Sacred Mountains and its Significance in Religious Practices

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In this essay, I will discuss both the historic and modern relevance of sacred mountains within religions around the world. The broader prospective of this essay is to connect the sacredness of mountains to the socio-religious impact to mountain culture. The first part of the essay will discuss the history of sacred mountains within different religions and cultures across the globe. The second part will discuss the practices within and its significance in cultures that is connected to mountains. In the third part, I will provide reasons to why sacred mountains are being threatened by modern commercial tourism and mountaineering and its recent efforts to conserve its sacred significance.
INTRODUCTION
Currently, mountains has increasingly over decades been a place to awaken a sense of awe or wonder in individuals that sets them apart as a place endowed with provocative beauty and meaning. For example, many tourists, hikers, and climbers visit Sierra Nevada in California and the Alps in Europe. Besides mountains being known for their provocative beauty, they are also known to be distinguished as sacred places of worship or sanctities. There is no universal definition for sacredness, it is rather more context-specific, meaning that it can have various meanings. Mountains are considered sacred if it contains sacred sites or objects such as temples, monasteries, hermitages, stones, springs, and groves that are directly associated with the activities of holy persons (Bernbaum 305). Mountains can be singled out by a specific culture or tradition as places of sanctity (Bernbaum 304). According to the Japanese religion, a mountain is considered sacred for a given group of people if it is majestically high, in an unusual shape, or if it was...

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...th Christianity and Greek we can see similarities that connect, such as a mountain sacredness being weighed by its holy happening such as Moses giving God the Ten Commandments on Mountains Sinai and the Greek regarding a mountain “sacred” based on its divine births and miraculous events such as, Mt. Kyllene being the birthplace of Herkles. As we can see in these religions that they are parallel themes throughout each one we can also say the same for around the world. The best way to effectively analyze the different reasons to why the sacredness of mountains is to organize them. Edwin Bernbaum was able to find ten common themes that are commonly expressed throughout his study. Including Height, Center, Power, Diety or Abode of Deity, Temple or Place of Worship, Paradise or Garden, Ancestors and the Dead, Identity, Source, Inspiration, Renewal, and Transformation.

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