Axis Mundi

“Myth begins in humanity’s experience of the sacred which, Mircea Eliade states, is an element in the structure of consciousness, not a stage in the history of events.  He saw the motif of the separation of heaven and earth in creation myths pointing to a fundamental alienation from the primordial unity of spiritual being. Consequently, people could maintain their connection to the spiritual sources of meaning only through an imaginal conduit, an axis mundi, a bond between heaven and earth which became implicitly present in religious ritual and which was embodied architecturally in important temples and sacred sites. The axis mundi (‘axis of the world’) is an image of connection between the mundane, terrestrial plane and the transcendent home of the spirit(s) above.” (From The Not-Yet God, p. 13).