Gyeryongsan (계룡산 / 鷄龍山)

Rising from the heartland of South Chungcheong Province, this mountain takes its name — Gyeryong, the Chicken-Dragon — from the ridge connecting Cheonwangbong, Yeoncheonbong, and Sambulbong, said to trace the shape of a dragon crowned with a cock's comb. In the Baekje era it was written as Gyeramsan (鷄籃山), and its name was inscribed in Tang dynasty records as well. Those who have sought out the mountain feel it instinctively: the name existed before the characters used to write it.

The Unified Silla kingdom venerated this mountain as one of the Five Sacred Peaks (五嶽) and offered state rites upon its slopes. Those ceremonies carried unbroken through Goryeo and into Joseon, and even now it is said that their energy still dwells within the Jungakdan Altar (中嶽壇) at Sinwonsa Temple. That the rites were never interrupted implies, among other things, that something has been answering them all along.

The valley to the south, Sindoan (新都內), was once considered as the site for a new capital on the eve of the Joseon dynasty's founding. Geomancers read the land as the place where a Jeong (鄭) dynasty would rise, and that conviction drew wave after wave of new religious movements and prayer sites to the mountain's foothills across several centuries. Even now their traces linger across the Gyeryongsan area like a persistent mist.

The residents of the villages below say little about Cheonwangbong and Ssalgaebong, the peaks where entry is forbidden. The official reason is military installations, but older whispers tell a somewhat different story. Accounts surface here and there of people who climbed into the restricted heights and descended having lost all sense of direction.

There are those who hold that the arrangement of Donghaksa, Gapsa, and Sinwonsa — set as though standing watch over the mountain's three aspects — is no accident. Whether the temples have embraced the mountain, or the mountain has simply kept the temples from leaving, there is no monk who will answer that question.