When I was a boy, the high peaks of the Ecuadorean Andes, where I lived at the time, held a peculiar fascination for me. A snow-capped mountain shining white in the morning sun had the power to move something deep within me, something that urged me to climb up to its summit and enter the pure and magical realm that hung there, gleaming in the sky. I did not know what that something was, nor where it came from, only that it was utterly compelling – and a source of endless daydreams. I began to climb with an Ecuadorean mountaineering club as a way of reaching that high and fantastic world of ice and snow so different from the usual surroundings of my everyday life.

Although not as high as the Himalayas, the mountains of traditional China possess an extraordinary beauty and richness of character that make them equally impressive – and just as evocative. Some, like the limestone pinnacles and granite peaks of the south, hang poised over rivers and plains in such incredible shapes of delicate rock that they look as if they could only exist in a Chinese landscape painting where the laws of gravity need not apply. Others, such as the imposing massif of Tai Shan in the east, stand as monuments of ancient stone, made venerable by ages of erosion. On the border with North Korea rises the highest peak in northern China – Changbai Shan, an extinct volcano with an enormous caldera embracing the sacred waters of Heaven Lake.

As the highest and most dramatic features of the natural landscape, mountains have an extraordinary power to evoke the sacred. The ethereal rise of a ridge in mist, the glint of moonlight on an icy face, a flare of gold on a distant peak – such glimpses of transcendent beauty can reveal our world as a place of unimaginable mystery and splendor. In the fierce play of natural elements that swirl about their summits – thunder, lightning, wind, and clouds – mountains also embody powerful forces beyond our control, physical expressions of an awesome reality that can overwhelm us with feelings of wonder and fear.

Dry hills of ancient rock, green ranges of jungle peaks, slick summits of wet granite, fiery volcanoes of fresh ash – a great diversity characterizes the mountains of South and Southeast Asia, reflecting the variety of cultures that fill the region. Aside from the Himalayas, which we have covered in a separate chapter, South Asia comprises the Indian subcontinent and the island of Sri Lanka. It includes crystalline mountains formed of some of the oldest bedrock in the world, remnants of an ancient continent called Gondwanaland. Southeast Asia covers the Asian peninsula east of India and south of China, along with its continuation in a line of Pacific islands that curves eastward toward Australia and New Guinea. Its mountains range from the Himalayan outliers of northern Burma through the hills of Thailand and Cambodia to the volcanoes of Indonesia. The region also includes the mountainous islands of Borneo and the Philippines.

From Mexico in the north to Argentina and Chile in the south, Latin America includes within its far-flung boundaries some of the highest and most mysterious mountains in the world. Like fumes slowly dissipating from past eruptions, memories of little-known civilizations linger around the cones of Mexican volcanoes such as Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl. The surrounding highlands of Mexico and Central America hold ruins with ancient pyramids whose forms reflect the shapes of mountains still revered by native peoples. From the warm Caribbean shores of Colombia and Venezuela to the icy fjords of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, the Andes stretch 4,500 miles down the west coast of South America to form the longest mountain range in the world.

Now that we have looked at mountains of major significance in cultures around the world, what conclusions can we draw about the symbolism that makes them sacred? On the most general level, we can identify from our study three broad ways in which people hold mountains in special regard. Firstly, certain peaks are singled out by particular cultures and traditions as places of sanctity directly linked to their highest and deepest values and aspirations. These mountains – the ones traditionally known as sacred mountains – have well-established networks of myths, beliefs, and religious practices such as pilgrimage, meditation, and devotion. Primary examples include Mount Kailas in Tibet, associated with the spiritual goals of liberation and enlightenment, and Tai Shan in China, connected for millennia with the cult of emperors.

Glimpsed through the haze of the imagination, hidden behind vast expanses of jungle, desert, and grassland, the mountains of Africa crystallize in rock – and traces of equatorial snow – the aura of mystery that imbues the continent with its special mystique. Just south of the Mediterranean, the Atlas Mountains rise in a great wall of folded ranges, barring the way to the empty wastes of the Sahara. Deep in the sands of the world’s largest desert, undulating in waves of heat, stand the gaunt pinnacles of the Ahaggar and Tibesti massifs. Like most of the mountains of Africa, other than the Atlas and the Ruwenzori, they were formed by volcanic activity. Remnants of ancient lava flows sprawl over other parts of the continent, capping the serrated ranges of South Africa and covering the highlands of Ethiopia.

From the glacier-sharpened spires of Alaska to the softly rounded ridges of Appalachia, the mountains of North America display a diversity of form and beauty that reflects the varied character and spirit of the continent and its people. Massive peaks hung with glaciers, looming over vast expanses of northern forest and arctic tundra, epitomize for many the ultimate ideal of wilderness in its wildest and most natural state. To the south snow-capped volcanoes of the Cascades present a vision of paradise, floating pure and cool among the clouds. Breaking free from the valleys around their feet to leap toward the open heights above, the rugged peaks of the Sierra Nevada express in sculpted rock a yearning for freedom and fulfillment. The endless ranges of the Rocky Mountains, rippling out toward the thin blue rim of the western sky, beckon the traveler with promises of a land of limitless opportunity, waiting beyond the horizon.

For most of us sacred mountains are remote from the experience of everyday life. They lie far off in space and time, revered by distant cultures, many of which vanished long ago. Even the peaks that we manage to climb and visit rise on the borders of our lives, removed from the cities and plains where most of us live. What is the value, then, of thinking about them? It is simply this: the contemplation of sacred mountains, with their special power to awaken another, deeper way of experiencing reality, opens us to a sense of the sacred in our own homes and communities – a sense that we need to cultivate in order to live in harmony with our environment and with each other. In looking up to the heights and reflecting on the world around them, we discover within ourselves something that enables us to lead deeper and more meaningful lives.

North of the Himalayas and the plateau of Tibet, thousands of miles from the nearest ocean, rise the remote and mysterious mountains of Central Asia, shimmering like mirages on the distant horizon. The Kunlun, the Tian Shan, the Pamir, the Altai – ranges whose names conjure up visions of faraway places stretch off in long ridges of snow peaks to waver and vanish in clouds of dust swept up from two of the harshest and most forbidding deserts on earth – the Gobi and the Taklamakan. Older than the Himalayas, but nearly as high, these little-known ranges form some of the most formidable barriers in the world, folded and squeezed up in great walls of metamorphic and sedimentary rock, topped here and there by impregnable towers of granite.

An enormous range 1,500 miles long, the Himalayas rise in the monsoon-drenched jungles north of Myanmar to sweep in a great arc of snow and ice northwest along the border of India and Tibet through Bhutan, Sikkim, and Nepal up to the dusty glaciers of the Karakoram on the remote desert frontier between Pakistan and China. From the plains of India, the mountains appear as luminous tracings on the far blue sky, wisps of light hinting at another world far above ours. As one approaches, they dwindle behind intervening hills to reappear in more substantial form in flashes of white, glimpsed now and then through the opening of a dark green valley. From the vantage point of a high ridge gained by an arduous climb, they emerge sharp and solid against the horizon, their glaciers glistening in the sun, too brilliant for eyes to bear.

The mountains of Oceania rise over flat expanses of sea, desert, and jungle. As the only points to break the monotony of a horizontal world, their vertical shapes, silhouetted against the sky, excite the imagination. Emerging from the deserts of central Australia, monoliths of ancient stone evoke visions of a primordial world that existed at the beginning of time. Elsewhere, in moister regions of Oceania, green crags and peaks of volcanic rock burst forth from the Pacific, streaming with vegetation, the symbol of life. Fuming in the sky, the cones and clouds of erupting volcanoes make visibly manifest the awesome power of the sacred. Far off over sea and jungle, at the limits of sight, alpine peaks with glaciers gleaming in the mist stir the spirit with glimpses of strange and unexpected beauty.

From the bright peaks of the Mediterranean to the dark fjords of the Arctic, mountain ranges weave intricate patterns across the landscape of Europe, supplying the texture and definition responsible for much of the continent’s beauty and appeal. Cliffs and ridges of clean rock dropping into the Aegean provide spectacular settings for the temples and monasteries that grace the mountains of Greece. North of the Mediterranean the snow peaks of the Alps swirl around in a great arc to divide the cloudy reaches of northern Europe from the sunlit regions of the south. The spirits of legendary figures of the past still stalk the crags and moors that cover the hills of the British Isles. Ghost-like memories of Norse gods haunt the mountains and fjords of Scandinavia, adding to the atmosphere of mystery that hovers like mist over the lonely fjords and mountains of the Arctic north.