Cosmic Mountain
Cosmic Mountain, 2022 acrylic on panel. 20"x 16"
The vision for this painting came after opening the magisterial photo book Meetings with Mountains, by the eminent photographer Peter Sanders, where I encountered in its very first pages a striking image of the Mountain of Light (jabal al-nur)—the reported site where Muhammad was first given revelation in a cave at the mountain’s summit. Sanders’ photograph uniquely captures the mountain in silhouette, its shadowed profile cast against a moonlit sky. Although I have seen many images of this particular mountain, looking at the stark simplicity of the silhouetted landscape, I understood it anew alchemically as an example of the Cosmic Mountain.
Within virtually all forms of spirituality there can be found an association between mountains and the highest states of human consciousness. For the Abrahamic traditions, the most well-known is of course Moses’ biblical encounter on the summit of Mount Sinai—the same mountain known as Mount Horeb, “the mountain of God,” where Elijah is also said to have received revelation, hearing divine utterance as an audible silence—the oft quoted “still small voice” of God (1 Kings 19:12). The Mount of Transfiguration is another example of this archetypal mountain, where according to the gospels, Jesus was transfigured by divine light in the company of both Moses and Elijah. For the spiritual traditions of the East, Mount Kailash is perhaps the most well-known. As a sacred place of pilgrimage, it is recognized by many Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains as the mythical Mount Meru, the center of the universe, abode of deities, and site of power and liberation.
From an alchemical perspective, the element that forms the Cosmic Mountain is primordial matter (prima materia)—the universal ground from which form and consciousness manifest. The metaphorical ascent of the soul up the Mountain represents the alchemical process of the transmutation of our base “metals,” or traits, into noble ones. This takes place within the alchemical oven—the athanor—of the heart, depicted in this image as a lit cave at the Mountain’s summit where the fire of sacred presence is cultivated in order to prepare the alchemical elixir and produce the Philosopher’s Stone. The fire illuminating the cave is none other than the light of the One—the fire of Love—that burns through the false self, revealing the Real at its core. It is this fiery sun of the essential heart that illuminates the transfigured soul, here symbolized by the rising full moon overhead, which perfectly receives and reflects divine light after the clouds of the ego and conditioned thought have melted away.
The medieval French alchemist, Nicolas Flamel (d. 1418) described the Cosmic Mountain as “the lonely mountain of essential Being . . . round which the heavens circle, through which the polar axis runs, and round which glide the dragons of the cosmic powers.” As the central and highest peak in the cosmos, its apex represents the realization of unified consciousness itself. Yet, as Flamel paradoxically highlights, the Mountain is a “lonely” one; the serpentine pass traversing the straight ridge to its summit marks the inward journey of the alchemical quest. While the straightness of the ridge symbolizes the essential perfection that comprises the unified ground of alchemical transformation, the winding path marks the unique and seemingly circuitous journey of each individual quest.
Within this alchemical pilgrimage of unfolding to essence, the self is transfigured from being constrained by temporal duality to a transcendent realization of the Whole where, in Sufi parlance, Love, Lover, and Beloved are one. The ascent up the Cosmic Mountain thus symbolizes the cultivation of the essential self—the alchemical evolution from a base of chaotic fragmentation and separation to essential wholeness and dimensionless unity at its peak. This return to essence is famously depicted in the Sufi poet Attar’s classic work The Conference of the Birds (Mantiq ut-tayr) and its analogy of the spiritual quest to find Mount Qaf, where God (symbolized by the mythical phoenix the Simorgh) can be found.
As a symbol of the realized self, the Mountain is none other than the incorruptible Philosopher’s Stone. Having been created from primordial matter, the Stone has grown and evolved through the purifying layers of the earth, finally standing within essential wholeness as the pillar of the cosmos, the center of existence, and the unswerving support for the embodiment of sacred presence in the world.