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Cultural anthropologists often use the term axis
mundi in a looser sense than the strict astronomical
one. This poses a problem, because the objects
they identify as ‘axis mundi’
in mythological and early cosmological sources
do not correspond to the present state of the
axis of the earth. The association of these objects
with the axis of the earth does not appear to
have been made explicitly and unambiguously before
the 1st millennium BCE, probably because the rotation
of the earth around its axis was not commonly
known in earlier times.
By contrast, the mythological phenomenon
loosely identified as the axis mundi dates
back to the earliest stages of civilisation and
is described by the most diverse cultures in remarkably
similar terms. It can be explained by reference
to a once visible entity in the sky, with a complex,
evolving morphology and a possible link to the
zenith or the pole. The prototype may have been
the zodiacal light or, as recent insights in plasma
physics indicate, an enhanced aurora formed in
prehistoric times.
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keywords: mythology, cosmology,
astronomy, auroras, axis mundi, catastrophism,
religion, interdisciplinary, anthropology, ladder
to heaven, native beliefs, tree of life, cosmic
mountain, plasma, petroglyphs, history of religion,
history of ideas, symbolism
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