We speak of events hundreds of thousands of years old, nay, even millions

of years old—if man date from the geological periods(1736)—not of any of

those events which happened during the few thousand years of the pre‐

historic margin allowed by timid and ever‐cautious history. Yet there are

men of Science who are almost of our way of thinking. From the brave

confession of the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, who says that:

Traditions, whose traces recur in Mexico, in Central America, in

Peru, and in Bolivia, suggest the idea that man existed in these

different countries at the time of the gigantic upheaval of the

Andes, and that he has retained the memory of it—

down to the latest Palæontologists and Anthropologists, the majority of

scientific men is in favour of just such an antiquity. _Àpropos_ of Peru,

has any satisfactory attempt been made to determine the ethnological

affinities and characteristics of the race which reared those Cyclopean

erections, the ruins of which display the relics of a great civilization?

At Cuelap, for instance, such are found, consisting—

Of a wall of wrought stones, 3,600 feet long, 560 broad, and 150

feet high, constituting a solid mass with a level summit. On this

mass was another, 600 feet long, 500 broad, and 150 feet high,

making an aggregate height of 300 feet. In it were rooms and

cells.(1737)

A most suggestive fact is the _startling resemblance between the

architecture of these colossal buildings and that of the archaic European

nations_. Mr. Fergusson regards the analogies between the ruins of “Inca”

civilization and the Cyclopean remains of the Pelasgians in Italy and

Greece, as a coincidence—

The most remarkable in the history of architecture.... It is

difficult to resist the conclusion that there may be some relation

between them.

The “relation” is simply explained by the derivation of the stocks who

devised these erections, from a common centre in an Atlantic continent.

The acceptance of the latter can alone assist us to approach a solution of

this and similar problems in almost every branch of Modern Science.

Dr. Lartet, treating upon the subject, settles the question by declaring

that:

The truth, so long contested, of the coëxistence of man with the

great extinct species [elephas primigenius, rhinoceros

tichorrhinus, hyæna spelæa, ursus spelæus, etc.], appears to me to

be henceforth unassailable and definitely conquered by

science.(1738)

It is shown elsewhere that such is also de Quatrefages’ opinion. He says:

Man has in all probability seen Miocene times(1739) and

consequently the entire Pliocene epoch. Are there any reasons for

believing that his traces will be found further back still?... He

may then have been contemporaneous with the earliest mammalia, and

go back as far as the Secondary period.(1740)

Egypt is far older than Europe as now traced on the map. Atlanto‐Âryan

tribes began to settle on it when the British Islands(1741) and France

were not even in existence. It is well known that “the tongue of the

Ægyptian Sea,” or the Delta of lower Egypt, became firm land very

gradually, and followed the highlands of Abyssinia; unlike the latter,

which arose suddenly, comparatively speaking, it was very slowly formed,

through long ages, from successive layers of sea‐slime and mud, deposited

annually by the soil brought down by a large river, the present Nile. Yet

even the Delta, as a firm and fertile land, has been inhabited for more

than 100,000 years. Later tribes, with still more Âryan blood in them than

their predecessors, arrived from the East, and _conquered_ it from a

people whose very name is lost to posterity, except in the Secret Books.

It is this natural barrier of slime, which sucked in slowly and surely

every boat that approached those inhospitable shores, that was, till

within a few thousand years B.C., the best safeguard of the later

Egyptians, who had managed to reach it through Arabia, Abyssinia, and

Nubia, led on by Manu Vînâ in the day of Vishvâmitra.(1742)

So evident does the antiquity of man become with every day, that even the

Church is preparing for an _honourable_ surrender and retreat. The learned

Abbé Fabre, professor at the Sorbonne, has categorically declared that

pre‐historic Palæontology and Archæology may, without any harm to the

Scriptures, discover in the Tertiary beds as many traces as they please of

Pre‐Adamite man.

Since it disregards all creations anterior to the last deluge but

one [that which produced the diluvium, according to the Abbé],

Bible revelation leaves us free to admit the existence of man in

the grey diluvium, in Pliocene, and even Eocene strata. On the

other hand, however, geologists are not all agreed on regarding

the men who inhabited the globe in these primitive ages as our

ancestors.(1743)

The day on which the Church shall find that its only salvation lies in the

Occult interpretation of the _Bible_ may not be so far off as some

imagine. Already many an Abbé and ecclesiastic has become an ardent

Kabalist, and as many appear publicly in the arena, breaking a lance with

Theosophists and Occultists in support of the metaphysical interpretation

of the _Bible_. But they commence, unfortunately for them, at the wrong

end. They are advised, before they begin to speculate upon the

_metaphysical_ in their Scriptures, to study and master that which relates

to the purely _physical_—_e.g._, its hints on Geology and Ethnology. For

such allusions to the septenary constitution of the Earth and Man, to the

seven Rounds and Races, abound in the _New_ as in the _Old Testament_, and

are as visible as the Sun in the heavens to him who reads both

symbolically. To what do the laws in chapter xxiii of _Leviticus_ apply?

What is the philosophy of reason for all such hebdomadal offerings and

symbolical calculations as:

Ye shall count ... from the morrow after the Sabbath ... that ye

brought the sheaf of the wave offering; seven Sabbaths shall be

complete.... And ye shall offer with the bread seven lambs without

blemish, etc.(1744)

We shall be contradicted, no doubt, when we say that all these “wave” and

“peace” offerings were in commemoration of the _seven_ “Sabbaths” of the

Mysteries. These Sabbaths are seven Pralayas between seven Manvantaras, or

what we call Rounds; for “Sabbath” is an elastic word, meaning a period of

rest of whatever nature, as explained elsewhere. And if this is not

sufficiently conclusive, then we may turn to the verse which adds:

Even unto the morrow after the seventh Sabbath shall ye number

fifty days [forty‐nine, 7 × 7, stages of activity, and forty‐nine

stages of rest, on the seven Globes of the Chain, and then comes

the rest of Sabbath, the _fiftieth_]; and ye shall offer _a new

meat offering_ unto the Lord.(1745)

That is, ye shall make an offering of your flesh or “coats of skin,” and,

divesting yourselves of your bodies, ye shall remain pure spirits. This

law of offering, degraded and materialized with ages, was an institution

that dated from the earliest Atlanteans; it came to the Hebrews _viâ_ the

“Chaldees,” who were the “wise men” of a _caste_, not of a nation, a

community of great Adepts come from their “Serpent‐holes,” who had settled

in Babylonia ages before. And if this interpretation from _Leviticus_

(full of the disfigured _Laws of Manu_) is found too far‐fetched, then

turn to _Revelation_. Whatever interpretation profane mystics may give to

the famous chapter xvii, with its riddle of the woman in purple and

scarlet; whether Protestants nod at the Roman Catholics, when reading

“Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the

Earth,” or Roman Catholics glare at the Protestants, the Occultists

pronounce, in their impartiality, that these words have applied from the

first _to all and every exoteric_ Churchianity—“ceremonial magic” of old,

with its terrible effects, and now the harmless, because distorted, farce

of ritualistic worship. The “mystery” of the woman and of the beast, are

the symbols of soul‐killing Churchianity and of Superstition.

The beast that ... was, and is not, ... and yet is. And here is

the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains

[seven Continents and seven Races] on which the woman sitteth—

the symbol of all the exoteric, barbarous, idolatrous faiths which have

covered that symbol “with the blood of the saints and the blood of the

martyrs” who protested and do protest.

And there are seven kings [seven Races]; five are fallen [our

Fifth Race included], and one is [the Fifth continues], and the

other [the Sixth and the Seventh Races] is not yet come; and when

he [the Race “king”] cometh, he must continue a short space.(1746)

There are many such apocalyptic allusions, but the student has to find

them out for himself.

If the _Bible_ combines with Archæology and Geology to show that human

civilization has passed through three more or less distinct stages, in

Europe at least; and if man, both in America and Europe, as much as in

Asia, dates from geological epochs—why should not the statements of _The

Secret Doctrine_ be taken into consideration? Is it more philosophical or

logical and scientific to _disbelieve_, with Mr. Albert Gaudry, in Miocene

man, while believing that the famous Thenay flints(1747) “were carved by

the dryopithecus monkey”; or, with the Occultist, that the

anthropomorphous monkey came ages after man? For if it is once conceded,

and even scientifically demonstrated, that:

There was not in the middle of the Miocene epoch a single species

of mammal identical with species now extant(1748)

—and that man was then just as he is now; only taller, and more athletic

than we are(1749)—then where is the difficulty? That they could hardly be

the descendants of monkeys, which are themselves not traced before the

Miocene epoch,(1750) is, on the other hand, testified to by several

eminent Naturalists:

Thus, in the savage of quaternary ages, who had to fight against

the mammoth with stone weapons for arms, we find all those

craniological characters generally considered as the sign of great

intellectual development.(1751)

Unless man emerged spontaneously, endowed with all his intellect and

wisdom, from his brainless catarrhine ancestor, he could not have acquired

such brain within the limits of the Miocene period, if we are to believe

the learned Abbé Bourgeois.

As to the matter of giants, though the tallest man hitherto found in

Europe among fossils is the “Mentone man” (6ft. 8in.), others may yet be

excavated. Nilsson, quoted by Lubbock, states that:

In a tomb of the Neolithic age ... a skeleton of extraordinary

size was found in 1807.

It was attributed to a king of Scotland, Albus McGaldus.

And if in our own day we occasionally find men and women from 7ft. to even

9ft. and 11 ft. high, this only proves—on the law of atavism, or the

reäppearance of ancestral features of character—that there was a time when

9ft. and 10ft. was the average height of humanity, even in our latest

Indo‐European race.

But as the subject has been sufficiently treated elsewhere, we may pass on

to the Lemurians and the Atlanteans, and see what the old Greeks knew of

these early races and what the moderns now know.

The great nation mentioned by the Egyptian priests, from which descended

the forefathers of the Greeks of the age of Troy, and which, as averred,

had fought with the Atlantic race, was then, as we see, assuredly no race

of Palæolithic savages. Nevertheless, even in the days of Plato, with the

exception of priests and initiates, no one seems to have preserved any

distinct recollection of the preceding races. The earliest Egyptians had

been separated from the latest Atlanteans for ages upon ages; they were

themselves descended from an _alien_ race, and had settled in Egypt some

400,000 years before,(1752) but their Initiates had preserved all the

records. Even so late as the time of Herodotus, they had still in their

possession the statues of 341 kings who had reigned over their little

Atlanto‐Aryan sub‐race.(1753) If we allow only twenty years as an average

figure for the reign of each king, the duration of the Egyptian Empire has

to be pushed back, from the days of Herodotus, about 17,000 years.

Bunsen allowed the great Pyramid an antiquity of 20,000 years. More modern

Archæologists will not give it more than 5,000, or at the utmost 6,000

years, and generously concede to Thebes, with its hundred gates, 7,000

years from the date of its foundation. And yet there are records which

show Egyptian priests—Initiates—journeying in a north‐westerly direction,

_by land_, _viâ_ what became later the Straits of Gibraltar; turning North

and travelling through the future Phœnician settlements of Southern Gaul;

then still further North, until reaching Carnac (Morbihan) they turned to

the West again and arrived, _still travelling by land_, on the north‐

western promontory of the New Continent.(1754)

What was the object of their long journey? And how far back must we place

the date of such visits? The Archaic Records show the Initiates of the

second sub‐race of the Âryan family moving from one land to the other for

the purpose of supervising the building of menhirs and dolmens, of

colossal Zodiacs in stone, and places of sepulchre to serve as receptacles

for the ashes of generations to come. When did this occur? The fact of

their crossing from France to Great Britain _by land_ may give an idea of

the date when such a journey could have been performed on _terra firma_.

It was when:

The level of the Baltic and of the North Sea was 400 feet higher

than it is at the present day. The valley of the Somme was not

hollowed to the depth it has now attained; Sicily was joined to

Africa, Barbary to Spain. Carthage, the Pyramids of Egypt, the

palaces of Uxmal and Palenque were not yet in existence, and the

bold navigators of Tyre and Sidon, who at a later date were to

undertake their perilous voyages along the coasts of Africa, were

yet unborn. What we know with certainty is that European man was

contemporaneous with the extinct species of the quaternary epoch

... that he witnessed the upheaval of the Alps(1755) and the

extension of the glaciers, in a word that he lived for thousands

of years before the dawn of the remotest historical traditions. It

is even possible that man was the contemporary of extinct mammalia

of species yet more ancient ... of the elephas meridionalis of the

sands of St. Prest, or at the least of the elephas antiquus,

assumed to be prior to the elephas primigenius, since their bones

are found in company with carved flints in several English caves,

associated with those of the rhinoceros hæemitechus and even of

the machairodus latidens, which is of still earlier date. M. Ed.

Lartet is also of opinion that there is nothing really impossible

in the existence of man as early as the Tertiary period.(1756)

If “there is nothing impossible” scientifically, in the idea, and it may

be admitted that man was already in existence as early as the Tertiary

period, then it is just as well to remind the reader that Mr. Croll places

the beginning of that period 2,500,000 years back; but there was a time

when he assigned to it 15,000,000 years.

And if all this may be said of _European_ man, how great is the antiquity

of the Lemuro‐Atlantean and of the Atlanto‐Âryan man? Every educated

person who follows the progress of Science, knows how all vestiges of man

during the Tertiary period are received. The calumnies that were poured on

Desnoyers in 1863, when he announced to the Institute of France that he

had made a discovery

In the undisturbed Pliocene sands of St. Prest near Chartres,

proving the coëxistence of man and the elephas meridionalis—

were equal to the occasion. The later discovery, in 1867, by the Abbé

Bourgeois, that man lived in the Miocene epoch, and the reception it was

given at the Pre‐historic Congress held at Brussels in 1872, proves that

the average man of Science will see _only that which he wishes to

see_.(1757)

The modern Archæologist, though speculating _ad infinitum_ upon the

dolmens and their builders, knows, in fact, nothing either of them or of

their origin. Yet these weird and often colossal monuments of unhewn

stones—which consist generally of four or seven gigantic blocks placed

together—are strewn over Asia, Europe, America, and Africa, in groups or

rows. Stones of enormous size are found placed horizontally and variously

upon two, three, four, and as in Poitou, upon six and seven blocks. People

name them “devil’s altars,” druidic stones, and giant tombs. The stones of

Carnac in Morbihan, Brittany—nearly a mile in length and numbering 11,000

ranged in eleven rows—are twin sisters of those at Stonehenge. The conical

menhir of Loch‐maria‐ker, in Morbihan, measures twenty yards in length and

nearly two yards across. The menhir of Champ Dolent (near St. Malo) rises

thirty feet above the ground, and is fifteen feet in depth below. Such

dolmens and pre‐historic monuments are met with in almost every latitude.

They are found in the Mediterranean basin; in Denmark (among the local

tumuli from twenty‐seven to thirty‐five feet in height); in Shetland; in

Sweden, where they are called Ganggriften (or tombs with corridors); in

Germany, where they are known as the giant tombs (Hünengräben); in Spain,

where is the dolmen of Antiguera near Malaga; in Africa; in Palestine and

Algeria; in Sardinia, with the Nuraghi and Sepolture dei Giganti, or tombs

of giants; in Malabar; in India, where they are called the tombs of the

Daityas (Giants) and of the Râkshasas, the Men‐demons of Lankâ; in Russia

and Siberia, where they are known as the Koorgan; in Peru and Bolivia,

where they are termed the Chulpas or burial places, etc.

There is no country from which they are absent. Who built them? Why are

they all connected with serpents and dragons, with alligators and

crocodiles? Because remains of “Palæolithic man” were, it is thought,

found in some of them, and because, in the funeral mounds of America,

bodies of later races were discovered with the usual paraphernalia of bone

necklaces, weapons, stone and copper urns, etc., they are, therefore,

ancient _tombs_! But surely the two famous mounds—one in the Mississippi

valley and the other in Ohio—known respectively as the “Alligator Mound”

and the “Great Serpent Mound,” were never meant for tombs.(1758) Yet one

is told authoritatively that the mounds, and the mound or dolmen builders,

are all “Pelasgic” in Europe, antecedent to the Incas in America, yet not

of “extremely distant times.” They are built by “no race of dolmen

builders,” who _never existed_ save in the earlier archæological fancy

(opinion of De Mortillet, Bastian, and Westropp). Finally Virchow’s

opinion of the giant tombs of Germany is now accepted as an axiom. Says

that German Biologist:

The tombs alone are gigantic, and not the bones they contain.

And Archæology has but to bow and submit to the decision.(1759)

That no gigantic skeletons have been hitherto found in the “tombs” is no

reason for saying that the remains of giants were never in them.

_Cremation was universal_ till a comparatively recent period—some 80,000

or 100,000 years ago. The real giants, moreover, were nearly all drowned

with Atlantis. Nevertheless, classical writers, as we have shown

elsewhere, often speak of giant skeletons being excavated in their day.

Moreover, human fossils may be counted on the fingers, as yet. No skeleton

ever yet found is older than between 50,000 or 60,000 years,(1760) and

man’s size was reduced from 15 to 10 or 12 feet, from the time of the

third sub‐race of the Âryan stock, which sub‐race—born and developed in

Europe and Asia Minor under new climates and conditions—had become

European. Since then, as we have said, it has been steadily decreasing. It

is truer, therefore, to say that the tombs alone are archaic, and not

necessarily the bodies of men occasionally found in them; and that those

tombs, since they are gigantic, must have contained giants,(1761) or

rather the ashes of generations of giants.

Nor were all such cyclopean structures intended for sepulchres. It is with

the so‐called Druidical remains, such as Carnac in Brittany and Stonehenge

in Great Britain, that the travelling Initiates above alluded to had to

do. And these gigantic monuments are all symbolic records of the World’s

history. They are not Druidical, but universal. Nor did the Druids build

them, for they were only the heirs of the cyclopean lore left to them by

generations of mighty builders and—“magicians,” both good and bad.

It will always be a subject of regret that History, rejecting _à priori_

the actual existence of giants, has preserved to us so little of the

records of antiquity concerning them. Yet in nearly every Mythology—which

after all _is_ Ancient History—the giants play an important part. In the

old Norse Mythology, the giants, Skrymir and his brethren, against whom

the sons of the Gods fought, were potent factors in the histories of

deities and men. The modern exegesis, that makes these giants the brethren

of the dwarfs, and reduces the combats of the Gods to the history of the

development of the Âryan Race, will only receive credence amongst the

believers in the Âryan theory as expounded by Max Müller. Granting that

the Turanian races were typified by the dwarfs (Dwergar), and that a dark,

round‐headed, and dwarfish race was driven northward by the fair‐faced

Scandinavians, or Æsir, the Gods being like unto men, there still exists

neither in history nor in any other scientific work any anthropological

proof whatever of the existence in Time or Space of a race of giants. Yet

that such exist, relatively and _de facto_ side by side with dwarfs,

Schweinfurth can testify. The Nyam‐Nyam of Africa are regular dwarfs,

while their next neighbours, several tribes of comparatively fair‐

complexioned Africans, are giants when confronted with the Nyam‐Nyams, and

very tall even among Europeans, for their women are all above six and a

half feet high.

In Cornwall and in ancient Britain the traditions of these giants are, on

the other hand, excessively common; they are said to have lived even down

to the time of King Arthur. All this shows that giants lived to a later

date amongst the Celtic than among the Teutonic peoples.

If we turn to the New World, we have traditions of a race of giants of

Tarija on the eastern slopes of the Andes and in Ecuador, who combated

Gods and men. These old beliefs, which term certain localities “Los Campos

de los Gigantes,” the “Fields of Giants,” are always concomitant with the

existence of Pliocene mammalia and the occurrence of Pliocene raised

beaches. “All the giants are not under Mount Ossa,” and it would be poor

Anthropology indeed that would restrict the traditions of giants to Greek

and Bible mythologies. Slavonian countries, Russia especially, teem with

legends about the Bogaterey (mighty giants) of old; and Slavonian

folklore, most of which has served for the foundation of national

histories, the oldest songs, and the most archaic traditions, speaks of

the giants of old. Thus we may safely reject the modern theory that would

make of the Titans mere symbols standing for cosmic forces. They were real

living men, whether twenty or only twelve feet high. Even the Homeric

heroes, who, of course, belonged to a far more recent period in the

history of the races, appear to have wielded weapons of a size and weight

beyond the strength of the strongest men of modern times.

Not twice ten men the mighty bulk could raise,

Such men as live in these degenerate days.

If the fossil footprints at Carson, Nevada, U.S.A., are human, they

indicate gigantic men, and of their genuineness there can remain no doubt.

It is to be deplored that the modern and scientific evidence for gigantic

men should rest on footprints alone. Over and over again, the skeletons of

hypothetical giants have been identified with those of elephants and

mastodons. But all such blunders before the days of Geology, and even the

traveller’s tales of Sir John Mandeville, who says that he saw giants

fifty‐six feet high, in India, only show that belief in the existence of

giants has never, at any time, died out of the thoughts of men.

That which is known and accepted is, that several races of gigantic men

have existed and left distinct traces. In the _Journal of the

Anthropological Institute_(1762) such a race is shown as having existed at

Palmyra and possibly in Midian, exhibiting cranial forms quite different

from those of the Jews. It is not improbable that another such race

existed in Samaria, and that the mysterious people who built the stone

circles in Galilee, hewed Neolithic flints in the Jordan valley, and

preserved an ancient Semitic language quite distinct from the square

Hebrew character, were of very large stature. The English translations of

the _Bible_ can never be relied upon, even in their modern revised forms.

They tell us of the Nephilim, translating the word by “giants,” and

further adding that they were “hairy” men, probably the large and powerful

prototypes of the later satyrs so eloquently described by patristic fancy;

some of the Church Fathers assuring their admirers and followers that they

had themselves seen these “satyrs”—some alive, others “pickled” and

“preserved.” The word “giants” being once adopted as a synonym of

Nephilim, the commentators have since identified them with the sons of

Anak. The filibusters who seized on the Promised Land found a preëxisting

population far exceeding their own in stature, and called it a race of

giants. But the races of really gigantic men had disappeared ages before

the birth of Moses. These tall people existed in Canaan, and even in

Bashan, and may have had representatives in the Nabatheans of Midian. They

were of far greater stature than the undersized Jews. Four thousand years

ago their cranial conformation and large stature separated them from the

children of Heber. Forty thousand years ago their ancestors may have been

of still more gigantic size, and four hundred thousand years earlier they

must have been in proportion to men in our days as the Brobdingnagians

were to the Lilliputians. The Atlanteans of the middle period were called

the “Great Dragons,” and the first symbol of their tribal deities, when

the “Gods” and the Divine Dynasties had forsaken them, was that of a giant

serpent.

The mystery veiling the origin and the religion of the Druids is as great

as that of their supposed fanes to the modern Symbologist, but not to the

initiated Occultists. Their priests were the descendants of the last

Atlanteans, and what is known of them is sufficient to allow the inference

that they were Eastern priests, akin to the Chaldæans and Indians, though

little more. It may be inferred that they symbolized their deity as the

Hindûs do their Vishnu, as the Egyptians did their Mystery God, and as the

builders of the Ohio great Serpent Mound worshipped theirs—namely under

the form of the “Mighty Serpent,” the emblem of the eternal deity Time—the

Hindû Kâla. Pliny called them the “Magi of the Gauls and Britons.” But

they were more than that. The author of _Indian Antiquities_ finds much

affinity between the Druids and the Brâhmans of India. Dr. Borlase points

to a close analogy between them and the Magi of Persia;(1763) others will

see an identity between them and the Orphic priesthood of Thrace—simply

because they were connected, in their Esoteric Teachings, with the

universal Wisdom Religion, and thus presented affinities with the exoteric

worship of all.

Like the Hindûs, the Greeks and Romans—we speak of the Initiates—the

Chaldees and the Egyptians, the Druids believed in the doctrine of a

succession of “worlds,” as also in that of seven “creations” (of new

continents) and transformations of the face of the Earth, and in a seven‐

fold night and day for each Earth or Globe. Wherever the serpent with the

egg is found, there this tenet was surely present. Their Dracontia are a

proof of it. This belief was so universal that, if we seek for it in the

Esotericism of various religions, we shall discover it in all. We shall

find it among the Âryan Hindûs and Mazdeans, the Greeks, the Latins, and

even among the old Jews and early Christians, whose modern stocks hardly

comprehend now what they read in their Scriptures. In the _Book of God_ we

read:

The world, says Seneca, being melted and having reëntered into the

bosom of Jupiter, this god continues for some time totally

concentred in himself and remains concealed, as it were, wholly

immersed in the contemplation of his own ideas. Afterwards we see

a new world spring from him, perfect in all its parts. Animals are

produced anew. An innocent race of men is formed.

And again, speaking of a mundane dissolution as involving the destruction

or death of all, he teaches us that:

When the laws of nature shall be buried in ruin, and the last day

of the world shall come, the Southern Pole shall crush, as it

falls, all the regions of Africa, and the North Pole shall

overwhelm all the countries beneath its axis. _The affrighted Sun

shall be deprived of its light_; the palace of heaven falling to

decay shall produce at once both life and death, and some kind of

dissolution shall equally seize upon all the deities, who thus

shall return into their original chaos.(1764)

One might imagine oneself reading the Paurânic account by Parâshara of the

great Pralaya. It is nearly the same thing, idea for idea. Has

Christianity nothing of the kind? It has, we say. Let the reader open any

English _Bible_ and read chapter iii of the Second _Epistle of Peter_, and

he will find there the same ideas:

There shall come in the last days scoffers ... saying, Where is

the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all

things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.

For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God

the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water

and in the water: whereby the world that then was, being

overflowed with water, perished: but the heavens and the earth

which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto

fire ... the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the

elements shall melt with fervent heat. Nevertheless we ... look

for new heavens and a new earth.(1765)

If the interpreters choose to see in this a reference to the creation, the

deluge, and the promised coming of Christ, when they shall live in a New

Jerusalem in Heaven, this is no fault of “Peter.” What the writer of the

Epistle meant was the destruction of this Fifth Race of ours by

subterranean fires and inundations, and the appearance of new continents

for the Sixth Root‐Race. For the writers of the Epistles were all learned

in symbology if not in science.

It has been mentioned elsewhere that the belief in the septenary

constitution of our Chain was the oldest tenet of the early Iranians, who

got it from the first Zarathushtra. It is time to prove it to those Parsîs

who have lost the key to the meaning of their Scriptures. In the _Avesta_

the Earth is considered septempartite and tripartite at one and the same

time. This is regarded by Dr. Geiger as an incongruity, for the following

reasons, which he calls discrepancies. The _Avesta_ speaks of the three

thirds of the Earth because the _Rig Veda_ mentions:

Three earths.... Three strata or layers, one lying above the

other, are said to be meant by this.(1766)

But he is quite mistaken, as are all exoteric profane translators. The

_Avesta_ has not borrowed the idea from the _Rig Veda_, but simply repeats

the Esoteric Teaching. The “three strata or layers” do not refer to our

Globe alone, but to three layers of the Globes of our Terrestrial

Chain—two by two, on each plane, one on the descending, the other on the

ascending arc. Thus, with reference to the six Spheres or Globes above our

Earth, the seventh and the fourth, the Earth is _septempartite_, while

with regard to the planes over our plane—it is _tripartite_. This meaning

is carried out and corroborated by the text of the _Avesta_, and even by

the speculations—most laborious and unsatisfactory guess‐work—of the

translators and commentators. It thus follows that the division of the

Earth, or rather the Earth’s Chain, into seven Karshvars is not in

contradiction with the three “zones,” if this word is read “planes.” As

Geiger remarks, this septenary division is very old—the oldest of

all—since the Gâthas already speak of the “septempartite earth.”(1767)

For:

According to the statements of the later Parsî Scriptures, the

_seven Kêrshvars are to be considered as completely disconnected

parts of the earth_ [which they surely are. For] between them

_there flows the ocean_, so that it is impossible, as stated in

several passages, to pass from one Kêrshvar to another.(1768)

The “Ocean” is _Space_, of course, for the latter was called “Waters of

Space” before it was known as Ether. Moreover, the word Karshvar is

consistently rendered as Dvîpa, and Hvaniratha is rendered by Jambudvîpa

(Neryosangh, the translator of the _Yasna_).(1769) But this fact is not

taken into account by the Orientalists, and therefore we find even such a

learned Zoroastrian and Parsî by birth as the translator of Dr. Geiger’s

work, passing unnoticed and without a word of comment sundry remarks of

the former on the “incongruities” of this kind abounding in the Mazdean

Scriptures. One of such “incongruities” and “coïncidences” concerns the

similarity of the Zoroastrian with the Indian tenet with regard to the

seven Dvîpas—islands, or continents, rather—as met with in the _Purânas_,

namely:

The Dvîpas form concentric rings, which, separated by the ocean,

surround Jambudvîpa, which is situated in the centre, [and]

according to the Iranian view, the Kêrshvar Qaniratha is likewise

situated in the centre of the rest, they form no concentric

circles, but each of them [the six other Karshvars] is a peculiar

individual space, and so they group themselves round [above]

Qaniratha.(1770)

Now Qaniratha—better Hvaniratha—is not, as believed by Geiger and his

translator, “the country inhabited by the Irânian tribes,” and “the other

names” do not mean “the adjacent territories of foreign nations in the

North, South, West, and East,” but signify our Globe or Earth. For that

which is meant by the sentence which follows the last quoted, namely,

that:

Two, Vorubarshti and Voruzarshti, lie in the North; two,

Vidadhafshu and Tradadhafshu, in the South; Savahi and Arzahi in

the East and West

—is simply the very graphic and accurate description of the Chain of our

Planet, the Earth, represented in the _Book of Dzyan_ (11) thus:

[Illustration: The Chain of Earth]

The Mazdean names given above have only to be replaced by those used in

the Secret Doctrine to present us with the Esoteric tenet. The “Earth”

(our world) _is_ tripartite, because the Chain of the Worlds is situated

on three different planes above our Globe; and it is septempartite because

of the seven Globes or Spheres which compose the Chain. Hence the further

meaning given in _Vendidâd_ (xix. 39), showing that:

Qaniratha alone is combined with _imat_, “this” (earth), while all

other Karshvares are combined with the word “_avat_,” “that” or

_those_—upper earths.

Nothing could be plainer. The same may be said of the modern comprehension

of all other ancient beliefs.

The Druids, then, understood the meaning of the Sun in Taurus, when, all

other fires being extinguished on the first of November, their sacred and

inextinguishable fires alone remained to illumine the horizon, like those

of the Magi and the modern Zoroastrians. And like the early Fifth Race and

later Chaldees, like the Greeks, and again like the Christians—who do the

same to this day, without suspecting the real meaning—they greeted the

Morning Star, the beautiful Venus‐Lucifer.(1771) Strabo speaks of an

island near to Britannia:

Where Ceres and Persephone were worshipped with the same rites as

in Samothrace and this island was Sacred Ierna(1772)—

where a perpetual fire was lit. The Druids believed in the rebirth of man,

not as Lucian explains:

That the same spirit shall animate a new body, not here, but in a

different world—

but in a series of reïncarnations in this same world; for as Diodorus

says, they declared that the souls of men, after determinate periods,

would pass into other bodies.(1773)

These tenets came to the Fifth Race Âryans from their predecessors of the

Fourth Race, the Atlanteans. They had piously preserved the teachings,

which told them how their parent Root‐Race, becoming with every generation

more arrogant, owing to the acquisition of superhuman powers, had been

gradually gliding toward its end. Those records reminded them of the giant

intellect of the preceding races as well as of their giant size. We find

the repetition of those records in every age of history, in almost every

old fragment which has descended to us from antiquity.

Ælian preserved an extract from Theophrastus written during the days of

Alexander the Great. It is a dialogue between Midas, the Phrygian, and

Silenus. The former is told of a continent that had existed in times of

old, so immense, that Asia, Europe and Africa seemed like poor islands

compared with it. _It was the last to produce_ animals and plants of

gigantic magnitudes. There, said Silenus, men grew to double the size of

the tallest man in his (the narrator’s) time, and they lived till they

were twice as old. They had wealthy cities with temples, and one of such

cities held more than a million of inhabitants in it, gold and silver

being found there in great abundance.

Grote’s suggestion that Atlantis was but a myth arisen from a

mirage—clouds on a dazzling sky taking the appearance of islands on a

golden sea—is too disingenuous to be further noticed.

A. Some Statements About The Sacred Islands And Continents In The

Classics, Explained Esoterically.

All that which precedes was known to Plato, and to many others. But as no

Initiate had the right to divulge and declare all he knew, posterity got

only hints. Aiming more to instruct as a Moralist than as a Geographer and

Ethnologist or Historian, the Greek Philosopher merged the history of

Atlantis, which covered several million years, into one event which he

located on one comparatively small island 3,000 stadia long by 2,000 wide

(or about 350 miles by 200, which is about the size of Ireland); whereas

the priests spoke of Atlantis as a continent vast as “all Asia and Lybia”

put together.(1774) But, however altered in its general aspect, Plato’s

narrative bears the impress of truth upon it.(1775) It was not he who

invented it, at any rate, since Homer, who preceded him by many centuries,

also speaks in his _Odyssey_ of the Atlantes—who are our Atlanteans—and of

their island. Therefore the tradition was older than the bard of Ulysses.

The Atlantes and the Atlantides of Mythology are based upon the Atlantes

and the Atlantides of History. Both Sanchuniathon and Diodorus have

preserved the histories of those heroes and heroines, however much their

accounts may have become mixed up with the mythical element.

In our own day we witness the extraordinary fact that such comparatively

recent personages as Shakspere and William Tell are all but denied, an

attempt being made to show one to be a _nom de plume_, and the other a

person who never existed. What wonder then, that the two powerful

Races—the Lemurians and the Atlanteans—have been merged into and

identified, in time, with a few half mythical peoples, who all bore the

same patronymic.

Herodotus speaks of the Atlantes—a people of Western Africa—who gave their

name to Mount Atlas: who were vegetarians, and “whose sleep was never

disturbed by dreams”; and who, moreover,

Daily cursed the sun at his rising and at his setting because his

excessive heat scorched and tormented them.

These statements are based upon moral and psychic facts and not on

physiological disturbance. The story of Atlas gives the key to this. If

the Atlanteans never had their sleep disturbed by dreams, it is because

that particular tradition is concerned with the earliest Atlanteans, whose

physical frame and brain were not yet sufficiently consolidated, in the

physiological sense, to permit the nervous centres to act during sleep.

With regard to the other statement—that they daily “cursed the sun”—this

again had nothing to do with the heat, but with the moral degeneration

that grew with the Race. It is explained in our Commentaries.

_They [the sixth sub‐race of the Atlanteans] used magic incantations even

against the Sun_—

failing in which they cursed it. The sorcerers of Thessaly were credited

with the power of calling down the Moon, as Greek history assures us. The

Atlanteans of the later period were renowned for their magic powers and

wickedness, their ambition and defiance of the Gods. Thence the same

traditions, taking form in the _Bible_, about the antediluvian giants and

the Tower of Babel, and found also in the _Book of Enoch_.

Diodorus records another fact or two: the Atlanteans boasted of possessing

the land in which all the Gods had received their birth; as also of having

had Uranus for their first King, he being also the first to teach them

Astronomy. Very little more than this has come down to us from antiquity.

The myth of Atlas is an allegory easily understood. Atlas is the old

Continents of Lemuria and Atlantis, combined and personified in one

symbol. The poets attribute to Atlas, as to Proteus, a superior wisdom and

a universal knowledge, and especially _a thorough acquaintance with the

depths of the ocean_; for both Continents bore Races instructed by

_divine_ Masters, and both were transferred to the bottom of the seas,

where they now slumber until their next reäppearance above the waters.

Atlas is the son of an ocean nymph, and his daughter is Calypso—the

“watery deep.” Atlantis has been submerged beneath the waters of the

ocean, and its progeny is now sleeping its eternal sleep on the ocean

floors. The _Odyssey_ makes of him the guardian and the “sustainer” of the

huge pillars that separate the Heavens from the Earth. He is their

“supporter.” And as both Lemuria, destroyed by submarine fires, and

Atlantis, submerged by the waves, perished in the ocean deeps,(1776) Atlas

is said to have been compelled to leave the surface of the Earth, and join

his brother Iapetus in the depths of Tartarus.(1777) Sir Theodore Martin

is right in interpreting this allegory as meaning:

[Atlas] standing on the solid floor of the inferior hemisphere of

the universe, and thus carrying at the same time the disc of the

earth and the celestial vault—the solid envelope of the superior

hemisphere.(1778)

For Atlas is Atlantis, which supports the new continents and their

horizons on its “shoulders.”

Decharme, in his _Mythologie de la Grèce Antique_, expresses a doubt as to

the correctness of Pierron’s translation of the Homeric word ἕχει by

_sustinet_, as it is not possible to see:

How Atlas can support or bear at once several pillars situated in

various localities.

If Atlas were an individual it would be an awkward translation. But, as he

personifies a Continent in the West said to support Heaven and Earth at

once,(1779) _i.e._, the feet of the giant tread the earth while his

shoulders support the celestial vault—an allusion to the gigantic peaks of

the Lemurian and Atlantean Continents—the epithet “supporter” becomes very

correct. The term _conservator_ for the Greek word ἕχει, which Decharme,

following Sir Theodore Martin, understands as meaning φυλάσσει and

ἐπιμελεῖταυ, does not render the same sense.

The conception was certainly due to the gigantic mountain chain running

along the terrestrial border or disc. These mountain peaks plunged their

roots into the very bottom of the seas, while they raised their heads

heavenward, their summits being lost in the clouds. The ancient continents

had more mountains than valleys on them. Atlas and the Teneriffe Peak, now

two of the dwarfed relics of the two lost Continents, were thrice as lofty

during the day of Lemuria and twice as high in that of Atlantis. Thus, the

Lybians called Mount Atlas the “Pillar of Heaven,” according to

Herodotus,(1780) and Pindar qualified the later Ætna as the “Celestial

Pillar.”(1781) Atlas was an inaccessible island peak in the days of

Lemuria, when the African continent had not yet been raised. It is the

sole Western relic which survives, _independent_, belonging to the

Continent on which the Third Race was born, developed and fell,(1782) for

Australia is now part of the Eastern Continent. Proud Atlas, according to

Esoteric tradition, having sunk one‐third of its size into the waters, its

two parts remained as an heirloom of Atlantis.

This again was known to the priests of Egypt and to Plato himself, the

solemn oath of secrecy, which extended even to the mysteries of Neo‐

Platonism, alone preventing the whole truth from being told.(1783) So

secret was the knowledge of the last island of Atlantis, indeed—on account

of the superhuman powers possessed by its inhabitants, the last direct

descendants of the Gods or Divine Kings, as it was thought—that to divulge

its whereabouts and existence was punished by death. Theopompus says as

much in his ever‐suspected _Meropis_, when he speaks of the Phœnicians as

being the only navigators in the seas which wash the Western coast of

Africa; who did it with such mystery that very often they sunk their own

vessels to make the too inquisitive foreigners lose all trace of them.

There are Orientalists and Historians—and they form the majority—who,

while feeling quite unmoved at the rather crude language of the _Bible_,

and some of the events narrated in it, show great disgust at the

“immorality” in the Pantheons of India and Greece.(1784) We may be told

that before them Euripides, Pindar, and even Plato, express the same

disgust; that they too felt irritated with the tales invented—“those

miserable stories of the poets,” as Euripides phrases it.(1785)

But there may have been another reason for this, perhaps. To those who

knew that there was more than one key to Theogonic Symbolism, it was a

mistake to have expressed it in a language so crude and misleading. For if

the educated and learned Philosopher could discern the kernel of wisdom

under the coarse rind of the fruit, and knew that the latter concealed the

greatest laws and truths of psychic and physical nature, as well as the

origin of all things—not so with the uninitiated profane. For him the

dead‐letter was religion; the interpretation—sacrilege. And this dead‐

letter could neither edify nor make him more perfect, seeing that such an

example was given him by his Gods. But to the Philosopher—especially the

Initiate—Hesiod’s _Theogony_ is as historical as any history can be. Plato

accepts it as such, and gives out as much of its truths as his pledges

permitted.

The fact that the Atlantes claimed Uranus for their first king, and that

Plato commences his story of Atlantis by the division of the great

Continent by Neptune, the grandson of Uranus, shows that there were

continents before Atlantis and kings before Uranus. For Neptune, to whose

lot the great Continent fell, finds on a small island only one human

couple made of clay—_i.e._, the first physical _human_ man, whose origin

began with the last sub‐races of the Third Root‐Race. It is their daughter

Clito that the God marries, and it is his eldest son Atlas who receives

for his part the mountain and the continent which were called by his

name.(1786)

Now all the Gods of Olympus, as well as those of the Hindû Pantheon and

the Rishis, were the septiform personations (1) of the Noumena of the

Intelligent Powers of Nature; (2) of Cosmic Forces; (3) of Celestial

Bodies; (4) of Gods or Dhyân Chohans; (5) of Psychic and Spiritual Powers;

(6) of Divine Kings on Earth, or the incarnations of the Gods; and (7) of

Terrestrial Heroes or Men. The knowledge how to discern among these seven

forms the one that is intended, belonged at all times to the Initiates,

whose earliest predecessors had created this symbolical and allegorical

system.

Thus while Uranus, or the Host representing this celestial group, reigned

and ruled over the Second Race and their then Continent, Cronus or Saturn

governed the Lemurians; and Jupiter, Neptune(1787) and others fought in

the allegory for Atlantis, which was the whole Earth in the day of the

Fourth Race. Poseidonis, or the last island of Atlantis—the “third step”

of Idas‐pati, or Vishnu, in the mystic language of the Secret Books—lasted

till about 12,000 years ago.(1788) The Atlantes of Diodorus were right in

claiming that it was their country, the region surrounding Mount Atlas,

where “the Gods were born”—_i.e._, “incarnated.” But it was after their

fourth incarnation that they became, for the first time, human kings and

rulers.

Diodorus speaks of Uranus as the first king of Atlantis, confusing, either

consciously or otherwise, the Continents; but as we have shown, Plato

indirectly corrects the statement. The first astronomical teacher of men

was Uranus, because he is one of the seven Dhyân Chohans of that Second

Period or Race. Thus also in the second Manvantara, that of Svârochisha,

among the seven sons of the Manu, the presiding Gods or Rishis of that

race, we find Jyotis,(1789) the teacher of Astronomy (Jyotisha), one of

the names of Brahmâ. And thus also the Chinese revere Tien (or the Sky,

Ouranos), and name him as their first teacher of Astronomy. Uranus gave

birth to the Titans of the Third Race, and it is they, personified by

Saturn‐Cronus, who mutilated him. For as it is the Titans who _fell into

generation_, when “creation by _will_ was superseded by physical

procreation,” they needed Uranus no more.

And here a short digression must be permitted and pardoned. In consequence

of the last scholarly production of Mr. Gladstone in the _Nineteenth

Century_, “The Greater Gods of Olympos,” the ideas of the general public

about Greek Mythology have been still further perverted and biassed. Homer

is credited with an inner thought, which is regarded by Mr. Gladstone as,

“the true key to the Homeric conception,” whereas this “key” is merely a

“blind.”

[Poseidon] is indeed essentially of the earth earthy ... strong

and self‐asserting, sensual and intensely jealous and vindictive—

but this is because he symbolizes the Spirit of the Fourth Root‐Race, the

Ruler of the Seas, that Race which lives above the surface of the

seas,(1790) which is composed of the giants, the children of Eurymedon,

the race which is the father of Polyphemus, the Titan, and the one‐eyed

Cyclops. Though Zeus reign over the Fourth Race, it is Poseidon who rules,

and who is the true key to the triad of the Cronid Brothers, and to our

_human_ races. Poseidon and Nereus are _one_; the former the Ruler or

Spirit of Atlantis before the beginning of its submersion, the latter,

after. Neptune is the titanic strength of the _living_ Race, Nereus, its

Spirit, reïncarnated in the subsequent Fifth or Âryan Race; and this is

what the Greek scholar of England has not yet discovered, or even dimly

perceived. And yet he makes many observations upon the “artfulness” of

Homer, who never names Nereus, at whose designation we arrive only through

the patronymic of the Nereids!

Thus the tendency of even the most erudite Hellenists is to confine their

speculations to the exoteric images of Mythology and to lose sight of

their inner meaning; and it is remarkably illustrated in the case of Mr.

Gladstone, as we have shown. While almost the most conspicuous figure of

our age as a statesman, he is at the same time one of the most cultured

scholars to whom England has given birth. Grecian literature has been the

beloved study of his life, and he has found time amid the bustle of public

affairs to enrich contemporary literature with contributions to Greek

scholarship, which will make his name famous through coming generations.

At the same time, as his sincere admirer, the present writer cannot but

feel a deep regret that posterity, while acknowledging his profound

erudition and splendid culture, will yet, in the greater light which

_must_ then shine upon the whole question of Symbolism and Mythology,

judge that he has failed to grasp the spirit of the religious system which

he has often criticized from the dogmatic Christian standpoint. In that

future day it will be perceived that the Esoteric key to the mysteries of

the Christian as well as of the Grecian Theogonies and Sciences, is the

Secret Doctrine of the pre‐historic nations, which, along with others, he

has denied. It is that doctrine alone which can trace the kinship of all

human religious speculations, or even of so‐called “revelations,” and it

is this teaching which infuses the spirit of life into the lay figures on

the Mounts of Meru, Olympus, Walhalla, or Sinai. If Mr. Gladstone were a

younger man, his admirers might hope that his scholastic studies would be

crowned by the discovery of this underlying truth. As it is, he but wastes

the golden hours of his declining years in futile disputations with that

giant free‐thinker, Col. Ingersoll, each fighting with the weapons of

exoteric temper, drawn from the arsenals of ignorant Literalism. These two

great controversialists are equally blind to the true Esoteric meaning of

the texts which they hurl at each other’s heads like iron bullets, while

the world alone suffers by such controversies; since the one helps to

strengthen the ranks of Materialism, and the other those of blind

Sectarianism of the dead‐letter. And now we may return once more to our

immediate subject.

Many a time Atlantis is spoken of under another name, one unknown to our

commentators. The _power of names_ is great, and has been known since the

first men were instructed by the _Divine_ Masters. And as Solon had

studied it, he translated the “Atlantean” names into names devised by

himself. In connection with the continent of Atlantis, it is desirable to

bear in mind that the accounts which have come down to us from the old

Greek writers contain a confusion of statements, some referring to the

great Continent and others to the last small island of Poseidonis. It has

become customary to take them all as referring to the latter only, but

that this is incorrect is evident from the incompatibility of the various

statements as to the size, etc., of “Atlantis.”

Thus, in the _Critias_, Plato says, that the plain surrounding the city

was itself surrounded by mountain chains, and the plain was smooth and

level, and of an oblong shape, lying north and south, three thousand

stadia in one direction and two thousand in the other; they surrounded the

plain by an enormous canal or dike, 101 feet deep, 606 feet broad, and

1,250 miles in length.(1791)

Now in other places the entire size of the _island_ of Poseidonis is given

as about the same as that assigned here to the “_plain_ around the city”

alone. Obviously, one set of statements refers to the great Continent, and

the other to its last remnant—Plato’s island.

And, again, the standing army of Atlantis is given as upwards of a million

men; its navy as 1,200 ships and 240,000 men. Such statements are quite

inapplicable to a small island state, of about the size of Ireland!

The Greek allegories give to Atlas, or Atlantis, seven daughters—seven

sub‐races—whose respective names are Maia, Electra, Taygeta, Asterope,

Merope, Alcyone, and Celæno. This ethnologically—as they are credited with

having married Gods and with having become the mothers of famous heroes,

the founders of many nations and cities. Astronomically, the Atlantides

have become the seven Pleiades (?). In Occult Science the two are

connected with the destinies of nations, those destinies being shaped by

the past events of their early lives according to Karmic Law.

Three great nations claimed in antiquity a direct descent from the kingdom

of Saturn or Lemuria, confused with Atlantis several thousands of years

before our era; and these were the Egyptians, the Phœnicians

(Sanchuniathon), and the old Greeks (Diodorus, after Plato). But the

oldest civilized country of Asia—India—can likewise be shown to claim the

same descent. Sub‐races, guided by Karmic Law or destiny, repeat

unconsciously the first steps of their respective mother‐races. As the

comparatively fair Brâhmans—when invading India with its dark‐coloured

Dravidians—have come from the North, so the Âryan Fifth Race must claim

its origin from northern regions. The Occult Sciences show that the

founders, the respective groups of the seven Prajâpatis, of the Root‐Races

have all been connected with the Pole Star. In the Commentary we find:

_He who understands the age of Dhruva_(_1792_)_ who measures 9090

mortal years, will understand the times of the Pralayas, the final

destiny of nations, O Lanoo._

Moreover there must have been a good reason why an Asiatic nation should

locate its great Progenitors and Saints in Ursa Major, a _northern

constellation_. It is 70,000 years, however, _since the Pole of the Earth

pointed to the further end of Ursa Minor’s tail_; and many more thousand

years since the seven Rishis could have been identified with the

constellation of Ursa Major.

The Âryan Race was born and developed in the far North, though after the

sinking of the Continent of Atlantis its tribes emigrated further South

into Asia. Hence Prometheus is the son of Asia, and Deucalion, his son,

the Greek Noah—he who created men out of the stones of mother Earth—is

called a northern Scythe, by Lucian, and Prometheus is made the brother of

Atlas and is tied down to Mount Caucasus amid the snows.(1793)

Greece had her _Hyperborean_ as well as her _Southern_ Apollo. Thus nearly

all the Gods of Egypt, Greece, and Phœnicia, as well as those of other

Pantheons, are of a northern origin and originated in Lemuria, towards the

close of the Third Race, after its full physical and physiological

evolution had been completed.(1794) All the “fables” of Greece would be

found to be built on historical facts, if that history had only passed to

posterity unadulterated by myths. The “one‐eyed” Cyclopes, the giants

fabled as the sons of Cœlus and Terra—three in number, according to

Hesiod—were the last three sub‐races of the Lemurians, the “one‐eye”

referring to the wisdom‐eye;(1795) for the two front eyes were fully

developed as physical organs only in the beginning of the Fourth Race. The

allegory of Ulysses, whose companions were devoured while the king of

Ithaca himself was saved by putting out the eye of Polyphemus with a fire‐

brand, is based upon the psycho‐physiological atrophy of the “third eye.”

Ulysses belongs to the cycle of the heroes of the Fourth Race, and, though

a “Sage” in the sight of the latter, must have been a profligate in the

opinion of the pastoral Cyclopes.(1796) His adventure with the latter—a

savage gigantic race, the antithesis of cultured civilization in the

_Odyssey_—is an allegorical record of the gradual passage from the

Cyclopean civilization of stone and colossal buildings to the more sensual

and physical culture of the Atlanteans, which finally caused the last of

the Third Race to lose their all‐penetrating _spiritual_ eye. The other

allegory, which makes Apollo kill the Cyclopes to avenge the death of his

son Asclepius, does not refer to the three sub‐races represented by the

three sons of Heaven and Earth, but to the Hyperborean Arimaspian

Cyclopes, the last of the race endowed with the “wisdom‐eye.” The former

have left relics of their buildings everywhere, in the South as much as in

the North; the latter were confined to the North solely. Thus Apollo—pre‐

eminently the God of the Seers, whose duty it is to punish desecration,

killed them—his shafts representing human passions, fiery and lethal—and

hid his shaft behind a mountain in the Hyperborean regions.(1797)

Cosmically and astronomically this Hyperborean God is the Sun personified,

which during the course of the Sidereal Year—25,868 years—changes the

climates on the Earth’s surface, making frigid regions of tropical, and

_vice versâ_. Psychically and spiritually his significance is far more

important. As Mr. Gladstone pertinently remarks in his “Greater Gods of

Olympos”:

The qualities of Apollo (jointly with Athenê) are impossible to be

accounted for without repairing to sources, which lie beyond the

limit of the traditions most commonly explored for the elucidation

of the Greek mythology.(1798)

The history of Latona (Leto), Apollo’s mother, is most pregnant in various

meanings. Astronomically, Latona is the polar region and the night, giving

birth to the Sun, Apollo, Phœbus, etc. She is born in the Hyperborean

countries, wherein all the inhabitants were priests of her son,

celebrating his resurrection and descent to their country every nineteen

years at the renewal of the lunar cycle.(1799) Latona is the Hyperborean

Continent, and its Race—geologically.(1800)

When the astronomical meaning cedes its place to the spiritual and

divine—Apollo and Athene transforming themselves into the form of “birds,”

the symbol and glyph of the higher divinities and angels—then the bright

God assumes divine creative powers. Apollo becomes the personification of

seership, when he sends the astral double of Æneas to the battle

field,(1801) and has the gift of appearing to his seers without being

visible to other persons present,(1802) a gift, however, shared by every

high Adept.

The King of the Hyperboreans was, therefore, the son of Boreas, the North

Wind, and the High Priest of Apollo. The quarrel of Latona with Niobe—the

Atlantean Race—the mother of seven sons and seven daughters, personifying

the seven sub‐races of the Fourth Race and their seven branches(1803)

allegorizes the history of the two Continents. The wrath of the “Sons of

God,” or of “Will and Yoga,” at seeing the steady degradation of the

Atlanteans was great;(1804) and the destruction of the children of Niobe

by the children of Latona—Apollo and Diana, the deities of light, wisdom

and purity, or the Sun and Moon astronomically, whose influence causes

changes in the Earth’s axis, deluges and other cosmic cataclysms—is thus

very clear.(1805) The fable about the never‐ceasing tears of Niobe, whose

grief causes Zeus to change her into a fountain—Atlantis covered with

water—is no less graphic as a symbol. Niobe, let it be remembered, is the

daughter of one of the Pleiades, or Atlantides, the grand‐daughter of

Atlas therefore,(1806) because she represents the last generations of the

doomed Continent.

A true remark, that of Bailly, which says that Atlantis had an enormous

influence on antiquity. He adds:

If these mythical names are mere allegories, then all that they

have of truth comes from Atlantis; if the fable is a real

tradition—however altered—then the ancient history is wholly their

history.(1807)

So much so, that all ancient writings—prose and poetry—are full of the

reminiscences of the Lemuro‐Atlanteans, the first _physical_ Races, though

the Third and the Fourth in number in the evolution of Fourth Round

Humanity on our Globe. Hesiod records the tradition about the men of the

Age of Bronze, whom Jupiter had made out of ash‐wood and who had hearts

harder than diamond. Clad in bronze from head to foot, they passed their

lives in fighting. Monstrous in size, endowed with a terrible strength,

invincible arms and hands descended from their shoulders, says the

poet.(1808) Such were the giants of the first physical Races.

The Iranians have a reference to the later Atlanteans in _Yasna_, ix. 15.

Tradition maintains that the “Sons of God,” or the great Initiates of the

Sacred Island, took advantage of the Deluge to rid the Earth of all the

Sorcerers among the Atlanteans. The said verse addresses Zarathushtra as

one of the “Sons of God.” It says:

Thou, O Zarathushtra, didst make all demons [Sorcerers], who

before roamed the world in human forms, conceal themselves in the

earth [helped them to submersion].

The Lemurians, and also the early Atlanteans, were divided into two

distinct classes—the “Sons of Night” or Darkness, and the “Sons of the

Sun” or Light. The old books tell us of terrible battles between the two,

when the former, leaving their land of Darkness, whence the Sun departed

for long months, descended from their inhospitable regions and “tried to

wrench the Lord of Light” from their better‐favoured brothers of the

equatorial regions. We may be told that the Ancients knew nothing of the

long night of six months’ duration in the polar regions. Even Herodotus,

more learned than the rest, only mentions a people who slept for six

months in the year, and remained awake the other half. Yet the Greeks knew

well that there was a country in the North where the year was divided into

a day and night each of six months’ duration, for Pliny distinctly says

so.(1809) They speak of the Cimmerians and of the Hyperboreans, and draw a

distinction between the two. The former inhabited the Palus Mæotis—between

45° and 50° latitude. Plutarch explains that they were but a _small

portion_ of a _great nation_ driven away by the Scythians—which nation

stopped near the Tanais, after _having crossed Asia_.

These warlike multitudes lived formerly on the ocean shores, in

dense forests, and _under a tenebrous sky_. There the pole is

almost touching the head, there _long nights and days divide the

year_.(1810)

As to the Hyperboreans, these peoples, as expressed by Solinus Polyhistor:

Sow in the morning, reap at noon, gather their fruits in the

evening, and store them during the night in their caves.(1811)

Even the writers of the _Zohar_ knew this fact, as it is written:

In the Book of Hammannunah, the Old [or the Ancient], we learn ...

there are some countries of the earth which are lightened, whilst

others are in darkness; these have the day, when for the former it

is night; and there are countries in which it is constantly day,

or in which at least the night continues only some instants.(1812)

The island of Delos, the Asteria of Greek Mythology, was never in Greece,

for this country, in that day, was not yet in existence, not even in its

molecular form. Several writers have shown that it represented a country

or an island, far larger than the small dots of land which became Greece.

Both Pliny and Diodorus Siculus place it in the Northern Seas. One calls

it Basilea, or “Royal”;(1813) the other, Pliny, names it Osericta,(1814) a

word which, according to Rudbeck,(1815) had

A significance in the northern languages, equivalent to the Island

of the Divine Kings or God‐kings—

or again the “Royal Island of the Gods,” because the Gods were born there,

_i.e._, the Divine Dynasties of the Kings of Atlantis proceeded from that

place. Let Geographers and Geologists seek for it among that group of

islands discovered by Nordenskiöld on his “Vega” voyage in the Arctic

regions.(1816) The Secret Books inform us that _the climate has changed in

those regions more than once_, since the first men inhabited those now

almost inaccessible latitudes. They were a Paradise before they became

Hell; the dark Hades of the Greeks, and the cold Realm of Shades where the

Scandinavian Hel, the Goddess‐Queen of the country of the dead, “holds

sway deep down in Helheim and Niflheim.” Yet it was the birthplace of

Apollo, who was the brightest of Gods, in Heaven—astronomically—as he was

the most enlightened of the Divine Kings who ruled over the early nations,

in his human meaning. The latter fact is borne out in the _Iliad_, wherein

Apollo is said to have appeared four times in his own form (as the God of

the Four Races) and six times in human form,(1817) _i.e._, as connected

with the Divine Dynasties of the earlier unseparated Lemurians.

It is those early mysterious peoples, their countries—which have now

become uninhabitable—as well as the name given to “man” both dead and

alive, which have furnished an opportunity to the ignorant Church Fathers

for inventing a Hell, which they have transformed into a burning instead

of a freezing locality.(1818)

It is, of course, evident that it is neither the Hyperboreans, nor the

Cimmerians, the Arimaspes, nor even the Scyths—known to and communicating

with the Greeks—who were our Atlanteans. But they were all the descendants

of their last sub‐races. The Pelasgians were certainly one of the root‐

races of future Greece, and were a remnant of a sub‐race of Atlantis.

Plato hints as much in speaking of the latter, whose name, it is averred,

came from _pelagus_, the “great sea.” Noah’s Deluge is astronomical and

allegorical, but it is not mythical, for the story is based upon the same

archaic tradition of men—or rather of nations—who were saved during the

cataclysms, in canoes, arks, and ships. No one would presume to say that

the Chaldæan Xisuthrus, the Hindû Vaivasvata, the Chinese Peirun—the

“Beloved of the Gods,” who rescued him from the flood in a canoe—or the

Swedish Belgamer, for whom the Gods did the same in the North, are all

identical as personages. But their legends have all sprung from the

catastrophe which involved both the Continent and the Island of Atlantis.

The allegory about the antediluvian giants and their achievements in

sorcery is no myth. Biblical events _are_ revealed indeed. But it is

neither by the voice of God amid thunder and lightning on Mount Sinai, nor

by a divine finger tracing the record on tablets of stone, but simply

through tradition _viâ_ Pagan sources. It was not surely the _Pentateuch_

that Diodorus was repeating when he wrote about the Titans—the giants born

of Heaven and Earth, or, rather, born of the Sons of God who took to

themselves for wives the daughters of men who were fair. Nor was

Pherecydes quoting from _Genesis_ when giving details on those giants

which are not to be found in the Jewish Scriptures. He says that the

Hyperboreans were of the race of the Titans, a race which descended from

the earliest giants, and that it was that Hyperborean region which was the

birthplace of the first giants. The Commentaries on the Sacred Books

explain that the said region was the far North, the Polar Lands now, the

Pre‐Lemurian earliest Continent, embracing once upon a time the present

Greenland, Spitzbergen, Sweden, Norway, etc.

But who were the Nephilim of _Genesis_ (vi. 4)? There were Palæolithic and

Neolithic men in Palestine ages before the events recorded in the Book of

the Beginnings. The theological tradition identifies these Nephilim with

hairy men or satyrs, the latter being mythical in the Fifth Race, and the

former historical in both the Fourth and Fifth Races. We have stated

elsewhere what the prototypes of these satyrs were, and have spoken of the

bestiality of the early and later Atlantean Race. What is the meaning of

Poseidon’s amours under such a variety of _animal_ forms? He became a

dolphin to win Amphitrite; a horse, to seduce Ceres; a ram, to deceive

Theophane, etc. Poseidon is not only the personation of the Spirit and

Race of Atlantis, but also of the vices of these giants. Gesenius and

others devote an enormous space to the meaning of the word Nephilim and

explain very little. But Esoteric Records show these hairy creatures to be

the last descendants of those Lemuro‐Atlantean Races, which begot children

on female animals, of species now long extinct; thus producing dumb men,

“monsters,” as the Stanzas have it.

Now Mythology, built upon Hesiod’s _Theogony_, which is but a poetized

record of actual traditions, or oral history, speaks of three giants,

called Briareus, Cottus, and Gyges, living in a dark country where they

were imprisoned by Cronus for their rebellion against him. All the three

are endowed by myth with a hundred arms and fifty heads, the latter

standing for races, the former for sub‐races and tribes. Bearing in mind

that in Mythology every personage almost is a God or Demi‐god, and also a

king or simple mortal in his second aspect,(1819) and that both stand as

symbols for lands, islands, powers of nature, elements, nations, races and

sub‐races, the Esoteric Commentary will become comprehensible. It says

that the three giants are three polar lands which have changed form

several times, at each new cataclysm, or disappearance of one continent to

make room for another. The whole Globe is convulsed periodically; and has

been so convulsed, since the appearance of the First Race, four times.

Yet, though the whole face of the Earth was transformed thereby each time,

the conformation of the Arctic and Antarctic Poles has but little altered.

The polar lands unite and break off from each other into islands and

peninsulas, yet remain ever the same. Therefore Northern Asia is called

the “Eternal or Perpetual Land,” and the Antarctic the “Ever‐living” and

the “Concealed”; while the Mediterranean, Atlantic, Pacific and other

regions disappear and reäppear in turn, into and above the Great Waters.

From the first appearance of the great Continent of Lemuria, the three

polar giants have been imprisoned in their circle by Cronus. Their gaol is

surrounded by a wall of bronze, and the exit is through gates fabricated

by Poseidon—or Neptune—hence by the seas, which they cannot cross; and it

is in that damp region, where eternal darkness reigns, that the three

brothers languish. The _Iliad_ makes it Tartarus.(1820) When the Gods and

Titans rebelled in their turn against Zeus—the deity of the Fourth

Race—the Father of the Gods bethought himself of the imprisoned giants

that they might help him to conquer the Gods and Titans, and to

precipitate the latter into Hades; or, in clearer words, to have Lemuria

hurled amid thunder and lightning to the bottom of the seas, so as to make

room for Atlantis, which was to be submerged and perish in its turn.(1821)

The geological upheaval and deluge of Thessaly was a repetition on a small

scale of the great cataclysm; and, remaining impressed on the memory of

the Greeks, was merged by them into, and confused with, the general fate

of Atlantis. So, also, the war between the Râkshasas of Lankâ and the

Bhârateans, the _mèlée_ of the Atlanteans and Âryans in their supreme

struggle, or the conflict between the Devs and Izeds, or Peris, became,

ages later, the struggle of Titans, separated into two inimical camps, and

still later the war between the Angels of God and the Angels of Satan.

Historical facts became theological dogmas. Ambitious scholiasts, men of a

small sub‐race born but yesterday, and one of the latest issues of the

Âryan stock, took upon themselves to overturn the religious thought of the

world, and succeeded. For nearly two thousand years they impressed

thinking humanity with the belief in the existence of Satan.

But as it is now the conviction of more than one Greek scholar—as it was

that of Bailly and Voltaire—that Hesiod’s _Theogony_ is based upon

historical facts,(1822) it becomes easier for the Occult Teachings to find

their way into the minds of thoughtful men, and therefore are these

passages from Mythology brought forward in our discussion upon modern

learning in this Addendum.

Such symbols as are found in all the exoteric creeds are so many landmarks

of pre‐historic truths. The sunny, happy land, the primitive cradle of the

earliest human races, has become several times since then Hyperborean and

Saturnine;(1823) thus showing the Golden Age and Reign of Saturn from

multiform aspects. It was many‐sided in its character indeed—climatically,

ethnologically and morally. For the Third, Lemurian Race must be

physiologically divided into the early androgynous and the later bi‐sexual

race; and the climate of its dwelling‐places and continents into that of

an eternal spring and eternal winter, into life and death, purity and

impurity. The cycle of legends is ever being transformed on its journey by

popular fancy. Yet it may be cleansed from the dross it has picked up on

its way through many nations, and through the countless minds which have

added their own exuberant additions to the original facts. Leaving for a

while the Greek interpretations, we may seek for some more corroborations

of the latter in the scientific and geological proofs.

Section VII. Scientific and Geological Proofs of the Existence of Several

Submerged Continents.

It may not be amiss—for the benefit of those who resolve the tradition of

a lost Miocene Atlantis into an “antiquated myth”—to append a few

scientific admissions on this point. Science, it is true, is largely

indifferent to such questions. But there are Scientists ready to admit

that, in any case, a cautious agnosticism as to geological problems

concerning the remote past is far more philosophical than _à priori_

denial, or even hasty generalizations on insufficient data.

Meanwhile two very interesting instances, that have been lately met with,

may be pointed out as “confirming” certain passages in the letter of a

Master, published in _Esoteric Buddhism_. The eminence of the authorities

will not be questioned (we italicize the corresponding passages):

Extract from _Esoteric Buddhism_, p. 70.

(1.)

The sinking of Atlantis (the group of continents and isles) began

during the Miocene period ... and it culminated first in the final

disappearance of the largest continent, _an event coincident with

the elevation of the Alps_, and second with that of the last of

the fair islands mentioned by Plato.

Extract from a Lecture by W. Pengelly, F.R.S., F.G.S.

(1.)

Was there, as some have believed, an Atlantis—a continent or

archipelago of large islands occupying the area of the North

Atlantic? There is, perhaps, nothing unphilosophical in the

hypothesis. For since, as geologists state, “_The Alps have

acquired 4,000 and even in some places more than 10,000 feet of

their present altitude since the commencement of the Eocene

epoch_” (Lyell’s _Principles_, p. 256, 2nd Ed.)—_a Post‐Miocene

depression might have carried the hypothetical Atlantis into

almost abysmal depths_.(1824)

Extract from _Esoteric Buddhism_, pp. 64, 65.

(2.)

Lemuria ... should no more be confounded with the Atlantis

Continent than Europe with America. Both sank and were drowned

with their high civilizations and “gods”; yet between the two

catastrophes a period of about 700,000 years elapsed, Lemuria

flourishing and ending her career just about that lapse of time

before the early part of the _Eocene_ age, since its Race was the

Third. Behold _the relics of that once great nation in some of the

flat‐headed aborigines of your Australia_.

Extract from an article in the _Popular Science Review_, v. 18, by

Professor Seemann, Ph.D., F.L.S., V.‐P.A.S.

(2.)

It would be premature to say, because no evidence has yet been

adduced, _that men may not have existed in the Eocene age_,

especially as it can be shown that _a race of men, the lowest we

know of, co‐exists with that remnant of the Eocene flora which

still survives on the continent and islands of Australia_.

Extract from _The Pedigree of Man_, p. 81.

Hæckel, who fully accepts the reality of a former Lemuria, also

regards the _Australians as direct descendants of the Lemurians_.

Persistent forms of both [his Lemurian] stems are in all

probability still surviving, of the former in the Papuans and

Hottentots, of the latter in the _Australians_ and in one division

of the Malays.

With regard to a former civilization, of which a _portion_ of these

degraded Australians are the last surviving offshoot, the opinion of

Gerland is strongly suggestive. Commenting upon the religion and mythology

of the tribes, he writes:

The statement that Australian civilization [?] indicates a higher

grade, is nowhere more clearly proved than here [in the province

of religion] where everything resounds like the expiring voices of

a previous and richer age.... The idea that the Australians have

no trace of religion or mythology is thoroughly false. But this

religion is certainly quite deteriorated.(1825)

As to Hæckel’s view of the relationship between the Australians and the

Malays, as two branches of a common stock, he is in error when he classes

the Australians with the rest. The Malays and Papuans are a _mixed_ stock,

resulting from the intermarriages of the low Atlantean sub‐races with the

seventh sub‐race of the Third Root‐Race. Like the Hottentots, they are of

indirect Lemuro‐Atlantean descent. It is a most suggestive fact—to those

concrete thinkers who demand a _physical_ proof of Karma—that the lowest

races of men are now rapidly dying out; a phenomenon largely due to an

extraordinary sterility setting in among the women, from the time that

they were first approached by the Europeans. A process of decimation is

taking place all over the Globe, among those races, whose “time is

up”—among just those stocks, be it remarked, which Esoteric Philosophy

regards as the senile representatives of lost archaic nations. It is

inaccurate to maintain that the extinction of a lower race is _invariably_

due to cruelties or abuses perpetrated by colonists. Change of diet,

drunkenness, etc., have done much; but those who rely on such data as

offering an all‐sufficient explanation of the crux, cannot meet the

phalanx of facts now so closely arrayed. Even the Materialist Lefèvre

says:

Nothing can save those that have run their course. It would be

necessary to extend their destined cycle.... _The peoples that

have been relatively most spared, those who have defended

themselves most valiantly, Hawaiians or Maories, have been no less

decimated than the tribes massacred or tainted by European

intrusion._(1826)

True; but is not the phenomenon here confirmed, an instance of the

operation of Cyclic Law, difficult to account for on materialist lines?

Whence the “destined cycle” and the order here testified to? Why does this

(Karmic) sterility attack and root out certain races at their “appointed

hour”? The answer that it is due to a “mental disproportion” between the

colonizing and aboriginal races is obviously evasive, since it does not

explain the sudden “checks to fertility” which so frequently supervene.

The dying out of the Hawaiians, for instance, is one of the most

mysterious problems of the day. Ethnology will sooner or later have to

recognize, with Occultists, that the true solution has to be sought for in

a comprehension of the workings of Karma. As Lèfevre remarks:

The time is drawing near when there will remain nothing but three

great human types.

The time is before the Sixth Root‐Race dawns; the three types are the

white (Âryan, Fifth Root‐Race), the yellow, and the African negro—with

their crossings (Atlanto‐European divisions). Redskins, Eskimos, Papuans,

Australians, Polynesians, etc.—all are dying out. Those who realize that

every Root‐Race runs through a gamut of seven sub‐races with seven

branchlets, etc., will understand the “why.” The tide‐wave of incarnating

Egos has rolled past them to harvest experience in more developed and less

senile stocks; and their extinction is hence a Karmic necessity. Some

extraordinary and _unexplained_ statistics as to race extinction are given

by de Quatrefages.(1827) No solution, except on Occult lines, is able to

account for these.

But we have digressed from our direct subject. Let us hear now what

Professor Huxley has to say on the subject of former Atlantic and Pacific

Continents.

He writes in _Nature_:

There is nothing, so far as I am aware, in the biological or

geological evidence at present accessible, to render untenable the

hypothesis that _an area of the Mid‐Atlantic or Pacific sea‐bed as

big as Europe_, should have been upheaved as high as Mont Blanc,

and have subsided again any time since the Palæozoic epoch, if

there were any grounds for entertaining it.(1828)

That is to say, then, that there is nothing to militate against _positive_

evidence of the fact; nothing, therefore, against the geological

postulates of the Esoteric Philosophy. Dr. Berthold Seemann assures us in

the _Popular Science Review_ that:

The facts which botanists have accumulated for reconstructing

these lost maps of the globe are rather comprehensive; and they

have not been backward in demonstrating the former existence of

several large tracts of solid land in parts now occupied by great

oceans. The many striking points of contact between the present

floras of the United States and Eastern Asia, induced them to

assume that, during the present order of things, there existed a

continental connection between South‐Eastern Asia and Western

America. The singular correspondence of the present flora of the

Southern United States with that of the lignite flora of Europe

induces them to believe that, in the Miocene period, Europe and

America were connected by a land passage, of which Iceland,

Madeira, and the other Atlantic islands are remnants; that, in

fact, the story of an Atlantis, which an Egyptian priest told to

Solon, is not purely fictitious, but rests upon a solid historical

basis.... Europe of the Eocene period received the plants which

spread over mountains and plains, valleys and river‐banks (from

Asia generally), neither exclusively from the South nor from the

East. The West also furnished additions, and if at that period

these were rather meagre, they show, at all events, that the

bridge was already building, which, at a later period, was to

facilitate communication between the two continents in such a

remarkable manner. At that time some plants of the Western

Continent began to reach Europe by means of the island of

Atlantis, then probably just [?] just rising above the

ocean.(1829)

And in another number of the same review(1830) Mr. W. Duppa Crotch, M.A.,

F.L.S., in an article entitled “The Norwegian Lemming and its Migrations,”

alludes to the same subject:

Is it probable that land could have existed where now the broad

Atlantic rolls? All tradition says so: old Egyptian records speak

of Atlantis, as Strabo and others have told us. The Sahara itself

is the sand of an ancient sea, and the shells which are found upon

its surface prove that, no longer ago than the Miocene period, a

sea rolled over what is now desert. The voyage of the “Challenger”

has proved the existence of three long ridges(1831) in the

Atlantic Ocean,(1832) one extending for more than three thousand

miles, and lateral spurs may, by connecting these ridges, account

for the marvellous similarity of the fauna of the Atlantic

islands.(1833)...

The submerged continent of _Lemuria_, in what is now the Indian

Ocean, is considered to afford an explanation of many difficulties

in the distribution of organic life, and, I think, the existence

of a _Miocene Atlantis_ will be found to have a strong elucidative

bearing on subjects of greater interest [truly so!] than the

migration of the lemming. At all events, if it can be shown that

land existed in former ages where the North Atlantic now rolls,

not only is a motive found for these apparently suicidal

migrations, but also a strong collateral proof that what we call

instincts are but the blind and sometimes even prejudicial

inheritance of previously acquired experience.

At certain periods, we learn, multitudes of these animals swim to sea and

perish. Coming, as they do, from all parts of Norway, the powerful

instinct which survives throughout ages as an inheritance from their

progenitors impels them to seek a continent, once existing but now

submerged beneath the ocean, and to court a watery grave.

In an article containing a criticism of Mr. A. R. Wallace’s _Island

Life_—a work devoted largely to the question of the distribution of

animals, etc.—Mr. Starkie Gardiner writes:

By a process of reasoning supported by a large array of facts of

different kinds, he arrives at the conclusion that the

distribution of life upon the land as we now see it has been

accomplished without the aid of important changes in the relative

positions of continents and seas. Yet if we accept his views, we

must believe that Asia and Africa, Madagascar and Africa, New

Zealand and Australia, Europe and America, have been united at

some period not remote geologically, and that seas to the depth of

1,000 fathoms have been bridged over; but we must treat as

“utterly gratuitous and entirely opposed to all the evidences at

our command” [! !], the supposition that temperate Europe and

temperate America, Australia, and South America, have ever been

connected, except by way of the Arctic or Antarctic Circles, and

that lands now separated by seas of more than 1,000 fathoms depth

have ever been united.

Mr. Wallace, it must be admitted, has succeeded in explaining the

chief features of existing life distribution, without bridging the

Atlantic or Pacific, except towards the Poles, yet I cannot help

thinking that some of the facts might perhaps be more easily

explained by admitting the former existence of the connection

between the coast of Chili and Polynesia(1834) and Great Britain

and Florida, shadowed by the sub‐marine banks which stretch

between them. Nothing is urged that renders these more direct

connections impossible, and no physical reason is advanced why the

floor of the ocean should not be upheaved from any depth. The

route by which [according to the Anti‐Atlantean and Lemurian

hypotheses of Wallace] the floras of South America and Australia

are supposed to have mingled, is beset by almost insurmountable

obstacles, and the apparently sudden arrival of a number of

subtropical American plants in our Eocenes necessitates a

connection more to the South than the present 1,000 fathom line.

Forces are unceasingly acting, and there is _no reason why an

elevating force once set in action in the centre of an ocean

should cease to act until a continent is formed_. They have acted

and lifted out from the sea, in comparatively recent geological

time, the loftiest mountains on earth. Mr. Wallace himself admits

repeatedly that sea‐beds have been elevated 1,000 fathoms, and

islands have risen up from the depths of 3,000 fathoms; and to

suppose that the upheaving forces are limited in power, is, it

seems to me, to again quote from _Island Life_, “utterly

gratuitous and entirely opposed to all the evidences at our

command.”(1835)

The “father” of English Geology—Sir Charles Lyell—was a uniformitarian in

his views of continental formation. We find him saying:

Professors Unger (_Die Versunkene Insel Atlantis_) and Heer

(_Flora Tertiaria Helvetiæ_) have advocated on botanical grounds

_the former existence of an Atlantic Continent during some part of

the tertiary period_, as affording the only plausible explanation

that can be imagined of the analogy between the Miocene flora of

Central Europe, and the existing flora of Eastern America.

Professor Oliver, on the other hand, after showing how many of the

American types found fossil in Europe are common to Japan,

inclines to the theory, first advanced by Dr. Asa Gray, that the

migration of species, to which the community of types in the

Eastern States of North America, and the Miocene flora of Europe

is due, took place when there was an overland communication from

America to Eastern Asia between the fiftieth and sixtieth

parallels of latitude, or south of Behring’s Straits, following

the direction of the Aleutian islands. By this course they may

have made their way, at any epoch, Miocene, Pliocene, or

Postpliocene, antecedently to the Glacial epoch, to Amoorland, on

the East coast of Northern Asia.(1836)

The unnecessary difficulties and complications here incurred in order to

avoid the hypothesis of an Atlantic Continent, are really too apparent to

escape notice. _If the botanical evidences stood alone_, scepticism would

be partially reasonable; but in this case all branches of Science converge

to one point. Science has made blunders, and has exposed itself to greater

errors than it would be exposed to by the admission of our two now

invisible Continents. It has denied even the undeniable, from the days of

the Mathematician Laplace down to our own, and that only a few years

ago.(1837) We have Professor Huxley’s authority for saying that there is

no _à priori_ improbability whatever against possible evidences supporting

the belief. But now that the _positive evidence is brought forward_, will

that eminent Scientist admit the corollary?

Touching on the problem in another place Sir Charles Lyell tells us:

Respecting the cosmogony of the Egyptian priests, we gather much

information from writers of the Grecian sects, who borrowed almost

all their tenets from Egypt, and amongst others that of the former

successive destruction and renovation of the world [_continental_,

not cosmic, catastrophes]. We learn from Plutarch that this was

the theme of one of the hymns of Orpheus, so celebrated in the

fabulous ages of Greece. It was brought by him from the banks of

the Nile; and we even find in his verses, as in the Indian

systems, a definite period assigned for the duration of every

successive world. The returns of great catastrophes were

determined by the period of the Annus Magnus, or great year, a

cycle composed of the revolutions of the sun, moon, and planets,

and terminating when these return together to the same sign whence

they were supposed at some remote epoch to have set out.... We

learn particularly from the _Timæus_ of Plato that the Egyptians

believed the world to be subject to occasional conflagrations and

deluges. The sect of Stoics adopted most fully the system of

catastrophes destined at certain intervals to destroy the world.

These, they taught, were of two kinds—the cataclysm, or

_destruction by deluge_, which sweeps away the whole human race,

and annihilates all the animal and vegetable productions of

nature, and the _ecpyrosis_, or _conflagration_, which destroys

the globe itself [submarine volcanoes]. From the Egyptians they

derived the doctrine of the gradual debasement of man from a state

of innocence [nascent simplicity of the first sub‐races of each

Root‐Race]. Towards the termination of each era the gods could no

longer bear with the wickedness of men [degeneracy into magical

practices and gross animality of the Atlanteans], and a shock of

the elements, or a deluge, overwhelmed them; after which calamity,

Astræa again descended on the earth to renew the golden age [dawn

of a new Root‐Race].(1838)

Astræa, the Goddess of Justice, is the last of the deities to forsake the

Earth, when the Gods are said to abandon it and to be taken up again into

heaven by Jupiter. But, no sooner does Zeus carry from Earth Ganymedes—the

object of _lust_, personified—than the Father of the Gods throws down

Astræa on the Earth again, on which she falls _upon her head_. Astræa is

Virgo, the constellation of the Zodiac. Astronomically it has a very plain

significance, and one which gives the key to the occult meaning. But it is

inseparable from Leo, the sign that precedes it, and from the Pleiades and

their sisters, the Hyades, of which Aldebaran is the brilliant leader. All

these are connected with the periodical renovations of the Earth, with

regard to its continents—even Ganymedes, who in astronomy is Aquarius. It

has already been shown that while the South Pole is the “Pit” (or the

infernal regions figuratively and cosmologically), the North Pole is

geographically the First Continent; while astronomically and

metaphorically the Celestial Pole, with its Pole Star in Heaven, is Meru,

or the Seat of Brahmâ, the Throne of Jupiter, etc. For in the age when the

Gods forsook the Earth and were said to ascend into Heaven, the ecliptic

had become parallel with the meridian, and part of the Zodiac appeared to

descend from the North Pole to the north horizon. Aldebaran was in

conjunction then with the Sun, as it was 40,000 years ago, at the great

festival in commemoration of that Annus Magnus, of which Plutarch spoke.

Since that Year—40,000 years ago—there has been a retrograde motion of the

equator, and about 31,000 years ago Aldebaran was in conjunction with the

vernal equinoctial point. The part assigned to Taurus, even in Christian

Mysticism, is too well known to need repetition. The famous Orphic Hymn on

the great periodical cataclysm divulges the whole Esotericism of the

event. Pluto, in the Pit, carries off Eurydice, bitten by the Polar

Serpent. Then Leo, the Lion, is vanquished. Now, when the Lion is “in the

Pit,” or below the South Pole, then Virgo, as the next sign, follows him,

and when her head, down to the waist, is below the southern horizon—she is

inverted. On the other hand, the Hyades are the rain or Deluge

constellations; and Aldebaran—he who follows, or _succeeds_ the daughters

of Atlas, or the Pleiades—looks down from the eye of Taurus. It is from

this point of the ecliptic that the calculations of the new cycle were

commenced. The student has to remember also, that when

Ganymedes—Aquarius—is raised to heaven—or above the horizon of the North

Pole—Virgo or Astræa, who is Venus‐Lucifer, descends head downwards below

the horizon of the South Pole, or the Pit; which Pit, or the Pole, is also

the Great Dragon, or the Flood. Let the student exercise his intuition by

placing these facts together; no more can be said. Lyell remarks:

The connection between the doctrine of successive catastrophes and

repeated deteriorations in the moral character of the human race,

is more intimate and natural than might at first be imagined. For,

in a rude state of society, all great calamities are regarded by

the people as judgments of God on the wickedness of man.... In

like manner in the account given to Solon by the Egyptian priests

of the submersion of the island of Atlantis under the waters of

the ocean, after repeated shocks of an earthquake, we find that

_the event happened when Jupiter had seen the moral depravity of

the inhabitants_.(1839)

True; but was it not owing to the fact that all Esoteric truths were given

out to the public by the Initiates of the temples _under the guise of

allegories_? “Jupiter,” is merely the personification of that immutable

Cyclic Law, which arrests the downward tendency of each Root‐Race after

attaining the zenith of its glory.(1840) We must admit allegorical

teaching, unless we hold with Prof. John Fiske’s singularly dogmatic

opinion that a myth:

Is an explanation by the uncivilized mind, of some natural

phenomenon; not an allegory, not an esoteric symbol, for the

ingenuity is wasted [!!] which strives to detect in myths the

remnants of a refined primeval science—but an explanation.

Primitive men had no profound science to perpetuate by means of

allegory [how does Mr. Fiske know?], nor were they such sorry

pedants as to talk in riddles when plain language would serve

their purpose.(1841)

We venture to say the language of the initiated few was far more “plain,”

and their Science‐Philosophy far more comprehensive and satisfying alike

to the physical and _spiritual_ wants of man, than even the terminology

and system elaborated by Mr. Fiske’s master—Herbert Spencer. What,

however, is Sir Charles Lyell’s “explanation” of the “myth”? Certainly, he

in no way countenances the idea of its “astronomical” origin, as asserted

by some writers.

The two interpreters are entirely at variance with one another. Lyell’s

solution is as follows. A disbeliever in cataclysmal changes from the

absence (?) of any reliable historical data on the point, as well as from

a strong bias to the uniformitarian conceptions of geologic changes,(1842)

he attempts to trace the Atlantis “tradition” to the following sources:

(1) Barbarous tribes connect catastrophes with an avenging God, who is

assumed in this way to punish immoral races.

(2) Hence the commencement of a new race is logically a virtuous one.

(3) The primary source of the geologic basis of the tradition was Asia—a

continent subject to violent earthquakes. Exaggerated accounts would thus

be handed down the ages.

(4) Egypt, being herself free from earthquakes, nevertheless based her not

inconsiderable geologic knowledge on these cataclysmal traditions.

An ingenious “explanation,” as all such are! But proving a negative is

proverbially a difficult task. Students of Esoteric Science, who know what

the resources of the Egyptian priesthood really were, need no such

laboured hypothesis. Moreover, while an imaginative theorist is always

able to furnish a reasonable solution of problems which, in one branch of

Science, seem to necessitate the hypothesis of periodical cataclysmic

changes on the surface of our planet, the impartial critic who is not a

specialist, will recognize the immense difficulty of explaining away the

cumulative evidences—namely, the archaeological, ethnological, geological,

traditional, botanical, and even biological—in favour of former continents

now submerged. When each science is fighting for its own hand, the

cumulative force of the evidence is almost invariably lost sight of.

In the _Theosophist_ we wrote:

We have as evidence the most ancient traditions of various and

wide‐separated peoples—legends in India, in ancient Greece,

Madagascar, Sumatra, Java, and all the principal isles of

Polynesia, as well as the legends of both Americas. Among savages,

and in the traditions of the richest literature in the world—the

Sanskrit literature of India—there is an agreement in saying,

that, ages ago, there existed in the Pacific Ocean, a large

Continent, which by a geological upheaval was engulfed by the

sea(1843) [Lemuria]. And it is our firm belief ... that most, if

not all, of the islands from the Malayan Archipelago to Polynesia,

are fragments of that once immense submerged Continent. Both

Malacca and Polynesia, which lie at the two extremities of the

ocean, and which, since the memory of man, never had nor could

have any intercourse with, or even a knowledge of each other, have

yet a tradition common to all the islands and islets, that their

respective countries extended far, far into the Sea; that there

were in the world but two immense continents, one inhabited by

yellow, the other by dark men; and that the Ocean, by command of

the Gods, and to punish them for their incessant quarrelling,

swallowed them up. Notwithstanding the geographical fact that New

Zealand, and Sandwich and Easter Islands, are at a distance from

each other of between 800 and 1,000 leagues, and that, according

to every testimony, neither these nor any other intermediate

islands, for instance, the Marquesan, Society, Fiji, Tahitian,

Samoan, and other islands, could, since they became islands,

ignorant as their people were of the compass, have communicated

with each other before the arrival of Europeans; yet they one and

all maintain that their respective countries extended far toward

the West, on the Asian side. Moreover with very small differences,

they all speak dialects evidently of the same language, and

understand each other with little difficulty, have the same

religious beliefs and superstitions, and pretty much the same

customs. And as few of the Polynesian islands were discovered

earlier than a century ago, and the Pacific Ocean itself was

unknown to Europe until the days of Columbus, and these islanders

have never ceased repeating the same old traditions since the

Europeans first set foot on their shores, it seems to us a logical

inference that our theory is nearer to the truth than any other.

Chance would have to change its name and meaning, were all this

due but to chance alone.(1844)

Professor Schmidt, writing in defence of the hypothesis of a former

Lemuria, declares:

A great series of animal‐geographical facts is explicable only on

the hypothesis of the former existence of a Southern Continent of

which the Australian mainland is a remnant.... [The distribution

of species] points to the vanished land of the south, where

perhaps the home of the progenitors of the Maki of Madagascar may

also be looked for.(1845)

Mr. A. R. Wallace, in his _Malay Archipelago_, arrives at the following

conclusion after a review of the mass of evidence at hand:

The inference that we must draw from these facts is undoubtedly

that the whole of the islands eastwards beyond Java and Borneo do

essentially form a part of a former Australian or Pacific

Continent, although some of them may never have been actually

joined to it. This continent must have been broken up not only

before the Western Islands were separated from Asia, but probably

before the extreme south‐eastern portion of Asia was raised above

the waters of the ocean, for a great part of the land of Borneo

and Java is known to be geologically of quite recent

formation.(1846)

According to Hæckel:

Probably Southern Asia itself was not the earliest cradle of the

human race; but Lemuria, a continent that lay to the South of

Asia, and sank later on beneath the surface of the Indian

Ocean.(1847)

In one sense Hæckel is right as to Lemuria—the “cradle of the human race.”

That Continent _was_ the home of the first _physical_ human stock—the

later Third‐Race Men. Previous to that epoch the Races were far less

consolidated and physiologically quite different. Hæckel makes Lemuria

extend from Sunda Island to Africa and Madagascar and eastwards to Upper

India.

Professor Rütimeyer, the eminent Palæontologist, asks:

Need the conjecture that the almost exclusively graminivorous and

insectivorous marsupials, sloths, armadilloes, ant‐eaters and

ostriches, once possessed an actual point of union in a Southern

Continent of which the present flora of Terra del Fuego and

Australia must be the remains—need this conjecture raise

difficulties at a moment when, from their fossil remains, Heer

restores to our sight the ancient forests of Smith’s Sound and

Spitzbergen?(1848)

Having now dealt generally with the broad scientific attitude on the two

questions, it will, perhaps, conduce to an agreeable brevity, if we sum up

the more striking isolated facts in favour of that fundamental contention

of Esoteric Ethnologists—the reality of Atlantis. Lemuria is so widely

accepted, that further pursuit of the subject is unnecessary. With regard,

however, to the former, it is found that:

(1) The Miocene floræ of Europe have their most numerous and striking

analogues in the floræ of the United States. In the forests of Virginia

and Florida are found the magnolias, tulip‐trees, evergreen oaks, plane

trees, etc., which correspond with European Tertiary flora, term for term.

How was the migration effected, if we exclude the theory of an Atlantic

Continent bridging the ocean between America and Europe? The proposed

“explanation” to the effect that the transition was by way of Asia and the

Aleutian Islands is a mere uncalled‐for theory, obviously upset by the

fact that a large number of these floræ only appear _East_ of the Rocky

Mountains. This also negatives the idea of a Trans‐Pacific migration. They

are now superseded by European continents and islands to the North.

(2) Skulls exhumed on the banks of the Danube and Rhine bear a _striking

similarity_ to those of the Caribs and Old Peruvians (Littré). Monuments

have been exhumed in Central America, which bear representations of

undoubted _negro_ heads and faces. How are such facts to be accounted for

except on the Atlantean hypothesis? What is now N.W. Africa was once

connected with Atlantis by a network of islands, few of which now remain.

(3) According to Farrar the “_isolated_ language” of the Basques has no

affinities with the other languages of Europe,(1849) but with:

The aboriginal languages of the vast opposite continent [America]

and those alone.(1850)

Professor Broca is also of the same opinion.

Palæolithic European man of the Miocene and Pliocene times was a pure

Atlantean, as we have previously stated. The Basques are, of course, of a

much later date than this, but their affinities, as here shown, go far to

prove the original extraction of their remote ancestors. The “mysterious”

affinity between their tongue and that of the Dravidian races of India

will be understood by those who have followed our outline of continental

formations and shiftings.

(4) Stones have been found in the Canary Islands bearing sculptured

symbols similar to those found on the shore of Lake Superior. Berthollet

was induced by such evidence to postulate the unity of race of the early

men of the Canary Islands and America.(1851)

The Guanches of the Canary Islands were lineal descendants of the

Atlanteans. This fact will account for the _great stature_ evidenced by

their old skeletons, as well as by those of their European congeners, the

Cro‐Magnon Palæolithic men.

(5) Any experienced mariner has but to navigate the fathomless ocean along

the Canary Islands to ask himself the question when or how that group of

volcanic and rocky little islands has been formed, surrounded on every

side by that vast watery space. Frequent questions of this kind led

finally to the expedition of the famous Leopold von Buch, which took place

in the first quarter of the present century. Some Geologists maintained

that the volcanic islands had been raised right from the bottom of the

ocean, the depth of which in the immediate vicinity of the island varies

from 6,000 to 18,000 feet. Others were inclined to see in these

groups—including Madeira, the Azores, and the islands of Cape de Verde—the

remnants of a gigantic but submerged continent which had once united

Africa with America. The latter men of Science supported their hypothesis

by a mass of evidence in its favour, drawn from ancient “myths.” Hoary

“superstitions,” such as the fairy‐like Atlantis of Plato, the Garden of

the Hesperides, Atlas supporting the world on his shoulders, all of them

mythoi connected with the Peak of Teneriffe, did not go far with sceptical

Science. The identity of animal and vegetable species, showing either a

previous connection between America and the remaining groups of the

islands—the hypothesis of their having been drifted from the New to the

Old World by the waves was too absurd to stand long—found more serious

consideration. But it is only quite lately, and after Donnelly’s book had

been published several years, that the theory has had a greater chance

than ever of becoming an accepted fact. Fossils found on the _Eastern

Coast_ of South America have now been _proved_ to belong to the Jurassic

formations, and are nearly identical with the Jurassic fossils of

_Western_ Europe and _Northern_ Africa. The geological structure of both

coasts is also almost identical; the resemblance between the smaller

marine animals dwelling in the more shallow waters of the South American,

the Western African, and the South European coasts, is also very great.

All such facts are bound to bring Naturalists to the conclusion that there

has been, in distant pre‐historic ages, a continent which extended from

the coast of Venezuela, across the Atlantic Ocean, to the Canarese Islands

and North Africa, and from Newfoundland nearly to the coast of France.

(6) The great resemblance between the Jurassic fossils of South America,

North Africa, and Western Europe is a striking enough fact in itself, and

admits of no explanation, unless the ocean is bridged with an Atlantis.

But why, also, is there so marked a similarity between the fauna of the

(now) isolated Atlantic islands? Why did the specimens of Brazilian fauna

dredged up by Sir C. Wyville Thompson resemble those of Western Europe?

Why does a resemblance exist between many of the West African and West

Indian animal groups? Again:

When the animals and plants of the Old and New World are compared,

one cannot but be struck with their identity; all, or nearly all,

belong to the same genera, while many, even of the species, are

common to both continents ... indicating that they radiated from a

common centre [Atlantis].(1852)

The horse, according to Science, originated in America. At least, a large

proportion of the once “missing links” connecting it with inferior forms

have been exhumed from American strata. How did the horse penetrate into

Europe and Asia, if no land communication bridged the oceanic interspaces?

Or if it is asserted that the horse originated in the Old World, how did

such forms as the hipparion, etc., get into America in the first instance

on the migration hypothesis?

Again:

Buffon had ... remarked the repetition of the African in the

American fauna, how, for example, the llama is a juvenescent and

feeble copy of the camel, and how the puma of the New represents

the lion of the Old World.(1853)

(7) The following quotation runs with No. 2, but its significance is such

and the writer cited is so authoritative, that it deserves a place to

itself:

With regard to the primitive dolichocephalæ of America, I

entertain a hypothesis still more bold, namely, that they are

nearly related to the Guanches of the Canary Islands, and to the

Atlantic populations of Africa, the Moors, Tuaricks, Copts, which

Latham comprises under the name of Egyptian‐Atlantidæ. We find one

and the same form of skull in the Canary Islands, in front of the

African coast, and in the Carib islands, on the opposite coast

which faces Africa. The colour of the skin on both sides of the

Atlantic is represented in these populations as being of a

reddish‐brown.(1854)

If, then, Basques and Cro‐Magnon Cave‐Men are of the same race as the

Canarese Guanches, it follows that the former are also allied to the

aborigines of America. This is the conclusion necessitated by the

independent investigations of Retzius, Virchow, and de Quatrefages. The

Atlantean affinities of these three types become patent.

(8) The sea‐soundings undertaken by H.M.S. “Challenger” and the “Dolphin,”

have established the fact that a huge elevation some 3,000 miles in

length, projecting upwards from the abysmal depths of the Atlantic,

extends from a point near the British Islands southwards, curving round

near Cape de Verde, and running in a south‐easterly direction along the

West African coast. This elevation averages some 9,000 feet in height, and

rises above the waves at the Azores, Ascension, and other places. In the

ocean depths around the neighbourhood of the former the ribs of a once

massive piece of land have been discovered.(1855)

The inequalities, the mountains and valleys of its surface could

never have been produced in accordance with any known laws for the

deposition of sediment, nor by submarine elevation; but, on the

contrary, must have been carved by agencies acting above the

water‐level.(1856)

It is most probable that necks of land formerly existed knitting Atlantis

to South America, somewhere above the mouth of the Amazon, to Africa near

Cape de Verde, while a similar point of juncture with Spain is not

unlikely, as contended for by Donnelly.(1857) Whether the latter existed

or not, is of no consequence, in view of the fact that what is now N.W.

Africa was—before the elevation of the Sahara and the rupture of the

Gibraltar connection—an extension of Spain. Consequently no difficulty can

be raised as to how the migration of the European fauna, etc., took place.

Enough has now been said from the purely scientific standpoint, and it is

needless, in view of the manner in which the subject has already been

developed on the lines of Esoteric Knowledge, to swell the mass of

testimony further. In conclusion, the words of one of the most intuitive

writers of the day may be cited as admirably illustrative of the opinions

of the Occultist, who awaits in patience the dawn of the coming day:

We are but beginning to understand the past; one hundred years ago

the world knew nothing of Pompeii or Herculaneum; nothing of the

lingual tie that binds together the Indo‐European nations; nothing

of the significance of the vast volume of inscriptions upon the

tombs and temples of Egypt; nothing of the meaning of the arrow‐

headed inscriptions of Babylon; nothing of the marvellous

civilizations revealed in the remains of Yucatan, Mexico, and

Peru. We are on the threshold. Scientific investigation is

advancing with giant strides. Who shall say that one hundred years

from now, the great museums of the world may not be adorned with

gems, statues, arms, and implements from Atlantis, while the

libraries of the world shall contain translations of its

inscriptions, throwing new light upon all the past history of the

human race, and all the great problems which now perplex the

thinkers of to‐day.(1858)

And now to conclude.

We have concerned ourself with the ancient records of the nations, with

the doctrine of chronological and psychic cycles, of which these records

are the tangible proof; and with many other subjects, which may, at first

sight, seem out of place in this Volume. But they are necessary in truth.

In dealing with the secret annals and traditions of so many nations, whose

very origins have never been ascertained on more secure grounds than

inferential suppositions, in giving out the beliefs and philosophy of more

than pre‐historic races, it is not quite as easy to deal with the subject

matter as it would be if only the philosophy and evolution of one special

race, were concerned. The Secret Doctrine was the common property of the

countless millions of men born under various climates, in times with which

history refuses to deal, and to which Esoteric Teachings assign dates

incompatible with the theories of Geology and Anthropology. The birth and

evolution of the Sacred Science of the Past are lost in the very night of

Time, and that even which is historic—_i.e._, that which is found

scattered hither and thither throughout ancient classical literature—is,

in almost every case, attributed by modern criticism to lack of

observation in the ancient writers, or to superstition born out of the

ignorance of antiquity. It is, therefore, impossible to treat this subject

as one would the ordinary evolution of an art or science in some well‐

known historical nation. It is only by bringing before the reader an

abundance of proofs all tending to show that in every age, under every

condition of civilization and knowledge, the educated classes of every

nation made themselves the more or less faithful echoes of one identical

system and its fundamental traditions—that he can be made to see that so

many streams of the same water must have had a common source from which

they started. What was this source? If coming events are said to cast

their shadows before, past events cannot fail to leave their impress

behind them. It is, then, by those shadows of the hoary Past and their

fantastic silhouettes on the external screen of every Religion and

Philosophy, that we can, by checking them as we go along and comparing

them, trace out finally the body that produced them. There must be truth

and fact in that which every people of antiquity accepted and made the

foundation of its religions and its faith. Moreover, as Haliburton said:

Hear one side, and you will be in the dark; hear both sides, and

all will be clear.

The public has hitherto had access to, and has heard but one side, or

rather the one‐sided views of two diametrically opposed classes of men,

whose _primâ facie_ propositions or respective premises differ widely, but

whose final conclusions are the same—the men of Science and Theology. And

now our readers have an opportunity of hearing the other, and so of

learning the defendants’ justification and the nature of our arguments.

If the public is to be left to its old opinions—namely, on one side, that

Occultism, Magic, the legends of old etc., are all the outcome of

ignorance and superstition; and on the other, that everything outside the

orthodox groove is the work of the devil—what will be the result? In other

words, had no theosophical and mystic literature obtained a hearing for

the last few years, the present work would have had but a poor chance of

impartial consideration. It would have been proclaimed—and by many will

still be proclaimed—a fairy tale woven out of abstruse problems, poised

in, and based on the air; built of soap‐bubbles, bursting at the slightest

touch of serious reflection, with no foundation to stand upon. Even the

ancient “superstitious and credulous” classical writers have no word of

reference to it in clear and unmistakable terms, and the symbols

themselves fail to yield a hint of the existence of such a system. Such

would be the verdict of all. But when it becomes undeniably proven that

the claim of the modern Asiatic nations to a Secret Science and an

Esoteric History of the world is based on fact; that though hitherto

unknown to the masses and a veiled mystery even to the learned—because

they have never had the key to a right understanding of the abundant hints

thrown out by the ancient classics—it is still no fairy tale, but an

actuality; then the present work will become but the pioneer of many more

such books. The statement that hitherto even the keys discovered by some

great scholars have proved too rusty for use, and that they are but the

silent witnesses that there do exist mysteries behind the veil which are

unreachable without a new key, is borne out by too many proofs to be

easily dismissed. An instance may be given as an illustration out of the

history of Freemasonry.

In his _Maçonnerie Occulte_, Ragon, an illustrious and learned Belgian

Mason, rightly or wrongly reproaches the English Masons with having

materialized and dishonoured Masonry, once based upon the Ancient

Mysteries, by adopting, owing to a mistaken notion of the origin of the

craft, the name of “Free Masonry” and “Free Masons.” The mistake is due,

he says, to those who connect Masonry with the _building_ of Solomon’s

Temple. He derides the idea, and says: