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9 sacred mountains humanity has worshipped for thousands of years — from Mount Olympus to Mount Kailash. New documentary videos every day on Mythologia Geographic. 🏔️
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00:00For 5,000 years, wherever human beings looked up and saw a mountain tearing through the clouds,
00:07they put their gods on top of it.
00:08Not beside it, on top.
00:11In Greece, Tibet, Japan, the Red Heart of Australia,
00:17cultures that never met, oceans apart,
00:20all crowned the same kind of rock with the same kind of throne.
00:25Tonight we climb nine of them.
00:27From the lightning throne of Zeus to a Tibetan peak no human being has ever stood upon.
00:33From the volcano Japanese pilgrims climb through the night
00:37to a Californian mountain that modern believers say hides an entire city inside it.
00:42Some of these gods are ancient.
00:45One or two are still being worshipped right now, this very week.
00:49And by the final mountain, you will understand why it was always the mountains.
00:53It was always the mountains.
00:59In northern Greece, Mount Olympus rises nearly 3,000 meters in a single thrust above the Aegean Plain,
01:05a peak that looks built for someone important.
01:08In the oldest Greek stories, the gods did not live in some vague heaven.
01:12They lived here, on a real summit,
01:15in palaces of bronze built by Hephaestus,
01:18behind gates of cloud no mortal could pass.
01:21Zeus held court on the highest throne,
01:24and when lightning cracked across the ridges,
01:27the Greeks knew exactly why.
01:29The king of the gods was throwing his thunderbolts.
01:33It is the tallest mountain in Greece,
01:35and it behaves like a god.
01:38Brooding, violent, wrapped in cloud.
01:41People still climb it today.
01:43Stand on its summit at dawn,
01:46clouds breaking beneath your boots,
01:48and you will understand how one mountain
01:51invented the western idea of heaven.
01:57But there is one sacred mountain
01:59that goes further than Olympus ever did.
02:02Mount Kailash rises in western Tibet
02:05like a perfect pyramid of rock and snow,
02:07and four religions call it the center of the world.
02:11Hindus believe Lord Shiva meditates upon its summit
02:15beside Parvati.
02:17Buddhists call it the axis of the universe.
02:20Jains and followers of Bon revere it just as deeply.
02:24And here is what sets Kailash apart.
02:26No human being has ever stood on its summit.
02:29In 1985, a legendary mountaineer was offered permission
02:32and turned it down out of respect.
02:35In 2001, when a foreign expedition was briefly considered,
02:39outrage across Asia killed the plan within weeks.
02:43Instead, pilgrims walk 52 kilometers around its base,
02:46some prostrating with every step.
02:48The mountain is not a mountain to them.
02:51It is a god.
02:52And you do not step on a god.
02:59Japan's most sacred mountain
03:01is a volcano that could kill you.
03:03Mount Fuji last erupted in 1707,
03:06dusting Edo with ash.
03:08Yet the Japanese have worshipped it far longer
03:10than they have feared it.
03:12In Shinto belief,
03:13the mountain is home to Kami,
03:15the spirits of nature,
03:16and to the goddess Konohana Sakuya Haime,
03:19the blossom princess,
03:20whose shrine crowns the summit.
03:22For a thousand years,
03:24pilgrims have climbed Fuji through the night,
03:27headlamps winding up the dark slope
03:29like a river of stars,
03:31to stand on the crater rim at dawn,
03:33for Goraiko,
03:35the honorable arrival of light.
03:37Many climb in white robes,
03:40staffs stamped at every station.
03:42In 2013,
03:44UNESCO named Fuji a world heritage site,
03:47not for its perfect cone,
03:49but for its sacredness,
03:51the art it inspired,
03:52the pilgrimages it commands.
03:55Every summer,
03:55hundreds of thousands make the climb.
03:57The goddess, it seems,
03:58is not short of visitors.
04:03In the red heart of Australia,
04:06stands a mountain,
04:07that is not a mountain.
04:09Uluru is a single sandstone monolith,
04:13348 meters high,
04:14rising from flat desert,
04:16like something dropped from the sky.
04:18The Anangu people have lived beside it,
04:21for 30,000 years,
04:22and their law,
04:24to kurpa,
04:25teaches that ancestral beings
04:27walked this rock in the creation time,
04:30and that every cave and water hole
04:32is a verse of that story,
04:34still being read.
04:36For decades,
04:37tourists treated the climb as a trophy.
04:40The Anangu always asked them not to.
04:42This is sacred ground,
04:44not a staircase.
04:45In October 2019,
04:47the climb closed for good,
04:49and the rock got back its silence.
04:51Today, visitors walk the base instead,
04:54learning the stories the proper way,
04:56slowly.
04:56And when rare desert rain comes,
04:59waterfalls pour off the red dome,
05:01and the desert blooms,
05:02which the Anangu read as the ancestors speaking.
05:09On the border of Turkey and Armenia,
05:13rises a snow-capped volcano,
05:15carrying the most famous shipwreck story ever told.
05:19Genesis says Noah's Ark came to rest upon the mountains of Ararat,
05:23and for 2,000 years,
05:25explorers have searched its glaciers for timbers.
05:28In 2010,
05:30explorers announced a wooden structure buried in ice at 4,000 meters,
05:34carbon dated to nearly 5,000 years old.
05:38The claim made global headlines.
05:40Mainstream archaeologists remain deeply skeptical,
05:43and no conclusive proof has ever been produced.
05:46But the expeditions keep coming.
05:48Satellite scans,
05:49ground-penetrating radar,
05:51climbers braving a peak that sits in a restricted military zone.
05:55Whether the Ark is up there or not,
05:57Ararat became sacred the moment humanity needed the flood to have an ending,
06:01a mountain where the waters stopped,
06:04the dove found land,
06:05and the world began again.
06:11In the desert of Egypt's Sinai Peninsula
06:14stands a granite peak where,
06:16according to the Bible,
06:18the sky itself spoke.
06:20Moses led the Israelites to Mount Sinai,
06:23and Exodus describes thunder and lightning,
06:25a thick cloud,
06:26a trumpet blast,
06:28growing louder and louder,
06:29until the whole mountain trembled,
06:31and Moses climbed into the fire
06:33to receive the Ten Commandments.
06:35At the foot of the mountain
06:37stands St. Catherine's Monastery,
06:39founded in the 6th century,
06:41one of the oldest working Christian monasteries on earth,
06:44unbroken for 1,400 years,
06:47guarding a library of ancient manuscripts
06:49second only to the Vatican's.
06:51Pilgrims still climbed the 3,750 steps of repentance
06:56through the night
06:57to reach the summit by dawn.
07:00Three religions,
07:01Judaism,
07:02Christianity,
07:03and Islam,
07:04all honor this mountain.
07:06Few silhouettes on earth
07:07carry that much weight.
07:12But some sacred mountains
07:14were never meant to be climbed at all,
07:16because they may not exist on any map.
07:19Mount Meru is the cosmic mountain
07:21at the center of Hindu,
07:23Buddhist,
07:23and Jain cosmology,
07:2584,000 leagues high,
07:27its rivers flowing to the four corners of the world,
07:31the gods in golden palaces upon its summit.
07:34Scholars have proposed real peaks
07:36as its earthly shadow,
07:38Kailash,
07:39the Pamirs,
07:40but Meru was always bigger than geography.
07:42It was the axis of the universe,
07:45the still point around which everything turns.
07:47And here is the beautiful part.
07:50Humanity rebuilt it everywhere.
07:53Every towering temple spire in India,
07:56every Buddhist stupa,
07:58every Jain shrine,
07:59is a small Meru raised by human hands.
08:02A mountain you can walk into.
08:04A mountain you can pray inside.
08:07The gods got their peak.
08:09We just had to build it ourselves.
08:14In eastern China,
08:16one mountain has been called
08:17the most sacred under heaven
08:19for 3,000 years.
08:21Mount Tai was the seat of the Jade Emperor,
08:24ruler of heaven in Chinese belief.
08:26And for 2,000 years,
08:29emperors climbed its 7,200 stone steps
08:32to perform the Feng Shan sacrifices,
08:35rites held only when a dynasty
08:38stood at its absolute peak,
08:40announcing to heaven
08:41that the empire was in order.
08:44Temples, pavilions,
08:46and poems carved into living rock
08:49lined the entire ascent.
08:51Confucius climbed Tai
08:53and declared the whole world
08:55looked small from the top.
08:57The phrase,
08:58as steady as Mount Tai,
09:00entered the language,
09:01meaning unshakable.
09:03Today,
09:04two million pilgrims a year
09:05still climbed through the night
09:06for the sunrise.
09:08Dynasties rose and fell.
09:10The mountain outlasted them all,
09:12which is exactly why
09:13the emperors needed it.
09:18Now we come to the strangest mountain
09:21on the list,
09:22because its gods were invented
09:24in living memory.
09:25Mount Shasta in California
09:27is a solitary volcano,
09:294,300 meters high,
09:31rising alone above the forests.
09:32In the 1880s,
09:34a writer claimed
09:35that a hidden city
09:36called Telos
09:37existed inside the mountain,
09:39home to the Lemurians,
09:40survivors of a lost continent
09:42in the Pacific.
09:43Decades later,
09:44the I Am movement
09:46declared Shasta
09:47one of the seven sacred
09:48mountains of the world,
09:49a vortex of mystical energy,
09:51robed figures on the slopes,
09:53strange lights above the summit.
09:56Geologists call it
09:57a young volcano
09:58that last erupted
09:59200 years ago.
10:00But Shasta proved
10:02something remarkable.
10:03The instinct to put
10:04gods on mountains
10:05survived the telegraph,
10:07the airplane,
10:07and the internet.
10:08It just found a new mountain.
10:14So why mountains?
10:16Why did cultures
10:17on opposite sides
10:18of the planet,
10:18with no contact,
10:20no shared language,
10:21no shared gods,
10:22all make the same choice?
10:24The answer is written
10:25in the air itself.
10:27Above 3,000 meters,
10:28the air thins,
10:29your heart pounds,
10:31your thoughts slow,
10:32your body knows
10:33it has left
10:34the ordinary world.
10:36Storms gather on peaks
10:37while the valleys
10:38stay calm.
10:39Lightning strikes
10:40the summit first,
10:41so the sky literally
10:42seems to touch
10:43the mountain
10:44and nowhere else.
10:46And there is
10:46the psychology of awe,
10:49standing small
10:50beneath something enormous,
10:52quiets the ego,
10:53and opens the mind
10:54to the sacred.
10:55A shift neuroscientists
10:58can now measure
10:58in the brain.
11:00The gods did not
11:01choose the mountains.
11:03The mountains
11:04chose the gods.
11:06Every culture
11:07that climbed high
11:08and watched clouds
11:09break beneath its feet
11:11returned with one story.
11:13Up there,
11:14above the clouds,
11:16someone is in charge.
11:21Nine mountains,
11:23nine thrones.
11:24from the lightning palace
11:25of Zeus on Olympus
11:26to the unclimbed
11:28silence of Kailash,
11:29from the night pilgrims
11:30of Fuji
11:31to the ark hunters
11:32of Ararat,
11:33from the thunder
11:34of Sinai
11:35to the hidden city
11:36inside Mount Shasta.
11:38For 5,000 years,
11:40humanity has put
11:41its gods
11:42where the earth
11:42touches the sky,
11:43and the mountains
11:45never asked for the job.
11:46They just stood there,
11:48enormous
11:49and indifferent,
11:50until we gave
11:51them meaning.
11:52If this climb
11:53gave you chills,
11:54subscribe to
11:55Mythology or Geographic
11:56and ring the bell,
11:57because every single day
11:59we chase another legend
12:00to the ends of the earth.
12:02And the next mountain
12:03is already waiting.
12:04Until then,
12:05keep looking up.
12:06the next mountain
12:07is about to stay
12:08I will see you