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§§ (43) The Lemuro-Atlanteans build cities and spread civilization. The incipient stage of anthropomorphism. (44) Their statues, witnesses to the size of the Lemuro-Atlanteans. (45) Lemuria destroyed by fire, Atlantis by water. The Flood. (46) The destruction of the fourth race and of the last antediluvian monster-animals.
- 43. They (the Lemurians) built huge cities. Of rare earths and metals they built. Out of the fires (lava) vomited. Out of the white stone of the mountains (marble) and the black stone (of the subterranean fires) they cut their own images, in their size and likeness, and worshipped them (a).
(a) As the History of the first two human races — the last of the Lemurians and the first of the future Atlanteans — proceeds, we have at this point to blend the two, and speak of them for a time collectively. Here reference is also made to the divine Dynasties, such as were claimed by the Egyptians, Chaldeans, Greeks, etc., to have preceded their human kings ; they are still believed in by the modern Hindus, and are enumerated in their sacred books. But of these we shall treat in their proper place. What remains to be shown is, that our modern geologists are now being driven into admitting the evident existence of submerged continents. But to confess their presence is not to accept that there were men on them during the early geological periods ; * —
* This is the reason why, perhaps, even Easter Island with its wondrous gigantic statues — a speaking witness to a submerged continent with a civilized mankind on it — is hardly mentioned anywhere in the modern Encyclopædias. Its mention is carefully avoided except in some books of Travels ; modern science has an undeniable predilection for forcing upon the cultured public hypotheses, built on personal hobbies, as well-established evidence, for offering it guesses instead of Knowledge, and calling them “ scientific conclusions.” Its specialists will evolve a thousand and one contradictory speculations rather than confess an awkward self-evident fact — pre-eminent among such specialists being Hæckel and his English admirers and co-thinkers. Yet “ they are authorities ” — we are sternly reminded. What of that ? The Pope of Rome is also an authority and an infallible one — for his followers ; whereas the remarkable fallibility of Scientific speculations is being proven periodically with every change of the moon.
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ay, men and civilized nations, not Palæolithic savages only ; who, under the guidance of their divine Rulers, built large cities, cultivated arts and sciences, and knew astronomy, architecture and mathematics to perfection. This primeval civilization did not, as one may think, immediately follow their physiological transformation. Between the final evolution and the first city built, many hundred thousands of years had passed. Yet, we find the Lemurians in their sixth sub-race building their first rock-cities out of stone and lava. * One of such great cities of primitive structure was built entirely of lava, some thirty miles west from where Easter Island now stretches its narrow piece of sterile ground, and was entirely destroyed by a series of volcanic eruptions. The oldest remains of Cyclopean buildings were all the handiwork of the Lemurians of the last sub-races ; and an occultist shows, therefore, no wonder on learning that the stone relics found on the small piece of land called Easter Island by Captain Cook, are “ very much like the walls of the Temple of Pachacamac or the Ruins of Tia-Huanuco in Peru,” (“ The Countries of the World,” by Robert Brown, Vol. 4, p. 43) ; and that they are in the Cyclopean style. The first large cities, however, appeared on that region of the continent which is now known as the island of Madagascar. There were civilized people and savages in
* Our best modern novelists, who are neither Theosophists nor Spiritualists, begin to have, nevertheless, very psychological and suggestively Occult dreams : witness Mr. Louis Stephenson and his Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, than which no grander psychological essay on Occult lines exists. Has the rising novelist, Mr. Rider Haggard, also had a prophetic or rather a retrospective clairvoyant dream before he wrote “ She ” ? His imperial Kor, the great city of the dead, whose surviving living men sailed northwards after the plague had killed almost a whole nation, seems to step out in its general outlines from the imperishable pages of the old archaic records. Ayesha suggests “ that those men who sailed north may have been the fathers of the first Egyptians ” ; and then seems to attempt a synopsis of certain letters of a Master quoted in “ Esoteric Buddhism.” For, she says, “ Time after time have nations, ay, and rich and strong nations, learned in the arts, been, and passed away, and been forgotten, so that no memory of them remains. This (the nation of Kor) is but one of several ; for time eats up the work of man unless, indeed, he digs in caves like the people of Kor, and then mayhap the sea swallows them, or the earthquake shakes them in. . . . . Yet were not these people utterly destroyed, as I think. Some few remained in the other cities, for their cities were many. But the barbarians. . . came down upon them, and took their women to wife, and the race of the Amahagger that is now is a bastard brood of the mighty sons of Kor, and behold it dwelleth in the tombs with its fathers’ bones. . .” ( pp. 180, 181.)
Here the clever novelist seems to repeat the history of all the now degraded and down-fallen races of humanity. The Geologists and Anthropologists would place at the head of humanity as descendants of Homo primigenius, the ape-man, of which “ no fossil remains are as yet known to us,” but (which) “ were probably akin to the gorilla and orang of the present day ” (Hæckel). In answer to whose “ probably,” occultists point to another and a greater probability — the one given in our text. ( See above. )
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those days as there are now. Evolution achieved its work of perfection with the former, and Karma — its work of destruction on the latter. The Australians and their like are the descendants of those, who, instead of vivifying the spark dropped into them by the “ Flames,” extinguished it by long generations of bestiality. * The Aryan nations could trace their descent through the Atlanteans from the more spiritual races of the Lemurians, in whom the “ Sons of Wisdom ” had personally incarnated. †
It is with the advent of the divine Dynasties that the first civilizations were started. And while, in some regions of the Earth, a portion of mankind preferred leading a nomadic and patriarchal life, and in others savage man was hardly learning to build a fire and to protect himself against the Elements, his brothers — more favoured than he by their Karma, and helped by the divine intelligence which informed them — built cities, and cultivated arts and sciences. Nevertheless, and civilization notwithstand-
* See Stanza II, ante. This would account for the great difference and variation between the intellectual capacities of races, nations, and individual men. While incarnating, and in other cases only informing the human vehicles evolved by the first brainless (manasless) race, the incarnating Powers and Principles had to make their choice between, and take into account, the past Karmas of the Monads, between which and their bodies they had to become the connecting link. Besides which, as correctly stated in “ Esoteric Buddhism ” (p. 30), “ the fifth principle, or human (intellectual) soul, in the majority of mankind is not even yet fully developed.”
† It is said by Krishna, the Logos incarnate, in the Bhagavat-gîtâ, “ The seven great Rishis, the four preceding Manus, partaking of my nature, were born from my mind : from them sprang (emanated or was born) the human race and the world,” (Chap. X. Verse 6.)
Here, by the seven great Rishis, the seven great rupa hierarchies or classes of Dhyan Chohans, are meant. Let us bear in mind that the Saptarshi (the seven Rishis) are the regents of the seven stars of the Great Bear, therefore, of the same nature as the angels of the planets, or the seven great Planetary Spirits. They were all reborn, all men on earth in various Kalpas and races. Moreover, “ the four preceding Manus ” are the four classes of the originally arupa gods — the Kumâras, the Rudras, the Asuras, etc. : who are also said to have incarnated. They are not the Prajâpatis, as the first are, but their informing principles — some of which have incarnated in men, while others have made other men simply the vehicles of their reflections. As Krishna truly says — the same words being repeated later by another vehicle of the logos — “ I am the same to all beings. . . . those who worship me (the 6th principle or the intellectual divine Soul, Buddhi, made conscious by its union with the higher faculties of Manas) are in me, and I am in them.” (Ibid, 29.) The Logos, being no personality but the universal principle, is represented by all the divine Powers born of its mind — the pure Flames, or, as they are called in Occultism, the “ Intellectual Breaths ” — those angels who are said to have made themselves independent, i.e., passed from the passive and quiescent, into the active state of Self-Consciousness. When this is recognised, the true meaning of Krishna becomes comprehensible. But see Mr. Subba Row’s excellent lecture on the Bhagavatgita, (“ Theosophist,” April 1887, p. 444.)
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ing, while their pastoral brethren enjoyed wondrous powers as their birthright, they, the builders, could now obtain theirs only gradually ; even these being generally used for power over physical nature and selfish and unholy purposes. Civilization has ever developed the physical and the intellectual at the cost of the psychic and spiritual. The command and the guidance over his own psychic nature, which foolish men now associate with the supernatural, were with early Humanity innate and congenital, and came to man as naturally as walking and thinking. “ There is no such thing as magic ” philosophises “ She,” the author forgetting that “ magic ” in her early day still meant the great science of wisdom, and that Ayesha could not possibly know anything of the modern perversion of thought — “ though there is such a thing as knowledge of the Secrets of Nature.” (p. 152). But they have become “ Secrets ” only in our race, and were public property with the Third.
Gradually, mankind went down in stature , for, even before the real advent of the Fourth or Atlantean race, the majority of mankind had fallen into iniquity and sin, save the hierarchy of the “ Elect,” the followers and disciples of the “ Sons of Will and Yoga ” — called later the “ Sons of the Fire Mist.”
Then came the Atlanteans ; the giants whose physical beauty and strength reached their climax, in accordance with evolutionary law, toward the middle period of their fourth sub-race. But, as said in the Commentary : —
The last survivors of the fair child of the White Island (the primitive Sveta-dwipa) had perished ages before. Their (Lemuria’s) elect, had taken shelter on the sacred Island (now the “ fabled ” Shamballah, in the Gobi Desert), while some of their accursed races, separating from the main stock, now lived in the jungles and underground (“ cave-men ”), when the golden yellow race (the Fourth) became in its turn “ black with sin.” From pole to pole the Earth had changed her face for the third time, and was no longer inhabited by the Sons of Sveta-dwipa, the blessed, and Adbhitanya, east and west, the first, the one and the pure, had become corrupted The demi-gods of the
Third had made room for the semi-demons of the Fourth Race. Sveta-dwipa, whose northern parts of the Toyambudhi the seven Kumâras ( Sanaka, Sananda, Sanâtana, Sanatkumâra, Jâta, Vodhu, and Panchasikha ) had visited, agreeably with exoteric tradition (See the Uttara Khanda of the Padma Purâna ; Asiat. Researches also, Vol. XI., pp. 99, 100) ; the White Island had veiled her face. Her children now lived on the Black land, wherein, later on, Daityas from the seventh Dwipa (Pushkara) and Râkshasas from the seventh
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climate replaced the Saddhus and the ascetics of the Third age, who “ had descended to them from other and higher regions.” . . . .
It is evident that, taken in their dead letter, the Purânas read as an absurd tissue of fairy tales and no better. But if one reads chapters I., II. and III. from Book II. (Vol. II.) of Vishnu Purâna and accepts verbatim its geography, geodesy, and ethnology, in the matter of Priyavrata’s seven sons, among whom the father divides the seven Dwipas (Continental Islands) ; and then proceeds to study how the eldest son, the King of Jambu-dwipa, Agnidhra, apportioned Jambudwipa among his nine sons ; and then how Nabhi his son, who had a hundred sons and apportioned all these in his turn — then the reader is likely to throw the book away and pronounce it a farrago of nonsense. But the esoteric student will understand that, in the days when the Purânas were written, the true meaning was clear only to the Initiated Brahmins, who wrote those works allegorically and would not give the whole truth to the masses. And he will explain to the Orientalists who, beginning with Colonel Wilford and ending with Professor Weber, made and still are making such a mess of it, that the first three chapters ( See Wilson’s trans. of Vishnu Purâna Book II. et seq. ) purposely confuse the following subjects and events : —
I. The series of Kalpas or Ages (also of Races) are never taken into account ; e.g., events which have happened in one being allowed to stand along with those which took place in another. The chronological order is entirely ignored. This is shown by several of the Sanskrit commentators, who explain the incompatibility of events and calculations in saying — “ Whenever any contradictions in different Purânas are observed, they are ascribed . . . to differences of Kalpas and the like ” (Vishnu and Bhagavata Purânas).
II. The several meanings of the words “ Manvantara ” and “ Kalpa ” or age, are withheld, and the general one only given.
III.In the genealogy and geography of the Kings and their Varshas (countries) and Dwipas, they are all allowed to be regarded as terrestrial regions.
Now, the truth is that, without entering into too minute details, it is easy and permissible to show that : —
(a) The Seven Dwipas apportioned to Priyavrata’s septenary progeny refer to several localities : first of all to our planetary chain. Jambudwipa alone representing our globe, the six others are the (to us) invisible companion globes of this earth. This is shown by the very nature of the allegorical and symbolic descriptions. Jambu (dwipa) “ is in the centre of all these (the so-called insular continents) and is surrounded ” by a sea of salt water (lavana), whereas Plaksha, Salmalia,
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Kusa, Krauncha, Sâka and Pushkara, are “ surrounded severally — by great seas of sugar-cane juice, of wine, of clarified butter, of curds, of milk,” etc., etc., and such like metaphorical names. ( Chap. II., Book II.) This is shown furthermore by —
(b) Bhâskara Acharya, who uses expressions from the Secret Doctrine and its books, in his description of the sidereal position of all these dwipas : — “ the sea of milk and the sea of curds ” etc., meaning the Milky Way, and the various congeries of nebulæ ; the more so, since he names “ the country to the south of the equator Bhur-loka, that to the north Bhuva-loka, Swar, Mahar, Jana, Tapo and Satya lokas ” ; and says : “ Those lokas are gradually attained by increasing religious merits,” i.e., they are various paradises. (See Bibliotheca Indica. Trans. of the Golâdhyâya of the Siddhânta-siromani III., 21-44).
(c) That this geographical division of seven allegorical continents, islands, mountains, seas and countries, does not belong only to our Round nor even to our races (the name of Bharata Varsha (India) notwithstanding), is explained in the texts themselves by the narrator of Vishnu Purâna. For he closes the first chapter by saying : “ Bharata (the son of Nabhi, who gave his name to Bharata-Varsha or I dia) consigned the Kingdom to his son Sumati . . . . and abandoned his life at Salagrama. He was afterwards born again as a religious Brahman, in a distinguished family of ascetics . . . . under these princes (Bharata’s descendants) Bharata Varsha was divided into nine portions, and their descendants held successively possession of the country for seventy-one periods of the aggregate of the four ages,” or the reign of a Manu, representing a Mahayuga of 4,320,000 years.
But having said so much, Parasâra suddenly explains that “ this was the creation of Swayambhûva Manu, by which the earth was peopled when he presided over the first Manvantara, in the Kalpa of Vârâha,” i.e., the boar incarnation, or Avatar. Now every Brahmin knows that it is only with Vaivasvata Manu that our Humanity began on this Earth (or Round). And if the Western reader turns to the sub-section on “ The Primeval Manus of Humanity,” he will see that Vaivasvata is the seventh of the fourteen Manus who preside over our planetary chain during its life cycle : i.e., that representing or standing in every Round for two Manus of the same name (a Root and a Seed Manu), he is the Root Manu of the Fourth Round, hence the seventh. Wilson finds in this only “ an incongruity ” (see his Vishnu Purâna, vol. II., p. 108, footnote), and speculates that “ the patriarchial genealogies are older than the chronological system of Manvantaras and Kalpas,” and thus “ have been rather clumsily distributed amongst the different periods.” It is nothing of the kind.
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But as Orientalists know nothing of the secret teaching, they will take everything literally, and then turn round and abuse the writers of that which they do not comprehend !
These genealogies embrace a period of three and a half Rounds ; they speak of pre-human periods, and explain the descent into generation of every Manu — the first manifested sparks of the One Unity — and show, furthermore, each of these human sparks dividing into, and multiplying by, first, the Pitars, the human ancestors, then by human Races. No being can become God, or Deva, unless he passes through the human cycles. Therefore the Sloka says, “ Happy are those who are born, even from the (latent) condition of gods, as men, in Bharata-varsha ; as that is the way to . . . final liberation.” In Jambu-dwipa, Bharata is considered the best of its divisions, because it is the land of works. In it alone “ it is that the succession of four Yugas (ages), the Krita, the Treta, the Dwapara, and Kali take place ” ; when, therefore, Parasâra, asked by Maitreya “ to give him the descriptions of the Earth,” returns again to the enumeration of the same Dwipas with the same seas, etc., as those he had described in the Swayambhûva Manvantara — it is simply a blind, yet, to him who reads between the lines, the Four great Races and the Fifth are there, ay, with their sub-divisions, islands, and continents, some of which were called by the names of celestial lokas, and by those of other globes. Hence the confusion.
All these are called by the Orientalists “ mythical ” and “ fabulous ” islands and lands. * Very true, some are not of this earth, but they still exist. The “ White Island ” and Atala, at all events, are no myths, since the latter was the name contemptuously applied by the earliest pioneers of the Fifth Race to the land of Sin — Atlantis, in general, not to Plato’s island alone ; and since the former was (a) the Sveta-dwipa of theogony, and (b) Sâka-dwipa, or Atlantis (its earliest portions) in its beginnings. This was when it yet had its “ seven holy rivers that washed away all sin,” and its “ seven districts, wherein there was no dereliction of virtue, no contention, no deviation from virtue,” as it was then inhabited by the caste of the Magas — that caste which even the Brahmins acknowledged as not inferior to their own — and which was
* In a lecture, Professor Pengelly, F.R.S., quoting Professor Oliver, makes him say “ that the present Atlantic islands’ Flora affords no substantial evidence of a former direct communication with the mainland of the New World,” but himself adds that, at the same time, “ at some period of the Tertiary epoch, N.E. Asia was united to N.W. America, perhaps by the line where the Aleutian chain of islands now extends.” Thus Occult Science alone can reconcile the contradictions and hesitations of modern Science. Moreover, surely the argument for the existence of Atlantis does not rest on Botany alone.
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the nursery of the first Zaratushta. The Brahmins are shown consulting with Gauramukha, on Narada’s advice, who told them to invite the Magas as priests of the Sun in the temple built by Sâmba (the reputed) son of Krishna, who in reality had none. In this the Purânas are historical — allegory notwithstanding — and Occultism is stating facts.
The whole story is told in Bhavishya Purâna. It is stated that, having been cured by Sûrya (the Sun) of leprosy, Sâmba, having built a temple dedicated to the Sun, was looking for pious Brahmins to perform the appointed rites in it, and receive donations made to the God. But Narada (this virgin ascetic whom one finds in every age in the Purânas) advised him not to do so, as Manu forbade the Brahmins to receive emoluments for the performance of religious rites. He therefore referred Sâmba to Gauramukha (white face), the Purohita or family priest of Hgrasena, King of Mathura, who would tell him whom he could best employ. The priest directed Sâmba to invite the Magas, the worshippers of Sûrya, to discharge the duty. Ignorant of the place they lived in, it is Sûrya, the Sun himself, who directs Sâmba to Sâkadwipa beyond the salt water. Then Sâmba performs the journey, using Garuda (Vishnu’s and Krishna’s vehicle, the great Bird) who lands him among the Magas, etc.
Now Krishna, who lived 5,000 years ago, and Narada, who is found reborn in every cycle (or race), besides Garuda — the symbol esoterically of the great cycle — show the allegory ; yet the Magas are the Magi of Chaldea, and their class and worship were born on the earlier Atlantis, in Sâka-dwipa, the Sinless. All the Orientalists are agreed that the Magas of Sâka-dwipa are the forefathers of the fire-worshipping Parsis. Our quarrel with them rests, as usual, on their dwarfing hundreds of thousands to a few centuries this time : they carry the event — Narada and Sâmba notwithstanding — to the days of the flight of the Parsis to Gujerat, which is simply absurd, as that was in the VIIIth cent. of our era. Though the Magas in the Bhavishya Purâna are credited with still living in Sâka-dwipa in the day of Krishna’s Son, yet the last of it — Plato’s “ Atlantis ” — had perished 6000 years before. They were Mag “ late of ” Sâka-Dwipa, and lived in those days in Chaldea. This is an intentional confusion, again.
The earliest pioneers of the Fourth Race were not Atlanteans, nor yet the human Asuras and the Râkshasas which they became later. In those days large portions of the future continent of Atlantis were yet part and parcel of the Ocean floors. “ Lemuria,” as we have called the continent of the Third Race, was then a gigantic land. * It covered
* As shown in the Introduction, it stands to reason that neither the name of Lemuria nor even Atlantis are the real archaic names of the lost continents, but have been adopted by us for the sake of clearness. Atlantis was the name given to those
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the whole area of space from the foot of the Himalayas, which separated it from the inland sea rolling its waves over what is now Tibet, Mongolia, and the great desert of Schamo (Gobi) ; from Chittagong, westward to Hardwar, and eastward to Assam. From thence, it stretched South across what is known to us as Southern India, Ceylon, and Sumatra ; then embracing on its way, as we go South, Madagascar on its right hand and Australia and Tasmania on its left, it ran down to within a few degrees of the Antarctic Circle ; when, from Australia, an inland region on the Mother Continent in those ages, it extended far into the Pacific Ocean, not only beyond Rapa-nui (Teapy, or Easter Island) which now lies in latitude 26 S., and longitude 110 W. (See Addenda to this Book II., Section, “ Proofs of the Submerged Continents.”) This statement seems corroborated by Science, — even if only partially ; as, when discussing continental trends, and showing the infra-Arctic masses trending generally with the Meridian, several ancient continents are generally mentioned, though inferentially. Among such the “ Mascarene continent,” which included Madagascar, stretching north and south, is spoken of, and the existence of another ancient continent running “ from Spitzbergen to the Straits of Dover, while most of the other parts of Europe were sea bottom,” is taught. * The latter corroborates, then, the Occult teaching which shows the (now) polar regions as the earliest of the seven cradles of Humanity, and as the tomb of the bulk of the mankind of that region during the Third Race, when the gigantic continent of Lemuria began separating into smaller continents. This is due, according to the explanation in the Commentary, to a decrease of velocity in the earth’s rotation : —
“ When the Wheel runs at the usual rate, its extremities (the poles) agree with its middle circle (equator), when it runs slower and tilts in every direction, there is a great disturbance on the face of the Earth. The waters flow toward
portions of the submerged Fourth-Race continent which were “ beyond the pillars of Hercules,” and which happened to keep above water after the general cataclysm. The last remnant of these — Plato’s Atlantis, or the “ Poseidon ” (another substitute or rather a translation of the real name) — was the last of it some 11,000 years ago. Most of the correct names of the countries and islands of both continents are given in the Purânas ; but to mention them specially, as found in other more ancient works, such as the Sûrya Siddhanta, would necessitate too lengthy explanations. If, in earlier writings, the two seem to have been too faintly disconnected, this must be due to careless reading and want of reflection. If ages hence, Europeans are referred to as Aryans, and a reader confuses them with the Hindus and the latter with the Fourth Race, as they live (some of them) in ancient Lanka — the blame will not fall on the writer.
* See Professor Dana’s article, “ American Journal of Science,” III. v. 442-3 ; Prof. Winchell’s “ World Life ” ; and other geological works.
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the two ends, and new lands arise in the middle belt (equatorial lands), while those at the ends are subject to pralayas by submersion ”
And again : —
. . . “ Thus the wheel (the Earth) is subject to, and regulated by, the Spirit of the Moon, for the breath of its waters (tides). Toward the close of the age (Kalpa) of a great (root) race, the regents of the moon (the Pitar fathers, or Pitris) begin drawing harder, and thus flatten the wheel about its belt, when it goes down in some places and swells in others, and the swelling running toward the extremities (poles) new lands will arise and old ones be sucked in.”
We have but to read astronomical and geological works, to see the meaning of the above very clearly. Scientists (modern Specialists) have ascertained the influence of the tides on the geological distribution of land and water on the planets, and the shifting of the oceans with a corresponding subsidence and rise of continents and new lands. Science knows, or thinks it knows, that this occurs periodically. * Professor Todd believes he can trace the series of oscillations backward to the periods of the earth’s first incrustation. (See “ American Naturalist,” XVIII., 15 et seq.) ; therefore it seems easy for Science to verify the Esoteric statements. We propose to treat of this at greater length in the Addenda. (Vide §§ V. and VI.)
It is asked by some Theosophists : “ What will Atlantis be like when raised ? ” they understanding from a few words in “ Esoteric Buddhism ” that “ old continents ” that have been submerged will reappear. Here, again, there is a slight misconception. Were the same identical lands of Atlantis that were submerged to be raised again, then they would, indeed, be barren for ages. Because the Atlantic sea-bottom is covered with some 5,000 feet of chalk at present, and more is forming — a new “ cretaceous formation ” of strata, in fact — is no reason why, when the time for a new continent to appear arrives, a geological convulsion and upraising of the sea bottom should not dispose of these 5,000 feet of chalk for the formation of some mountains and 5,000 more come to the surface. The racial cataclysms are not a Noah’s deluge of forty days — a kind of Bombay monsoon.
* Speaking on periodical elevation and subsidence of the equatorial and polar regions, and ensuing changes of climate, Mr. Winchell (professor of Geology at Michigan) says — “ As the movements here contemplated are cyclical, the same conditions would recur again and again ; and accordingly the same fauna might return again and again to the same region, with intervals of occupation by another fauna. Progressive sedimentation would preserve the records of such faunal alterations ; and there would be presented the phenomena of ‘ colonies ’ ‘ re-apparitions ’ and other faunal dislocations in the vertical and horizontal distributions of fossil remains. These phenomena are well known to the student of geology.” (“ Effects of Astronomical changes.”)
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That the periodical sinking and re-appearance of the mighty continents, now called Atlantis and Lemuria by the modern writers, is no fiction, will be demonstrated in the Section in which all the proofs of the same have been collated together. The most archaic Sanskrit and Tamil works teem with references to both Continents. The seven sacred Islands (Dwipas) are mentioned in the Sûrya Siddhanta, the oldest astronomical work in the whole world, and in the works of Asura Maya, the Atlantean astronomer whom Professor Weber has made out re-incarnated in Ptolemy. Yet, it is a mistake to call these “ sacred islands ” Atlantean — as done by us ; for, like everything else in the Hindu Sacred Books, they are made to refer to several things. The heirloom left by Priyavrata, the Son of Swayambhûva Manu, to his seven sons — was not Atlantis,even though one or two of these islands survived the subsidence of their fellows, and offered shelter, ages later, to Atlanteans, whose continent had been submerged in its turn. When originally mentioned by Parasâra (Vishnu Purâna) the seven refer to an esoteric doctrine which is explained further on. Of all the seven islands, Jambu-dwipa is the only one that is terrestrial, for it is our globe. In the Purânas every reference to the North of Meru is connected with that primeval Eldorado, now the North Polar region ; which, when the magnolia blossomed there where now we see an unexplored endless desert of ice, was then a continent again. Science speaks of an ancient continent which stretched from Spitzbergen down to the Straits of Dover. The Secret Doctrine teaches that, in the earliest geological periods, these regions formed a horse-shoe-like continent, whose one end, the Eastern, far more northward than North Cornwall, included Greenland, and the other contained Behring Straits as an inland piece of ground, and descended southward in its natural trend down to the British Isles, which in those days must have been right under the lower curve of the semi-circle. This continent was raised simultaneously with the submersion of the equatorial portions of Lemuria. Ages later, some of the Lemurian remains re-appeared again on the face of the Oceans. Therefore, though it can be said without departing from truth that Atlantis is included in the Seven great insular continents, since the Fourth Race Atlanteans got some of the Lemurian relics, and, settling on the islands, included them among their lands and continents, yet a difference should be made and an explanation given, once that a fuller and more accurate account is attempted, as in the present work. Easter Island was also taken possession of in this manner by some Atlanteans ; who, having escaped from the cataclysm which befell their own land, settled on that remnant of Lemuria only to perish thereon, when destroyed in one day by its volcanic fires and lava. This may be regarded as fiction by certain geographers and geologists ; to the Occul-
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tists it is history. What does Science know to the contrary ? “ Until the appearance of a map, published at Basle in 1522, wherein the name of America appears for the first time, the latter was believed to be part of India . . . . . Science also refuses to sanction the wild hypothesis that there was a time when the Indian peninsula at one end of the line, and South America at the other, were connected by a belt of islands and continents. The India of the pre-historic ages . . . . was doubly connected with the two Americas. The lands of the ancestors of those whom Ammianus Marcellinus calls the ‘ Brahmans of Upper India ’ stretched from Kashmir far into the (now) deserts of Schamo. A pedestrian from the north might then have reached — hardly wetting his feet — the Alaskan peninsula, through Manchooria, across the future Gulf of Tartary, the Kurile and Aleutian islands ; while another traveller, furnished with a canoe, and starting from the South, could have walked over from Siam, crossed the Polynesian Islands and trudged into any part of the continent of South America.” (But see “ Five years of Theosophy,” art. “ Leaflets from Esoteric History,” pp. 338 and 340.) This was written from the words of a Master — a rather doubtful authority for the materialists and the sceptics. But here we have one of their own flock, and a bird of the same feather — Ernest Hæckel, who, in his distribution of races, corroborates the statement almost verbatim : . . . . “ It would seem that the region on the earth’s surface where the evolution of these primitive men from the closely related catarrhine apes (! !) took place, must be sought either in Southern Asia or Eastern Africa [which, by the bye, was not even in existence when the Third Race flourished — H.P.B.] or in Lemuria. Lemuria is an ancient continent now sunk beneath the waters of the Indian Ocean, which, lying to the South of the Asia of to-day, stretched on the one hand eastwards to upper India and Sunda Island, on the other westward as far as Madagascar and Africa.” (See supra and compare “ The Pedigree of Man,” p. 80-81.)
In the epoch we are treating of, the Continent of “ Lemuria,” had already broken asunder in many places, and formed new separate continents. There was, nevertheless, neither Africa nor the Americas, still less Europe in those days, all these slumbering yet on the Ocean floors. Nor was there much of present Asia ; for the cis-Himalayan regions were covered with seas, and beyond this stretched the “ lotus leaves ” of Sveta-dwipa, the countries now called Greenland, Eastern and Western Siberia, etc., etc. The immense Continent, which had once reigned supreme over the Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans, now consisted of huge islands which were gradually disappearing one after the other, until the final convulsion engulfed the last remains of it. Easter Isle, for instance, belongs to the earliest civilisation of the Third
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Race. Submerged with the rest, a volcanic and sudden uplifting of the Ocean floor, raised the small relic of the Archaic ages untouched, with its volcano and statues, during the Champlain epoch of northern polar submersion, as a standing witness to the existence of Lemuria. It is said that some of the Australian tribes are the last remnants of the last descendants of the Third Race.
In this we are again corroborated to a degree by materialistic Science. Hæckel, when speaking of Blumenbach’s brown or Malay race and the Australians and Papuans, remarks : — “ There is much likeness between these last and the Aborigines of Polynesia, that Australian island-world, that seems to have been once on a time a gigantic and continuous continent.” (“ Pedigree of Man,” p. 82. But see footnote supra and the Addenda.)
It certainly was, since it stretched, during the Third Race, east and west, as far as where the two Americas now lie, and since the present Australia is but a portion of it, as are also a few surviving islands sown hither and thither on the face of the Pacific and a large bit of California, which belonged to it. Funnily enough, Hæckel, in his fantastic “ Pedigree of Man,” considers “ the Australians of to-day as the lineal descendants, almost unchanged (? !), of that second branch of the primitive human race. . . that spread northwards, at first chiefly in Asia, from the home of man’s infancy, and seems to have been the parent of all the other straight-haired races of men. . . . The one, woolly-haired, migrated in part, westwards ” . . . (i.e., to Africa and northwards to New Guinea, which countries had then, as said, no existence as yet) . . . “ the other, straight-haired, was evolved farther to the north in Asia . . . . and peopled Australia . . .” (p. 81). “ Behold,” writes a master, “ the relics of that once great nation (Lemuria of the Third Race) in some of the flat-headed aborigines of your Australia ” (“ Esoteric Buddhism,” p. 65). But they belong to the last remnants of the Seventh Sub-race of the Third. Prof. Hæckel must also have dreamt a dream and seen for once a true vision !
It is to this period that we have to look for the first appearance of the Ancestors of those, who are termed by us the most ancient peoples of the world — now called respectively the Aryan Hindus, the Egyptians, and the oldest Persians, on the one hand, and the Chaldees and Phœnicians on the other. These were governed by the divine dynasties, i.e., kings and rulers who had of mortal man only his physical appearance as it was then, but who were Beings from spheres higher and more celestial than our own sphere will be, long Manvantaras hence. It is useless of course to attempt to force their existence on sceptics. Their greatest pride consists in proving their patronymic denomination as catarrhinides ; which fact they try to demonstrate on the alleged
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authority of the Coccyx appended to their os sacrum, that rudimentary tail which, if they only had it long enough, they would wag in joy and for ever, in honour of its eminent discoverer. These will remain as faithful to their ape-ancestors as Christians will to tailless Adam. The Secret Doctrine, however, sets right on this point theosophists and students of Occult Sciences.
If we regard the Second portion of the Third Race as the first representatives of the really human race with solid bones, then Hæckel’s surmise that “ the evolution of the primitive men took place . . . . in either Southern Asia or . . . . Lemuria ” — Africa, whether Eastern or Western being out of question — is correct enough, if not entirely so. To be accurate, however, in the same way that the evolution of the First Race (from the bodies of the pitars) took place on seven distinctly separated regions of the (then) only Earth at the arctic pole — so did the ultimate transformation of the Third occur : it began in those northern regions, which have just been described a few pages back as including Behring’s Straits, and what there then was of dry land in Central Asia, when the climate was semi-tropical even in the Arctic regions and most adapted to the primitive wants of nascent physical man. That region, however, has been more than once frigid and tropical in turn since the appearance of man. The commentary tells us that the Third Race was only about the middle point of its development when : —
“ The axle of the Wheel tilted. The Sun and Moon shone no longer over the heads of that portion of the Sweat Born ; people knew snow, ice, and frost, and men, plants, and animals were dwarfed in their growth. Those that did not perish remained as half-grown babes * in size and intellect. This was the third pralaya of the races. †
Which means again, that our globe is subject to seven periodical entire changes which go pari passu with the races. For the Secret Doctrine teaches that, during this Round, there must be seven terrestrial pralayas, three occasioned by the change in the inclination of the earth’s axis. It is a law which acts at its appointed time, and not at all blindly, as science may think, but in strict accordance and harmony with Karmic law. In Occultism this inexorable law is referred to as “ the great adjuster.” Science confesses its ignorance of the cause producing climatic vicissitudes and such changes in the axial direction, which are always followed by these vicissitudes ; nor does it seem so sure of the axial changes. And being unable to account for them, it is prepared rather to deny the axial phenomena altogether, than admit the intelligent Karmic hand and
* “ Half-grown babes ” in comparison with their giant Brethren on other zones. So would we now.
† Relates to Lemuria.
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law which alone could reasonably explain such sudden changes and their results. It has tried to account for them by various more or less fantastic speculations ; one of which would be the sudden, and as imaginary, collision of our earth with a comet (De Boucheporn’s hypothesis), as the cause of all the geological revolutions. But we prefer holding to our esoteric explanation, since Fohat is as good as any comet, having, in addition, universal intelligence to guide him.
Thus, since Vaivasvata Manu’s Humanity appeared on this Earth, there have already been four such axial disturbances ; when the old continents — save the first one — were sucked in by the oceans, other lands appeared, and huge mountain chains arose where there had been none before. The face of the Globe was completely changed each time ; the survival of the fittest nations and races was secured through timely help ; and the unfit ones — the failures — were disposed of by being swept off the earth. Such sorting and shifting does not happen between sunset and sunrise, as one may think, but requires several thousands of years before the new house is set in order.
The Sub-races are subject to the same cleansing process, as also the side-branchlets (the family-Races). Let one, well-acquainted with astronomy and mathematics, throw a retrospective glance into the twilight and shadows of the Past. Let him observe, take notes of what he knows of the history of peoples and nations, and collate their respective rises and falls with what is known of astronomical cycles — especially with the Sidereal year, equal to 25,868 of our solar years. * If the observer is gifted with the faintest intuition, then will he find how the weal and woe of nations is intimately connected with the beginning and close of this sidereal cycle. True, the non-occultist has the disadvantage that he has no such far distant times to rely upon. He knows nothing, through exact Science, of what took place nearly 10,000 years ago ; yet he may find consolation in the knowledge or — if he so prefers — speculation on the fate of every one of the modern nations he knows of — about 16,000 years hence.
* There are other cycles, of course, cycles within cycles — and this is just that which creates such a difficulty in the calculations of racial events. The circuit of the ecliptic is completed in 25,868 years. And, with regard to our Earth, it is calculated that the equinoctial point falls back fifty minutes ten seconds, annually. But there is another cycle within this one. It is said that “ as the apsis goes forward to meet it at the rate of eleven minutes twenty-four seconds, annually,” (see the article on Astronomy in Encyclopædia Britannica), “ this would complete a revolution in one hundred and fifteen thousand three hundred and two years (115,302). The approximation of the equinox and the apsis is the sum of these motions, sixty-one minutes thirty-four seconds, and hence the equinox returns to the same position in relation to the apsis in 21,128 years.” We have mentioned this cycle in Isis Unveiled, Vol. I., in relation to other cycles. Each has a marked influence on its contemporary race.
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Our meaning is very clear. Every sidereal year the tropics recede from the pole four degrees in each revolution from the equinoctial points, as the equator rounds through the Zodiacal constellations. Now, as every astronomer knows, at present the tropic is only twenty-three degrees and a fraction less than half a degree from the equator. Hence it has still 21 degrees to run before the end of the Sidereal year ; which gives humanity in general, and our civilized races in particular, a reprieve of about 16,000 years. *
After the Great Flood of the Third Race (the Lemurians) —
“ Men decreased considerably in stature, and the duration of their lives was diminished. Having fallen down in godliness they mixed with animal races, and intermarried among giants and Pigmies (the dwarfed races of the Poles). . . Many acquired divine, more — unlawful knowledge, and followed willingly the LEFT PATH.” (Commentary xxxiii.)
Thus were the Atlanteans approaching destruction in their turn. How many geological periods it took to accomplish this fourth destruction ? Who can tell. But we are told that —