Introduction Mountains and the Sacred 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. People have traditionally revered mountains as places of sacred power and spiritual attainment. Sinai and Zion in the Middle East, Olympos in Greece, Kailas in Tibet, T'ai Shan in China, Fuji in Japan, the San Francisco Peaks in Arizona - all have acquired a special stature as natural objects of devotion. Speaking of the ability of these mountains to arouse spontaneous feelings of reverence and awe, Lama Anagarika Govinda, a Western practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism, wrote: The power of such a mountain is so great and yet so subtle that, without compulsion, people are drawn to it from near and far, as if by the force of some invisible magnet; and they will undergo untold hardships and privations in their inexplicable urge to approach and to worship the center of this sacred power"--