Joined in Spirit: The Kaaba in mecca, to the left, and Tibet's Mt. Kailas, are circled by pilgrims for similar reasons: purification. (Kaaba photo by Abid Katib/Getty Images; Kailas photo by Ondřej Žváček/Wikimedia Commons)
I'm always taken by the similarities between religions. I don't mean in this case the sort of similarities that are sometimes, unfortunately, too easy to point out, like the fanatics or bloodletting they have in common. I man similarities that aren't at first evident, but speak loads, and movingly, of the religious--or, let's say more accurately, the spiritual--impulse that give religions their epic breadth.
Take the circling of the Kaaba, Mecca's holy shrine in Saudi Arabia(which, I always like to remind readers, predates Islam and the prophet Muhammad, who merely appropriated the shrine to Islam's uses the way, say, Christians appropriated Saturnalia to their tamer Christmassy holiday). Pilgrims circle the holy site seven times (the same number that Christianity and other religions revere as the best of numbers, luckiest of numbers, most sacred of numbers). They do so from a commandment in the Koran. Anti-clockwise, to boot. Why seven? Because God created seven skies, and the circling represents an homage to god's patience, a show of humility to god's power.
Move the scene a few thousand miles to the east. To the mountains of Tibet. To Mount Kailas. And read its description by Colin Thubron, the world's best travel writers, in his latest, heart-wrenching To a Mountain in Tibet:
The mountain is swathed in such a dense and changing mystique that it eludes simple portrayal. It was on to such a peak that the first Tibetan kings descended from the sky (eventually to be cut off and stranded). Hindus believe its summit to be the palace of Shjva the lord of destruction and change who sits there in eternal meditation But it is unknown when the first pilgrims came. Buddhist herders and Hindu ascetics must have ritually circled the mountain for centuries, and the blessings accruing to them increased marvellously in sacred lore, until it was claimed that a single circuit expunged the sins of a lifetime. The mountain was dangerous to reach, but never quite inaccessible. Only in the nineteenth century did Tibet itself, swayed by a xenophobic China, become a forbidden land. And Kailas kept its own taboos. Its slopes are sacrosanct, and it has never been climbed.
The first Tibetan kings descended from the sky, like the Kaaba's pre-Islamic meteorite. The cleansing circling. The humbling.
Set aside the many terrible things religions have in common. What you're left with are many wonderful things as well, threading the humanity that religions, like the common Earth beneath them, have in common as well.
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Was it Voltaire or some other wise philosopher who said: If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him”. Religion like alcohol it is good for the soul and body if taken in moderation. This does not stop me being outrageously secular.