The Mountain of Meeting: Mount Sinai and St Catherine

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A shepherd saw a bush that burned and was not consumed.

He had been tending his father-in-law’s flocks in the wilderness, far from the palaces where he had been raised. He led them to the far side of the desert and came to the mountain. And there, the Book of Exodus says, a flame blazed out of the middle of a bush. The bush was on fire, yet it did not burn away.

I will turn aside now, and see this great sight, said Moses.

And a voice called to him out of the fire: Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.

The Mountain of Meeting

For thousands of years, pilgrims of three faiths have honoured Mount Sinai, called Jebel Musa, “the mountain of Moses”, in the south of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, as the place where the Divine spoke to humanity. Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions each remember Moses, the burning bush and the giving of the law on the mountain. Scholars debate the precise location of the biblical Sinai, but the tradition attached to this mountain is ancient and deeply loved.

It is, in the deepest sense, a mountain of meeting: where the human ascends, and the Divine descends, and the two encounter one another.

The Monastery at the Foot of the Mountain

At the foot of the mountain, within high granite walls, stands the Monastery of St Catherine. It was built in the sixth century under the Byzantine emperor Justinian, around a chapel that tradition places at the very site of the burning bush. It is among the oldest continuously inhabited Christian monasteries in the world, and its library holds one of the most important collections of ancient manuscripts anywhere. Within its walls stands a small mosque too, a reminder of centuries of coexistence.

The monastery is named for Catherine of Alexandria, a learned young woman of Egypt who, according to her legend, debated the philosophers of the emperor and converted them, and was martyred for her faith. The legend says that angels carried her body to the summit of a nearby mountain, where monks later found it and brought it down to the monastery.

The Ascent in Darkness

Pilgrims have long climbed the mountain by night, so as to reach the summit for sunrise. There are two traditional routes: a winding camel path and the steep Steps of Repentance, said to number more than three thousand, cut by monks over the centuries.

You climb in the dark, by starlight or torchlight, one step at a time. The air grows colder. Your breath is loud. You cannot see the summit. And then, at the top, you wait in the cold, until the first line of light appears over the ranges of the Sinai, and the mountains turn rose, then gold.

The Teaching of the Mountain

In the language of the Great Work, the mountain is the rubedo, the final stage: the meeting with the Divine that transforms everything. But notice how it begins. Not with power, but with curiosity. Moses turns aside to see. And it continues with humility: take off your sandals.

• Turn aside. The sacred often appears at the edge of ordinary life. You have to be willing to stop and look.
• Take off your sandals. Lay down what protects you from the ground of your own life. Stand barefoot in the truth.
• Climb in the dark. You will rarely see the summit. You only need the next step.
• Wait for the light. At the top, there is nothing to do but be present for dawn.

The bush burned and was not consumed. That, too, is a teaching. The fire of transformation does not destroy what is truly you. It reveals it.

• What is the burning bush at the edge of your ordinary life, asking you to turn aside?
• What sandals do you need to remove?
• What step, taken in darkness, is in front of you now?

Kristina’s words about the beginning of every Great Work could have been written on the mountain path: “You don’t know where it’s leading. But you know how alive you feel when you get close.”

A Practice: The Night Ascent

Pilgrims climb Mount Sinai in darkness to meet the dawn. You can make a symbolic night ascent of your own.

1. Wake before dawn on a chosen day. Do not turn on bright lights or check your phone.
2. Walk slowly outdoors or around your home in the dim light, one deliberate step at a time.
3. With each step, name something you are carrying that you are ready to lay down, like sandals at the threshold of holy ground.
4. Find a place to sit facing east. Wait in silence for the first light.
5. As the sky changes colour, ask: What is the Divine asking of me?
6. When the sun rises, write down what you received, however small.

The mountain teaches that the Divine is met not through force but through presence and humility. You do not need to see the whole path. You need only to keep climbing and to be there when the light comes. Generations of pilgrims have discovered that the dawn after a night ascent feels different from any other: hard-won, simple and holy.

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• Rubedo in the King’s Chamber