AxisMundi

Axis Mundi may be termed as also the cosmic world axis, world pillar, columna cerului,  navel of the world, center of the word, or world (axis) center.  Religion and ancient mythology describes the Axis Mundi as a connection with heaven and the Earth as celestial and/or geographic pole, expressing connection points between the sky and Earth inclusive of four compass directions.  Correspondence and travel between higher and lower, or above and below realms allow communication from the below to ascend to the above where blessings from the above or higher realms may, too, deescalate to the below realms for dissemination to all.  The navel functions may be termed as the  omphalos, the world's spot or point of all beginning.

The feminine depicts the umbilical chord for nourishment, opposing with the masculine phallus for insemination into a uterus.  The natural object for the phallic form involves a mountain, a tree, a vine, a stalk, a column of smoke or fire.  Also as a product of the human being, a staff, tower, ladder, staricase, maypole, cross, steeple, rope, totem pole, pillar, or a spire.  The proximity to heaven or the above carries religious implications such as the pagoda, temple mount, and church.  Secular implications may involve the obelisk, minaret, lighthouse, rocket, and skyscraper.  Although the Axis Mundi makes its appearances both in religious and secular contexts, the symbol itself is found in cultures utilizing shamanic practices or animist belief systems, in major world religions, even in technologically advanced urban situations and centers.

Acquirement

Symbolically, the Axis Mundi originated within a natural an universal psychological perception, meaning this space occupies and stands strong as "the center of the planetary world".  The spot exists as a microcosm or order remaining omniscient and settled in its state.  The microcosm has outside boundaries where foreign realms may be in various orders, often termed as unfamiliar, representing chaos, death, night.  The center of the microcosm allows one to venture into the four cardinal directions to discover and establish novice centers as new realms unfold into known and more settled states.  A "Middle Kingdom" known as China, the expression of ancient perception allows the Chinese polity, or group of polities to occupy a center on the planet.  Additional other lands in various directions remaining relative.  The central universe often depicts a mountain or such an elevated space, a place where earth and sky are close to status of the center, of the Axis Mundi.  Mountains, higher ones, can be regarded as sacred by the beings living amongst them.  Often shrines are erected from the base or summit.  

In Japanese culture the high mountain, Mount Fuji, symbolizes the world planetary axis.  Kun-Lun in China bears the same meaning in China, leaving Mount Zion for the ancient Hebrews, and the Black Hills as the Axis Mundi for the Sioux.  Mount Kailash in Hinduism and several cultures, often religious, in Tibet express the center in their symbols.  In central Australia the Pitjantjatjara beings have Uluru as the ancient Sumer and Babylon cultures in Mesopotamia created their erected and artificial mountain the ziggurats. Hindu temples in India strategically place temples on high mountains such as the Amarnath, Tirupati, and the Vaishno Devi.  Pre-Columbians of Teotihuacán in Mexico also erected their massive pyramids which feature staircases leading to a heaven.  There is the reference to Jacob's Ladder as an axis mundi visual at Temple Mount.  Christians refer to the Cross on Mount Calvary, and again Kun-Lun in middle kingdom ancient China as "the mountain at the middle of the world."

To go "into the mountains" is to dedicate one to a higher life, often spoken of as the spiritual life.  In monasteries of various faiths, shrines are placed at elevated places as wise teachers are often depicted in literary texts and in the arts bringing their revelations, such as Moses in Hebrew texts, atop mountains, trees, and temples.

Mt. Kailash, pictured below depicting the family of Shiva and Parvati cradling 

Skanda with Ganesha, is often associated with Axis Mundi.

The Cosmic Tree houses an axis mundi symbol uniting the sky as branches, earth as trunk, and underworld as its roots, on all three dimensional planes.  Additional cultures include the Pacific Island banyan tree, Bodhi tree, and the Sacred Fig as abode of ancestor spirits.  Hindu religion supports the banyan tree as sacred "Ashwath Vriksha" meaning "I am Banyan tree among trees" in the Bhagavad Gita.  Eternal life is represented given its eternal expanding branches.  Bodhi Tree is the tree where the known Gautama Siddhartha, Buddha, sat attaining enlightenment.  World Ash or the Yggdrasil in Norse mythology depicts the spot where Odin found enlightenment.  Again additional examples may include Jievaras in Lithuanian mythology, Thor's Oak tree in pre-Christian Germanic myths, the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in Genesis, and each said to be standing at the core center of Paradise garden. The paradise garden allows four rivers flowing to nourish the entire world.  The bamboo plan where Asian calligraphy pens stem from is representative of knowledge, often found on Asian university campuses.  Pre-Christian European beliefs represent the axis mundi in the Christmas tree, Entheogens often are relatable to world axes, as these psychoactive substances (entheogens) such as the Fly Agaric mushroom amongst the Evenks of Russia are often depicted.

In Beings

The physical body carries the symbol of the world axis such as the abstract Tree of Life.  Additional representations include the Sefirot in Kabbalism, and also depictions in Chakra systems, Hinduism and Buddhism, as well as the physical corporeal body concept of a human being pillar bridging heaven and earth together.  These are depicted in disciplines such as Tai Chi, Chi Gong, Martial Arts, and various Yoga practices.  The Buddha represented the axis mundi as a world center in the human physical form.  Statues of meditating buddhas and figurines uniting the human figure in a symbolic fashion such as a temple or tower.  Astrological settings most often depict a correlation uniting the health of a human and relationships with their celestial bodies.  Religions in world dynamics suggest the physical body as a temple itself with prayer bridging the union from the planet earth towards heaven.  Colossus of Rhodes is an ancient example of a beings physical figure united with a portal and skyscraper.  A being here suspended upon a tree or a cross also placed the being itself at the axis mundi in between heaven and the planet earth.  This meeting, amongst the Renaissance, has also been depicted as the Vitruvian Man representing mathematical explorations of the being in a physical form in a world axis.

Home

Sacred spaces for where a being houses oneself is representative of one's own planetary center.  Mountains, altars, gardens, and variations of one's created paradise, such as in Asian cultures, utilize the home or house with a square layout, oriented towards the four compass directions.  Traditional homes in Asian culture orient towards the sky through Feng shui, systems of geomancy, as well as Arab traditions including square surroundings with a central focus such as a fountain evoking primordial paradise, often in a garden layout.  These symbolic fields originate from the acxis mundi, as Mircea Eliade has stated.  Dwellings and archaic central situations utilizing a pillar can be useful as a means for communication within a community, mirroring the heavens and the sky.  Nomads in Mongolia as well as the Americas traditionally lived in structures of a circular nature.  The poles on the planet are also reflected in central poles of tents with the axis at the center and a focus on the four compass points surrounding to be of lesser importance.  

Shamanistic functions

Concepts in Shamanic tradition tells of a story of a healer involving traversing through the axis mundi to collect and bring forth knowledge from one pole to another.  Odin stories as well as the World Ash Tree, as well as Garden of Eden, Jacob's Ladder, Rapunzel and even Jack and the Beanstalk depict similar knowledge being brought back from other planets and worlds.  Journeys in The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri carry a similar essence.  Epic poems allow the hero's ascent and descent through spiral structures in a series guiding one from and through cores of the earth, from the abyss of Hell to the pristine Paradise.  This also is the central idea in the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex.  One suspended amongst the axis of heaven and earth may transform and become themselves a form of knowledge.  The serpent, suspended hanging involving a fruit or crucifixion, or in some cases by mistletoe, involves the idea in Rod of Asclepius, the medical profession often uses this emblem.  The caduceus, the corresponding and commercial professions emblem, and additional emblems representative of the axis mundi always including serpents behaviors as those which guard or guide one to knowledge.  

Stories

Modern tales, myths, and folklore include the axis mundi in fiction as well.  The ash tree in Hunding's room from a Norse legend.  The sphinx in the science fiction novel The Time Machine (1895) by H.G. Wells was a center for the worlds distant future structuring human being society.  The Wizard of Oz depicted Emerald City as a center of four directions.  Stephen Kings The Dark Tower also may stand for the center or axis of all universes in his novel series.  Orodruin in The Lord of the Rings by J.R. R. Tolkein serves as the center location for creation and destruction of the One Ring.  Tolkein's Middle-earth with its Supreme God light depicted Two Trees of Valinor as a central axis.  Children travel to a central spot termed the wardrobe lamppost in The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, where one world and the world adjacent to it begins and ends.  Steven Spielberg incorporates an ark of the covenant in his film Raiders of the Lost Ark, Bernardo Bertolucci depicts a hill topi with a safe tree in the film Stealing Beauty, and various other filmmakers have used the axis mundi symbols such as in Bob Kane's Gotham City, in Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins, again using the symbolic skyscraper.   Tim Burton's cathedral remains an example of a steeple, skyscraper, staircase, rope and ladder. ABC had a hit series drama called Lost where the maypole is incorporated into a song, generating the axis mundi idea.  The ABC drama also has its location, the island, as its own axis mundi.  Literal forms of the axis mundi include separating the planet from Hades in God of War: Chains of Olympus where Persephone's mission is to destroy life, where Atlas is the one punished for replacing the axis mundi, the pillar.  World pillars, such as the Cataclysm in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm mirrors the axis mundi in its literal form as a world pillar.  This meaning involves a broken Azeroth and Deepholme collapsing on to another leaving Thrall and Earthen ring separating the worlds, and here players literally are attempting to repair the axis mundi.  AND who could forget the beloved Harry Potter movie and legible book series.  There is a bridge between the magical world of the wizards and oppose world of the muggles.  Youthful magical beings in the first legible book Harry Potter & the Philosopher's Stone, including Harry Potter, cross platforms, the axis mundi, to the magical world of Hogwarts.

The Emerald Forest as axis mundi symbol from the Wizard of OZ