So wherever this sacred mountain or sacred tree was, that was sort of where all the action was. That's where the deity or the gods really run things from. Everything else is sort of oriented around them and around this location. Wensinck is an important source on this. And by the way, you can get this source for free. We have this linked at the episode page for this episode. It's a public domain source—one of the few scholarly works on the world tree idea (the navel of the earth idea). So you can get this source.
Wensinck notes five general characteristics associated with the myth (Wensinck, Ideas, xi—xii):
1. The location was exalted above the surrounding areas.
2. It was the place from which creation occurred.
3. It was the center of the earth.
4. It was the place of communication between heaven, earth, and the underworld.
5. It was the medium of distributing food over the earth.
In other words, it's the thing that not only created life (from which creation sprang), but it's the thing that sustained all life. It connected all aspects of the perceived cosmology. We can see how Eden would fit into this. Eden is called the "cosmic mountain." It's called a mountain. It's a biblical sort of illustration for this thinking about this particular place where God lives and heaven meets earth and this is the source of life. All of this makes sense when you start to think about it in these very big-picture kind of terms.
