ZARATHUSTRA'S MOUNTAIN

Zarathustra up his mountain rather like Moses on his, communing with whatever fiery inspiration came his way, though not necessarily in connection with thunderbolts from 'on high'.  But is this transcendentalism?  I rather doubt it.  More like fundamentalism if not, in effectively state-hegemonic terms, materialism.  After all, mountains are not necessarily airy places, least of all in hot countries like one finds in the Middle East.

Had Nietzsche lived to see Zeppelin flight he might have favoured a more idealistic if not transncendentalist experience 'on high', though there is, of course, no guarantee of it.  Suffice it to say that the meditative or contemplative guy in the airship is likely to be a different kettle-of-fish to Zarathustra, not to say Moses and his Tablets of the Law ostensibly received from God.

If you get to look down at Zarathustra from the seat of an aeroplane flying high above the clouds, how much more would you likely be to do so from the seat of an airship, leisurely gliding through the clouds en route to some distant destination.  A glorified slag heap and/or solidified residue of lava eruptions would not, as a kind of hill or mountain, be the best place  to sit upon if you wanted an idealistic break from materialism, or a transcendentalist break from fundamentalism.  On the contrary,  it would be one of those places to avoid, since traditionally the sort of place where castles and other manifestations of autocratic domination were sited.