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:

The Frenchman knew well, when he adopted the title of Freemason, that it was no question of building the smallest wall, but that, initiated into the Mysteries veiled under the name of Freemasonry, which could only be the continuation or the renovation of the ancient Mysteries, he was to become a “Mason” after the manner of Apollo or Amphion. And do not we know that the ancient initiated poets, when speaking of the _foundation of a city_, meant thereby the establishment of a doctrine? Thus Neptune, God of reasoning, and Apollo, God of hidden things, presented themselves as masons before Laomedon, Priam’s father, to help him to build the city of Troy—that is to say, to establish the Trojan religion.(1859)

Such veiled sentences with double meaning abound in ancient classical writers. Therefore, if an attempt had been made to show that, for instance, Laomedon was the founder of a branch of Archaic Mysteries, in which the earth‐bound material soul, the Fourth Principle, was personified in Menelaus’ faithless wife, the fair Helen, and if Ragon had not come to corroborate what we asserted, we might have been told that no classical author speaks of it, and that Homer shows Laomedon building a _city_, not founding an _Esoteric Worship_ or _Mysteries_. Who are those left now, save a few Initiates, who understand the language and correct meaning of such symbolical terms?

But though we have pointed to many a misconceived symbol bearing on our thesis, there still remains more than one difficulty to be overcome. Most important among several such obstacles is that of chronology. But this could hardly be helped. Wedged in between theological chronology and that of the Geologists, backed by all the materialistic Anthropologists, who assign dates to man and nature which fit in with their own theories alone—what could the writer do except what she has done? Since Theology places the Deluge 2448 B.C., and the World’s Creation only 5890 years ago; and since the accurate researches by the methods of “exact” Science, have led the Geologists and Physicists to assign to the incrusted age of our Globe between ten million and one thousand million of years(1860) (a _trifling_ difference, verily!); and since the Anthropologists, to vary their divergence of opinion as to the appearance of man, ask for between 25,000 and 500,000 years—what can one who studies the Occult Doctrine do, but bravely present the Esoteric calculations before the world?

But to do this, corroboration by even a few “historical” proofs has been necessary, though all know the real value of the so‐called “historical evidence.” For, whether man appeared on Earth 18,000 or 18,000,000 years ago, can make no difference to profane history, since it only begins about a couple of thousand years before our era, and since, even then, it grapples hopelessly with the clash and din of contradictory and mutually‐ destroying opinions around it. Nevertheless, in view of the respect in which the average reader has been brought up for exact Science, even that short Past would remain meaningless, unless the Esoteric Teachings were corroborated and supported on the spot—_whenever possible_—by references to historical names of a so‐called historical period. This is the only guide that can be given to the beginner before he is permitted to start among the, to him, unfamiliar windings of that dark labyrinth called the pre‐historic ages. This necessity has been complied with. It is only hoped that the desire to do so, which has led the writer to be constantly bringing ancient and modern evidence as a corroboration of the archaic and quite unhistoric Past, will not bring on her the accusation of having sorely jumbled up, without order or method, the various and widely‐ separated periods of history and tradition. But literary form and method had to be sacrificed to the greater clearness of the general exposition.

To accomplish the proposed task, the writer has had to resort to the rather unusual means of dividing each Volume into three Parts; the first of which only is the consecutive, though very fragmentary, history of the Cosmogony and the Evolution of Man on this Globe. In treating of Cosmogony and then of the Anthropogenesis of mankind, it was necessary to show that on religion, from the very earliest, has ever been based entirely on fiction, that none was the object of special revelation, and that it is dogma alone which has ever been killing primeval truth; finally, that no human‐born doctrine, no creed, however sanctified by custom and antiquity, can compare in sacredness with the religion of Nature. The Key of Wisdom that unlocks the massive gates leading to the arcana of the innermost sanctuaries can be found hidden in her bosom only; and that bosom is in the countries pointed to by the great seer of the past century, Emanuel Swedenborg. There lies the Heart of Nature, that shrine whence issued the early races of primeval humanity, and which is the cradle of _physical_ man.

Thus far have proceeded the rough outlines of the beliefs and tenets of the archaic, earliest Races, contained in their hitherto secret scriptural Records. But our explanations are by no means complete, nor do they pretend to give out the full text, or to have been read by the help of more than three or four keys out of the sevenfold bunch of Esoteric interpretation; and even this has only been partially accomplished. The work is too gigantic for any one person to undertake, far more to accomplish. Our main concern has been simply to prepare the soil. This, we trust we have done. These two Volumes only constitute the work of a pioneer who has forced his way into the well‐nigh impenetrable jungle of the virgin forests of the Land of the Occult. A commencement has been made in felling and uprooting the deadly upas trees of superstition, prejudice, and conceited ignorance, so that these two Volumes should form for the student a fitting prelude for other works. Until the rubbish of the ages is cleared away from the minds of the Theosophists to whom these pages are dedicated, it is impossible that the more practical teaching contained in the Third Volume should be understood. Consequently, it entirely depends upon the reception with which Volumes I and II shall meet at the hands of Theosophists and Mystics, whether the last Volume will ever be published.

SATYÂT NÂSTI PARO DHARMAH.

THERE IS NO RELIGION HIGHER THAN TRUTH.

END OF VOLUME II.

[Transcriber’s Note: Obvious printer’s errors have been corrected.]

FOOTNOTES

1 See _Genesis_ ii. 19. Adam is formed in verse 7, and in verse 19 it is said: “Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them.” Thus man was created _before_ the animals; for the animals mentioned in