FRACTAL MOUNTAIN UNIVERSE

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FRACTAL MOUNTAIN UNIVERSE One of the most famous tightrope walkers living today said: "To look up elevates the soul; to watch a falcon take flight from the cornice of a building is to envy its freedom, to consider the world from a loftier perspective. We need altitude as much as we need oxygen. To be surrounded by things of great height -- mountain peaks or skyscrapers -- reminds us of our fragility but also inspires us to reach for the clouds, to take our measure and to stretch it."(3) These observations speak to strong sensibilities in human experience, and usefully broach the topic of the significance of great heights. For countless generations, mountains existing as upthrust geographical areas of higher elevation have nurtured the religious imagination by enticing people with the possibilities of drawing closer to the sky, a realm beyond the human being's usual earthbound reach. Around the world, wherever mountains exist as geographical

features of the environment, there are ancient associations -- ideas of reaching up to heaven, contacting a higher spiritual realm.(4) We think of the Himalayas, Olympus, Fuji, Sinai, and the temple mount in Jerusalem, as well as holy mountains in the Andes, and in China, to name but a few.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mountains prefigure the sacred sanctuaries around the world.

Photos by Herb Tobin.

 

 

 

In the Hindu experience the idea of the archetypal mountain of existence is mythologized in the cosmic mountain named Meru, the mythological center or navel of the universe. Temple scholar and historian George Michell writes: "In the superstructure of the Hindu temple, perhaps its most characteristic feature, the identification of the temple with the mountain is specific, and the superstructure itself is known as a 'mountain peak' or 'crest' (shikhara). The curved contours of some temple superstructures and their tiered arrangements owe much to a desire to suggest the visual effect of a mountain peak."(5) The fractal structure of some mountains has been researched and discussed by analysts-- self-similar angles of sloping stone are often observable once one has acquired "an eye for fractals."(6)

In North India the superstructure is "a solid tower with curvilinear vertical ribs, bulging in the middle and ending in a very narrow necking covered by a distinct ribbed piece of round stone known as amalaka."(7)Temples in South India (an area of about 20% of the subcontinent) typically have a more pyramid-shaped tower, composed of "gradually receding stories divided by horizontal bands, and ending in a dome... or barrel-shaped ridge."(8) South Indian Dravidian culture was already highly evolved before Sanskritic influences arrived from the North-- this accounts for the different styles. In the South tall gateway towers (called gopuras) form entrances to the temple compound; they attained a greater height than the temple superstructure.

Here are examples -- one of each kind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

North Indian style temple (left) and South Indian style temple (right).

Left photo by Wes Tedrow, right photo by official temple photographer.

 

 

 

While there are a number of variations on the mountain shape in Indian temples but nevertheless "the purpose of the superstructure is always one and the same. It is to lead from a broad base to a single point where all lines converge. In it are gathered the multifarious movements, the figures and symbols which are their carriers, in the successive strata of the ascending pyramidal or curvilinear form of the superstructure. Integrated in its body they partake, each in its proper place, in the ascent which reduces their numbers and leads their diversity to the unity of the point."(9) Thus a structure such as the Kandariya Mahadeva temple in Khajuraho visually conveys a recursive sensibility. It is a whole of self-similar peaks clustered and rising, forming a consistent coherent totality-- the rising slopes of a cosmic mountain. The rising and falling lines lead up to one

supreme point of transcendence, symbolic of the ultimate unity which is of supreme importance in many great Hindu traditions. All the features are parts of the ultimate oneness, and so they share the same style, though on various levels and scales of significance and attainment.(10)

 

 

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