Sacred mountains Examples of this would be the Hindu belief that Mount Kailas is the final resting place for the souls of the dead, as well as the large cemetery placed on Mount Koya-san. Sacred mountains can also provide an important piece of a culture's identity. For example, Messerli and Ives write, “The Armenian people regard Mount Ararat, a volcano in eastern Turkey believed to be the site of Noah's Ark in the Bible, to be a symbol of their natural and cultural identity”. As a result of the mountain's role as a part of a cultural identity, even people who do
The Gospel According to Spiritism forward to basing his teachings in solid biblical knowledge, as well as the messages he received from his guiding spirits. Therefore, the first part of the "Gospel According to Spiritism" is dedicated to a series of observations and clarifications intended to situate its arguments and doctrine so that those more familiar with exegesis would find their way throughout it more easily. The first item of the introduction argues that the currently existing translations of the Gospels were imperfect and were effectively unintelligible without proper relation to scholarly research about the culture and the customs of the peoples of the Middle-East.