Called to Shasta

What this is, and what it is not

Something brought you here. A photograph, a name that keeps surfacing, a friend who would not stop talking about a mountain in northern California. However it happened, you are curious, and that is reason enough to read on.

I want to be honest with you about what this guide is.

It is not a definitive account of Mount Shasta. No such thing exists. She holds many layers at once and they do not always agree with each other. There is the physical mountain, a volcano with a documented geology. There are the Indigenous peoples whose ancestral homelands surround her, whose cultures are living and present and not mine to interpret. There are the spiritual movements that formed around her over the last century, which have a traceable history of their own. There is a large body of modern esoteric lore. There are the unusual experiences visitors report. And there is my own relationship with her, which I hold as mine rather than as instruction for anyone else.

I have tried to keep those layers separate throughout these pages. Where something is documented, I say so plainly. Where something belongs to spiritual tradition, I name it as tradition. Where I am telling you what I experience, I say that too.

You do not have to believe any of it. Notice what resonates. Question what does not. Let some of it stay unresolved. We do not need to settle the mystery in order to enter it.

I am Anya. I facilitate Kundalini Activation and energy work, and I have been returning to this mountain since 2017. What I know about her is small next to what she is. This is what I have gathered so far.

The physical mountain

Mount Shasta stands approximately 14,163 feet in the southern Cascade Range of northern California. She is a stratovolcano built from overlapping cones over hundreds of thousands of years, with a second summit, Shastina, rising off her western shoulder.

What makes her strange is her solitude. Most great mountains belong to a range and share the horizon with their siblings. Shasta stands nearly alone. She lifts roughly ten thousand feet off the land around her with almost nothing to soften the rise, and on a clear day she is visible from a great distance.

Seven named glaciers cling to her slopes, including Whitney, Bolam, Hotlum and Wintun.

Her volcanic geology also shapes the water below. Snow and rain infiltrate permeable volcanic rock, recharge groundwater aquifers, and later emerge through springs and seeps around the region.

That is the part everyone agrees on, and it is remarkable on its own.

My own arrival

I was first called to her in 2017, for Lions Gate.

I did not know much about her then. I only knew that something in me kept turning toward that name. Mount Shasta. Lions Gate. The two of them together would not leave me alone.

So I went, with my two year old daughter and my aunt who was visiting from Russia. We drove in, and I looked up, and I saw her for the first time.

I came home. That is the only way I know how to say it. Not that I arrived somewhere beautiful. There was excitement and there was something majestic in her that met me before I had taken a step, and my heart opened so wide I could not contain it. We spent two days with her. We went up. I was mesmerized, and I understood I was only at the beginning.

Seven years later, in July of 2024, I heard about a Kundalini Activation retreat and the moment I heard the word Shasta it was an immediate yes. I was being initiated into this work then, and being on her while that was happening changed the shape of me. My light language came through on that mountain. I came home in awe, and then the integration took months. I could not stop dreaming of her.

So I went back that November for the 11:11 portal with a small circle of friends. In 2025 I brought people to her for the first time as an official retreat, and again that November.

What I keep noticing is how clearly she communicates with me. She tells me when it is time. She has never once been vague about it.

She is my teacher. She is my guide. She is the temple I return to, and I go with devotion. That is my relationship with her, not a claim about what she is.

From here on we are in different territory. What follows is spiritual tradition, published esoteric literature, and experiences that visitors have reported, some of them mine. None of it is established fact and I will not present it that way. It is also the reason many people find their way to this mountain, and it deserves to be told well.

Lemuria

Within the lore surrounding Mount Shasta, the story begins with a lost continent. Lemuria, sometimes called Mu, is described as a civilization in the Pacific whose luminous beings lived heart led and telepathic, at ease with the earth rather than at war with it. When their land began to go under, the story holds that some of them survived by going inside the mountain.

Telos

Beneath her, the lore continues, is Telos, a crystal city of light. It is described as home to those same luminous beings, tall and long lived, working with sound and crystal and light, organized around what the teachings call the Seven Rays. These accounts most often name a high priest called Adama, whose teachings were published by Aurelia Louise Jones from Mount Shasta itself.

It is worth knowing that this body of lore is relatively modern. The idea of a hidden civilization inside Shasta enters print in the early twentieth century and grows from there.

People report reaching Telos in meditation and in dream far more often than they report finding a door. That is the honest shape of it.

Something I hear often from visitors, and have felt myself, is a kind of homesickness with no address. A grief for something never lived. Some seekers understand this as Lemurian memory surfacing. I do not know what it is. I only know it is common enough here to be worth naming, and that not knowing the cause does not make it less real to the person feeling it.

The sky above Shasta

Start with something you can observe.

Mount Shasta frequently creates conditions favorable to dramatic lenticular clouds. Moist air lifts over her summit, cools, condenses, and forms a smooth lens shaped cloud that can hang almost motionless above the peak while every other cloud moves past it. This is ordinary mountain meteorology and it happens because of her shape and her isolation. It is also one of the most beautiful things you will ever see while standing in a parking lot.

Those same clouds are read differently within the lore surrounding the mountain, where they are sometimes described as craft resting unseen.

Stories of unusual lights and objects have also become part of the modern lore surrounding Mount Shasta. Some accounts describe multiple people witnessing the same phenomenon together. I cannot tell you what they saw.

I have had experiences here I cannot explain, and photographs I cannot explain. What I notice in myself is that they tend to come when I am unhurried and open rather than when I am looking hard, though I hold that as a pattern in my own life rather than a method that produces anything.

I would rather leave this unresolved than tidy it. Look up while you are here, and let what happens be what happens.

Perhaps she has been on your mind

I am not going to tell you that the mountain is calling you. I do not know that, and neither does anyone else who has not met you.

What I do notice is that people arrive here having had a similar few months beforehand. The name keeps surfacing. Three different people mention her without knowing each other. A photograph stops the scroll and something in the chest responds before the mind catches up. Some have dreamed of a mountain they have never walked. Others simply became curious and could not say why.

I do not believe every synchronicity needs to become a sign. But I do believe curiosity is worth listening to, particularly when it does not fade.

So rather than telling you what any of it means, I will just ask.

You do not need an answer today. Notice the question and let it sit.

Coming home

If Shasta has your attention, I hope you experience her. Maybe you will go alone, which is a good way to go. Maybe with someone you love. Maybe you will drive up for a weekend and never tell anyone why.

And some of you will want people with you while you go.

That is the work I do. I bring a small circle to the mountain and hold the container while we are there. We move slowly, spend real time on the land, and gather for ceremony in the evenings. I do not promise anyone an experience. I've watched people arrive with one idea of what their time here would hold and leave having experienced something entirely different.

I can't promise what Shasta will mean to you. What I can offer is a small group, careful facilitation, meaningful time on the land, ceremony, and enough spaciousness to actually be here.