People keep building holy sites on Spiritspings

TLDR:

#1. Farum Azula, Elir Ilim, multiple stone cairns and likely all three holy trees are grown on spiritsprings.

#2. The reason Farum Azula and Elir Ilim floats is because they're made of spiritual material (i.e., special stone corpses).

My theory springs from the theory linked below from u/Oh_no_bros about how Elir Ilim and Farum Azula are built on petrified corpses:

https://www.reddit.com/r/EldenRingLoreTalk/comments/1evriaq/farum_azula_is_the_enir_ilim_of_a_previous_age/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Upwards spirals of "something"

The additional pieces to my theory is that BOTH Farum Azula and Elir Ilim are kept aloft by flowing on a spiraling updraft of energy: visible to the player as a massive storm for Farum Azula and visible to the Hornsent faithful.

Spiritsprings and Sealed Spiritsprings

As we traverse the Lands Between, we encounter spiritsprings, which appear as updrafts of energy (spirits?) ascending in spirals. These spiritsprings have two qualities:

1. they lift spirits like Torrent and spirit turtles up into the air; and

2. the do absolutely nothing if you are not riding Torrent.

This turtle has gained enlightenment. Imagine if you could build a city on his back...

I suspect that only people with an innate connection with spirits/kami can see spiritsprings: they're invisible to everyone else (c.f., the Guidance of Grace, the giant glowing tree).

In the Land of Shadow, things are slightly harder because people keep erecting piles of (spirit) stones on the spiritsprings, rendering them unusable until they have been removed.

Why did people keep doing this?

One possible answer as to why people built these piles of stones on spiritseals in the Land of Shadow is because these piles of stones might be cairns: to mark locations or (more likely, given the death-obsessed nature of Fromsoft) BURIAL MOUNDS.

Yes, there might be body under there.

Some ancient culture appears to be spiritually attuned enough to see the spiritsprings and see spirits being lifted into the air by them. These people then buried their loved-ones on top of them, likely so that their spirits would ascend to heaven.

(P.S., Who knows how high Torrent would be able to ascend on a spiritspring, if he wasn't carrying your fat, corporeal arse?)

(P.P.S., If you get the buoyancy right (i.e., the right mix of spiritual/virtuous and corporeal/sinful) maybe, rather than ascending or dropping like a (non-spiritual) stone, you'd have something that just hovers in the air. Suddenly grafting shaman and sinners together becomes an engineering/material sciences problem rather than a ethical one...)

(P.P.P.S., On further thought, it's still a MASSIVE ethical problem, even if lets you make floating cities.)

Spiritual stone: entire blocks stonking dragon corpses or a cement Shaman/Hornsent mix

So why does Farum Azula and Elir Ilim float, while the stone cairns remain land-bound?

As stated in u/Oh_no_bros theory linked above:

1. Farum Azula is either built a foundation or entirely constructed of stone dragon corpses; and

2. Elir Ilim is either built on a foundation or entirely constructed of petrified corpses.

( u/Oh_no_bros suggests that Elir Ilim is made up of Hornsent, while I believe that you can't easily petrify Hornsent corpses without grafting them to a Shaman first.)

Both cities are built using material that can interact with the (giant) spiritsprings that they are built on, holding them aloft.

Wild theory-crafting

Could the Haligtree and the Scadutree have also been built/grown on giant, invisible spiritsprings? Both of them grew in an ascending spiral pattern.

Final comments

This theory is also linked from my own theory on how to make petrified corpses from Hornsent (with a splash of Shamans):

https://www.reddit.com/r/EldenRingLoreTalk/comments/1euaynr/comment/litebqt/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button