Axis Mundi and the Ordering of Space

What all these have in common is the axis mundi, the vertical line through the centre joining the underworld, the earth and the sky, imagined as a tree, a mountain, a pillar or a ladder: Yggdrasil in the Norse material, Mount Meru in Indian and Buddhist cosmology, the world tree in Mesoamerica, the pillar at the centre of the Saxon Irminsul, the tent pole and the smoke hole in a great many mobile dwellings. Mircea Eliade made this the centrepiece of his account of sacred space, arguing that founding a settlement or a temple repeats the ordering of the cosmos from a centre.

Eliade's comparative method has been sharply criticised since for flattening the differences between traditions and for assuming a universal religious structure, and the criticism is well taken. The recurrence of centred cosmograms is nonetheless real, and it is best explained without claiming that they all mean the same thing.