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Even when they are often located within plains and valleys, Javanese Hindu Buddhist temples and shrines are not always built on flat ground. Actually, there isa whole set of shrines that are clearly associated with topographical markers namely hills and mountains: temples built on small, isolated hilltops and templeslocated in high, remote areas.

Within and around the Province of Yogyakarta, 16 temples are built up high. Built at the top of a hill, they convey a different impression than temples built in the shadow of high volcanoes. They fuse with the hill and form a summit to be reached by visitors.They organize the natural landscape and re-shape the hill, so that it fits withcosmological principles.

The presence of a temple at its top transforms the hill into a replica of Mt. Meru, the axis of the universe. Although the temple may itself represent Meru, locating it on a hilltop makes the association even more obvious. In Hindu and Buddhist thought, the symbolism of Meru is inextricably linked with royal power.

Meru is not only the pivot of the universe, it is the abode of Indra, who presides over the gods and is presented as a model of the Hindu/Buddhist king. It isthus not surprising that, given their cosmological and royal implications, hilltops were considered appropriate building sites for Hindu-Buddhist shrines.

Temples like Candi Ijo consist of shrines built outside the wet-rice cultivatio

n areas, away from communication routes, in relatively high and remote areas. Why was that the intention of the builders?

Architectural and epigraphic data suggest that at least some of the sites located on the Pegat-Ijo hills were related to ascetic and tantric practices. This isobviously the case with Candi Ijo and the nearby religious complex of Ratu Boko. The presence of meditation caves in the northern part of the Boko compound already suggested that the place was used by hermits or ascetics. There are therefore good reasons to believe that Ratu Boko was the dwelling of Buddhist hermits.Other references to ascetic practices from the gunung Pejat-Ijo hills are for example inscriptions found near a large Ganesha statue which deal with the worship of the god by sadhu, indicating that the hilly area was also used by Hindu asce

tics. Similarly, the inscribed golden plate found within the temple pit of Candi Ijo refers to Jatila (Siwa the Ascetic). Figures of ascetics are also part of the decoration of the lowermost building of the Ijo temple complexWhy is it facing west?

It goes without saying that the main orientations towards west and east of the Javanese temples in general are associated to the movement of the sun and the moon near the equator.

Ritualistically this movement was highly important in Hindu and Buddhist philosophy and is still to this day a core concept of the Kejawen cosmological thinking.

Whereas the sun was associated usually with concepts of material birth and growth, the moon was related to concepts of spiritual awakening and death.

Conceptions of space defined in pairs of complementary elements are well known in present day Indonesia, and are still found all over the archipelago. Two perceptions of space were challenging one another among the elite of central Javanese society.

One was the imported Indian pradaksina concept, which relates space, time and sun. The other was of Javanese origin, probably ancient, and conceived a dualisti

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c world. For Candi Ijo it is probable that the high level spiritual approach todeath (sunset) by local ascetics played a role in its facing west.

West is usually associated with funerary rites and ancestor worship rather than deity worship. Auspicious signs like the full moon moving westward and the setting of the sun would have had an influence in turn for the devotees during their meditation rituals. Candi Ijo follows a Hindu conceptual orientation of the Axis Mundi or central Axis of the universe and within which the center is groundedby the mythical Meru.

What about contemporary mysticalaspect of the four direction

It is clear for present day Javanese spiritual adepts that a monument like Candi Ijo is a symbol of high religious symbolism linked to still current cosmological values found in Kejawen. The meanings encapsulated in the spatial orientationof the monument, the reliefs and its auspicious location at a hilltop are best interpreted through the teaching or ilmu called Manunggaling Kiblat Papat, limo Pancer.

This aspect of Javanese culture portrays the obsession of the people to organize their world according to an ancient template of the Hindu-Buddhist Mandala ornament.

The mandala figure will always represent a core source of wisdom which radiatesits beneficial power and receives enlightening input to and from the four cardinal points of East, West, North and South.

The system of four directions and a fifth center is applied in all sorts of important aspects of social and spiritual life by the Javanese, because it offers them an ordered template of correspondences between apparently distinct variables in the material and visible world. Most commonly it is visible in the architecture of older buildings (the Sultan Kraton i.e.), in agricultural practices (mangsa) and in harmonizing initiation rituals (slametan).

In pure mystical and spiritual practices of meditation, inner power or ritualsthe system if Sadulur Kiblat Papat, Kalimo Pancer is an essential prerogative fo

r success and mental achievements. Esoteric books on the subject are named Primbon and are still hugely read by adults seeking a bit of harmony in their life.