next, in their choice of food. It is an unpleasant subject, but can
scarcely be passed over. The flesh of the animals they usually
discarded, while the parts which among us are avoided as food, were by
them devoured. The blood also they drank--often hot from the
animal--and various cooked dishes were also made of it.
It must not, however, be thought that they were without the lighter,
and to us, more palatable, kinds of food. The seas and rivers provided
them with fish, the flesh of which they ate, though often in such an
advanced stage of decomposition as would be to us revolting. The
different grains were largely cultivated, of which were made bread and
cakes. They also had milk, fruit and vegetables.
A small minority of the inhabitants, it is true, never adopted the
revolting customs above referred to. This was the case with the Adept
kings and emperors and the initiated priesthood throughout the whole
empire. They were entirely vegetarian in their habits, but though many
of the emperor's counsellors and the officials about the court
affected to prefer the purer diet, they often indulged in secret their
grosser tastes.
Nor were strong drinks unknown in those days. Fermented liquor of a
very potent sort was at one time much in vogue. But it was so apt to
make these who drank it dangerously excited that a law was passed
absolutely forbidding its consumption.
The weapons of warfare and the chase differed considerably at
different epochs. Swords and spears, bows and arrows sufficed as a
rule for the Rmoahals and the Tlavatli. The beasts which they hunted
at that very early period were mammoths with long woolly hair,
elephants and hippopotami. Marsupials also abounded as well as
survivals of intermediate types--some being half reptile and half
mammal, others half reptile and half bird.
The use of explosives was adopted at an early period, and carried to
great perfection in later times. Some appear to have been made to
explode on concussion, others after a certain interval of time, but in
either case the destruction to life seems to have resulted from the
release of some poisonous vapour, not from the impact of bullets. So
powerful indeed must have become these explosives in later Atlantean
times, that we hear of whole companies of men being destroyed in
battle by the noxious gas generated by the explosion of one of these
bombs above their heads, thrown there by some sort of lever.
The monetary system must now be considered. During the first three
sub-races at all events, such a thing as a State coinage was unknown.
Small pieces of metal or leather stamped with some given value were,
it is true, used as tokens. Having a perforation in the centre they
were strung together, and were usually carried at the girdle. But each
man was as it were his own coiner, and the leather or metal token
fabricated by him, and exchanged with another for value received, was
but a personal acknowledgment of indebtedness, such as a promissory
note is among us. No man was entitled to fabricate more of these
tokens than he was able to redeem by the transfer of goods in his
possession. The tokens did not circulate as coinage does, while the
holder of the token had the means to estimate with perfect accuracy
the resources of his debtor by the clairvoyant faculty which all then
possessed to a greater or less degree, and which in any case of doubt
was instantly directed to ascertain the actual state of the facts.
It must be stated, however, that in the later days of Poseidonis, a
system approximating to our own currency was adopted, and the triple
mountain visible from the great southern capital was the favourite
representation on the State coinage.
But the system of land tenure is the most important subject under this
heading. Among the Rmoahal and Tlavatli, who lived chiefly by hunting
and fishing, the question naturally did not arise, though some system
of village cultivation was recognized in the Tlavatli days.
It was with the increase of population and civilization in the early
Toltec times that land first became worth fighting for. It is not
proposed to trace the system or want of system prevalent in the
troublous times anterior to the advent of the Golden Age. But the
records of that epoch present to the consideration, not only of
political economists, but of all who regard the welfare of the race, a
subject of the utmost interest and importance.
The population it must be remembered had been steadily increasing,
and under the government of the Adept emperors it had reached the very
large figure already quoted; nevertheless poverty and want were things
undreamt of in those days, and this social well-being was no doubt
partly due to the system of land tenure.
Not only was all the land and its produce regarded as belonging to the
emperor, but all the flocks and herds upon it were his as well. The
country was divided into different provinces or districts, each
province having at its head one of the subsidiary kings or viceroys
appointed by the emperor. Each of these viceroys was held responsible
for the government and well-being of all the inhabitants under his
rule. The tillage of the land, the harvesting of the crops, and the
pasturage of the herds lay within his sphere of superintendence, as
well as the conducting of such agricultural experiments as have been
already referred to.
Each viceroy had round him a council of agricultural advisers and
coadjutors, who had amongst their other duties to be well versed in
astronomy, for it was not a barren science in those days. The occult
influences on plant and animal life were then studied and taken
advantage of. The power, too, of producing rain at will was not
uncommon then, while the effects of a glacial epoch were on more than
one occasion partly neutralized in the northern parts of the continent
by occult science. The right day for beginning every agricultural
operation was of course duly calculated, and the work carried into
effect by the officials whose duty it was to supervise every detail.
The produce raised in each district or kingdom was as a rule consumed
in it, but an exchange of agricultural commodities was sometimes
arranged between the rulers.
After a small share had been put aside for the emperor and the central
government at the "City of the Golden Gates," the produce of the whole
district or kingdom was divided among the inhabitants--the local
viceroy and his retinue of officials naturally receiving the larger
portions, but the meanest agricultural labourer getting enough to
secure him competence and comfort. Any increase in the productive
capacity of the land, or in the mineral wealth which it yielded, was
divided proportionately amongst all concerned--all, therefore, were
interested in making the result of their combined labour as lucrative
as possible.
This system worked admirably for a very long period. But as time went
on negligence and self-seeking crept in. Those whose duty it was to
superintend, threw more and more responsibility on their inferiors in
office, and in time it became rare for the rulers to interfere or to
interest themselves in any of the operations. This was the beginning
of the evil days. The members of the dominant class who had previously
given all their time to the state duties began to think about making
their own lives more pleasant. The elaboration of luxury was setting
in.
There was one cause in particular which produced great discontent
amongst the lower classes. The system under which the youth of the
nation was drafted into the technical schools has already been
referred to. Now it was always one of the superior class whose psychic
faculties had been duly cultivated, to whom the duty was assigned of
selecting the children so that each one should receive the training,
and ultimately be devoted to the occupation, for which he was
naturally most fitted. But when those possessed of the clairvoyant
vision, by which alone such choice could be made, delegated their
duties to inferiors who were wanting in such psychic attributes, the
results ensuing were that the children were often thrust into wrong
grooves, and those whose capacity and taste lay in one direction often
found themselves tied for life to an occupation which they disliked,
and in which, therefore, they were rarely successful.
The systems of land tenure which ensued in different parts of the
empire on the breaking up of the great Toltec dynasty were many and
various. But it is not necessary to follow them. In the later days of
Poseidonis they had, as a rule, given place to the system of
individual ownership which we know so well.
Reference has already been made, under the head of "Emigrations," to
the system of land tenure which prevailed during that glorious period
of Peruvian history when the Incas held sway about 14,000 years ago. A
short summary of this may be of interest as demonstrating the source
from which its ground-work was doubtless derived, as well as
instancing the variations which had been adopted in this somewhat more
complicated system.
All title to land was derived in the first instance from the Inca, but
half of it was assigned to the cultivators, who of course constituted
the great bulk of the population. The other half was divided between
the Inca and the priesthood who celebrated the worship of the sun.
Out of the proceeds of his specially allotted lands the Inca had to
keep up the army, the roads throughout the whole empire, and all the
machinery of government. This was conducted by a special governing
class all more or less closely related to the Inca himself, and
representing a civilization and a culture much in advance of the great
masses of the population.
The remaining fourth--"the lands of the sun"--provided not only for
the priests who conducted the public worship throughout the empire,
but for the entire education of the people in schools and colleges,
for all sick and infirm persons, and finally, for every inhabitant
(exclusive, of course, of the governing class for whom there was no
cessation of work) on reaching the age of forty-five, that being the
age arranged for the hard work of life to cease, and for leisure and
enjoyment to begin.
_Religion._--The only subject that now remains to be dealt with is the
evolution of religious ideas. Between the spiritual aspiration of a
rude but simple race and the degraded ritual of an intellectually
cultured but spiritually dead people, lies a gulf which only the term
religion, used in its widest acceptation, can span. Nevertheless it is
this consecutive process of generation and degeneration which has to
be traced in the history of the Atlantean people.
It will be remembered that the government under which the Rmoahals
came into existence, was described as the most perfect conceivable,
for it was the Manu himself who acted as their king. The memory of
this divine ruler was naturally preserved in the annals of the race,
and in due time he came to be regarded as a god, among a people who
were naturally psychic, and had consequently glimpses of those states
of consciousness which transcend our ordinary waking condition.
Retaining these higher attributes, it was only natural that this
primitive people should adopt a religion, which, though in no way
representative of any exalted philosophy, was of a type far from
ignoble. In later days this phase of religious belief passed into a
kind of ancestor-worship.
The Tlavatli while inheriting the traditional reverence and worship
for the Manu, were taught by Adept instructors of the existence of a
Supreme Being whose symbol was recognized as the sun. They thus
developed a sort of sun worship, for the practice of which they
repaired to the hill tops. There they built great circles of upright
monoliths. These were intended to be symbolical of the sun's yearly
course, but they were also used for astronomical purposes--being
placed so that, to one standing at the high altar, the sun would rise
at the winter solstice behind one of these monoliths, at the vernal
equinox behind another, and so on throughout the year. Astronomical
observations of a still more complex character connected with the
more distant constellations were also helped by these stone circles.
We have already seen under the head of emigrations how a later
sub-race--the Akkadians--in the erection of Stonehenge, reverted to
this primitive building of monoliths.
Endowed though the Tlavatli were with somewhat greater capacity for
intellectual development than the previous sub-race, their cult was
still of a very primitive type.
With the wider diffusion of knowledge in the days of the Toltecs, and
more especially with the establishment later on of an initiated
priesthood and an Adept emperor, increased opportunities were offered
to the people for the attainment of a truer conception of the divine.
The few who were ready to take full advantage of the teaching offered,
after having been tried and tested, were doubtless admitted into the
ranks of the priesthood which then constituted an immense occult
fraternity. With these, however, who had so outstripped the mass of
humanity, as to be ready to begin the progress of the occult path, we
are not here concerned, the religions practised by the inhabitants of
Atlantis generally being the subject of our investigation.
The power to rise to philosophic heights of thought was of course
wanting to the masses of those days, as it is similarly wanting to the
great majority of the inhabitants of the world to-day. The nearest
approach which the most gifted teacher could make in attempting to
convey any idea of the nameless and all-pervading essence of the
Kosmos was necessarily imparted in the form of symbols, and the sun
naturally enough was the first symbol adopted. As in our own days too
the more cultivated and spiritually minded would see through the
symbol, and might sometimes rise on the wings of devotion to the
Father of our spirits, that
"Motive and centre of our soul's desire,
Object and refuge of our journey's end"
while the grosser multitude would see nothing but the symbol, and
would worship it, as the carved Madonna or the wooden image of the
crucified one is to-day worshipped throughout Catholic Europe.
Sun and fire worship then became the cult for the celebration of which
magnificent temples were reared throughout the length and breadth of
the continent of Atlantis, but more especially in the great "City of
the Golden Gates"--the temple service being performed by retinues of
priests endowed by the State for that purpose.
In those early days no image of the Deity was permitted. The sun-disk
was considered the only appropriate emblem of the godhead, and as such
was used in every temple, a golden disk being generally placed so as
to catch the first rays of the rising sun at the vernal equinox or at
the summer solstice.
An interesting example of the almost unalloyed survival of this
worship of the sun-disk may be instanced in the Shinto ceremonies of
Japan. All other representation of Deity is in this faith regarded as
impious, and even the circular mirror of polished metal is hidden from
the vulgar gaze save on ceremonial occasions. Unlike the gorgeous
temple decorations of Atlantis however, the Shinto temples are
characterized by an entire absence of decoration--the exquisite finish
of the plain wood-work being unrelieved by any carving, paint or
varnish.
But the sun-disk did not always remain the only permissible emblem of
Deity. The image of a man--an archetypal man--was in after days placed
in the temples and adored as the highest representation of the divine.
In some ways this might be considered a reversion to the Rmoahal
worship of the Manu. Even then the religion was comparatively pure,
and the occult fraternity of the "Good Law" of course did their utmost
to keep alive in the hearts of the people the spiritual life.
The evil days, however, were drawing near when no altruistic idea
should remain to redeem the race from the abyss of selfishness in
which it was destined to be overwhelmed. The decay of the ethical idea
was the necessary prelude to the perversion of the spiritual. The hand
of every man fought for himself alone, and his knowledge was used for
purely selfish ends, till it became an established belief that there
was nothing in the universe greater or higher than themselves. Each
man was his own "Law, and Lord and God," and the very worship of the
temples ceased to be the worship of any ideal, but became the mere
adoration of man as he was known and seen to be. As is written in the
_Book of Dzyan_, "Then the Fourth became tall with pride. We are the
kings it was said; we are the Gods.... They built huge cities. Of rare
earths and metals they built, and out of the fires vomited, out of the
white stone of the mountains and of the black stone, they cut their
own images in their size and likeness, and worshipped them." Shrines
were placed in temples in which the statue of each man, wrought in
gold or silver, or carved in stone or wood, was adored by himself. The
richer men kept whole trains of priests in their employ for the cult
and care of their shrines, and offerings were made to these statues as
to gods. The apotheosis of self could go no further.
It must be remembered that every true religious idea that has ever
entered into the mind of man, has been consciously suggested to him by
the divine Instructors or the Initiates of the Occult Lodges, who
throughout all the ages have been the guardians of the divine
mysteries, and of the facts of the supersensual states of
consciousness.
Mankind generally has but slowly become capable of assimilating a few
of these divine ideas, while the monstrous growths and hideous
distortions to which every religion on earth stands as witness, must
be traced to man's own lower nature. It would seem indeed that he has
not always even been fit to be entrusted with knowledge as to the mere
symbols under which were veiled the light of Deity, for in the days of
the Turanian supremacy some of this knowledge was wrongfully divulged.
We have seen how the life and light giving attributes of the sun were
in early times used as the symbol to bring before the minds of the
people all that they were capable of conceiving of the great First
Cause. But other symbols of far deeper and more real significance were
known and guarded within the ranks of the priesthood. One of these was
the conception of a Trinity in Unity. The Trinities of most sacred
significance were never divulged to the people, but the Trinity
personifying the cosmic powers of the universe as Creator, Preserver,
and Destroyer, became publicly known in some irregular manner in the
Turanian days. This idea was still further materialized and degraded
by the Semites into a strictly anthropomorphic Trinity consisting of
father, mother and child.
A further and rather terrible development of the Turanian times must
still be referred to. With the practice of sorcery many of the
inhabitants had, of course, become aware of the existence of powerful
elementals--creatures who had been called into being, or at least
animated by their own powerful wills, which being directed towards
maleficent ends, naturally produced the elementals of power and
malignity. So degraded had then become man's feelings of reverence and
worship, that they actually began to adore these semi-conscious
creations of their own malignant thought. The ritual with which these
beings were worshipped was blood-stained from the very start, and of
course every sacrifice offered at their shrine gave vitality and
persistence to these vampire-like creations--so much so, that even to
the present day in various parts of the world, the elementals formed
by the powerful will of these old Atlantean sorcerers still continue
to exact their tribute from unoffending village communities.
Though inaugurated and widely practised by the brutal Turanians, this
blood-stained ritual seems never to have spread to any extent among
the other sub-races, though human sacrifices appear to have been not
uncommon among some branches of the Semites.
In the great Toltec empire of Mexico the sun-worship of their
forefathers was still the national religion, while the bloodless
offerings to their beneficent Deity, Quetzalcoatl, consisted merely of
flowers and fruit. It was only with the coming of the savage Aztecs
that the harmless Mexican ritual was supplemented with the blood of
human sacrifices, which drenched the altars of their war-god,
Huitzilopochtli, and the tearing out of the hearts of the victims on
the summit of the Teocali may be regarded as a direct survival of the
elemental-worship of their Turanian ancestors in Atlantis.
It will be seen then that as in our own days, the religious life of
the people embraced the most varied forms of belief and worship. From
the small minority who aspired to initiation, and had touch with the
higher spiritual life--who knew that good will towards all men,
control of thought, and purity of life and action were the necessary
preliminaries to the attainment of the highest states of consciousness
and the widest realms of vision--innumerable phases led down through
the more or less blind worship of cosmic powers, or of anthropomorphic
gods, to the degraded but most widely extended ritual in which each
man adored his own image, and to the blood-stained rites of the
elemental worship.
It must be remembered throughout that we are dealing with the
Atlantean race only, so that any reference would be out of place that
bore on the still more degraded fetish-worship that even then
existed--as it still does--amongst the debased representatives of the
Lemurian peoples.
All through the centuries then the various rituals composed to
celebrate these various forms of worship were carried on, till the
final submergence of Poseidonis, by which time the countless hosts of
Atlantean emigrants had already established on foreign lands the
various cults of the mother-continent.
To trace the rise and follow the progress in detail of the archaic
religions, which in historic times have blossomed into such diverse
and antagonistic forms, would be an undertaking of great difficulty,
but the illumination it would throw on matters of transcendent
importance may some day induce the attempt.
In conclusion, it would be vain to attempt to summarize what is
already too much of a summary. Rather let us hope that the foregoing
may lend itself as the text from which may be developed histories of
the many offshoots of the various sub-races--histories which may
analytically examine political and social developments which have been
here touched on in the most fragmentary manner.
One word, however, may still be said about that evolution of the
race--that progress which all creation, with mankind at its head, is
ever destined to achieve century by century, millennium by millennium,
manvantara by manvantara, and kalpa by kalpa.
The descent of spirit into matter--these two poles of the one eternal
substance--is the process which occupies the first half of every
cycle. Now the period we have been contemplating in the foregoing
pages--the period during which the Atlantean race was running its
course--was the very middle or turning point of this present
manvantara.
The process of evolution which in our present Fifth Race has now set
in--the return, that is, of matter into spirit--had in those days
revealed itself in but a few isolated individual cases--forerunners of
the resurrection of the spirit.
But the problem, which all who have given the subject any amount of
consideration must have felt to be still awaiting a solution, is the
surprising contrast in the attributes of the Atlantean race. Side by
side with their brutal passions, their degraded animal propensities,
were their psychic faculties, their godlike intuition.