Axis Mundi

The **Axis Mundi**, also known as the **Stairway to Heaven**, are pathways that connect the Earthly plane to the Heavens. They are used by celestial beings to travel to and fro between Heaven and Earth.

## Appearance

The Axis Mundi can come in large variety of appearances and is framed to coincide with the respective cultural belief or afterlife one is associated with. The ones that are normally seen within the series are the famous Stairways to Heaven which are framed as golden escalators that lead to Heaven.

Axis Mundis mostly appear as a product of human manufacture (such as a tower, a ladder, a staircase, a maypole, a steeple, a rope, a totem pole, a pillar, a spire). The Axis's appearance can also change in terms of religious iconography (pagoda, temple mount, minaret, church) or secular (obelisk, lighthouse, rocket, skyscraper).

## Description

In a similar function to the Undervator the Axis Mundi acts as a passage towards the Heavenly realms and is one of the primary modes of transportation for a celestial being to reach their respective divine abode or when a virtuous soul is led to an afterlife. Axis Mundi are the branches or roots of the Tree of Life which acts as the absolute centerpoint of all creation. The Axis Mundi can normally be located within the "navel" of creation with this navel being Purgatory itself as Purgatory is often interpreted as the "lobby" between the Heavens and the Underworld. Surrounding that navel are various pathways that lead to an afterlife which correspond to a soul's belief or religion. For Christian terms, the top of the golden escalators hold a Logaeth (Gate of Heaven) that is managed and secured by a Guardian Angel inside a toll booth. These angels carry the Logos which are keys that can open the Logaeth that lead to the Nine Spheres of Heaven.

In terms of said beliefs that do not relate to Christianity, these pathways are also depicted as stairways but grafted into colossal mountains or hillsides; tall mountains are often regarded as sacred and some have shrines erected at the summit or base. When reaching the top of the Axis a soul can find an entrance that again takes various appearances like a temple, pillar, totem pole or even a calumet where they perform a series of tasks for a psychopomp to come and take them. One example are sailors who died a virtuous death at sea and climb a jagged rocky support to reach a lighthouse where they ring a ship's bell to be taken to Fiddler's Green.

The Axis Mundis can even extend towards the precipice of the Underworld's entrances with the pathways resembling roots that act as rails for the Undervator to travel throughout the Underworld. Most of these pathways even carry running rivers with these rivers being named after a mythological one that leads to their respective underworld. Since physics do not apply on the other side of the spirit world, the geographical structure of these rivers' course are nonsensical but according to Sam Hill the rivers of the foreign underworld diverge from Hell's rivers whilst the latter are located in the middle of the roots.

## Trivia

* In astronomy, axis mundi is the Latin term for the axis of Earth between the celestial poles.
	+ In a geocentric coordinate system, this is the axis of rotation of the celestial sphere. Consequently, in ancient Greco-Roman astronomy, the axis mundi is the axis of rotation of the planetary spheres within the classical geocentric model of the cosmos.
	+ In 20th-century comparative mythology, the term axis mundi – also called the cosmic axis, world axis, world pillar, center of the world, or world tree – has been greatly extended to refer to any mythological concept representing "the connection between Heaven and Earth" or the "higher and lower realms".
* Limbo is said to be the liminal space that is located between two Axis Mundis.