The Holy Mountain Qartulad [2021] Guide

გადაღებების დაწყებამდე მსახიობებმა გაიარეს სპეციალური სულიერი მომზადება და მედიტაციის კურსები.

Watch the sunset from the Ferris wheel of the mind – meaning, do not ride the wheel. Instead, sit on the grass outside the Pantheon. As Tbilisi lights up below, whisper the word aloud: Mtatsminda . You will feel the weight of fifteen centuries.

A: Understanding abstract dialogue and Jodorowsky’s poetic Spanish/English lines. Georgian subtitles make the philosophical arguments clearer (e.g., “You are not your body, not your mind, not your money”). the holy mountain qartulad

A common confusion among Orthodox Christians is the difference between "the holy mountain" (Mtatsminda) and the "Holy Mountain" (Mount Athos). In qartulad , the distinction is clear:

In the ancient Georgian polytheistic pantheon, this peak was dedicated to Apsat , the god of the hunt and the moon. The mountain’s strategic prominence—visible from every corner of the old city—made it the ideal location for sacrifices and celestial observation. Even today, elderly Tbilisians whisper about "the old path," where pre-Christian priests would ascend to read the stars. As Tbilisi lights up below, whisper the word

No discussion of Mtatsminda is complete without addressing its 20th-century transformation. In 1929, the Soviet authorities, in a bizarre compromise with Georgian nationalism, established the – a cemetery for the nation’s most illustrious writers, artists, and scientists.

When Christianity arrived in the 4th century (courtesy of Saint Nino), the church did not destroy these sites. Instead, it adopted the Georgian method: they baptized the space. The "mountain of the moon" became the "holy mountain" – a physical elevation of the spirit above the pagan past. No full Georgian translation exists

They represent the most powerful—and corrupt—forces of industrial society

Saint David discovered that the mountain was infested with demons. He prayed for forty days, and according to legend, the earth split, and a spring of healing water burst forth. That spring, known as St. David’s Spring (თამარის წყარო – Tamaris Tskaro, wrongly associated with Queen Tamar, but actually predating her), flows to this day. Pilgrims come to drink from it and to crawl three times under a ancient thorn tree nearby—a ritual of rebirth.

Before diving into the "qartulad" (Georgian) context, one must understand the architect of this madness. Alejandro Jodorowsky is not merely a director; he is a shaman, a playwright, a comic book writer, and a practitioner of psychomagic. By the time he made The Holy Mountain , he had already shocked the world with El Topo (1970), the film that arguably invented the "Midnight Movie" phenomenon in the United States.

No full Georgian translation exists, but you can search for: