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Plate 1 A mountain with a tree on its peak and a straight line running up through both, joining the earth below to the sky above

Axis mundi

Axis mundi, Latin for “axis of the world”, is the scholars’ name for the line said to join heaven, earth and the underworld at the centre of the world: a mountain such as Meru, a tree such as Yggdrasil, a pillar, a ladder or a temple.

Symbols across cultures. Also called axis mundi meaning, center of the world, cosmic mountain, world axis.

Meaning

The term belongs to the study of religion, not to any one tradition. Lawrence E. Sullivan’s entry in the Encyclopedia of Religion (1987) defines it as “the ‘hub’ or ‘axis’ of the universe”, a technical term of the history of religions, and lists its usual images: the cosmic mountain, the cosmic tree, the pillar, the ladder. The idea was worked out above all by Mircea Eliade, the Encyclopedia’s editor, whose Patterns in Comparative Religion (1949) treats the centre of the world and the cosmic tree. The traditions themselves have their own names: Mount Meru in Hindu and Buddhist cosmology, Yggdrasil in Norse myth, the Maya Yaxche, the Babylonian temple called “link between heaven and earth”. The tree of life page covers the tree that gives life, a related idea.

Origin and history

In the Prose Edda the ash Yggdrasil is the place where “the gods meet in council every day”. “This ash is the best and greatest of all trees; its branches spread over all the world, and reach up above heaven”, and its three roots run to the gods, to the frost giants, and down into Niflheim. Its own page is Yggdrasil.

Mount Meru, in the Encyclopedia of Religion entry on the centre of the world by Eliade and Sullivan, is the cosmic mountain of the Puranas and of Buddhist texts: “On its peak lie the cities of the gods… The sacred river Ganges flows from Mount Meru. It is the fixed point about which revolve the sun and the stars.” W. J. Wilkins, writing in 1882, described it as a mountain “supposed to be the centre of the earth”, believed to lie north of the Himalayas. Eliade and Sullivan add that the stupa of Borobudur in Java was built as such a mountain.

In Mesopotamia the axis was a temple. The sanctuaries of Nippur and Larsa bore the title duranki, “link between heaven and earth” (Eliade and Sullivan). For the classical Maya, Sullivan writes, the centre of the world was Yaxche, the “first tree” or “green tree”, “whose place marked the center of all meaningful directions and colors of the universe”. The Vedic sacrificial post, the yūpa, was addressed as a cosmic tree: “With thy summit thou dost hold up the heavens, with thy branches thou fillest the air, with thy foot thou steadiest the earth” (Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, quoted by Eliade and Sullivan).

Many centres at once

A tradition can hold more than one centre. Eliade and Sullivan note that cultures in Mesopotamia, India and China “saw no inconsistency in recognizing a large number of sacred places, each one called ‘the center of the world’”. Their examples cover several religions: the Hebrew Bible calls Mount Gerizim “the navel of the earth” (Judges 9:37); a Syriac Christian text, the Cave of Treasures, makes Golgotha the summit of the cosmic mountain; Sullivan calls the cross “the cosmic tree of Christianity”. The axis could also travel: Eliade and Sullivan describe the Achilpa, an Aranda group in Australia, carrying their sacred pole, Kauwa-auwa, whenever they moved, and heading “in the direction toward which the sacred pole inclines”. Sullivan notes the double sense of every such image: they “connect realms of being but … emphasize the distance between such realms”.

Trees of two kinds

Britannica’s article on the world tree separates two forms: “In the one, the tree is the vertical centre binding together heaven and earth; in the other, the tree is the source of life at the horizontal centre of the earth.” The first is the axis mundi of this page; the second is closer to the tree of life.

A scholars’ idea, and its critics

The axis mundi is a comparison drawn by scholars, and Eliade’s comparisons have been questioned. Britannica’s article on Eliade records that some scholars have attacked his scholarship as “subjective and unscientific, making uncritical generalizations, ignoring verification procedures, and interjecting metaphysical and theological assumptions”, while he is still regarded as an influential historian of religion.

See also

Stupa, Labyrinth, Crescent moon, Spiral, Cosmic egg, Goddesses of love.

Sources

  1. Axis Mundi (Encyclopedia of Religion), Lawrence E. Sullivan (1987), “Axis Mundi”, Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd edition, ed. Lindsay Jones (Macmillan Reference USA, 2005), on Encyclopedia.com, Encyclopedia of Religion (Macmillan Reference USA), via Encyclopedia.com, article
  2. Center of the World (Encyclopedia of Religion), Mircea Eliade and Lawrence E. Sullivan (1987), “Center of the World”, Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd edition, ed. Lindsay Jones (Macmillan Reference USA, 2005), on Encyclopedia.com, Encyclopedia of Religion (Macmillan Reference USA), via Encyclopedia.com, article
  3. World tree (Encyclopaedia Britannica), “World tree”, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Internet Archive copy, 4 October 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article
  4. Mircea Eliade (Encyclopaedia Britannica), “Mircea Eliade”, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Internet Archive copy, 6 September 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article
  5. The Younger Edda (Anderson translation), Snorri Sturluson, trans. Rasmus B. Anderson, 1880, Project Gutenberg, Gylfaginning, chs. 15–16
  6. Hindu Mythology, Vedic and Purāṇic (W. J. Wilkins), W. J. Wilkins, Hindu Mythology, Vedic and Purāṇic (Thacker, Spink & Co., 1882), Internet Archive full text, Internet Archive, “Indra”, note

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Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research

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