Virtually
every culture on earth preserved
traditions of a stupendous
sky-reaching column that
mythologists collectively refer to
as the axis mundi or ‘world axis’ —
a theme that can now be understood
with the help of plasma science.
Numerous elements in the traditional
descriptions of cosmic pillars are
entirely meaningless had they been
inspired by the earth’s rotational
axis, the Milky Way or the ecliptic
in their present forms. One such
puzzling trait is the widespread
belief that the column emitted a
dazzling radiance comparable only to
the lightning or the sun.
The Sumerians were wont to
eulogise their temples by comparison
to the prototype of a cosmic
mountain endowed with the lustre of
Utu, the sun god. For example, Gudea,
ruler of Lagaš (22nd century BCE),
“made Ning͂irsu’s house come out
like the sun from the clouds” so
that it “rises like the sun over the
Land … illuminates the assembly like
a delightful moonlight … The house
is a great mountain reaching up to
the skies. It is Utu filling the
midst of the heavens …” In Hindūism,
the cosmic Mount Meru, surmounted by
the supreme abode of Viṣṇu, was
thought to be “brighter than sun and
fire” and “is difficult to see for
the Gods and Dānavas because of its
splendor. When they reach there,
even the celestial luminaries no
longer shine, for the Lord of
undaunted spirit outshines them by
himself.” The late medieval Jewish
Zohar, which is the classic
textbook of Qabbālā, made no
bones of the belief that the ‘tree
of life’ “is the Sun which illumines
all. Its radiance commences at the
top and extends through the whole
trunk in a straight line.” A
millennium earlier and applied to
the cross of Christ, the Christian
St. Ephrem the Syrian († 373 CE)
similarly mused:
Perhaps that blessed tree,
the Tree of Life,
is, by its rays,
the sun of Paradise.
Indian philosophers
stated with respect to the holy fig
tree Aśvattha, which is another form
of the sky tree, that “Its light is
the yonder sun”, “that indeed is
called the Bright, that is called
Brahman, that alone is called the
Immortal. All worlds are contained
in it …” One poet declared: “I know
that great person (purusha) of
sunlike lustre beyond the darkness.
… This whole universe is filled by
this person (purusha), to whom there
is nothing superior, from whom there
is nothing different, than whom
there is nothing smaller or larger,
who stands alone, fixed like a tree
in the sky.” Drawing on Hindūism, a
Javanese tradition had it that
Kalpataru, Kalpavṛksa or
Pārijāta was “a golden
wish-tree … shining like the sun”.
On Kiribati, Micronesia, “the beam
of wood that had lifted the sky” was
styled “the First Tree, the Ancestor
Sun”. And the Desana people, of
Brazilian Amazonia, submitted that
“the creative Sun holds and carries
the cosmos, of which it is the
center or axis, as the spine holds
and carries the body … It is the
‘sun axis’ that holds together the
upper, middle, and lower worlds …
The ‘sun axis’ is the phallus, our
world to be fertilized is the vulva
…”
The scintillating
quality of the mysterious object
ancient myth-makers described as a
tree, a rock or a giant ‘man’ rising
up to heaven is a strong indication
that the original referent was a
plasma phenomenon. That the solar
system, like the rest of space, is
inundated with plasma, mostly in a
very rarefied state, has now been
well established. Plasmas shift from
a ‘dark mode’, invisible to the
human eye, to a ‘glow mode’ and then
to an ultra-bright ‘arc mode’ under
increasing electrical strain. Since
lightning as well as the sun consist
of visible plasma, it is
understandable that prehistoric
eye-witnesses of an aurora-like
illumination of the earth’s
magnetosphere, in their effors to
capture the experience in words,
would resort to the terminology of
lightning or solar irradiation
distinct from the quotidian sun.
Indeed, the
hypothesised plasma tube that once
emanated from one or both of the
earth’s magnetic poles must at times
have emitted synchrotron radiation.
Synchrotron radiation is defined as
electromagnetic emission generated
whenever electrons moving at a speed
almost identical to the speed of
light come into the presence of a
magnetic field or a component
thereof that lies at an angle to
their path, forcing these so-called
relativistic electrons to perform a
circular or helical motion around
the magnetic field lines. Excepting
man-made light using modern
technology, any such radiation
emitted at visible wavelengths is,
under today’s tranquil conditions,
derived from extremely remote
sources such as the Crab Nebula M1
in the constellation of Taurus and
the ‘jet’ coming from the elliptical
galaxy M87 in Virgo. It now appears,
however, that the earth’s biosphere
was also bombarded with a much
closer source of visible synchrotron
radiation light during the Neolithic
period – light so unbearably bright
to the unprotected human eye, and
arguably lethal in many cases, that
human observers keen on watching or
recording the unfolding forms were
forced to occupy positions where
shields such as rock formations or
trees would conceal the brightest
sources of synchrotron radiation.
From a human perspective, the
closest imaginable match for the
ineffable intensity of this light is
the lightning or the full-blown
radiance of an unobtruded sun.
www.mythopedia.info
Further Reading:
The Mythology of the World Axis;
Exploring the Role of Plasma in
World Mythology
www.lulu.com/content/1085275
The World Axis as an
Atmospheric Phenomenon
www.lulu.com/content/1305081
