Mount Everest - a place of mystery, majesty and unparalleled beauty - rises higher into the sky than any other mountain on Earth. Many stories have been told about the dangers and triumphs of climbing the summit - but few have been written about the Sherpa, the people who have lived on the mountain for centuries and consider it sacred. With stunning photographs and engaging text, Sacred Mountain presents a unique picture of Mount Everest - its history, ecology and people - that will captivate readers of all ages.
The Incas carried out some of the most dramatic ceremonies known to us from ancient times. Groups of people walked hundreds of miles across arid and mountainous terrain to perform them on mountains over 6,096 m (20,000 feet) high. The most important offerings made during these pilgrimages involved human sacrifices (capacochas). Although Spanish chroniclers wrote about these offerings and the state sponsored processions of which they were a part, their accounts were based on second-hand sources, and the only direct evidence we have of the capacocha sacrifices comes to us from archaeological excavations. Some of the most thoroughly documented of these were undertaken on high mountain summits, where the material evidence has been exceptionally well preserved. In this study we describe the results of research undertaken on Mount Llullaillaco (6,739 m/22,109 feet), which has the world's highest archaeological site. The types of ruins and artifact assemblages recovered are described and analyzed. By comparing the archaeological evidence with the chroniclers' accounts and with findings from other mountaintop sites, common patterns are demonstrated; while at the same time previously little known elements contribute to our understanding of key aspects of Inca religion. This study illustrates the importance of archaeological sites being placed within the broader context of physical and sacred features of the natural landscape.
Chronicling the inner as well as the outer journey, an influential author offers his personal view of his spiritual adventure amid the breathtaking vistas of the Himalayas.
Custodians of the Sacred Mountains is the first comprehensive ethnography of the Bali Aga, a large ethnic minority that occupies the island's central highlands. The Bali Aga are popularly viewed as the indigenous counterparts to other Balinese who trace their origin to invaders from the Javanese kingdom of Majapait, who have ruled Bali from the fourteenth century A.D. Although Bali remains one of the most intensely researched localities in the world, the Bali Aga have long been overshadowed by the more exotic courtly culture of the south. A closer analysis of the changing position of the Bali Aga within Balinese society provides a key to understanding the politics and social process of cultural representation in Bali and beyond. The process is marked by a blend of representational competition and cooperation among the Bali Aga themselves, among the Bali Aga and southern Balinese, and later among the island's aristocratic elites and foreign colonizers or scholars, and state authorities. The study of this process raises important issues about the establishment and maintenance of status and power structures at regional, national, and global levels. Custodians of the Sacred Mountains explores the marginalization of the Bali Aga in light of a critical theory of cultural representation and calls for a morally engaged approach to ethnographic research. It proposes an intersubjective and communicative model of human interaction as the foundation for understanding the relative significance of cooperation and competition in the cultural production of knowledge.
W. Y. Evans-Wentz, great Buddhist scholar and translator of such now familiar works as the Tibetan Book of the Dead and the Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation, spent his final years in California. There, in the shadow of Cuchama, one of the Earth's holiest mountains, he began to explore the astonishing parallels between the spiritual teaching of America's native peoples and that of the deeply mystical Hindus and Tibetans. Cuchama and Sacred Mountains, a book completed shortly before his death in 1965, is the fruit of those explorations. To Cuchama, "Exalted High Place," came the young Cochimi and Yuma boys for initiation into the mystic rites for their people. In solitude they sought and received guidance and wisdom. In this same way, the peoples of ancient Greece, the Hebrews, the early Christians, and the Hindus had found access to inner truth on their own holy mountains: and in this same way must the modern person find the path to inner knowing. Surveying many of the most Sacred Mountains in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia, Evans-Wentz expresses the belief that the secret power of these high places has not passed away but only awaits the coming of a New Age. This new age, in accord with the oldest prophecies of our continent, will be a time of renaissance, the long-waited era of harmony and peace among all peoples. This renaissance shall be uniquely American, a renewal based on the values so long honored by the Americans before Columbus, and so ruthlessly trampled by the "civilized" Europeans who overran them. No other race of people has been as spiritual in their way of life than the original Americans, notes Evans-Wentz. Perhaps none other has known such martyrdom. Yet the secret greatness of the Indian religion still lives, ancient as the Earth itself, yet ageless in its power to renew.
This book explores in depth the wisdom and fierce beauty of an ancient Sioux story, which teaches the value of setting out on a quest in the natural world in order to discover who and what one truly is. What unfolds, in a dramatic and inspiring way, is a vision of the elements intrinsic to the pathless path toward freeing oneself from constraining beliefs and conditioning in order to awaken to the wonder and mystery of pure presence before the soul of the world.
"The Sacred Mountain" is a symbol revered by people in every religious and ethnic tradition of Asia. The 29 articles contained here celebrate these sacred peaks through prose, poetry, travelogue, historical and spiritual texts, art, and photos, and will be of interest to all students of Asian culture.
USE THESE HOLY MOUNTAINS! Late at night, on July 23rd, 1958, on a barren mountaintop in Devon, England, a Western Master of Yoga held a rendezvous with a Cosmic Master from the Planet Venus which forever changed the future of mankind upon Earth. Tremendous Spiritual Power from the Cosmic Being, through the Yogi, prevented a dangerous war in the Middle East and Charged the mountain as a New Age Power Centre. Thus began a modern odyssey which was to give to humanity 19 Spiritual Power Batteries—The Holy Mountains Of The World Charged In Operation Starlight. The Yoga Master was His Eminence Sir George King, Founder/President of The Aetherius Society, who had been designated Primary Terrestrial Mental Channel for Interplanetary Parliament in 1954. Operation Starlight and the 19 new Holy Mountains were to become a vital cornerstone for the building of a New Age of World Peace and Enlightenment soon to be born upon Earth. Thousands of people—ordinary people except for their desire to serve their brothers—have climbed these mountains; have opened their hearts to contact the mighty Power; and have sent this outward through Prayer to suffering humanity. The Holy Mountains Of The World are there for YOU, whoever you are! Whatever your age, race or belief, their Power will flow through you! Read this history. Then CHOOSE and ACT, to become one who helps to build the New Age!
