"You said in your heart, 'I will ascent to heaven; above the stars of God I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far north.'"
     - Isaiah 14:13 (denouncing the king of Babylon)

"Psalm 48, verse 2, has the astounding phrase 'Mount Zion in the far north'....Ezekiel, himself in Babylonia, was a vision of the Lord's chariot careering towards him. It did not come from the direction of the Palestinian Zion, where the Lord supposedly had his home. It came from the north on a storm-wind."
     - Geoffrey Ashe, The Ancient Wisdom

"The daughters of Israel, weeping for Tammuz, mentioned by Ezekiel, sat looking to the North, and waiting for his return from that region."
     - General Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma

"Like 'Safon' of the Canaanites, Mount Zion appears to be a Semitic version of a 'world mountain' which is familiar in independent legend over much of Asia. Its best-known guises is the Mount Meru of Hinduism.... Meru was far away to the north, and it was the center of the sky as well as the earth, of the entire universe in fact. The Hindu epic Mahabharata puts it beyond the Himalayas, and, describing a journey to it, ways the travelers passed 'a vast desert of sand', suggesting a location north of the Gobi region. The same epic declares that it 'stands carrying the worlds above, below and transversely'.
"Meru contained a paradise, like the Canaanite Safon, and an abode of gods. Above its peak was the celestial pole, and the heavens rotated round it as a pivot. Iranian and other legends portray; the same mountain. Among Buddhists it is usually called Sumeru. Sometimes it is said to have a temple on its summit...In some accounts the temple has a golden spire which we see as the Pole Star."

"Among the beings frequenting it [Meru] were the Seven Rishis, semi-divine sages, the sources of all sublunary wisdom. These...were identified in plain terms, and as early as the Rig Veda, with the stars of Ursa Major. Its principal Hindu name was Saptarshi, 'the seven Rishis'. Their homes were in the sky, and from there they made periodic descents on Meru."
"The earliest major earth-center distinguished from the heavenly one was apparently seven-gated Nippur. In the old astral system matching constellations with places on earth, Nippur actually was matched with the Bear, Mar-gid-da.... The underworld which was the center's downward extension had seven gates also, though differently arranged. In Babylon the main temple on the surface, housing the city's sovereign numen, had seven tiers. The Lord of the Jewish Temple on Zion had a septenary emblem. The resident god of Delphi was septenary in his own emblem and his ritual calendar. Mazes with magical centers, and complexities perhaps imitating the underworld, had a sevenfold path."
     - Geoffrey Ashe, The Ancient Wisdom

"The Great Bear is the most notable constellation near the celestial pole, the center and axis of the heavens; thus it is analogous to Nippur, the old summit and center and perhaps navel of Sumer.
     - Burrows in S. H. Hooke, The Labyrinth

"The victories of Hercules are but exhibitions of Solar power which have ever to be repeated. It was in the far North, among the Hyperboreans, that, divested of his Lion's skin, he lay down to sleep, and for a time lost the horses of his chariot. Henceforth that Northern region of gloom, called the 'place of the death and revival of Adonis', that Caucasus whose summit was so lofty, that, like the Indian Meru, it seemed to be both the goal and commencement of the Sun's career, became to the Greek imaginations the final bourne of all things, the abode of Winter and desolation, the pinnacle of the arch connecting the upper and lower world, and consequently the appropriate place for the banishment of Prometheus."
     - General Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma

The Arcadian goddess Artemis (the Roman Diana) "was Mistress of Wild Animals, and Homer give Artemis that title. She was specially close to bears. She ruled over them, and received homage under an ursine image....In the Attic festival of Artemis Brauronia, a girl of five and a girl of ten, wearing dark yellow bear-skin robes, danced in ceremonies that were still performed in classical times. Astrally they corresponded to the Little Bear and the Great Bear...The roots of the cult were pre-Hellenic. Most probably the Artemis who arrived from Asia Minor was a composite. There had been fusion between Anatolian elements and a bear-goddess who can be traced back along the north littoral towards Russia. The stellar connection may have been part of that combination. Astral myth, in general, was not native to Greece or the lands near it."
Artemis' brother, Apollo, "was a special friend of a nation called the Hyperboreans, dwellers-at-the-back-of-the-north-wind (or at any rate, 'beyond Boreas'), who were not Hellenic. He left Delphi for three months every year to live among them, riding through the sky in a chariot drawn by swans. Straw-wrapped offerings delivered annually to another of his temples, on the island of Delos, were alleged to come from his Hyperborean worshipers. They lived in a carefree country, a secret Elysium, with inhabitants a thousand years old."
     - Geoffrey Ashe, The Ancient Wisdom

"Tibetan Masters of mysticism often mention teachings of northern origin which have been mysteriously transmitted. These enigmatic sayings seem to be based rather on legend than on historical fact. Moreover we ought no to take the word 'northern' in the geographical sense. In Tibet, as in India, 'north' has mystical meaning.
"On the other hand some Indians including the learned Mr. Tilak believe in the nordic origin of the Aryas ['Honorable, venerable, noble'] whose cradle was, according to them, situated in the Arctic regions. This would explain, by the persistent effect of atavistic memories, the fascination which is exercised by the north on some of their mystics.
"This explanation cannot apply to Tibet where this same fascination is also found and even to a higher degree. In the Tibetan legends numerous allusions are made to a northern country where the transcendental doctrines originated. Certain naldjorpas ['he who posses peace, serenity'] pretend to go there occasionally. Enlightened Tibetans believe that this is a matter of psychic experiences, occurring in the course of special mediations, and not of actual voyages.
"On the historical or semi-historical level, the Tantric doctrines are, in the opinion of certain learned men, considered to have been imported into Bengal by traveling merchants coming form the North. In such a case what North can be in question? From Tibet or from Kashmir, lying to the north of India, or from regions farther away and stretching beyond Tibet?
     - Alexandra David-Neel and Lama Yongden, The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects

Altaic Shamanism

"The Altaians, Mongols, Buryat, Yakut and other tribes call a woman-shaman an utagan, with variants such as udagan, ubakhan, utygan. For a man-shaman they all have different words. Shamanism, it appears, was formerly a women's cult, which was united when the people themselves were. It only passed into male hands and required a new word for its male practitioners after the tribes were separated and drifted out of touch with each other. Furthermore the old word for a woman-shaman awakens echoes. It is like Etugen, a Mongol name for the Earth Goddess. The Siberian Earth Goddess, in her turn, has affinities with the Bear constellations. In one Tartar dialect utygan, the word for a woman-shaman, also means 'bear'."
     - Geoffrey Ashe, The Ancient Wisdom

According to Dr Theodore Barber, "the kind of people who can perform the most interesting mental feats under hypnosis can in fact perform them without the aid of any induced hypnosis at all. On the basis of his research he claims that between three to four percent of the female population at least can hallucinate at will, touch apparitions and have out of the body experiences and that most of such women are leading normal, active lives, unaware that their powers are anything special. Such abilities are found, says Barber, not in accordance with certain levels of education or types of personality or emotional stability but in women who share one basic trait: a tendency to have fantasized from an early age and to continue an intense fantasy life as adults."
     - Denise Winn, The Manipulated Mind

"...In one of the most important fields of shamanistic activity, the Altaic area stretching from Lake Bailkal west and south-west, seven is dominant. In a typical Altaic descent to the nether world, the shaman goes down thought seven levels to encounter Erlik Khan, lord of the dead, who has seven sons and seven daughters. (It is much the same infernal scene as in Inanna's ordeal.) A shamanistic variant of the cosmic tree is a world-mountain like Meru, with seven stories and the 'navel of the sky' above. One Altaic myth tells how the god who made the world sat on this mountain, which was then in the sky. After creation he lowered it so that it rested on the earth. It was made of gold. The name 'Altai' itself refers primarily to a mountain range and actually means 'golden'. In the Mahabharata (VL. vi. 10), Meru is said to be made of gold."

"It is feasible to picture the Altaic people as the first to conceive of a true Cosmos, an intelligible universe.... They had their holy place - the central mountain, the original Meru, pattern for all other centers - and there perhaps inspired or initiated persons could gather in a temple and spiritually ascend, descend, bring the realms together, and expound the correlation. They expressed the above-and-below cosmic pattern in number, seeing the great septenary of the Bear as powering the heavenly rotation; and they set up earthly septenaries to match it, such as spiral labyrinths and a college of seven principal teachers, remembered in India as the Rishis.
"Such ideas and practices, if they existed, were mythically stated, but their meaning transcended myth. Apollo's Hyperborean missionaries carried some of them south-westward. Wandering Indo-European tribes picked up fragments. Sumeria related the Bear to its own center of Nippur. Babylon's ziggurat imitated the sevenfold mountain. Presently the thought as the heart burst out again into new systems, such as Pythagoreanism and astrology."
"In Mongolia and Tibet, meanwhile, Altaic teaching that went into Kalachakra too dwelt on a divine center and skies that spelt out messages in their eternal circling. Lamas preserved their traditions of the source as Shambhala, a secret place of enlightenment in the northern mountains."
     - Geoffrey Ashe, The Ancient Wisdom

"According to the sacred tradition of the Hindus, the deep caverns of the Nagas [serpents] contain fabulous treasures, illuminated by flashing precious stones. The subterranean abodes are now to be in certain parts of both the Himalayas and Tibet, particularly around the Lake of the Great Nagas - Lake Manasarowar."
     - Andrew Tomas, On the Shores of Endless Worlds

"I have many treasures but only upon the appointed day may I bestow them upon my people. When the legions of Northern Shambhala shall bring the spear of salvation, then shall I uncover the depths of the mountains."
     - Gessar Khan

Sacred Centers of the Heavens

"Opposite to the coast of Celtic Gaul there is an island in the ocean, not smaller than Sicily, lying to the north - which is inhabited by the Hyperboreans, who are so named because they dwell beyond the North Wind....tradition says that Leto [the mother of Apollo and Artemis] was born there, and for that reason, the inhabitants venerate Apollo more than any other god."
"In this island, there is a magnificent precinct of Apollo, and a remarkable temple, of a round form [Stonehenge?], adorned with many consecrated gifts. There is also a city, sacred o the same god, most of the inhabitants of which are harpers..."
"It is also said that in this island the moon appears very near to the earth, that certain eminences of a terrestrial form are plainly seen in it, that Apollo visits the island once in a course of nineteen years, in which period the stars complete their revolutions, and that for this reason the Greeks distinguish the cycle of nineteen years by the name of 'the great year'. During the season of his appearance the god plays upon the harp and dances every night..."
     - Hecataeus of Abdera (4th century BC)

"Stonehenge began as a henge which had both solar and lunar alignments built into it. Seen from the center, one side of its entrance at the north-east roughly defined the place on the horizon near where the sun rose at midsummer, climbing above the rugged outlier known as the Heel Stone. The other side marked the midwinter rising of the moon.
"Just inside the bank the shorts sides of a rectangle of stones called the Four Stations pointed to the midsummer sunrise, the long sides to the extreme setting of the moon. This was possible because Stonehenge, by chance, had been built close to the latitude where these phenomena occurred at right-angles to each other, although the precise position for observing that would have been in the marshes around Salisbury 7 miles (11km) to the south."
     - Aubrey Burl, Prehistoric Stone Circles

"Hecataeus' placing of a Hyperborean priesthood in Britain my not be pure fantasy; it may reflect the shamanistic succession traveling west with Celtic migration, and evolving into Druidism en route, with colleges in Britain.
"Of some interest here is Avalon, the equivocal Otherworld of the British Celts. It is sometimes said to be an island, just as Shambhala sometimes is, and it has a decidedly Hyperboran air, being a blissful place where the climate is always gentle and there is never any snow or strong wind. Its name is thought to be derived from a Celtic world for 'apple'. Several scholars have proposed a direct link with Apollo, arguing that 'Apollo' means apple-god.
As Shambhala has its subterranean extension, Agharti, so had Avalon. It merged into an underworld known as Annwn. That fact raises the question of the name Avalon as applied to Glastonbury in Somerset, which was a holy place of the Celts. However Avalon came to be fixes on the map of Somerset, Glastonbury Tor certainly seems to have been regarded in folklore as an entrance to Annwn. This being so, it is a striking coincidence at least that a septenary spiral track has been reconstructed on the Tor."
     - Geoffrey Ashe, The Ancient Wisdom

According to Geoffrey Ash, this is believed to be the route traced by initiates to an ancient induction ritual atop the Tor. Confirmation of the theory can be found on a megalithic rock carving at Titingale, the reputed birthplace of King Arthur. Carved there is a seven fold spiral identical in design to the maze around the Tor. This pattern of in-out-in-out-in to reach the center can also be found in ancient Crete, Pompeii and American Indian sites.
     - from "In Search Of the Holy Grail" (the TV series)

Hyperlinks

·The Apocryphic Book of Enoch
·Chalice of the First Sacrament
·Parchment of the Sarmoung Brotherhood
·Secrets of the Vimana
·Tammuz/Dumuzi
·Thought Forms