Myth CodexRotA Wiki

All Sacred Sites in the Codex

Every sacred sites in the Codex, drawn from all 13 traditions.

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Traditions
24 entries

A

Arkona (Temple of Svetovid)The Cliff Where a God Was Dragged DownA Rugian temple-fortress with the best-documented pagan cult in the Slavic world - and the site of its most precisely dated destruction, in 1168.Sacred Site · Slavic

C

Chichen ItzaAt the Mouth of the Well of the ItzaThe great Postclassic Maya city of Yucatan — home to Kukulkan's pyramid and the Sacred Cenote, and a decades-long argument over how "Toltec" its art really is.Sacred Site · Mayan

E

Etemenanki (the Ziggurat of Babylon)Temple of the Foundation of Heaven and EarthBabylon's great stepped temple tower to Marduk, rebuilt by Nebuchadnezzar II, ruined to a flooded pit, and read for centuries as the Tower of Babel.Sacred Site · Mesopotamian

G

Glastonbury (Isle of Avalon)The Grave That Saved an AbbeyThe Somerset abbey that announced Arthur's grave in 1191, almost certainly a fundraising fiction, and became identified with Avalon ever after.Sacred Site · ArthurianThe Great Sphinx of GizaHoremakhet, Horus in the HorizonThe colossal lion-bodied guardian of Giza, carved from the living bedrock, worshipped a thousand years later as the sun god Horemakhet.Sacred Site · Egyptian

H

The Hill of TaraSeat of the High KingsA low Meath hilltop layered with 5,000 years of earthworks, remembered as the seat of Ireland's High Kings — a title the archaeology alone cannot confirm.Sacred Site · Celtic

I

Ise Grand ShrineThe Shrine That Is Always NewShinto's holiest site, home to the sun goddess's mirror — rebuilt on an adjacent plot every twenty years so nothing there is ever allowed to age.Sacred Site · JapaneseThe Ishtar GateEighth Gate of BabylonNebuchadnezzar II's glazed-brick gate to Ishtar, dug out of a Babylonian ruin mound and rebuilt whole in Berlin's Pergamon Museum.Sacred Site · MesopotamianIzumo TaishaThe Shrine of the Ceded LandThe shrine built, myth says, as the price for the land — where every kami in Japan is believed to gather each autumn, beneath a hall once among Japan's tallest.Sacred Site · Japanese

K

Karnak Temple ComplexIpet-Isut, the Most Select of PlacesThe largest religious complex ever built — fifteen hundred years of continuous construction at Thebes, centred on the state cult of Amun-Re.Sacred Site · Egyptian

M

Mount Fuji (Sacred Mountain)The Peerless MountainJapan's tallest, most sacred peak, home to a blossom goddess and climbed by pilgrim confraternities for centuries — a UNESCO site for its art, not its geology.Sacred Site · JapaneseMount KailashThe Mountain Four Faiths Call HolyA remote, unclimbed Himalayan peak in western Tibet sacred to Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and Bon — Shiva's meditation seat and the source of four great rivers.Sacred Site · HinduMount Tai (Taishan)The Eastern PeakChina's most sacred mountain, climbed by emperors seeking Heaven's mandate and by pilgrims for three millennia — seat of a goddess and an underworld judge.Sacred Site · Chinese

N

Newgrange (Bru na Boinne)The Winter Sun's DoorwayA 5,000-year-old passage tomb on the Boyne, built for the winter solstice centuries before the Celts arrived — later remembered as the Dagda's own hall.Sacred Site · Celtic

O

The Oracle of DelphiSeat of the PythiaThe mountainside sanctuary of Apollo where the priestess Pythia delivered oracles for over a thousand years, and the modern debate over what made her speak.Sacred Site · Greek

P

The ParthenonTemple of Athena the VirginThe Doric temple to Athena on the Athenian Acropolis, built under Pericles, decorated by Phidias, and still the most famous ruin in Greece.Sacred Site · Greek

S

The Sacred Cenote of Chichen ItzaThe Well of SacrificeThe natural sinkhole at Chichen Itza where the Maya threw offerings of jade, gold, and people, dredged by an American consul in the early 1900s.Sacred Site · Mayan

T

The Temple at UppsalaThe Golden Hall of the NorthA golden temple with statues of Thor, Odin and Freyr, described by Adam of Bremen c. 1075 — a real cult site, but archaeology and legend disagree on its form.Sacred Site · NorseTemple of the InscriptionsPakal's MountainPalenque's funerary pyramid, raised over the tomb of King Pakal and carved with one of the longest surviving Classic Maya hieroglyphic texts.Sacred Site · MayanTemplo MayorThe Mountain at the Heart of TenochtitlanTenochtitlan's twin pyramid to Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc, demolished in 1521 and lost until 1978, when electrical workers struck the Coyolxauhqui stone.Sacred Site · AztecTeotihuacanCity Where the Gods Were MadeA vast city already ancient when the Aztecs found it, mythologised by them as the place where the gods sacrificed themselves to make the Fifth Sun.Sacred Site · AztecTikalYax Mutal, City of the BajosThe great Classic Maya city of the Peten rainforest — a dynasty two thousand years deep, a war with Calakmul, and a king's tomb built as a mountain.Sacred Site · MayanTintagelArthur's Conception, in StoneThe Cornish clifftop where Geoffrey of Monmouth set Arthur's conception, and where archaeology has since found a real, wealthy post-Roman stronghold.Sacred Site · Arthurian

V

Varanasi (Kashi)The City of LightThe Ganges-side city where dying is said to grant liberation outright — one of Shiva's twelve jyotirlingas and a living pilgrimage center for three millennia.Sacred Site · Hindu