Chapter 954

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Occultism points to the Himâlayan Chain as that “belt,” and maintains that whether under the water or above, it encircles the Globe. The “navel” is described as situated towards the setting Sun or to the West of the Himavat in which lie the roots of Meru, which mountain is North of the Himâlaya. Meru is not “the fabulous mountain in the navel or centre of the earth,” but its roots and foundations are in that “navel,” while it is in the far North itself. This connects it with the “Central” Land “that never perishes”; the land in which “the day of the mortal lasts six months and his night another six months.” As the Vishnu Purâna has it: “For the North of Meru there is, therefore, always night during day in other regions; for Meru is North of all the Dvipas and Varshas” (islands and countries). (Book ii. chap. viii.) Meru is therefore neither on Atlas as Wilford suggests, nor, as Wilson tried to show, “absolutely in the centre of the globe,” only because “relatively with the inhabitants of the several portions, to all of whom the East is that quarter where the sun first appears.”