Shiva’s sacred abode and the mountain landscape of pilgrimage
Kailasa
Explore Kailasa as Shiva’s abode, its portrayal in myth and sacred art, and the distinct traditions associated with the physical mountain of Kailash.
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Cosmologies describe the order of a world and the places within it. Here, accounts of creation and the afterlife sit alongside named realms in particular texts. Read each world through the source that gives it form.
109 entries · A–Z
Shiva’s sacred abode and the mountain landscape of pilgrimage
Explore Kailasa as Shiva’s abode, its portrayal in myth and sacred art, and the distinct traditions associated with the physical mountain of Kailash.
Indian traditions, Nivedita and Coomaraswamy
The great plain on which the rival houses of the Mahabharata gather for war.
Japanese immortality tale, Davis retelling
The deathless country visited by Sentaro on a magical crane in Davis's Fuji legends.
Indian traditions, Nivedita and Coomaraswamy
Ravana’s island stronghold, reached through a sea-crossing and a hidden search.
Dante, Purgatory and Paradise
The stream that removes remembrance of offence.
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels into Lilliput and Brobdingnag; illustrated by Jean de Bosschère, Dodd, Mead / William Heinemann, undated title page
A miniature kingdom whose carefully measured bodies, provisions and machinery make Gulliver an immense but manageable prisoner.
Dante, Inferno
The first circle, where worthy souls endure desire without hope of blessedness.
Welsh folklore, Wirt Sikes
The lake of green-clad fairy women and extraordinary white cattle.
Welsh folklore, Wirt Sikes
The mountain lake from which the fairy wife of the Myddfai legend appears.
Lord Dunsany, The Last Book of Wonder; Boston: John W. Luce & Company, undated illustrated edition with 1916 copyright statement
The imagined, jewel-filled London described to a Sultan in the opening tale of Lord Dunsany’s The Last Book of Wonder.
Celtic fairy traditions
Pilgrimage lake interpreted through monster legends and earlier sacred associations.
Celtic fairy traditions
The happy plain among the names for the Irish western Otherworld.
Dante, Inferno
The eighth circle’s tenfold landscape of fraud, crossed by rocky bridges.
Lord Dunsany, The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories; London: George Allen & Sons, 1908 title page
The dreamed city whose monuments and memories conceal its vulnerability in Lord Dunsany’s title story.
Welsh folklore, Wirt Sikes
A mountain treasure site where supernatural light and storms guard an iron chest.
Japanese tale, Davis retelling
The lunar homeland and its inhabitants in Davis's tale of Lady Kaguya.
Japanese mountain legends, Davis retelling
The earthly mountain around which Davis gathers images of the lotus, divine presence and the Elixir of Life.
Japanese heroic legend, Davis retelling
The forbidding mountain and iron palace that form the setting of Davis's Goblin of Oyeyama episode.
Suffering realms in Hindu, Buddhist and Jain traditions
Explore Naraka and Niraya through Hindu, Buddhist and Jain sources, with distinct accounts of karma, suffering, judgment and rebirth.
Celtic fairy traditions
A real monument discussed through funerary evidence and fairy-palace traditions.
Egyptian funerary religion
The primordial water in Tirard’s creation account, from which light emerges and to which the ordered earth may return.
Egyptian funerary religion
A company of eight linked to primordial elemental pairs.
Welsh folklore, Wirt Sikes
The Cavern of the Ravens, where two fiery-eyed birds guard a chest of gold.
Japanese mythology, Davis retelling
The underwater palace where Hoori recovers a lost fish-hook and marries Toyo-tama in Davis's retelling.