Scholars have proposed several ideological or cosmological interpretations for the guachimontones. J. Charles Kelley was the first to suggest that the ceramic models looted from shaft and chamber tombs depicting one to four house structures and a pole in the center space with a person perched on top may be a depiction of a version of the volador ceremony practiced in Mexico today. Some of these models depict two poles, one straight, and one curved, perhaps as a way to indicate motion. Christopher Beekman expanded upon this idea several decades later to support the volador idea and to suggest practices could include other pole ceremonies known elsewhere from Mesoamerica. Kelley also suggested that the altar of a guachimonton might represent an artificial mountain, a cosmologically significant feature to Mesoamerican beliefs. Mountains were where the gods dwelt, where water flowed from, and where one could find caves to the underworld. Shaft and chamber tombs may represent artificial caves with their location underground. Together, tombs, guachimontones, and a pole ceremony, depicts the Mesoamerican cosmology of an underworld, an earthly plane, and the heavens.