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- Lucifer, vol. 6, no. 36, August 1890, pp. 461-467
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Title for references: Blake C.C. - The Atlanteans
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AT a period of time incalculably remote, and of which Geology has not fixed the precise period, man, who previously had been produced according to a pattern fixed by forces that have been defined in the Secret Doctrine, became of two sexes, and originated on earth on that Continent which we term Atlantis. To give the history of this race is beyond the power of science; to show a few of the scattered remnants that exist, and which illustrate what a mighty people once lived, will be the task of the future anthropologist, who, free from the prejudices of his boyhood, emancipated from the leanings to the hypotheses of a past generation, endeavors to hold on high the lamp of Theosophy, and to transmit to those who will soon follow him in the race, the lamp of truth.
Ut quasi cursores, vitaï lampada tradunt. Future generations will learn that the teachings of anthropology, stimulated into fresh life by the Secret Doctrine, are destined to throw a pure beam of radiant light on all our minds.
Our own annals begin with the Kelts, if, indeed, we are entitled to call by that historic name the really separate nations, Belgian, Iberian, and Teutonic, whom the Roman writers recognize as settlers in Britain,[1] settlers among a really earlier family, our rudest and oldest forefathers, who may have been, as they thought themselves to be, the primitive people of the land.[2] But beyond the Κελταί who occupied the sources of the Danube and the slope of the Pyrenees, and were known to Rome in later days, there was present in the mind of the father of Grecian history a still more western race, the Cynetæ, who may, perhaps, be supposed to be the very earliest people of the extreme west of the continent of Europe. Were those people the first poor pilgrims from the East, whose footsteps we are slowly tracing in the valleys of Picardy and the south of England, if not on the borders of the lakes of Switzerland? Are the representatives of the Atlanteans still to be found among the Rhætic Alps and the Asturian cliffs, if not amid the wilds of Connemara, pressed into the mountainous recesses by the legions of Rome, the spear of the Visigoth, and the sword of the Saxon? Or must we regard them as races of an earlier type, who had ceased to chip flints before the arrival of the Saxon or Goth, or Kelt, or Cynetian? These questions of romantic interest in the study of the distribution of languages of the families of man, are part of the large range of theosophical inquiry. Let us not expect or desire for them a very 462quick, or at present a very definite settlement. Deep shadows have gathered over all the earlier ages of mankind, which, perhaps, still longer periods of time may not avail to remove. Yet let us not undervalue the progress of anthropological enquiry, nor fail to mark how, within the period to which our recollections cling, the revelations of early Egypt have been followed by a chronology of the ancient kingdoms on the Tigris and Euphrates, through the same rigorous study of language. Thus has Rawlinson added another page to the brilliant discoveries of Young and Champollion, Lepsius and Rosellini. It must not be forgotten that the Atlantean race possessed the third eye, on which I have spoken in the June, December, and July numbers of Lucifer (1889 and 1890). The Atlantean race lived long enough on the earth for generations of inferior animals to have been procreated from them, that would have consoled Shylock for the loss of his jewel, by giving him a whole “wilderness of monkies” at a period of time far remote.
Atlantean civilisation left its imprint on Greece and Rome. The old structures of giants, which face the wayfarer at every spot in the Italian peninsula, were the works of people that did not represent mere poetical or mythological legends, but were the traditions of real people living at a period of time far remote. Perhaps we find traces of this population in Italy. The ancient Etrurians whom Plato makes Atlantean, were dolichocephalic, akin to the Lydians of Asia Minor. But Calori and Gatbiglietti, omitting my own insignificant evidence, have shown that a primitive Oscan type of skull existed of brachycephalic character, and so infer from other evidence that the peoples to which these races belonged claimed a vast antiquity. Those who remember the personal teachings of the late Rev. Pius Melia, D.D., who died a few years ago at an age far transcending that of ordinary men, can bear witness to the fact that in Magna Græcia at the end of the last century mysteries were celebrated, belonging to religions which have long passed away. In Naples the Jettatura, though now a vulgar superstition, reveals the occult arts of the bygone Atlanteans. The fico and the cuernos, vulgar though they may be, are symbols that an initiate may comprehend and that he will not venture to explain. The antipathy of all Neapolitans to cod-fish is not a mere harmless craze, but dates from a period far more ancient than the Christian era when ι. χ. θ. υ. ς. had a meaning known to those who knew, and Σωτηρς had another signification than the popular one. In the Eastern provinces of Switzerland it has been shown that a former brachycephalic population existed in the Grisons. The folk-lore of this people, a subject on which I am incompetent to enter, shows traces of Occult customs. Here, again, we find an Atlantean element existing in the people who, as Beddoe has shown, were a race of vast antiquity, widely separate from the long-headed inhabitants of Switzerland. The position of the Basque races will always remain a quæstio vexata for anthropologists. Their language is Mongolian, and in the days of Retzius, it was thought that they had some affinity with 463the Finns. But the researches of the late Paul Broca convinced both him and myself that the population of Zaraus, a typical Basque village, exhibited no cranial characters that could not be seen in the modern Spaniards. The Cromagnon remains may be considered to belong to the Fifth Race. It is of course possible that the hint given in the Secret Doctrine (ii, 740) may bear fruit, but not of the kind expected by Dr. Barnard Davis or myself. The vertical diameter of the orbits in the Cromagnon skulls is most singular, and its interpretation must rest on a larger series of skulls than Reliquia Aquitanicæ shows. The researches of Mr. C. S. Wake, as yet unpublished, on the Tuarik nation may produce the demonstration of a people ejusdem generis with the Kabyles or Guanches. It is certain that the Wuzúm of these nomads contains occult symbols, and a comparison between it and the old Hittite, Cypriot and Palmyrene character may in theosophical hands reveal something of importance. Only a portion of the evidence is before me, and I cannot read all I see. The monuments at Karnak in Brittany may be Atlantean, or may be due to moraine action. Those at Abury and Stonehenge were, as Mr. Fergusson has decidedly shown, referable to the late period of Briton, or early period of Saxon civilization. The Druids, who may have inherited the tradition of early Atlantean civilisation, and perpetuated the magical and religious rites of their ancestors (Godfrey Higgins and Stukely being beneath our consideration), had absolutely nothing to do with Stonehenge or Abury. The inland population of China shows traces of Atlantean descent. It is this population that Huxley has indicated as something apart from the surrounding populations. One of the great problems of future anthropology is the physical character of this people. Of its skull-form we know absolutely nothing: and of its religion and language as little. Anthropology must wait, like the lover in the Spanish song:
Con la boca seca |
On Central Asian (call it Mongolian, Tartarian, what you will) civilisation depends one of the most important problems of future anthropology. It was in the oligocene, a part of which was formerly called the miocene, period that the Atlantean race disappeared, during the great deluge which took place in which the whole Atlantean continent was destroyed. Traditions of this deluge were embodied in the mythologies of many nations. The Jews were hardest on the facts by shortening the periods of the lives of the problematical patriarchs, and giving the diluvial legend (a perfectly true story) a Jehovistical interpretation in form. The wives whom the Atlanteans took to themselves were, of course, descendants of the previously existing Lemurian race, and perpetuated its characteristics. The monsters generated from the “mindless and narrowheaded” must have been an unholy wretched race, and we must not confuse them with the Homo alalus or pithecanthropus of modern speculators, who would have confused the one 464with the other. But the Atlanteans left more traces of their civilisation in the new world than in the old. It is just as we find the Eocene rocks of America yield more treasure to the palæontologist than the European rocks, so we find that the races of the new World give us some traces of Atlantean ancestors. It is in the traditions of Mexico that we find the purest known form of the important story of Creation – the form, in fact, which has given the key of the entire mystery of mythology. Nor is this fact solitary, for we also find in this region more or less well preserved vestiges of other early symbolisms, and one especially which, as yet, has been found complete nowhere else. The cosmical legend of ancient Mexico lies at the basis of all the native traditions; and the true sequence of its events, distorted by some of the commentators, has been set to rights by the illustrious Humboldt, to whose great and judicious labors the students of American archæology are so deeply indebted.[3]
The four ages of Mexico are called in the native traditions suns, doubtless as being great solar periods, just as lunar periods are termed moons; and the designation would seem to have suggested the notion that not only man, but the sun itself, was destroyed in these catastrophes. As the story stands, then, the Mexicans believed that, besides the sun which now actually illumines the world, four others had existed in as many different ages, and had been successively destroyed, together with the greater part of mankind. The first of these ages was called Tlaltonatin, literally, sun of Earth, from tlalli, earth, and tonatin, sun. It lasted 5,206 years, and was terminated by terrific earthquakes and famine; for, as earth was the symbol of autumn, the season of fruitfulness, famine was the natural result of the close of the age of fruitfulness. The next age was that of Tletonatin, the sun of Fire ( tletl ); its duration was 4,804 years, and its catastrophe a conflagration, which involved the whole earth, and even the sun itself. Ehecatonatin, the sun of the age of Air ( ehecatl ), lasted 4,010 years, and terminated with fearful Hurricanes; and the fourth age, Atonatin, the sun of Water ( atl ), lasted 4,008 years, and ended in a universal deluge. Incidental facts show that the actual age is Tlaltonatin, the recommencement of the cycle, though I have not met with any direct statement to that effect. In each of these ages a single pair, a man and woman, were saved, and became the progenitors of humanity in the succeeding period; while a certain portion of mankind was also, in each case, changed into some animal form, typical of the element represented. These types, however, belong to formations far later than the story itself.
The most satisfactory account of this curious legend will be found in Humboldt, who has carefully studied both the Spanish writers and the still surviving pictorial representations. (See the Vues des Cordillières, as above.) The Spanish writers have mostly confused the true sequence of the events, either through ignorance of the proper order to be observed in 465reading the MSS., or from attempts to make the story square with Christian traditions. The story will be found in Gomara, Hist. Gen. de las Indias, fol. cxix; in Boturini, Idea de una Nueva Hist. Gen., p. 3; in the Hist. des Chichimèques of Fernando d’ Alva Ixtlilxochitl, published in the collection of Temaux-Compans, tom. xii, p. 2; in Clavigero, Storia Antica del Messica, lib. vi, p. 57; in Vetia, Hist. Antigua de Mejico, tom. I, cap. iv., p. 33; in the anonymous historian quoted by Gama, Descrip. Hist. of Chronol. de los Piedras, sec. 62, p. 94; and in Lord Kingsborough, Antiquities of Mexico, vol. vi, p. 172 (interpretation of the Codex Vaticanus, No. 3738). Torquemada alludes to it twice in the Monarchia Indiana, lib. I, cap. xiv, and lib. VI, cap. xliv. It is, of course, often referred to by recent writers, and has been very carefully considered by Mr. Gallatin (I quote for the moment from memory) in his elaborate memoir on Mexican civilisation, in the first volume of the Transactions of the American Ethnological Society. A facsimile of the curious native picture of these four ages is given by Lord Kingsborough; and Humboldt also has a copy perfectly faithful, as far as all mythic purposes are concerned, though in a firmer and more artistic outline than the original. When we have a series of anthropological maps, constructed on the plan of Spruner, illustrating the distribution of populations at various historical periods, Theosophy will be able to infer from the past what it may expect in the future.
The Zuni Indians of New Mexico give us an example how the traditions of Atlantis may be preserved. The work of Mr. E. G. Squier on Peru, gives us an idea of the importance of the Pre-Incarial monuments. The work of Bollaert, although untrustworthy, was probably the first that gave us an idea of Pre-Incarial or more properly Atlantean names. The races who made the great stone circles of Peru were on the whole immigrants from the East. The evidence in support of this theory has been given us by Gay and Castelnau, and to a certain extent by D'Orbigny. Peru and Bolivia have given us traces of the stone circle builders. Brazil has not yet told its story, and its primæval forests may conceal relics of the greatest anthropological importance. In the Theosophist for May, 1888, I pointed out some of the facts observable in Central America. But the identification of these relics with those of an Atlantean race rests on a slender though firm foundation. The late Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, in his Popol Vuh, indicated the line of argument which may be followed, and though his argument was sneered at by anthropologists at the time, and has since passed into the “treasury of accepted truths”, it is evident that structures were created in South America that repeat in every character the megalithic monuments of Etruria or Agrigentum. Here again do we see monuments that might have been found in
Lordly Volaterræ |
466
And here do we see examples of a peculiar style of architecture. It has been erroneously stated that the principle of the arch was unknown to the builders of the prehistoric monuments of Peru. Mr. E. G. Squier has disproved this theory, and triumphantly shown that the Atlantean race possessed great wisdom and knowledge of all the principles of architecture. The races that appear to have in all cases made megalithic monuments composed of large masses of unhewn stone, which were fastened together into gigantic walls and structures of prehistoric importance, appear to have had but little affinity with the Aztecs of the later period, who represented in Mexico the Quichuas of Peru. It was the Toltecs and Chichimecs who represented the Aymarás, and who may have been the primæval Atlantean population, that made these monuments. As I have seen Aztecs in Nicaragua, they are muy mansos and tame enough to be entirely oblivious of the fact that ancient remains exist close to their dwelling places, which were the relics of old Atlantean peoples. Mr. F. Boyle, whose courage none will deny, has hinted that some of these Aztecs have preserved the blood-sacrifice tradition of their ancestors. I have made careful enquiry on the spot, but am unable to verify their tradition. The stone statues which were found in Nicaragua indicate the existence of a mighty people. Probably the last thing that would occur to the present population would be the idea of making a statue at all, and it is indeed difficult to conceive their present degradation. Nurtured on modern principles, without law, virtue, or shame, the existing population of Central America is at a far lower moral and social level than the old Atlanteans. The ancient history of Central America has to be told by the anthropologists of the future.
If we look into our histories with a little of that scepticism which a clear-sighted criticism must naturally evoke, we shall soon see much that is not only unaccountable, but absolutely startling in its incongruity and extravagance. But perhaps, after all, the strangest thing about the matter is the easy faith with which the modern world, after so many experiences, still continues to accept the unproved tales of nations and times so utterly steeped in credulity as to have had a firm belief in the infinite absurdities of Greek and Roman Paganism or Hebrew legend. How can we reasonably expect that men trained in such schools, and breathing so gross an atmosphere of illusion, should be clear-sighted and critical in matters of history?
There is surely room for grave suspicion when we find that a history which can give us day and date for Romulus, the son of Mars, and which remembers the minutest details of the battle of the Horatii and Curiatii, which can tell us how the ambitious Tullia drove her chariot over the murdered body of her father, and how the son of the tyrant Tarquin overcame with words of terror the resistance of the chaste and proud Lucretia – it is surely suspicious that a history which can thus transmit so many pleasant tales and so many petty wars and domestic struggles, should be all but an entire blank as regards the great story of Etruria, 467a story which might have been lost for ever had it not literally risen from the tomb before the astonished gaze of modern Europe. The early annals of Rome present to us an Italy almost the counterpart of the Palestine of the Book of Genesis – a country of petty states and kinglets, gradually yielding to the growing power of the youngest and feeblest of them all; and they present these things as contemporaneous with the mid-life of Etruria – a power which held half Italy in its grasp, and probably overshadowed the remainder; a country of great cities, of which even the crumbling wrecks are still imposing, and which has left such vivid evidences of its wealth and refinement on the frescoed walls of its sepulchral chambers. But the history of Etruria gives an example of the tale of the Atlanteans. The giants have passed away –
“New people fill the land, now they are gone, |
The past has gone beyond the call of historical records, and “the spider dwelleth in the hall of the kings”. The mighty, learned, bad race of the pre-oligocene period has left few relics.
C. Carter Blake, Doct. Sci., F.T.S.
Footnotes
- ↑ Gallic or Belgian on the South-east coast; Iberian in South Wales. German at the foot of the Grampians (Tacitus, Vita Agricola).
- ↑ Britannia pars interior ab iis incolitur, quos natos in insula ipsa memoria proditum dicunt (Cæsar V, 12).
- ↑ Vues des Cordillières, plate xxvi, fol. and tom. ii, p. 118, etc., 8vo. edition.