Practical spirituality and sacred mountains

Abstract

This paper has three parts. The first part will summarise two decades of personal research in the fields of high altitude archaeology and anthropology of sacred mountains and provide an overview of the multiplicity of ways in which mountain cultures in the Americas, Oceania, Europe, Africa and Asia have interacted with the landscapes that they perceive to be sacred. In the second part some of the connections between modem mountaineering and spirituality are explored. This will be followed by identification of values shared by native communities and mountaineers in different parts of the world, by analyzing the transformative potential in the experience of mountains and their sacredness.