The Gnawing

There is a great pole somewhere, a mighty trunk similar to the sacred sun dance pole, only much, much bigger.

This pole is what holds up the Earth.

The Great White Grandfather Beaver of the North is gnawing at that pole.

He has been gnawing at the bottom of it for ages and ages.

More than half of the pole has already been gnawed through.

When the The Great White Grandfather Beaver of the North gets angry, He gnaws faster and more furiously.

Once He has gnawed all the way through, the pole will topple, and the Earth will crash into a bottomless nothing.

That will be the end of all humans, of everything.

The end of all ends.

So we are careful not to make The Great White Grandfather Beaver of the North angry.

That's why the Cheyenne never eat beaver flesh, or even touch a beaver skin.

We want the Earth to last a little longer.

-told by the wife of Medicine Bull

Pushing up the sky
Endeavor to persevere
How can you buy or sell the sky?
0 our Mother the Earth, 0 our Father the Sky

The axis mundi, also cosmic axis, world axis, world pillar, world center, center of the world, or center of reality is a symbol representing the point of connection between Heaven and Earth.

The axis mundi offers means of travel and correspondence between the two realms of Heaven and Earth.

The axis mundi is also the place where the four compass directions unite, allowing treasure from Heaven to be disseminated throughout the world.

This places the axis mundi at the center of the world: at its omphalos (navel), the world's point of beginning.

The axis mundi appears in all cultures and takes many forms.

The axis mundi's symbolic image is both feminine (an umbilical providing nourishment) and masculine (a phallus providing insemination into a uterus).

The axis mundi may have the form of a natural object (a mountain, a tree, a vine, a stalk, a column of smoke or fire) or a product of human manufacture (a staff, a tower, a ladder, a staircase, a maypole, a cross, a steeple, a rope, a totem pole, a pillar, a spire).

The axis mundi's proximity to Heaven may carry implications that are chiefly religious (pagoda, temple mount, church) or secular (obelisk, minaret, lighthouse, rocket, skyscraper).

The axis mundi exists in the Hindu linga, or lingam, and is featured prominently in the most technologically advanced cultures - wherever the impulse persists to link a tower with the idea of a "world center."

A person naturally thinks of their own home and land as "the center of the world" because it is the center of one's known universe.

Japan's highest mountain, Mount Fuji, has long symbolized the the axis mundi in Japanese culture.

Mount Kun-Lun is the axis mundi in China. The ancient Chinese recognized four mountains as pillars holding up the heavens. (Cultures sometimes had more than one axis mundi. In the ancient Chinese case the pillars resided at the compass points.)

In American Sioux beliefs the Black Hills are the axis mundi.

Mount Kailash is holy as the axis mundi to several religions in Tibet.

In ancient Mesopotamia the cultures of ancient Sumer and Babylon erected artificial mountains, or ziggurats, on the flat river plain with stairways leading to temples, the axis mundi, at the top.

The pre-Columbian residents of Teotihuacán in Mexico erected huge pyramids featuring stairways leading to temples at the top - stairways to heaven.

The ancient Greeks regarded several sites as places of earth's omphalos (navel) stone, notably the oracle at Delphi, while still maintaining a belief in a cosmic world tree and in Mount Olympus as the abode of the gods.

Judaism has Mount Sinai and Mount Zion as axis mundi.

Christianity has the Mount of Olives and Calvary as axis mundi.

Islam has the Temple Mount (Dome of the Rock) and Mecca, said to be the place on Earth that was created first.

All sacred places constitute reality centers (omphalos) with the altar or place of prayer as the the axis mundi.

Altars, incense sticks, candles and torches help form the axis mundi by sending a column of smoke, and prayer, toward heaven.

The architecture of sacred places often reflects this role.

The stupa of Hinduism, and later Buddhism, reflects Mount Meru.

Cathedrals are laid out in the form of a cross, with the vertical bar representing the union of Heaven and Earth as the horizontal bars represent union of people to one another, with the altar at the intersection.

Pagoda structures in Asian temples take the form of a stairway linking Heaven and Earth.

A steeple in a church or a minaret in a mosque also serve as connections of Heaven and Earth.

Structures such as the maypole, derived from the Saxons' Irminsul, and the totem pole among indigenous peoples of the Americas also represent the axis mundi.

The calumet, or sacred pipe, represents a column of smoke (the soul) rising form an the axis mundi.

An oak tree can serve as the axis mundi.

The oak tree provides an axis mundi that unites three planes: its branches reach for the Heavens, its trunk meets the Earth, and it roots reach down into the underworld.

In some Pacific island cultures the banyan tree, of which the Bodhi Tree is of the Sacred Fig variety, is the abode of ancestor spirits.

The Bodhi Tree is also the name given to the tree under which Gautama Siddhartha, the historical Buddha, sat on the night he attained enlightenment.

The Yggdrasil, or World Ash, functions in much the same way in Norse mythology; it is the site where Odin found enlightenment.

Other examples include Jievaras in Lithuanian mythology and Thor's Oak in the myths of the pre-Christian Germanic peoples.

The Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in Genesis present two aspects of the same image.

Each is said to stand at the center of the Garden of Paradise from which four rivers flow to nourish the whole world.

Each tree confers a boon.

The Christmas tree, which can be traced in its origins back to pre-Christian European beliefs, represents an axis mundi.

Entheogens (psychoactive substances) are often regarded as world axes, such as the Fly Agaric mushroom among the Evenks of Russia.

The human form can function as a world axis - an axis mundi.

Some of the more abstract Tree of Life representations, such as the Sefirot in Kabbalism and in the Chakra system recognized by Hinduism and Buddhism, merge with the concept of the human body as an axis mundi between Heaven and Earth.

Disciplines such as Yoga and Tai Chi begin from the premise of the human body as axis mundi.

Astrology in all its forms assumes a connection between human health and affairs and the orientation of heavenly bodies.

World religions regard the body itself as a temple and prayer as an axis mundi uniting Heaven and Earth.

The Renaissance image known as the Vitruvian Man represented a symbolic and mathematical exploration of the human form as axis mundi.

Dwellings also serve as centers of reality - the axis mundi of family life.

The hearth participates in the symbolism of the altar and a central garden partipates in the symbolism of a primordial garden paradise..

In Asian cultures dwellings were traditionally laid out in the form of a square oriented toward the four compass directions - east, west, north and south.

A traditional Asian home was oriented toward the heavens through Feng shui, a system of geomancy, just as a palace would be.

Traditional Arab houses are also laid out as a square surrounding a central fountain that evokes a primordial garden paradise.

A common shamanic concept, and a universally told story, is that of the healer traversing the axis mundi to bring back sacred mystical knowledge from the heavens.

This concept may be seen in the stories from Odin and the World Ash Tree, Garden of Eden, Jacob's Ladder, The Gnawing, Jack and the Beanstalk and Rapunzel.

It is the essence of the journey described in The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. The epic poem relates its hero's descent and ascent through a series of spiral structures that take him from through the core of the Earth, from the depths of Hell to celestial Paradise.

Anyone or anything suspended on the axis mundi between Heaven and Earth becomes a repository of sacred mystical knowledge.

A special status accrues to the thing suspended: a serpent, a victim of crucifixion or hanging, a rod, a fruit, mistletoe. (In pre-biblical times serpents acted as guardians of, or guides to, sacred mystical knowledge. The caduceus, a short herald's staff entwined by two serpents in the form of a double helix, is used as a symbol for medicine in North America. The traditional medical symbol, the rod of Asclepius, has only a single snake.)

Indra

Akhenaten

Revelation

God's Promise

Power of Imagination

!!EPIDEMIC OF INNER PEACE PREDICTED!!

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