This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Volcanic Crater Lakes gathers three lakes formed inside volcanic craters or calderas, and the group's real thread is not geology but a shared association with the departed and the divine that keeps recurring across three unrelated cultures.
Lake Nemi, a small crater lake in the Alban Hills southeast of Rome, was sacred to Diana in her aspect as Diana Nemorensis, Diana of the Wood, whose shrine stood on its northern shore. Its priesthood, the Rex Nemorensis, held office only by killing his predecessor in single combat, a custom James Frazer took as the opening case of The Golden Bough, his comparative study of religion.
Lake Toba in North Sumatra fills the caldera of a supervolcano whose last major eruption, roughly seventy four thousand years ago, was among the largest known in earth's history. For the Batak people of the surrounding highlands the lake is bound up with origin mythology, including accounts tracing their descent to a supernatural fish woman associated with the lake, and it remains a landscape of continuing spiritual significance.
Kelimutu, a volcano on Flores crowned with three adjacent crater lakes that differ in colour and shift over time from volcanic gases and mineral chemistry, is held sacred by the local Lio people as the resting place of departed souls, the young going to one lake, the old to a second and the wicked to a third, and an annual ceremony offers food to the ancestral spirits believed to reside there.