It seems to be logical to read Revelation 17:9 and begin looking for seven literal, physical mountains; big, rocky, piles of earth that might be the seven mountains spoken of.  Is that a correct tactic for understanding the passage?  The verse says that the seven heads represent seven mountains on which the woman sits.  Are the seven heads the figurative image, and seven mountains the literal interpretation of that image?  Why do I even ask the question?

Is the woman in the image riding on the seven heads of the beast?  If the seven mountains that the woman sits on are literal mountains, then don’t we have the thinking, leading, governing part of the beast being seven literal mountains of earth?  Wouldn’t that mean that this great beast is being led by seven piles of dirt?

It is clearly stated that the woman rides a beast with seven heads.  That image should be clear in everyone’s mind.  John also gives supplemental imagery to help us see more specifically what is being portrayed.  We are told that the woman sits “upon many waters” (v1) and that the seven heads of the beast are “seven mountain”.
 
Revelation 17:15 says that the waters where the whore sits “are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.”  I thought she was sitting on a beast?  That’s what verse three tells us.  There is no picture of the beast standing in the waters.  Is it possible that the “beast” and the “waters” are two different images for where she sits?

Perhaps Revelation 13:1 is the connecting link.  In that verse, a beast having the same seven heads (and also ten horns) rises out of the sea (waters).  Looks like the whore sits on a beast that came out of the sea, and that beast has seven heads.  Did any literal seven mountains (either Rome or Jerusalem) come out of the sea, the sea which represents “peoples, and multitudes, and nations and tongues”?  Don’t think so.  But, since the seven heads came out of the sea as part of the beast which came out of the sea, and the sea represents “peoples, and multitudes, and nations and tongues”, don’t the seven heads also have to represent some part of what the beast represents?   Is there a way to see that?
 
We’re speaking of prophecy.  Revelation is a book of prophecy.  When God speaks to us prophetically, He uses prophetic imagery, and He is consistent in that imagery.  Ezekiel has a prophecy presented as two riddles.  We find it in chapter seventeen.  In this prophecy, God uses the image of mountains.  He says that He will take a twig and plant it in a high mountain, a mountain as high as Israel.  Here’s the text.
 
“Thus saith the Lord GOD; I will also take of the highest branch of the high cedar, and will set it; I will crop off from the top of his young twigs a tender one, and will plant it upon an high mountain and eminent:  In the mountain of the height of Israel will I plant it: and it shall bring forth boughs, and bear fruit, and be a goodly cedar: and under it shall dwell all fowl of every wing; in the shadow of the branches thereof shall they dwell.”
                                                                                                                 (Ezekiel 17:22-23)

I live in Utah, and what Israel has as mountains do compare to what we have here.  I guess there is Mt Hermon, but if I were going to speak of something being physically high, I wouldn’t consider Israel’s mountains for making my point.  Besides that, God says that Israel IS the mountain He is using for His comparison.  In Ezekiel’s prophecy, God is speaking of a prominent kingdom into which He was going to plant a descendant of the kings of Israel.  Here “mountain” meant “kingdom”.  Then there is the prophecy in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of Daniel chapter two.
 
“Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth".        (Daniel 2:35)

“And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.”    (Daniel 2:44)

Here again “mountain” is an image of a “kingdom”.  Now when we come to Revelation, we read:

“And here is the mind which hath wisdom.  The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth.”                                                                    (Revelation 17:9)

The woman sits on/in seven kingdoms.  If the beast came up from the “peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues” so did its heads, and those heads drive the beast, which is in turn driven by the woman.  I look for the seven heads to be seven political entities driven by an entity which is at its core, an apostate church.

Some will think that I mean the Roman Catholic Church, but that’s too obvious.  Like Antiochus Ephiphanes IV, she is but a visible precursor.  The real whore of Babylon is in the background as yet, pulling the strings that guide the beast, just like she has done since the inception of the Babylonian combine.