What is it about the North Pole? Why are there so many myths about it?
The Cosmic Mill
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/heather.ho ... icmill.htm
At times in history, this was marked by a star which seemed to fix the top of the universe in its place. So the pole star has been called the Nail Star, or northern nail. The celestial pole also marked the place where the heavens were upheld by the world tree which had its branches in the sky, and its roots in the underworld below the land where people lived, and up which the shaman could climb to intervene with the gods. This central axis of the world, about which the rest appears to revolve, has also been visualized as a mountain or a pillar.
The Spatiality of the Cosmos in the Functional Perspective: the Axis Mundi and the Omphalos
http://www.geocities.com/therapeuter200 ... gical.html
Mircea Eliade is famous for what he has referred to as the valorisations religieuses de l'espace, which are correlative with the agriculturalist cyclism and which lie at the origin of the symbolism of the omphalos (center of the world) and the axis mundi that is universally found among all pre-industrialized humanity.
Plasma Mythology - The World Axis, Axis Mundi, or Cosmic Axis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMEi0Mff8go
The Axis Mundi
http://fusionanomaly.net/axismundi.html
In this religious belief, the soul always remains connected to the body through the 'axis mundi.' It is by way of the axis mundi that the soul also projects from the body and returns to the body. The axis mundi can be depicted using a variety of symbols: a black hole, tree, pillar, staff, cord, snake, door, bridge, stick, etc, can depict the axis which links the soul to its body during Mystical Projection. This religious belief is held by many American Indian tribes... the Shamans (medicine men) of the tribes claim to have the ability of projecting their soul from the body and journey to the spirit world through the axis mundi.
The World Tree
http://www.mystical-www.co.uk/trees/index.html
Many primitive people of noble, highly developed civilisations treated trees, flowers and plants with great respect. Often trees were associated with having supernatural powers, being gods, ancestors and associated with different forms of worship, whilst flowers and plants were viewed too as also having medicinal applications and miraculous healing qualities.
The World Tree
http://www.kheper.net/integral/tree.html
Like the octave, the spiral, the mandala, the fractal, the image of the tree represents a template for the structure of reality, and the emergence of multiplicity (branches, twigs and leaves) out of unity (the trunk), of the visible (the tree above ground) out of the invisible, (the hidden part of the tree - the roots below ground). Many ancient cultures incorporate the myth of the World Tree, or Tree of Life, Tree of Knowledge, Tree of Speech, as it is also known.
The “Shifting Poles Theory”
http://www.viewzone.com/changingpoles.html
The "Shifting Poles Theory" was introduced by History Professor, Charles H. Hapgood, whose fascination with geography and ancient maps led to his re-discovery of the Piri Reis Map.
Hapgood wrote: "Polar wandering is based on the idea that the outer shell of the earth shifts about from time to time, moving some continents toward and other continents away from the poles. Continental drift is based on the idea that the continents move individually... A few writers have suggested that perhaps continental drift causes polar wandering. This book advances the notion that polar wandering is primary and causes the displacement of continents.... This book will present evidence that the last shift of the earth's crust (the lithosphere) took place in recent time, at the close of the last ice age, and that it was the cause of the improvement in climate."
The Piri Re'is Map of 1513
http://www.viewzone.com/pirireis.html
A copy of the map was presented to a diplomat in the U.S. government, where it remained a curious artifact for years. The true mysteries of of this map were eventually discovered by Professor Charles H. Hapgood and revealed to the scientific community in his book, Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings. During scrutiny of the map, Hapgood discovered a partial charting of Antarctica, made during a period when the coast was free of ice. This coastal structure, now covered again by ice, was subsequently verified by satellite radar scanning. Ice core samples of the coastline have fixed the last ice-free period to between 11,000 B.C. and 4,000 B.C.
Hapgood has proved that the Piri Re'is map is plotted out in plane geometry, containing latitudes and longitudes at right angles in a traditional "grid"; yet it is obviously copied from an earlier map that was projected using spherical trigonometry! Not only did the early map makers know that the Earth was round, but they had knowledge of its true circumference to within 50 miles!
The Piri Re'is map is often exhibited in cases seeking to prove that civilization was once advanced and that, through some unknown event or events, we are only now gaining any understanding of this mysterious cultural decline.
IS THE NORTH POLE A YAWNING HOLE?
http://ku-prism.org/polarscientist/holl ... 6nyhw.html
The theory of Symmes was that the earth is not a solid mass thrown off ages ago from the sun in a molten condition, which has gradually cooled from, the surface inward. He held, on the contrary, that it is a hollow sphere, with an opening at either pole.
Celestial Ship of the North
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/cosmi ... raiton.pdf
Creation brought with it the beginnings of mythology, and ushered in the first period of Fixed Time. The Seven Stars of the Constellation at the Pole came to convey the idea of this First Time. They were called “The Beginningless Lights” and were held sacred by the priests, and many of the observations and information given in the sacred mysteries concerning these “Lights” have fortunately been so carefully preserved that no type has ever been completely lost.
Draco the Dragon
http://mail.colonial.net/~hkaiter/Draco_Yin_Yang.htm
Draco the dragon is a splendid constellation made up of fifteen or so stars. It circles around the North Pole. It is a long figure covering a large part of the northern sky, and in proper dragon fashion, it twists this way and that.
Draco is indeed a dragon or serpent. Its head is Yang and its tail is Yin. (The head and tail of the dragon has been known to represent duality, or opposing principles such as: male/female, sun/moon, ego/selflessness, inner/outer, wisdom/ignorance, hatred/compassion, subject/object.) The profound cosmic principle of Yang and Yin is the mythical bridge between outer and inner.
Ursa Major
http://www.dibonsmith.com/uma_con.htm
Ursa Major is a large sprawling constellation, the third largest in fact. It's mainly known as the home of the Big Dipper (UK: the Plough), certainly the best known asterism in all the heavens. The constellation offers a number of objects, some well known, others rather obscure, and one star that has recently been in the news as having at least one "temperate" planet circling about it.
Hyperborea, Land of the North
http://www.theoi.com/Phylos/Hyperborea.html
Hyperborea was a fabulous realm of eternal spring located in the far north beyond the land of winter. Its people were a blessed, long-lived race free of war, hard toil, and the ravages of old age and disease.
Hyperboreans
http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/HOR_I25/H ... Taepf.html
The Hyperboreans were a mythical people intimately connected with the worship of Apollo . Their name does not occur in the Iliad or the Odyssey, but Herodotus states chat they were mentioned in Hesiod and in the Epigoni, an epic of the Theban cycle.
Glacial Men
http://www.gnosticteachings.org/the-tea ... perboreans
The first Root Race that existed in the world lived on a secret island in what is now the polar cap of the North Pole. That region was tropical and was situated, as we already said, in what is now the equatorial zone, although later on, due to the revolution of the axis of the Earth, it came to occupy the place it is in now.