Blavatsky H.P. - A Land of Mystery: Difference between revisions

Go where we may, to explore the antiquities of America—whether of Northern, Central, or Southern America—we are first of all impressed with the magnitude of these relics of ages and races unknown, and then with the extraordinary similarity they present to the mounds and ancient structures of old India, of Egypt, and even of some parts of Europe. Whoever has seen one of these mounds has seen all. Whoever has stood before the cyclopean structures of one continent can have a pretty accurate idea of those of the other. Only be it said—we know still less of the age of the antiquities of America than even of those in the Valley of the Nile, of which we know next to nothing. But their symbolism—apart from their outward form—is evidently the same as in Egypt, India, and elsewhere. As before the great pyramid of Cheops in Cairo, so before the great mound, 100 feet high, on the plain of Cahokia—near St. Louis (Missouri)—which measures 700 feet long by 500 feet broad at the base, and covers upwards of eight acres of ground, having 20,000,000 cubic feet of contents, and the mound on the banks of Brush Creek, Ohio, so accurately described by Squier and Davis, one knows not whether to admire more the geometrical precision, prescribed by the wonderful and mysterious builders in the form of their monuments, or the hidden symbolism they evidently sought to express. The Ohio mound represents a serpent, upwards of 1,000 feet long. Gracefully coiled in capricious curves, it terminates in a triple coil at the tail. “The embankment constituting the effigy, is upwards of five feet in height, by thirty feet base at the centre of the body, diminishing somewhat toward the head and tail.”<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[New American Cyclopaedia, 1873-76, art. on “American Antiquities”; same ref. in the case of the quotation immediately following.—Compiler.]}}</ref> The neck is stretched out and its mouth wide opened, holding within its jaws an oval figure. “This oval is formed by an embankment four feet in height, and is perfectly regular in outline, its transverse and conjugate diameters being 160 and 80 feet respectively,” say the surveyors. The whole {{Page aside|315}} represents the universal cosmological idea of the serpent and the egg. This is easy to surmise. But how came this great symbol of the Hermetic wisdom of old Egypt to find itself represented in North America? How is it that the sacred buildings found in Ohio and elsewhere, these squares, circles, octagons, and other geometrical figures, in which one recognizes so easily the prevailing idea of the Pythagorean sacred numerals, seem copied from the Book of Numbers? Apart from the complete silence as to their origin, even among the Indian tribes, who have otherwise preserved their own traditions in every case, the antiquity of these ruins is proved by the existence of the largest and most ancient forests growing on the buried cities. The prudent archaeologists of America have generously assigned them 2,000 years. But by whom built, and whether their authors migrated, or disappeared beneath victorious arms, or were swept out of existence by some direful epidemic, or a universal famine, are questions, “probably beyond the power of human investigations to answer,” they say.<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[New Amer. Cyclop., as above.—Compiler.]}}</ref> The earliest inhabitants of Mexico, of whom history has any knowledge—more hypothetical than proven—are the Toltecs. These are supposed to have come from the North and believed to have entered Anahuac in the 7th century A.D. They are also credited with having constructed in Central America, where they spread in the eleventh century, some of the great cities whose ruins still exist. In this case it is they who must also have carved the hieroglyphics that cover some of the relics. How is it then, that the pictorial system of writing of Mexico, which was used by the conquered people and learned by the conquerors and their missionaries, does not yet furnish the keys to the hieroglyphics of Palenque and Copán, not to mention those of Peru? And these civilized Toltecs themselves, who were they, and whence did they come? And who are the Aztecs that succeeded them? Even among the hieroglyphical systems of Mexico, there were some which the foreign interpreters were precluded the possibility of studying. These were the so-called schemes {{Page aside|316}} of judicial astrology “given but not explained in Lord Kingsborough’s published collection,”<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[This has reference to Agostino Àglio’s Antiquities of Mexico, edited with copious notes by E. King, Viscount Kingsborough, London, 1830-48, 9 vols., fol.—Compiler.]}}</ref> and set down as purely figurative and symbolical, “intended only for the use of the priests and diviners and possessed of an esoteric significance.” Many of the hieroglyphics on the monoliths of Palenque and Copán are of the same character. The “priests and diviners” were all killed off by the Catholic fanatics—the secret died with them.

Nearly all the mounds in North America are terraced and ascended by large graded ways, sometimes square, often hexagonal, octagonal or truncated, but in all respects similar to the teocallis of Mexico, and to the topes of India. As the latter are attributed throughout this country to the work of the five Pandus of the Lunar Race, so the cyclopean monuments and monoliths on the shores of Lake Titicaca, in the republic of Bolivia, are ascribed to giants, the five exiled brothers “from beyond the mounts.” They worshipped the moon as their progenitor and lived before the time of the “Sons and Virgins of the Sun.” Here, the similarity of the Aryan with the South American tradition is again but too obvious, and the Solar and Lunar races—Sûrya-Vanśa and the Chandra-Vanśa—reappear in America.

This Lake Titicaca, which occupies the centre of one of the most remarkable terrestrial basins on the whole globe, is “160 miles long and from 50 to 80 broad, and discharges through the valley of El Desaguadero, to the south-east into another lake called Lake Aullagas, which is probably kept at a lower level by evaporation or filtration, since it has no known outlet. The surface of the lake is 12,846 feet above the sea, and it is the most elevated body of water of similar size in the world.”<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[New Amer. Cyclop., art. on “Titicaca”—Compiler.]}}</ref> As the level of its waters has very much decreased in the historical period, it is believed on good grounds that they once surrounded the elevated spot on which are found the remarkable ruins of Tiahuanaco.

The latter are without any doubt aboriginal monuments pertaining to an epoch which preceded the Incal period, as far back as the Dravidian and other aboriginal peoples preceded the Aryans in India. Although the traditions of the Incas maintain that the great lawgiver and teacher of the Peruvians, Manco Capac—the Manu of South America—diffused his knowledge and influence from this centre, yet the statement is unsupported by facts. If the original seat of the Aymara, or “Inca race” was there, as claimed by some, how is it that neither the Incas, nor the Aymaras, who dwell on the shores of the Lake to this day, nor yet the ancient Peruvians, had the slightest knowledge concerning their history? Beyond a vague tradition which tells us of “giants” having built these immense structures in one night, we do not find the faintest clue. And, we have every reason to doubt whether the Incas are of the Aymara race at all. The Incas claim their descent from Manco Capac, the son of the Sun, and the Aymaras claim this legislator as their instructor and the founder of the era of their civilization. Yet, neither the Incas of the Spanish period could prove the one, nor the Aymaras the other. The language of the latter is quite distinct from the Inichua—the tongue of the Incas; and they were the only race that refused to give up their language when conquered by the descendants of the Sun, as Dr. Heath tells us.

The ruins afford every evidence of the highest antiquity. Some are built on a pyramidal plan, as most of the American mounds are, and cover several acres; while the monolithic doorways, pillars, and stone-idols, so elaborately carved, are “sculptured in a style wholly different from any other remains of art yet found in America.”<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[Op. cit., art. on “Tiahuanaco.”—Compiler.]}}</ref> D’Orbigny speaks of the ruins in the most enthusiastic manner.

These monuments [he says] consist of a mound raised nearly 100 feet, surrounded with pillars—of temples from 600 to 1,200 feet in length, opening precisely toward the east, and adorned with colossal angular columns—of porticoes of a single stone, covered with reliefs of skilful execution though of rude design, displaying symbolical representations of the Sun, and the condor his messenger—of basaltic {{Page aside|318}} statues loaded with bas-reliefs, in which the design of the carved head is half Egyptian—and lastly, of the interior of a palace formed of enormous blocks of rock completely hewn, whose dimensions are often 21 feet in length, 12 in breadth, and 6 in thickness. In the temples and palaces, the portals are not inclined as among those of the Incas, but perpendicular; and their vast dimensions, and the imposing masses of which they are composed, surpass in beauty and grandeur all that were afterward built by the sovereigns of Cuzco.<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[New Amer. Cyclop., art. on “American Antiquities.”—Compiler.]}}</ref>