Mount Shasta

41.4090°N, 122.1947°W.

Stratovolcano in the Cascade Range of northern California, the second-highest peak in the Cascades at 4,322 metres elevation. Last eruption approximately 1786 CE; classified as active. The mountain is sacred to the Wintu, Karuk, Modoc, Shasta, and Pit River peoples, who tell distinct origin stories that all locate ancestral or supernatural beings on the mountain. The Wintu specifically describe Mt. Shasta as the dwelling of the Great Spirit Olelbis. From the 1880s onward Shasta accreted a series of Western occult traditions: the Lemurian survivor narrative (Frederick Spencer Oliver, 1894), the I AM Activity (Guy Ballard, 1930), and the Ascended Master tradition. The Whitney Glacier on the western slope is the longest glacier in California, 3.2 km.

A volcano sacred to five tribes became the focus of nineteenth-century occult fiction in English — and the Wintu still tell their own story about it.