The Story of Atlantis
A Geographical, Historical and Ethnological Sketch
by W. Scott-Elliot
[1896]
Preface to the First Edition
by A. P. SINNETT
For readers unacquainted with the progress that has been made
in recent years by earnest students of occultism attached to
the Theosophical Society, the significance of the statement embodied
in the following pages would be misapprehended without some preliminary
explanation. Historical research has depended for western civilization
hitherto, on written records of one kind or another. When literary
memoranda have fallen short, stone monuments have sometimes been
available, and fossil remains have given us a few unequivocal,
though inarticulate assurances concerning the antiquity of the
human race; but modern culture has lost sight of or has overlooked
possibilities connected with the investigation of past events,
which are independent of fallible evidence transmitted to us
by ancient writers. The world at large is thus at present so
imperfectly alive to the resources of human faculty, that by
most people as yet, the very existence, even as a potentiality,
of psychic powers, which some of us all the while are consciously
exercising every day, is scornfully denied and derided. The situation
is sadly ludicrous from the point of view of those who appreciate
the prospects of evolution, because mankind is thus wilfully
holding at arm's length, the knowledge that is essential to its
own ulterior progress. The maximum cultivation of which the human
intellect is susceptible while it denies itself all the resources
of its higher spiritual consciousness, can never be more than
a preparatory process as compared with that which may set in
when the faculties are sufficiently enlarged to enter into conscious
relationship with the super-physical planes or aspects of Nature.
For anyone who will have the patience to study the published
results of psychic investigation during the last fifty years,
the reality of clairvoyance as an occasional phenomenon of human
intelligence must establish itself on an immovable foundation.
For those who, without being occultists--students that is to
say of Nature's loftier aspects, in a position to obtain better
teaching than that which any written books can give--for those
who merely avail themselves of recorded evidence, a declaration
on the part of others of a disbelief in the possibility of clairvoyance,
is on a level with the proverbial African's disbelief in ice.
But the experiences of clairvoyance that have accumulated on
the hands of those who have studied it in connection with mesmerism,
do no more than prove the existence in human nature of a capacity
for cognizing physical phenomena distant either in space or time,
in some way which has nothing to do with the physical senses.
Those who have studied the mysteries of clairvoyance in connection
with theosophic teaching have been enabled to realize that the
ultimate resources of that faculty range as far beyond its humbler
manifestations, dealt with by unassisted enquirers, as the resources
of the higher mathematics exceed those of the abacus. Clairvoyance,
indeed, is of many kinds, all of which fall easily into their
places when we appreciate the manner in which human consciousness
functions on different planes of Nature. The faculty of reading
the pages of a closed book, or of discerning objects blindfold,
or at a distance from the observer, is quite a different faculty
from that employed on the cognition of past events. That last
is the kind of which it is necessary to say something here, in
order that the true character of the present treatise on Atlantis
may be understood, but I allude to the others merely that the
explanation I have to give may not be mistaken for a complete
theory of clairvoyance in all its varieties.
We may best be helped to a comprehension of clairvoyance as
related to past events, by considering in the first instance
the phenomena of memory. The theory of memory which relates it
to an imaginary rearrangement of physical molecules of brain
matter, going on at every instant of our lives, is one that presents
itself as plausible to no one who can ascend one degree above
the thinking level of the uncompromising atheistical materialist.
To every one who accepts, even as a reasonable hypothesis, the
idea that a man is something more than a carcase in a state of
animation, it must be a reasonable hypothesis that memory has
to do with that principle in man which is super-physical. His
memory in short, is a function of some other than the physical
plane. The pictures of memory are imprinted, it is clear, on
some nonphysical medium, and are accessible to the embodied thinker
in ordinary cases by virtue of some effort he makes in as much
unconsciousness as to its precise character, as he is unconscious
of the brain impulse which actuates the muscles of his heart.
The events with which he has had to do in the past are photographed
by Nature on some imperishable page of super-physical matter,
and by making an appropriate interior effort, he is capable of
bringing them again, when he requires them, within the area of
some interior sense which reflects its perception on the physical
brain. We are not all of us able to make this effort equally
well, so that memory is sometimes dim, but even in the experience
of mesmeric research, the occasional super-excitation of memory
under mesmerism is a familiar fact. The circumstances plainly
show that the record of Nature is accessible if we know how to
recover it, or even if our own capacity to make an effort for
its recovery is somehow improved without our having an improved
knowledge of the method employed. And from this thought we may
arrive by an easy transition at the idea, that in truth the records
of Nature are not separate collections of individual property,
but constitute the all-embracing memory of Nature herself, on
which different people are in a position to make drafts according
to their several capacities.
I do not say that the one thought necessarily ensues as a
logical consequence of the other. Occultists know that what I
have stated is the fact, but my present purpose is to show the
reader who is not an Occultist, how the accomplished Occultist
arrives at his results, without hoping to epitomize all the stages
of his mental progress in this brief explanation. Theosophical
literature at large must be consulted by those who would seek
a fuller elucidation of the magnificent prospects and practical
demonstrations of its teaching in many directions, which, in
the course of the Theosophical development, have been laid before
the world for the benefit of all who are competent to profit
by them.
The memory of Nature is in reality a stupendous unity, just
as in another way all mankind is found to constitute a spiritual
unity if we ascend to a sufficiently elevated plane of Nature
in search of the wonderful convergence where unity is reached
without the loss of individuality. For ordinary humanity, however,
at the early stage of its evolution represented at present by
the majority, the interior spiritual capacities ranging beyond
those which the brain is an instrument for expressing, are as
yet too imperfectly developed to enable them to get into touch
with any other records in the vast archives of Nature's memory,
except those with which they have individually been in contact
at their creation. The blindfold interior effort they are competent
to make, will not as a rule, call up any others. But in a flickering
fashion we have experience in ordinary life of efforts that are
a little more effectual. "Thought Transference" is
a humble example. In that case "impressions on the mind"
of one person--Nature's memory pictures, with which he is in
normal relationship, are caught up by someone else who is just
able, however unconscious of the method he uses, to range Nature's
memory under favourable conditions, a little beyond the area
with which he himself is in normal relationship. Such a person
has begun, however slightly, to exercise the faculty of astral
clairvoyance. That term may be conveniently used to denote the
kind of clairvoyance I am now endeavoring to elucidate, the kind
which, in some of its more magnificent developments, has been
employed to carry out the investigations on the basis of which
the present account of Atlantis has been compiled.
There is no limit really to the resources of astral clairvoyance
in investigations concerning the past history of the earth, whether
we are concerned with the events that have befallen the human
race in prehistoric epochs, or with the growth of the planet
itself through geological periods which antedated the advent
of man, or with more recent events, current narrations of which
have been distorted by careless or perverse historians. The memory
of Nature is infallibly accurate and inexhaustibly minute. A
time will come as certainly as the precession of the equinoxes,
when the literary method of historical research will be laid
aside as out of date, in the case of all original work. People
among us who are capable of exercising astral clairvoyance in
full perfection--but have not yet been called away to higher
functions in connection with the promotion of human progress,
of which ordinary humanity at present knows even less than an
Indian ryot knows of cabinet councils--are still very few. Those
who know what the few can do, and through what processes of training
and self-discipline they have passed in pursuit of interior ideals,
of which when attained astral clairvoyance is but an individual
circumstance, are many, but still a small minority as compared
with the modern cultivated world. But as time goes on, and within
a measurable future, some of us have reason to feel sure that
the numbers of those who are competent to exercise astral clairvoyance
will increase sufficiently to extend the circle of those who
are aware of their capacities, till it comes to embrace all the
intelligence and culture of civilized mankind only a few generations
hence. Meanwhile the present volume is the first that has been
put forward as the pioneer essay of the new method of historical
research. It is amusing to all who are concerned with it, to
think how inevitably it will be mistaken--for some little while
as yet, by materialistic readers, unable to accept the frank
explanation here given of the principle on which it has been
prepared--for a work of imagination.
For the benefit of others who may be more intuitive it may
be well to say a word or two that may guard them from supposing
that because historical research by means of astral clairvoyance
is not impeded by having to deal with periods removed from our
own by hundreds of thousands of years, it is on that account
a process which involves no trouble. Every fact stated In the
present volume has been picked up bit by bit with watchful and
attentive care, in the course of an investigation on which more
than one qualified person has been engaged, in the intervals
of other activity, for some years past. And to promote the success
of their work they have been allowed access to some maps and
other records physically preserved from the remote periods concerned--though
in safer keeping than in that of the turbulent races occupied
in Europe with the development of civilization in brief intervals
of leisure from warfare, and hard pressed by the fanaticism that
so long treated science as sacrilegious during the middle ages
of Europe.
Laborious as the task has been however, it will be recognized
as amply repaying the trouble taken, by everyone who is able
to perceive how absolutely necessary to a proper comprehension
of the world as we find it, is a proper comprehension of its
preceding Atlantean phase. Without this knowledge all speculations
concerning ethnology are futile and misleading. The course of
race development is chaos and confusion without the key furnished
by the character of Atlantean civilization and the configuration
of the earth at Atlantean periods. Geologists know that land
and ocean surfaces must have repeatedly changed places during
the period at which they also know-from the situation of human
remains in the various strata-that the lands were inhabited.
And yet for want of accurate knowledge as to the dates at which
the changes took place, they discard the whole theory from their
practical thinking, and, except for certain hypotheses started
by naturalists dealing with the southern hemisphere, have generally
endeavoured to harmonize race migrations with the configuration
of the earth in existence at the present time.
In this way nonsense is made of the whole retrospect; and
the ethnological scheme remains so vague and shadowy that it
fails to displace crude conceptions of mankind's beginning, which
still dominate religious thinking and keep back the spiritual
progress of the age. The decadence and ultimate disappearance
of Atlantean civilization is in turn as instructive as its rise
and glory; but I have now accomplished the main purpose with
which I sought leave to introduce the work now before the world,
with a brief prefatory explanation, and if its contents fail
to convey a sense of its importance to any readers I am now addressing,
that result could hardly be accomplished by further recommendations
of mine.
1896
The Story of Atlantis
A Geographical, Historical and Ethnological Sketch
THE GENERAL scope of the subject before us will best be realized
by considering the amount of information that is obtainable about
the various nations who compose our great Fifth or Aryan Race.
From the time of the Greeks and the Romans onwards volumes
have been written about every people who in their turn have filled
the stage of history. The political institutions, the religious
beliefs, the social and domestic manners and customs have all
been analyzed and catalogued, and countless works in many tongues
record for our benefit the march of progress.
Further, it must be remembered that of the history of this
Fifth Race we possess but a fragment--the record merely of the
last family races of the Celtic sub-race, and the first family
races of our own Teutonic stock.
But the hundreds of thousands of years which elapsed from
the time when the earliest Aryans left their home on the shores
of the central Asian Sea to the time of the Greeks and Romans,
bore witness to the rise and fall of innumerable civilizations.
Of the 1st sub-race of our Aryan Race who inhabited India and
colonized Egypt in prehistoric times we know practically nothing,
and the same may be said of the Chaldean, Babylonian, and Assyrian
nations who composed the 2nd sub-race--for the fragments of knowledge
obtained from the recently deciphered hieroglyphs or cuneiform
inscriptions on Egyptian tombs or Babylonian tablets can scarcely
be said to constitute history. The Persians who belonged to the
3rd or Iranian sub-race have, it is true, left a few more traces,
but of the earlier civilizations of the Celtic or 4th sub-race
we have no records at all. It is only with the rise of the last
family shoots of this Celtic stock, viz., the Greek and
Roman peoples, that we come upon historic times.
In addition also to the blank period in the past, there is
the blank period in the future. For of the seven sub-races required
to complete the history of a great Root Race, five only have
so far come into existence. Our own Teutonic or 5th sub-race
has already developed many nations, but has not yet run its course,
while the 6th and 7th sub-races, who will be developed on the
continents of North and South America, respectively, will have
thousands of years of history to give to the world.
In attempting, therefore, to summarize in a few pages information
about the world's progress during a period which must have occupied
at least as great a stretch of years as that above referred to,
it should be realized how slight a sketch this must inevitably
be.
A record of the world's progress during the period of the
Fourth or Atlantean Race must embrace the history of many nations,
and register the rise and fall of many civilizations.
Catastrophes, too, on a scale such as has not yet been experienced
during the life of our present Fifth Race, took place on more
than one occasion during the progress of the Fourth. The destruction
of Atlantis was accomplished by a series of catastrophes varying
in character from great cataclysms in which whole territories
and populations perished, to comparatively unimportant landslips
such as occur on our own coasts to-day. When the destruction
was once inaugurated by the first great catastrophe there was
no intermission in the minor landslips which continued slowly
but steadily to eat away the continent. Four of the great catastrophes
stand out above the rest in magnitude. The first took place in
the Miocene age, about 800,000 years ago. The second, which was
of minor importance, occurred about 200,000 years ago. The third--about
80,000 years ago--was a very great one. It destroyed all that
remained of the Atlantean continent, with the exception of the
island to which Plato gave the name of Poseidonis, which in its
turn was submerged in the fourth and final great catastrophe
of 9564 B.C.
Now the testimony of the oldest writers and of modern scientific
research alike bear witness to the existence of an ancient continent
occupying the site of the lost Atlantis.
Before proceeding to the consideration of the subject itself,
it is proposed cursorily to glance at the generally known sources
which supply corroborative evidence. These may be grouped into
the five following classes:
First, the testimony of the deep-sea surroundings.
Second, the distribution of fauna and flora.
Third, the similarity of language and of ethnological type.
Fourth, the similarity of religious belief, ritual, and architecture.
Fifth, the testimony of ancient writers, of early race traditions,
and of archaic flood-legends.
Deep-Sea Soundings
In the first place, then, the testimony of the deep-sea soundings
may be summarized in a few words. Thanks chiefly to the expeditions
of the British and American gun boats, "Challenger"
and "Dolphin" (though Germany also was associated in
this scientific exploration) the bed of the whole Atlantic Ocean
is now mapped out, with the result that an immense bank or ridge
of great elevation is shown to exist in mid-Atlantic. This ridge
stretches in a southwesterly direction from about fifty degrees
north towards the coast of South America, then in a south-easterly
direction towards the coast of Africa, changing its direction
again about Ascension Island, and running due south to Tristan
d'Acunha. The ridge rises almost sheer about 9,000 feet from
the ocean depths around it, while the Azores, St. Paul, Ascension,
and Tristan d'Acunha are the peaks of this land which still remain
above water. A line of 3,500 fathoms, or say 21,000 feet, is
required to sound the deepest parts of the Atlantic, but the
higher parts of the ridge are only a hundred to a few hundred
fathoms beneath the sea.
The soundings too showed that the ridge is covered with volcanic
débris of which traces are to be found right across
the ocean to the American coasts. Indeed the fact that the ocean
bed, particularly about the Azores, has been the scene of volcanic
disturbance on a gigantic scale, and that too within a quite
measurable period of geologic time, is conclusively proved by
the investigations made during the above-named expeditions.
Mr. Starkie Gardner is of opinion that in the Eocene times
the British Islands formed part of a larger island or continent
stretching into the Atlantic, and "that a great tract of
land formerly existed where the sea now is, and that Cornwall,
the Scilly and Channel Islands, Ireland and Brittany are the
remains of its highest summits."[1]
Distribution of Fauna and Flora
The proved existence on continents separated by great oceans
of similar or identical species of fauna and flora is the standing
puzzle to biologists and botanists alike. But if a link between
these continents once existed allowing for the natural migration
of such animals and plants, the puzzle is solved. Now the fossil
remains of the camel are found in India, Africa, South America
and Kansas: but it is one of the generally accepted hypotheses
of naturalists that every species of animal and plant originated
in but one part of the globe, from which centre it gradually
overran the other portions. How then can the facts of such fossil
remains be accounted for without the existence of land communication
in some remote age? Recent discoveries in the fossil beds of
Nebraska seem also to prove that the horse
[1. Pop. Sc. Review, July, 1878.]
originated in the Western Hemisphere, for that is the only
part of the world where fossil remains have been discovered,
showing the various intermediate forms which have been identified
as the precursors of the true horse. It would therefore be difficult
to account for the presence of the horse in Europe except on
the hypothesis of continuous land communication between the two
continents, seeing that it is certain that the horse existed
in a wild state in Europe and Asia before his domestication by
man, which may be traced back almost to the stone age. Cattle
and sheep as we now know them have an equally remote ancestry.
Darwin finds domesticated cattle in Europe in the earliest part
of the stone age, having long before developed out of wild forms
akin to the buffalo of America. Remains of the cave-lion of Europe
are also found in North America.
Turning now from the animal to the vegetable kingdom it appears
that the greater part of the flora of the Miocene age in Europe--found
chiefly in the fossil beds of Switzerland--exist at the present
day in America, some of them in Africa. But the noteworthy fact
about America is that while the greater proportion are to be
found in the Eastern States, very many are wanting on the Pacific
coast. This seems to show that it was from the Atlantic side
that they entered the continent. Professor Asa Gray says that
out of 66 genera and 155 species found in the forest east of
the Rocky Mountains, only 31 genera and 78 species are found
west of these heights.
But the greatest problem of all is the plantain or banana.
Professor Kuntze, an eminent German botanist, asks, "In
what way was this plant" (a native of tropical Asia and
Africa) "which cannot stand a voyage through the temperate
zone, carried to America?" As he points out, the plant is
seedless, it cannot be propagated by cuttings, neither has it
a tuber which could be easily transported. Its root is treelike.
To transport it special care would be required, nor could it
stand a long transit. The only way in which he can account for
its appearance in America is to suppose that it must have been
transported by civilized man at a time when the polar regions
had a tropical climate! He adds, "a cultivated plant which
does not possess seeds must have been under culture for a very
long period ... it is perhaps fair to infer that these plants
were cultivated as early as the beginning of the Diluvial period."
Why, it may be asked, should not this inference take us back
to still earlier times, and where did the civilization necessary
for the plant's cultivation exist, or the climate and circumstances
requisite for its transportation, unless there were at some time
a link between the old world and the new?
Professor Wallace in his delightful Island Life, as
well as other writers in many important works, has put forward
ingenious hypotheses to account for the identity of flora and
fauna on widely separated lands, and for their transit across
the ocean, but all are unconvincing, and all break down at different
points.
It is well known that wheat as we know it has never existed
in a truly wild state, nor is there any evidence tracing its
descent from fossil species. Five varieties of wheat were already
cultivated in Europe in the stone age--one variety found
in the "Lake Dwellings" being known as Egyptian wheat,
from which Darwin argues that the Lake dwellers "either
still kept up commercial intercourse with some southern people,
or had originally proceeded as colonists from the South."
He concludes that wheat, barley, oats, etc., are descended from
various species now extinct, or so widely different as to escape
identification, in which case he says: "Man must have cultivated
cereals from an enormously remote period." The regions where
these extinct species flourished, and the civilization under
which they were cultivated by intelligent selection, are both
supplied by the lost continent whose colonists carried them east
and west.
From the fauna and flora we now turn to man.
Similarity of Language
The Basque language stands alone amongst European tongues,
having affinity with none of them. According to Farrar, "there
never has been any doubt that this isolated language, preserving
its identity in a western corner of Europe, between two mighty
kingdoms, resembles in its structure the aboriginal languages
of the vast opposite continent (America) and those alone."[1]
The Phoenicians apparently were the first nation in the Eastern
Hemisphere to use a phonetic alphabet, the characters being regarded
as mere signs for sounds. It is a curious fact that at an equally
early date we find a phonetic alphabet in Central America
[1. Families of Speech, p. 132.]
amongst the Mayans of Yucatan, whose traditions ascribe the
origin of their civilization to a land across the sea to the
east. Le Plongeon, the great authority on this subject, writes:
"One-third of this tongue (the Maya) is pure Greek. Who
brought the dialect of Homer to America? or who took to Greece
that of the Mayas? Greek is the offspring of the Sanscrit. Is
Maya? or are they coeval?" Still more surprising is it to
find thirteen letters out of the Maya alphabet bearing most distinct
relation to the Egyptian hieroglyphic signs for the same letters.
It is probable that the earliest form of alphabet was hieroglyphic,
"the writing of the Gods," as the Egyptians called
it, and that it developed later in Atlantis into the phonetic.
It would be natural to assume that the Egyptians were an early
colony from Atlantis (as they actually were) and that they carried
away with them the primitive type of writing which has thus left
its traces on both hemispheres, while the Phoenicians, who were
a sea-going people, obtained and assimilated the later form of
alphabet during their trading voyages with the people of the
west.
One more point may be noticed, viz., the extraordinary
resemblance between many words in the Hebrew language and words
bearing precisely the same meaning in the tongue of the Chiapenecs--a
branch of the Maya race, and amongst the most ancient in Central
America.[1]
The similarity of language among the various savage races
of the Pacific islands has been used as an
[1. A list of' these words is given in North
Americans of Antiquity, p. 475.]
argument by writers on this subject. The existences of similar
languages among races separated by leagues of ocean, across which
in historic time they are known to have had no means of transport,
is certainly an argument in favour of their descent from a single
race occupying a single continent, but the argument cannot be
used here, for the continent in question was not Atlantis, but
the still earlier Lemuria.
Similarity of Ethnological Types
Atlantis as we shall see is said to have been inhabited by
red, yellow, white and black races. It is now proved by the researches
of Le Plongeon, De Quatrefages, Bancroft and others that black
populations of negroid type existed even up to recent times in
America. Many of the monuments of Central America are decorated
with negro faces, and some of the idols found there are clearly
intended to represent negroes, with small skulls, short woolly
hair and thick lips. The Popul Vuh, speaking of the first home
of the Guatemalan race, says that "black and white men together"
lived in this happy land "in great peace," speaking
"one language."[1] The Popul Vuh goes on to relate
how the people migrated from their ancestral home, how their
language became altered, and how some went to the east, while
others travelled west (to Central America).
[1. See Bancroft's Native Races, p. 547.]
Professor Retzius, in his Smithsonian Report, considers
that the primitive dolichocephalae of America are nearly related
to the Guanches of the Canary Islands, and to the population
on the Atlantic seaboard of Africa, which Latham comprises under
the name of Egyptian Atlantidae. The same form of skull is found
In the Canary Islands off the African coast and the Carib Islands
off the American coast, while the colour of the skin in both
is that of a reddish-brown.
The ancient Egyptians depicted themselves as red men of much
the same complexion as exists to-day among some tribes of American
Indians.
"The ancient Peruvians," says Short, "appear
from numerous examples of hair found in their tombs to have been
an auburn-haired race."
A remarkable fact about the American Indians, and one which
is a standing puzzle to ethnologists, is the wide range of colour
and complexion to be found among them. From the white tint of
the Menominee, Dakota, Mandan, and Zuni tribes, many of whom
have auburn hair and blue eyes, to the almost negro blackness
of the Karos of Kansas and the now extinct tribes of California,
the Indian races run through every shade of red-brown, copper,
olive, cinnamon, and bronze.[1]
We shall see by and by how the diversity of complexion
[1. See Short's North Americans of Antiquity,
Winchell's Pre-Adamites, and Catlin's Indians of North
America; see also Atlantis, by Ignatius Donnelly,
who has collected a great mass of evidence under this and other
heads.]
on the American Continent is accounted for by the original
race-tints on the parent continent of Atlantis.
Similarity of Religious Belief, Ritual and Architecture
Nothing seems to have surprised the first Spanish adventurers
in Mexico and Peru more than the extraordinary similarity to
those of the old world, of the religious beliefs, rites, and
emblems which they found established in the new. The Spanish
priests regarded this similarity as the work of the devil. The
worship of the cross by the natives, and its constant presence
in all religious buildings and ceremonies, was the principal
subject of their amazement; and indeed nowhere--not even in India
and Egypt--was this symbol held in more profound veneration than
amongst the primitive tribes of the American continents, while
the meaning underlying its worship was identical. In the west,
as in the east, the cross was the symbol of life-sometimes of
life physical, more often of life eternal.
In like manner in both hemispheres the worship of the sun-disk
or circle, and of the serpent, was universal, and more surprising
still is the similarity of the word signifying "God"
in the principal languages of east and west. Compare the Sanscrit
"Dyaus" or "Dyaus-pitar," the Greek, "Theos"
and Zeus, the Latin "Deus" and "Jupiter,"
the Keltic "Dia" and "Ta," pronounced "Thyah"
(seeming to bear affinity to the Egyptian Tau), the Jewish "Jah"
or "Yah" and lastly the Mexican "Teo" or
"Zeo."
Baptismal rites were practised by all nations. In Babylon
and Egypt the candidates for initiation in the Mysteries were
first baptized. Tertullian in his De Baptismo says that
they were promised in consequence "regeneration and the
pardon of all their perjuries." The Scandinavian nations
practised baptism of new-born children; and when we turn to Mexico
and Peru we find infant baptism there as a solemn ceremonial,
consisting of water sprinkling, the sign of the cross, and prayers
for the washing away of sin.[1][2]
In addition to baptism, the tribes of Mexico, Central America
and Peru resembled the nations of the old world in their rites
of confession, absolution, fasting, and marriage before priests
by joining hands. They had even a ceremony resembling the Eucharist,
in which cakes marked with the Tau (an Egyptian form of cross)
were eaten, the people calling them the flesh of their God. These
exactly resemble the sacred cakes of Egypt and other eastern
nations. Like these nations, too, the people of the new world
had monastic orders, male and female, in which broken vows were
punished with death. Like the Egyptians they embalmed their dead,
they worshipped sun, moon and planets, but over and above
[1. See Humboldt's Mexican Researches
and Prescott's Mexico.
2. For a fuller description of Baptismal Rites see W. Williamson's
"The Great Law, " chap. "Sacraments and
Blood Covenants.]
these adored a Deity "omnipresent, who knoweth all things
... invisible, incorporeal, one God of perfect perfection."[1]
They too had their virgin-mother goddess, "Our Lady"
whose son, the "Lord of Light," was called the "Saviour,"
bearing an accurate correspondence to Isis, Beltis and the many
other virgin - goddesses of the east with their divine sons.
Their rites of sun and fire worship closely resembled those
of the early Celts of Britain and Ireland, and like the latter
they claimed to be the "children of the sun." An ark
or argha was one of the universal sacred symbols which we find
alike in India, Chaldea, Assyria, Egypt, Greece and amongst the
Celtic peoples. Lord Kingsborough in his Mexican Antiquities[2]
says: "As among the Jews the ark was a sort of portable
temple in which the deity was supposed to be continually present,
so among the Mexicans, the Cherokees and the Indians of Michoacan
and Honduras, an ark was held in the highest veneration and was
considered an object too sacred to be touched by any but the
priests."
As to religious architecture, we find on both sides of the
Atlantic that one of the earliest sacred buildings is the pyramid.
Doubtful as are the uses for which these structures were originally
intended, one thing is clear, that they were closely connected
with some religious idea or group of ideas. The identity of design
in the pyramids of Egypt and those of Mexico
[1. See Sahagun's Historia de Nueva España,
lib. vi.
2. Vol. viii, p. 250.]
and Central America is too striking to be a mere coincidence.
True some--the greater number--of the American pyramids are of
the truncated or flattened form, yet according to Bancroft and
others, many of those found in Yucatan, and notably those near
Palenque, are pointed at the top in true Egyptian fashion, while
on the other hand we have some of the Egyptian pyramids of the
stepped and flattened type. Cholula has been compared to the
groups of Dachour, Sakkara and the step pyramid of Médourn.
Alike in orientation, in structure, and even in their internal
galleries and chambers, these mysterious monuments of the east
and of the west stand as witnesses to some common source whence
their builders drew their plan.
The vast remains of cities and temples in Mexico and Yucatan
also strangely resemble those of Egypt, the ruins of Teotihuacan
having frequently been compared to those of Karnak. The "false
arch"--horizontal courses of stone, each slightly overlapping
the other--is found to be identical in Central America, in the
oldest buildings of Greece, and in Etruscan remains. The mound
builders of both eastern and western continents formed similar
tumuli over their dead, and laid the bodies in similar stone
coffins. Both continents have their great serpent-mounds; compare
that of Adams Co., Ohio, with the fine serpent-mound discovered
in Argyleshire, or the less perfect specimen at Avebury in Wilts.
The very carving and decoration of the temples of America, Egypt
and India have much in common, while some of the mural decorations
are absolutely identical.
Testimony of Ancient Writers
It only remains now to summarize some of the evidence obtainable
from ancient writers, from early race traditions, and from archaic
flood-legends.
Aelian in his Varia Historia,[1] states that Theopompus
(400 B.C.) recorded an interview between the King of Phrygia
and Silenus, in which the latter referred to the existence of
a great continent beyond the Atlantic, larger than Asia, Europe
and Libya together.
Proclus quotes an extract from an ancient writer who refers
to the islands in the sea beyond the Pillars of Hercules (Straits
of Gibraltar), and says that the inhabitants of one of these
islands had a tradition from their ancestors of an extremely
large island called Atlantis, which for a long time ruled over
all the islands of the Atlantic Ocean.
Marcellus speaks of seven islands in the Atlantic, and states
that their inhabitants preserve the memory of a much greater
island, Atlantis, "which had for a long time exercised dominion
over the smaller ones."
Diodorus Siculus relates that the Phoenicians discovered "a
large island in the Atlantic Ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercules
several days' sail from the coast of Africa."
But the greatest authority on this subject is Plato. In the
Timaeus he refers to the island continent, while the Critias
or Atlanticus is nothing less than a detailed account
of the history, arts, manners and customs of
[1. Lib. iii., ch. xviii.]
the people. In the Timaeus he refers to "a mighty
warlike power, rushing from the Atlantic sea and spreading itself
with hostile fury over all Europe and Asia. For at that time
the Atlantic sea was navigable and had an island before that
mouth which is called by you the Pillars of Hercules. But this
island was greater than both Libya and all Asia together, and
afforded an easy passage to other neighbouring islands, as it
was likewise easy to pass from those islands to all the continents
which border on this Atlantic sea."
There is so much of value in the Critias that it is
not easy to choose, but the following extract is given, as it
bears on the material resources of the country: "They had
likewise everything provided for them which both in a city and
every other place is sought after as useful for the purposes
of life. And they were supplied indeed with many things from
foreign countries, on account of their extensive empire; but
the island afforded them the greater part of everything of which
they stood in need. In the first place the island supplied them
with such things as are dug out of mines in a solid state, and
with such as are melted: and orichalcum, which is now but seldom
mentioned, but then was much celebrated, was dug out of the earth
in many parts of the island, and was considered as the most honourable
of all metals except gold. Whatever, too, the woods afforded
for builders the island produced in abundance. There were likewise
sufficient pastures there for tame and savage animals; together
with a prodigious number of elephants. For there were pastures
for all such animals as are fed in lakes and rivers; on mountains
and in plains. And in like manner there was sufficient aliment
for the largest and most voracious kind of animals. Besides this,
whatever of odoriferous the earth nourishes at present, whether
roots, or grass, or wood, or juices, or gums, flowers or fruits-these
the island produced and produced them well."
The Gauls possessed traditions of Atlantis which were collected
by the Roman historian, Timagenes, who lived in the first century,
B.C. Three distinct peoples apparently dwelt in Gaul. First,
the indigenous population (probably the remains of a Lemurian
race), second, the invaders from the distant island of Atlantis,
and third, the Aryan Gauls.*
The Toltecs of Mexico traced themselves back to a starting-point
called Atlan or Aztlan; the Aztecs also claimed to come from
Aztlan.[2]
The Popul Vuh[3] speaks of a visit paid by three sons of the
King of the Quiches to a land "in the east on the shores
of the sea whence their fathers had come," from which they
brought back amongst other things "a system of writing."[4]
Amongst the Indians of North America there is a very general
legend that their forefathers came from a land "toward the
sun-rising." The Iowa and Dakota Indians, according to Major
J. Lind, believed that "all the tribes of Indians were formerly
one and dwelt together on an island . . . towards the
sunrise." They crossed the sea from thence "in huge
[1. See Pre-Adamites, p. 380.
2. See Bancroft's Native Races, vol. v. pp. 221 and
321.
3. Page 294.
4. See also Bancroft, Vol. V., p. 553.]
skiffs in which the Dakotas of old floated for weeks, finally
gaining dry land."
The Central American books state that a part of the American
continent extended far into the Atlantic Ocean, and that this
region was destroyed by a series of frightful cataclysms at long
intervals apart. Three of these are frequently referred to.[1]
It is a curious confirmation that the Celts of Britain had a
legend that part of their country once extended far into the
Atlantic and was destroyed. Three catastrophes are mentioned
in the Welsh traditions.
Quetzalcoatl, the Mexican Deity, is said to have come from
"the distant east." He is described as a white man
with a flowing beard. (N.B.-The Indians of North and South America
are beardless.) He originated letters and regulated the Mexican
calendar. After having taught them many peaceful arts and lessons
he sailed away to the east in a canoe made of serpent
skins.[2] The same story is told of Zamna, the author of civilization
in Yucatan.
The marvellous uniformity of the flood legends on all parts
of the globe, alone remains to be dealt with. Whether these are
some archaic versions of the story of the lost Atlantis and its
submergence, or whether they are echoes of a great cosmic parable
once taught and held in reverence in some common centre whence
they have reverberated throughout the world, does not immediately
concern us. Sufficient for our purpose is it to show the universal
acceptation of these legends. It would be needless waste of time
and space
[1. See Baldwin's Ancient America,
p. 176.
2. See Short's North Americans of Antiquity, pp. 268-271.]
to go over these flood stories one by one. Suffice it to say,
that in India, Chaldea, Babylon, Media, Greece, Scandinavia,
China, amongst the Jews and amongst the Celtic tribes of Britain,
the legend is absolutely identical in all essentials. Now turn
to the west and what do we find? The same story in its every
detail preserved amongst the Mexicans (each tribe having its
own version), the people of Guatemala, Honduras, Peru, and almost
every tribe of North American Indians. It is puerile to suggest
that mere coincidence can account for this fundamental identity.
The following quotation from Le Plongeon's translation of
the famous Troano MS., which may be seen in the British Museum,
will appropriately bring this part of the subject to a close.
The Troano MS. appears to have been written about 3,500 years
ago, among the Mayas of Yucatan, and the following is its description
of the catastrophe that submerged the island of Poseidonis:--"In
the year 6 Kan, on the 11th Muluc in the month Zac, there occurred
terrible earthquakes, which continued without interruption until
the 13th Chuen. The country of the hills of mud, the land of
Mu was sacrificed: being twice upheaved it suddenly disappeared
during the night, the basin being continually shaken by volcanic
forces. Being confined, these caused the land to sink and to
r' se several times and in various places. At last the surface
gave way and ten countries were torn asunder and scattered. Unable
to stand the force of the convulsions, they sank with their 64,000,000
of inhabitants 8060 years before the writing of this book."
The Occult Records
But enough space has now been devoted to the fragments of
evidence--all more or less convincing--which the world so far
has been in possession of. Those interested in pursuing any special
line of investigation are referred to the various works above
named or quoted.
The subject in hand must now be dealt with. Drawn as they
have been from contemporary records which were compiled in and
handed down through the ages we have to deal with, the facts
here collected are based upon no assumption or conjecture. The
writer may have failed fully to comprehend the facts, and so
may have partially misstated them. But the original records are
open for investigation to the duly qualified, and those who are
disposed to undertake the necessary training may obtain the powers
to check and verify.
But even were all the occult records open to our inspection,
it should be realized how fragmentary must be the sketch that
attempts to summarize in a few pages the history of races and
of nations extending over at least many hundreds of thousands
of years. However, any details on such a subject--disconnected
though they are--must be new, and should therefore be interesting
to the world at large.
Among the records above referred to there are maps of the
world at various periods of its history and it has been the great
privilege of the writer to be allowed to obtain copies--more
or less complete--of four of these. All four represent Atlantis
and the surrounding lands at different epochs of their history.
These epochs correspond approximately with the periods that
lay between the catastrophes referred to above, and into the
periods thus represented by the four maps the records of the
Atlantean Race will naturally group themselves.
First Map Period
Before beginning the history of the race, however, a few remarks
may be made about the geography of the four different epochs.
The first map represents the land surface of the earth as
it existed about a million years ago, when the Atlantean Race
was at its height, and before the first great submergence took
place about 800,000 years ago. The continent of Atlantis itself,
it will be observed, extended from a point a few degrees east
of Iceland to about the site now occupied by Rio de Janeiro,
in South America. Embracing Texas and the Gulf of Mexico, the
Southern and Eastern States of America, up to and including Labrador,
it stretched across the ocean to our own islands--Scotland and
Ireland, and a small portion of the north of England forming
one of its promontories--while its equatorial lands embraced
Brazil and the whole stretch of ocean to the African Gold Coast.
Scattered fragments of what eventually became the continents
of Europe, Africa and America, as well as remains of the still
older, and once widespread continent of Lemuria, are also shown
on this map. The remains of the still older Hyperborean continent
which was inhabited by the Second Root Race, are also given,
and like Lemuria, coloured blue.
Second Map Period
As will be seen from the second map the catastrophe of 800,000
years ago caused very great changes in the land distribution
of the globe. The great continent is now shorn of its northern
regions, and its remaining portion has been still further rent.
The now growing American continent is separated by a chasm from
its parent continent of Atlantis, and this no longer comprises
any of the lands now existing, but occupies the bulk of the Atlantic
basin from about 50' north to a few degrees south of the equator.
The subsidences and upheavals in other parts of the world have
also been considerable--the British Islands for example, now
being part of a huge island which also embraces the Scandinavian
peninsula, the North of France, and all the intervening and some
of the surrounding seas. The dimensions of the remains of Lemuria
it will be observed, have been further curtailed, while Europe,
Africa and America have received accretions of territory.
Third Map Period
The third map shows the results of the catastrophe which took
place about 200,000 years ago. With the exception of the rents
in the continents both of Atlantis and America, and the submergence
of Egypt, it will be seen how relatively unimportant were the
subsidences and upheavals at this epoch, indeed the fact that
this catastrophe has not always been considered as one of the
great ones, is apparent from the quotation already given from
the sacred book of the Guatemalans--three great ones only being
there mentioned. The Scandinavian island however, appears now
as joined to the mainland. The two islands into which Atlantis
was now split were known by the names of Ruta and Daitya.
Fourth Map Period
The stupendous character of the natural convulsion that took
place about 80,000 years ago, will be apparent from the fourth
map. Daitya, the smaller and more southerly of the islands, has
almost entirely disappeared, while of Ruta there only remains
the relatively small island of Poseidonis. This map was compiled
about 75,000 years ago, and it no doubt fairly represents the
land surface of the earth from that period onwards till the final
submergence of Poseidonis in 9564 B.C., though during that period
minor changes must have taken place. It will be noted that the
land outlines had then begun to assume roughly the same appearance
they do to-day, though the British Islands were still joined
to the European continent, while the Baltic Sea was nonexistent,
and the Sahara desert then formed part of the ocean floor.
The Manus
Some reference to the very mystical subject of the Manus is
a necessary preliminary to the consideration of the origin of
a Root Race. In Transaction No. 26, of the London Lodge, reference
was made to the work done by these very exalted Beings, which
embraces not only the planning of the types of the whole Manvantara,
but the superintending the formation and education of each Root
Race in turn. The following quotation refers to these arrangements:
"There are also Manus whose duty it is to act in a similar
way for each Root Race on each Planet of the Round, the Seed
Manu planning the improvement in type which each successive Root
Race inaugurates, and the Root Manu actually incarnating amongst
the new Race as a leader and teacher to direct the development
and ensure the improvement."
The way in which the necessary segregation of the picked specimens
is effected by the Manu in charge, and his subsequent care of
the growing community, may be dealt with in a future Transaction.
The merest reference to the mode of procedure is all that is
necessary here.
It was of course from one of the sub-races of the Third Root
Race on the continent which is spoken of as Lemuria, that the
segregation was effected which was destined to produce the Fourth
Root Race.
Following where necessary the history of the Race through
the four periods represented by the four maps, it is proposed
to divide the subject under the following headings:
1. Origin and territorial location of the different sub-races.
2. The political institutions they respectively evolved.
3. Their emigrations to other parts of the world.
4. The arts and sciences they developed.
5. The manners and customs they adopted.
6. The rise and decline amongst them of religious ideas.
The Sub-Races
The names of the different sub-races must first be given--
1. Rmoahal.
2. Tlavatli.
3. Toltec.
4. First Turanian.
5. Original Semite.
6. Akkadian.
7. Mongolian.
Some explanation is necessary as to the principle on which
these names are chosen. Wherever modern ethnologists have discovered
traces of one of these sub-races, or even identified a small
part of one, the name they have given to it is used for the sake
of simplicity, but in the case of the first two sub-races there
are hardly any traces left for science to seize upon, so the
names by which they called themselves have been adopted.
The Rmoahal Race
Now the period represented by Map No. 1 shows the land surface
of the earth as it existed about one million years ago, but the
Rmoahal race came into existence between four and five million
years ago, at which period large portions of the great southern
continent of Lemuria still existed, while the continent of Atlantis
had not assumed the proportions it ultimately attained. It was
upon a spur of this Lemurian land that the Rmoahal race was born.
Roughly it may be located at latitude 7º north and longitude
5º west, which a reference to any modern atlas will show
to lie on the Ashanti coast of to-day. It was a hot, moist country,
where huge antediluvian animals lived in reedy swamps and dank
forests. The Rmoahals were a dark race--their complexion being
a sort of mahogany black. Their height in these early days was
about ten or twelve feet--truly a race of giants--but through
the centuries their stature gradually dwindled, as did that of
all the races in turn, and later on we shall find they had shrunk
to the stature of the "Furfooz man." They ultimately
migrated to the southern shores of Atlantis, were they were engaged
in constant warfare with the sixth and seventh sub-races of the
Lemurians then inhabiting that country. A large part of the tribe
eventually moved north, while the remainder settled down and
intermarried with these black Lemurian aborigines. The result
was that at the period we are dealing with--the first map period--there
was no pure blood left in the south, and as we shall see it was
from these dark races who inhabited the equatorial provinces,
and the extreme south of the continent, that the Toltec conquerors
subsequently drew their supplies of slaves. The remainder of
the race, however, reached the extreme north-eastern promontories
contiguous with Iceland, and dwelling there for untold generations,
they gradually became lighter in colour, until at the date of
the first map period we find them a tolerably fair people. Their
descendants eventually became subject, at least nominally, to
the Semite kings.
That they dwelt there for untold generations is not meant
to imply that their occupation was unbroken, for stress of circumstances
at intervals of time drove them south. The cold of the glacial
epochs of course operated alike with the other races, but the
few words to be said on this subject may as well come in here.
Without going into the question of the different rotations
which this earth performs, or the varying degrees of eccentricity
of its orbit, a combination of which is sometimes held to be
the cause of the glacial epochs, it is a fact--and one already
recognized by some astronomers--that a minor glacial epoch occurs
about every 30,000 years. But in addition to these, there were
two occasions in the history of Atlantis when the ice-belt desolated
not merely the northern regions, but, invading the bulk of the
continent, forced all life to migrate to equatorial lands. The
first of these was in process during the Rmoahal days, about
3,000,000 years ago, while the second took place in the Toltec
ascendency about 850,000 years ago.
With reference to all glacial epochs it should be stated that
though the inhabitants of northern lands were forced to settle
during the winter far south of the ice-belt, there yet were great
districts to which in summer they could return, and where for
the sake of the hunting they encamped until driven south again
by the winter cold.
The Tlavatli Race
The place of origin of the Tlavatli or 2nd sub-race was an
island off the west coast of Atlantis. The spot is marked on
the 1st map with the figure 2. Thence they spread into Atlantis
proper, chiefly across the middle of the continent, gradually
however tending northwards towards the stretch of coast facing
the promontory of Greenland. Physically they were a powerful
and hardy race of a red-brown colour, but they were not quite
so tall as the Rmoahals whom they drove still further north.
They were always a mountain-loving people, and their chief settlements
were in the mountainous districts of the interior, which a comparison
of Maps 1 and 4 will show to be approximately coterminous with
what ultimately became the island of Poseidonis. At this first
map period they also--as just stated--peopled the northern coasts,
whilst a mixture of Tlavatli and Toltec race inhabited the western
islands, which subsequently formed part of the American continent.
The Toltec Race
We now come to the Toltec or 3rd sub-race. This was a magnificent
development. It ruled the whole continent of Atlantis for thousands
of years in great material power and glory. Indeed so dominant
and so endowed with vitality was this race that intermarriages
with the following sub-races failed to modify the type, which
still remained essentially Toltec; and hundreds of thousands
of years later we find one of their remote family races ruling
magnificently in Mexico and Peru, long ages before their degenerate
descendants were conquered by the fiercer Aztec tribes from the
north. The complexion of this race was also a red-brown, but
they were redder or more copper-coloured than the Tlavatli. They
also were a tall race, averaging about eight feet during the
period of their ascendency, but of course dwindling, as all races
did, to the dimensions that are common to-day. The type was an
improvement on the two previous sub-races, the features being
straight and well marked, not unlike the ancient Greek. The approximate
birthplace of this race may be seen, marked with the figure 3,
on the first map. It lay near the west coast of Atlantis about
latitude 30º North, and the whole of the surrounding country,
embracing the bulk of the west coast of the continent, was peopled
with a pure Toltec race. But as we shall see when dealing with
the political organization, their territory eventually extended
right across the continent, and it was from their great capital
on the eastern coast that the Toltec emperors held their almost
world-wide sway.
The First Turanian Race
The Turanian or 4th sub-race had their origin on the eastern
side of the continent, south of the mountainous district inhabited
by the Tlavatli people. This spot is marked 4 on Map No. 1. The
Turanians were colonists from the earliest days, and great numbers
migrated to the lands lying to the east of Atlantis. They were
never a thoroughly dominant race on the mother- continent, though
some of their tribes and family races became fairly powerful.
The great central regions of the continent lying west and south
of the Tlavatli mountainous district was their special though
not their exclusive home, for they shared these lands with the
Toltecs. The curious political and social experiments made by
this sub-race will be dealt with later on.
The Original Semite Race
As regards the original Semite or 5th sub-race ethnologists
have been somewhat confused, as indeed it is extremely natural
they should be considering the very insufficient data they have
to go upon. This sub-race had its origin in the mountainous country
which formed the more southerly of the two northeastern peninsulas
which, as we have seen, is now represented by Scotland, Ireland,
and some of the surrounding seas. The site is marked 5 in Map
No. 1. in this least desirable portion of the great continent
the race grew and flourished, for centuries maintaining its independence
against aggressive southern kings, till the time came for it
in turn to spread abroad and colonize. It must be remembered
that by the time the Semites rose to power hundreds of thousands
of years had passed and the 2nd map period had been reached.
They were a turbulent, discontented race, always at war with
their neighbours, especially with the then growing power of the
Akkadians.
The Akkadian Race
The birthplace of the Akkadian or 6th sub-race will be found
on Map No. 2 (marked there with the figure 6), for it was after
the great catastrophe of 800,000 years ago that this race first
came into existence. It took its rise in the land east of Atlantis,
about the middle of the great peninsula whose southeastern extremity
stretched out towards the old continent. The spot may be located
approximately at latitude 42º North and longitude 10º
East. They did not for long, however, confine themselves to the
land of their birth, but overran the now diminished continent
of Atlantis. They fought with the Semites in many battles both
on land and sea, and very considerable fleets were used on both
sides. Finally about 100,000 years ago they completely vanquished
the Semites, and from that time onwards an Akkadian dynasty was
set up in the old Semite capital, and ruled the country wisely
for several hundred years. They were a great trading, sea-going
and colonizing people, and they established many centres of communication
with distant lands.
The Mongolian Race
The Mongolian or 7th sub-race seems to be the only one that
had absolutely no touch with the mother-continent. Having its
origin on the plains of Tartary (marked No. 7 on the second map)
at about latitude 63º North and longitude 140º East,
it was directly developed from descendants of the Turanian race,
which it gradually supplanted over the greater part of Asia.
This sub-race multiplied exceedingly, and even at the present
day a majority of the earth's inhabitants technically belong
to it, though many of its divisions are so deeply coloured with
the blood of earlier races as to be scarcely distinguishable
from them.
Political Institutions
In such a summary as this it would be impossible to describe
how each sub-race was further sub-divided into nations, each
having its distinct type and characteristics. All that can be
here attempted is to sketch in broad outline the varying political
institutions throughout the great epochs of the race.
While recognizing that each sub-race as well as each Root
Race is destined to stand in some respects at a higher level
than the one before it, the cyclic nature of the development
must be recognized as leading the race like the man through the
various phases of infancy, youth, and manhood back to the infancy
of old age again. Evolution necessarily means ultimate progress,
even though the turning back of Its ascending spiral may seem
to make the history of politics or of religion a record not merely
of development and progress but also of degradation and decay.
In making the statement therefore that the 1st sub-race started
under the most perfect government conceivable, it must be understood
that this was owing to the necessities of their childhood, not
to the merits of their matured manhood. For the Rmoahals were
incapable of developing any plan of settled government, nor did
they ever reach even as high a point of civilization as the 6th
and 7th Lemurian sub-races. But the Manu who effected the segregation
actually incarnated in the race and ruled it as king. Even when
he no longer took visible part in the government of the race,
Adept or Divine rulers were, when the times required it, still
provided for the infant community. As students of The Secret
Doctrine know, our humanity had not then reached the stage
of development necessary to produce fully initiated Adepts. The
rulers above referred to, including the Manu himself, were therefore
necessarily the product of evolution on other systems of worlds.
The Tlavatli people showed some signs of advance in the art
of government. Their various tribes or nations were ruled by
chiefs or kings who generally received their authority by acclamation
of the people. Naturally the most powerful individuals and greatest
warriors were so chosen. A considerable empire was eventually
established among them, in which one king became the nominal
head, but his suzerainty consisted rather in titular honour than
in actual authority.
It was the Toltec race who developed the highest civilization
and organised the most powerful empire of any of the Atlantean
peoples, and it was then that the principle of heredity succession
was for the first time established. The race was at first divided
into a number of petty independent kingdoms, constantly at war
with each other, and all at war with the Lemurio-Rmoahals of
the south. These were gradually conquered and made subject peoples--many
of their tribes being reduced to slavery. About one million years
ago, however, these separate kingdoms united in a great federation
with a recognized emperor at its head. This was of course inaugurated
by great wars, but the outcome was peace and prosperity for the
race.
It must be remembered that humanity was still for the most
part possessed of psychic attributes, and by this time the most
advanced had undergone the necessary training in the occult schools,
and had attained various stages of initiation--some even reaching
to Adeptship. Now the second of these emperors was an Adept,
and for thousands of years the Divine dynasty ruled not only
all the kingdoms into which Atlantis was divided but the islands
on the West and the southern portion of the adjacent land lying
to the east. When necessary, this dynasty was recruited from
the Lodge of Initiates, but as a rule the power was handed down
from father to son, all being more or less qualified, and the
son in some cases receiving a further degree at the hands of
his father. During all this period these Initiate rulers retained
connection with the Occult Hierarchy which governs the world,
submitting to its laws, and acting in harmony with its plans.
This was the golden age of the Toltec race. The government was
just and beneficent; the arts and sciences were cultivated--indeed
the workers in these fields, guided as they were by occult knowledge,
achieved tremendous results; religious belief and ritual were
still comparatively pure--in fact the civilization of Atlantis
had by this time reached its height.
Sorcery versus the Good Law
After about 100,000 years of this golden age the degeneracy
and decay of the race set in. Many of the tributary kings, and
large numbers of the priests and people ceased to use their faculties
and powers in accordance with the laws made by their Divine rulers,
whose precepts and advice were now disregarded. Their connection
with the Occult Hierarchy was broken. Personal aggrandisement,
the attainment of wealth and authority, the humiliation and ruin
of their enemies became more and more the objects towards which
their occult powers were directed: and thus turned from their
lawful use, and practised for all sorts of selfish and malevolent
purposes, they inevitably led to what we must call by the name
of sorcery.
Surrounded as this word is with the odium which credulity
on the one hand and imposture on the other have, during many
centuries of superstition and ignorance, gradually caused it
to be associated, let us consider for a moment its real meaning,
and the terrible effects which its practice is ever destined
to bring on the world.
Partly through their psychic faculties, which were not
yet quenched in the depths of materiality to which the race afterwards
descended, and partly through their scientific attainments during
this culmination of Atlantean civilization, the most intellectual
and energetic members of the race gradually obtained more and
more insight into the working of Nature's laws, and more and
more control over some of her hidden forces. Now the desecration
of this knowledge and its use for selfish ends is what constitutes
sorcery. The awful effects, too, of such desecration are well
enough exemplified in the terrible catastrophes that overtook
the race. For when once the black practice was inaugurated it
was destined to spread in ever-widening circles. The higher spiritual
guidance being thus withdrawn, the Kamic principle, which being
the fourth, naturally reached its zenith during the Fourth Root
Race, asserted itself more and more in humanity. Lust, brutality
and ferocity were all on the increase, and the animal nature
in man was approaching its most degraded expression. It was a
moral question which from the very earliest times divided the
Atlantean Race into two hostile camps, and what was begun in
the Rmoahal times was terribly accentuated in the Toltec era.
The battle of Armageddon is fought over and over again in every
age of the world's history.
No longer submitting to the wise rule of the Initiate emperors,
the followers of the "black arts" rose in rebellion
and set up a rival emperor, who after much struggle and fighting
drove the white emperor from his capital, the "City of the
Golden Gates," and established himself on his throne.
The white emperor, driven northward, re-established himself
in a city originally founded by the Tlavatli on the southern
edge of the mountainous district, but which was now the seat
of one of the tributary Toltec kings. This king gladly welcomed
the white emperor and placed the city at his disposal. A few
more of the tributary kings also remained loyal to him, but most
transferred their allegiance to the new emperor reigning at the
old capital. These, however, did not long remain faithful. Constant
assertions of independence were made by the tributary kings,
and continual battles were fought in different parts of the empire,
the practice of sorcery being largely resorted to, to supplement
the powers of destruction possessed by the armies.
These events took place about 50,000 years before the first
great catastrophe.
From this time onwards things went from bad to worse. The
sorcerers used their powers more and more recklessly, and greater
and greater numbers of people acquired and practised these terrible
"black arts."
Then came the awful retribution when millions upon millions
perished. The great "City of the Golden Gates" had
by this time become a perfect den of iniquity. The waves swept
over it and destroyed its inhabitants, and the "black"
emperor and his dynasty fell to rise no more. The emperor of
the north as well as the initiated priests throughout the whole
continent had long been fully aware of the evil days at hand,
and subsequent pages will tell of the many priest-led emigrations
which preceded this catastrophe, as well as those of later date.
The continent was now terribly rent. But the actual amount
of territory submerged by no means represented the damage done,
for tidal waves swept over great tracts of land and left them
desolate swamps. Whole provinces were rendered barren, and remained
for generations in an uncultivated and desert condition.
The remaining population too had received a terrible warning.
It was taken to heart, and sorcery was for a time less prevalent
among them. A long period elapsed before any new powerful rule
was established. We shall eventually find a Semite dynasty of
sorcerers enthroned in the "City of the Golden Gates,"
but no Toltec power rose to eminence during the second map period.
There were considerable Toltec populations still, but little
of the pure blood remained on the mother continent.
On the island of Ruta however, in the third map period,
a Toltec dynasty again rose to power and ruled through its tributary
kings a large portion of the island. This dynasty was addicted
to the black craft, which it must be understood became more and
more prevalent during all the four periods, until it culminated
in the inevitable catastrophe, which to a great extent purified
the earth of the monstrous evil. It must also be borne in mind
that down to the very end when Poseidonis disappeared an Initiate
emperor or king--or at least one acknowledging the "good
law"--held sway in some part of the island continent, acting
under the guidance of the Occult Hierarchy in controlling where
possible the evil sorcerers, and in guiding and instructing the
small minority who were still willing to lead pure and wholesome
lives. In later days this "white" king was as a rule
elected by the priests-the handful, that is, who still followed
the "good law."
Little more remains to be said about the Toltecs. In Poseidonis
the population of the whole island was more or less mixed. Two
kingdoms and one small republic in the west divided the island
between them. The northern portion was ruled by an Initiate king.
In the south too the hereditary principle had given way to election
by the people. Exclusive race-dynasties were at an end, but kings
of Toltec blood occasionally rose to power both in the north
and south, the northern kingdom being constantly encroached upon
by its southern rival, and more and more of its territory annexed.
Having dealt at some length with the state of things under
the Toltecs, the leading political characteristics of the four
following sub-races need not long detain us, for none of them
reached the heights of civilization that the Toltecs did--in
fact the degeneration of the race had set in.
It seems to have been some sort of feudal system that the
natural bent of the Turanian race tended to develop. Each chief
was supreme on his own territory, and the king was only primus
inter pares. The chiefs who formed his council occasionally murdered
their king and set up one of their own number in his place. They
were a turbulent and lawless race--brutal and cruel also. The
fact that at some periods of their history regiments of women
took part in their wars is significant of the last named characteristics.
But the strange experiment they made in social life which,
but for its political origin, would more naturally have been
dealt with under "manners and customs," is the most
interesting fact in their record. Being continually worsted in
war with their Toltec neighbours, knowing themselves to be greatly
outnumbered, and desiring above all things increase of population,
laws were passed, by which every man was relieved from the direct
burden of maintaining his family. The State took charge of and
provided for the children, and they were looked upon as its property.
This naturally tended to increase the birth-rate amongst the
Turanians, and the ceremony of marriage came to be disregarded.
The ties of family life, and the feeling of parental love were
of course destroyed, and the scheme having been found to be a
failure, was ultimately given up. Other attempts at finding socialistic
solutions of economical problems which still vex us to-day, were
tried and abandoned by this race.
The original Semites, who were a quarrelsome marauding
and energetic race, always leant towards a patriarchal form of
government. Their colonists, who generally took to the nomadic
life, almost exclusively adopted this form, but as we have seen
they developed a considerable empire in the days of the second
map period, and possessed the great "City of the Golden
Gates." They ultimately, however, had to give way before
the growing power of the Akkadians.
It was in the third map period, about 100,000 years ago,
that the Akkadians finally overthrew the Semite power. The 6th
sub-race were a much more law-abiding people than their predecessors.
Traders and sailors, they lived in settled communities, and naturally
produced an oligarchical form of government. A peculiarity of
theirs, of which Sparta is the only modern example, was the dual
system of two kings reigning in one city. As a result probably
of their sea-going taste, the study of the stars became a characteristic
pursuit, and this race made great advances both in astronomy
and astrology.
The Mongolian people were an improvement on their immediate
ancestors of the brutal Turanian stock. Born as they were on
the wide steppes of Eastern Siberia, they never had any touch
with the mother-continent, and owing, doubtless, to their environment,
they became a nomadic people. More psychic and more religious
than the Turanians from whom they sprang, the form of government
towards which they gravitated required a suzerain in the background
who should be supreme both as a territorial ruler and as a chief
high priest.
Emigrations
Three causes contributed to produce emigrations. The Turanian
race, as we have seen, was from its very start imbued with the
spirit of colonizing, which it carried out on a considerable
scale. The Semites and Akkadians were also to a certain extent
colonizing races.
Then, as time went on and population tended more and more
to outrun the limits of subsistence, necessity operated with
the least well-to-do in every race alike, and drove them to seek
for a livelihood in less thickly populated countries. For it
should be realized that when the Atlanteans reached their zenith
in the Toltec era, the proportion of population to the square
mile on the continent of Atlantis probably equalled, even if
it did not exceed, our modern experience in England and Belgium.
It is at all events certain that the vacant spaces available
for colonizing were very much larger in that age than in ours,
while the total population of the world, which at the present
moment is probably not more than twelve hundred to fifteen hundred
millions, amounted in those days to the big figure of about two
thousand millions.
Lastly, there were the priest-led emigrations which took
place prior to each catastrophe--and there were many more of
these than the four great ones referred to above. The initiated
kings and priests who followed the "good law" were
aware beforehand of the impending calamities. Each one, therefore,
naturally became a centre of prophetic warning, and ultimately
a leader of a band of colonists. It may be noted here that in
later days the rulers of the country deeply resented these priest-led
emigrations, as tending to impoverish and depopulate their kingdoms,
and it became necessary for the emigrants to get on board ship
secretly during the night.
In roughly tracing the lines of emigration followed by
each sub-race in turn, we shall of necessity ultimately reach
the lands which their respective descendants to-day occupy.
For the earliest emigrations we must go back to the Rmoahal
days. It will be remembered that that portion of the race which
inhabited the northeastern coasts alone retained its purity of
blood. Harried on their southern borders and driven further north
by the Tlavatli warriors, they began to overflow to the neighbouring
land to the east, and to the still nearer promontory of Greenland.
In the second map period no pure Rmoahals were left on the then
reduced mother-continent but the northern promontory of the continent
then rising on the west was occupied by them, as well as the
Greenland cape already mentioned, and the western shores of the
great Scandinavian island. There was also a colony on the land
lying north of the central Asian sea.
Brittany and Picardy then formed part of the Scandinavian
island, while the island itself became in the third map period
part of the growing continent of Europe. Now it is in France
that remains of this race have been found in the quaternary strata,
and the brachycephalous, or round-headed specimen known as the
"Furfooz man," may be taken as a fair average of the
type of the race in its decay.
Many times forced to move south by the rigours of a glacial
epoch, many times driven north by the greed of their more powerful
neighbours, the scattered and degraded remnants of this race
may be found to-day in the modern Lapps, though even here there
was some infusion of other blood. And so it comes to pass that
these faded and stunted specimens of humanity are the lineal
descendants of the black race of giants who arose on the equatorial
lands of Lemuria well nigh five million years ago.
The Tlavatli colonists seem to have spread out towards
every point of the compass. By the time of the second map period
their descendants were settled on the western shores of the then
growing American continent (California) as well as on its extreme
southern coasts (Rio de Janeiro). We also find them occupying
the eastern shores of the Scandinavian island, while numbers
of them sailed across the ocean, rounded the coast of Africa,
and reached India. There, mixing with the indigenous Lemurian
population, they formed the Dravidian race. In later days this
in its turn received an infusion of Aryan or Fifth Race blood,
from which results the complexity of type found in India to-day.
In fact we have here a very fair example of the extreme difficulty
of deciding any question of race upon merely physical evidence,
for it would be quite possible to have Fifth Race egos incarnate
among the Brahmans, Fourth Race egos among the lower castes,
and some lingering Third Race among the hill tribes.
By the time of the fourth map period we find a Tlavatli
people occupying the southern parts of South America, from which
it may be inferred that the Patagonians probably had remote Tlavatli
ancestry.
Remains of this race, as of the Rmoahals, have been found
in the quaternary strata of Central Europe, and the dolichocephalous
"Cro-Magnon man"[1] may be taken as an average specimen
of the race in its decadence, while the "Lake-Dwellers"
of Switzerland formed an even earlier and not quite pure offshoot.
The only people who can be cited as fairly pure-blooded specimens
of the race at the present day are some of the brown tribes of
Indians of South America. The Burmese and Siamese have also Tlavatli
blood in their veins, but in their case it was
[1. Students of' geology and palaeontology
{sic} will know that these sciences regard the "Cro-Magnon
man'' as prior to the "Furfooz," and seeing that the
two races ran alongside each other for vast periods of time,
it may quite well be that the individual ''Cro-Magnon" skeleton,
though representative of the second race, was deposited in the
quarternary {sic} strata thousands of years before the individual
Furfooz man lived on the earth.]
mixed with, and therefore dominated by, the nobler stock
of one of the Aryan sub-races.
We now come to the Toltecs. It was chiefly to the West
that their emigrations tended, and the neighbouring coasts of
the American continent were in the second map period peopled
by a pure Toltec race, the greater part of those left on the
mother-continent being then of very mixed blood. It was on the
continents of North and South America that this race spread abroad
and flourished, and on which thousands of years later were established
the empires of Mexico and Peru. The greatness of these empires
is a matter of history, or at least of tradition supplemented
by such evidence as is afforded by magnificent architectural
remains. It may here be noted that while the Mexican empire was
for centuries great and powerful in all that is usually regarded
as power and greatness in our civilization of to-day, it never
reached the height attained by the Peruvians about 14,000 years
ago under their Inca sovereigns, for as regards the general well-being
of the people, the justice and beneficence of the government,
the equitable nature of the land tenure, and the pure and religious
life of the inhabitants, the Peruvian empire of those days might
be considered a traditional though faint echo of the golden age
of the Toltecs on the mother-continent of Atlantis.
The average Red Indian of North or South America is the
best representative to-day of the Toltec people, but of course
bears no comparison with the highly civilized individual of the
race at its zenith.
First Settlement in Egypt
Egypt must now be referred to, and the consideration of
this subject should let in a flood of light upon its early history.
Although the first settlement in that country was not in the
strict sense of the term a colony , it was from the Toltec race
that was subsequently drawn the first great body of emigrants
intended to mix with and dominate the aboriginal people.
In the first instance it was the transfer of a great Lodge
of Initiates. This took place about 100,000 years ago. The golden
age of the Toltecs was long past. The first great catastrophe
had taken place. The moral degradation of the people and the
consequent practice of the "black arts" were becoming
more accentuated and widely spread. Purer surroundings for the
White Lodge were needed. Egypt was isolated and was thinly peopled,
and therefore Egypt was chosen. The settlement so made answered
its purpose, and undisturbed by adverse conditions the Lodge
of Initiates for nearly 200,000 years did its work.
About 210,000 years ago, when the time was ripe, the Occult
Lodge founded an empire--the first "Divine Dynasty"
of Egypt--and began to teach the people. Then it was that the
first great body of colonists was brought from Atlantis, and
some time during the ten thousand years that led up to the second
catastrophe, the two great Pyramids of Gizeh were built, partly
to provide permanent Halls of Initiation, but also to act as
treasure-house and shrine for some great talisman of power during
the submergence which the Initiates knew to be impending. Map
No. 3 shows Egypt at that date as under water. It remained so
for a considerable period, but on its re-emergence it was again
peopled by the descendants of many of its old inhabitants who
had retired to the Abyssinian mountains (shown in Map No. 3 as
an island) as well as by fresh bands of Atlantean colonists from
various parts of the world. A considerable immigration of Akkadians
then helped to modify the Egyptian type. This is the era of the
second "Divine Dynasty" of Egypt--the rulers of the
country being again Initiated Adepts.
The catastrophe of 80,000 years ago again laid the country
under water, but this time it was only a temporary wave. When
it receded the third "Divine Dynasty"--that mentioned
by Manetho--began its rule, and it was under the early kings
of this dynasty that the great Temple of Karnak and many of the
more ancient buildings still standing in Egypt were constructed.
In fact with the exception of the two pyramids no building in
Egypt predates the catastrophe of 80,000 years ago.
The final submergence of Poseidonis sent another tidal
wave over Egypt. This too, was only a temporary calamity, but
it brought the Divine Dynasties to an end, for the Lodge of Initiates
had transferred its quarters to other lands.
Various points here left untouched have already been dealt
with in the Transaction of the London Lodge, "The Pyramids
and Stonehenge."
The Turanians who in the first map period had colonized
the northern parts of the land lying immediately to the east
of Atlantis, occupied in the second map period its southern shores
(which included the present Morocco and Algeria). We also find
them wandering eastwards, and both the east and west coasts of
the central Asian sea were Peopled by them. Bands of them ultimately
moved still further east, and the nearest approximation to the
type of this race is to-day to be found in the inland Chinese.
A curious freak of destiny must be recorded about one of their
western offshoots. Dominated all through the centuries by their
more powerful Toltec neighbours, it was yet reserved for a small
branch of the Turanian stock to conquer and replace the last
great empire that the Toltecs raised, for the brutal and barely
civilized Aztecs were of pure Turanian blood.
The Semite emigrations were of two kinds, first, those
which were controlled by the natural impulse of the race: second,
that special emigration which was effected under the direct guidance
of the Manu; for, strange as it may seem, it was not from the
Toltecs but from this lawless and turbulent, though vigorous
and energetic, sub-race that was chosen the nucleus destined
to be developed into our great Fifth or Aryan Race. The reason,
no doubt, lay in the Mânasic characteristic with which
the number five is always associated. The sub-race of that number
was inevitably developing its physical brain power and intellect,
although at the expense of the psychic perceptions, while that
same development of intellect to infinitely higher levels is
at once the glory and the destined goal of our Fifth Root Race.
Dealing first with the natural emigrations we find that
in the second map period while still leaving powerful nations
on the mother continent, the Semites had spread both west and
east--west to the lands now forming the United States, and thus
accounting for the Semitic type to be found in some of the Indian
races, and east to the northern shores of the neighbouring continent,
which combined all there then was of Europe, Africa and Asia.
The type of the ancient Egyptians, as well as of other neighbouring
nations, was to some extent modified by this original Semite
blood; but with the exception of the Jews, the only representatives
of comparatively unmixed race at the present day are the lighter
coloured Kabyles of the Algerian mountain.
The tribes resulting from the segregation effected by the
Manu for the formation of the new Root Race eventually found
their way to the southern shores of the Central Asian sea, and
there the first great Aryan kingdom was established. When the
Transaction dealing with the origin of a Root Race comes to be
written, it will be seen that many of the peoples we are accustomed
to call Semitic are really Aryan in blood. The world will also
be enlightened as to what constitutes the claim of the Hebrews
to be considered a "chosen people." Shortly it may
be stated that they constitute an abnormal and unnatural link
between the Fourth and Fifth Root Races {sic}.[1]
The Akkadians, though eventually becoming supreme rulers
on the mother continent of Atlantis, owed their birthplace as
we have seen in the second map period, to the neighbouring continent-that
part occupied by the basin of the Mediterranean
[1. See W. Williamson's The Great Law,
pp. 243-5.]
about the present island of Sardinia being their special
home. From this centre they spread eastwards, occupying what
eventually became the shores of the Levant, and reaching as far
as Persia and Arabia. As we have seen, they also helped to people
Egypt. The early Etruscans, the Phoenicians, including the Carthaginians
and the Shumero-Akkads, were branches of this race, while the
Basques of to-day have probably more of the Akkadian than of
any other blood which flows in their veins.
Stonehenge
A reference to the early inhabitants of our own islands
may appropriately be made here, for it was in the early Akkadian
days, about 100,000 years ago, that the colony of Initiates who
founded Stonehenge landed on these shores--"these shores"
being, of course, the shores of the Scandinavian part of the
continent of Europe, as shown in Map No. 3. The initiated priests
and their followers appear to have belonged to a very early strain
of the Akkadian race--they were taller, fairer, and longer headed
than the aborigines of the country, who were a very mixed race,
but mostly degenerate remnants of the Rmoahals. As readers of
the Transaction of the London Lodge on the "Pyramids and
Stonehenge," will know, the rude simplicity of Stonehenge
was intended as a protest against the extravagant ornament and
over-decoration of the existing temples in Atlantis, where the
debased worship of their own images was being carried on by the
inhabitants.
The Mongolians, as we have seen, never had any touch with
the mother-continent. Born on the wide plains of Tartary, their
emigrations for long found ample scope within those regions;
but more than once tribes of Mongol descent have overflowed from
northern Asia to America, across Behring's Straits, and the last
of such emigrations--that of the Kitans, some 1,300 years ago--has
left traces which some western savants have been able to follow.
The presence of Mongolian blood in some tribes of North American
Indians has also been recognized by various writers on ethnology.
The Hungarians and Malays are both known to be offshoots of this
race, ennobled in the one case by a strain of Aryan blood, degraded
in the other by mixture with the effete Lemurians. But the interesting
fact about the Mongolians is that its last family race is still
in full force-it has not in fact yet reached its zenith--and
the Japanese nation has still got history to give to the world.
[1]
Arts and Sciences
It must primarily be recognized that our own Aryan race
has naturally achieved far greater results in almost every direction
than did the Atlanteans, but even where they failed to reach
our level, the records of what they accomplished are of interest
as representing the high water mark which their tide of
[1. Since the above was written the Russo-Japanese
war has taken place.]
civilization reached. On the other hand, the character
of the scientific achievements in which they did outstrip us
are of so dazzling a nature, that bewilderment at such unequal
development is apt to be the feeling left.
The arts and sciences, as practised by the first two races,
were, of course, crude in the extreme, but we do not propose
to follow the progress achieved by each sub-race separately.
The history of the Atlantean, as of the Aryan race, was interspersed
with periods of progress and of decay. Eras of culture were followed
by times of lawlessness, during which all artistic and scientific
development was lost, these again being succeeded by civilizations
reaching to still higher levels. It must naturally be with the
periods of culture that the following remarks will deal, chief
among which stands out the great Toltec era.
Architecture and sculpture, painting and music were all
practised in Atlantis. The music even at the best of times was
crude, and the instruments of the most primitive type. All the
Atlantean races were fond of colour, and brilliant hues decorated
both the insides and the outsides of their houses, but painting
as a fine art was never well established, though in the later
days some kind of drawing and painting was taught in the schools.
Sculpture, on the other hand, which was also taught in the schools,
was widely practised, and reached great excellence. As we shall
see later on under the head of "Religion" it became
customary for every man who could afford it to place in one of
the temples an image of himself. These were sometimes carved
in wood or in hard black stone like basalt, but among the wealthy
it became the fashion to have their statues cast in one of the
precious metals, aurichalcum, gold or silver. A very fair resemblance
of the individual usually resulted, while in some cases a striking
likeness was achieved.
Architecture
Architecture, however, was naturally the most widely practised
of the arts. Their buildings were massive structures of gigantic
proportions. The dwelling houses in the cities were not, as ours
are, closely crowded together in streets. Like their country
houses some stood in their own garden grounds, others were separated
by plots of common land, but all were isolated structures. In
the case of houses of any importance four blocks of building
surrounded a central courtyard, in the centre of which generally
stood one of the fountains whose number in the "City of
the Golden Gates" gained for it the second appellation of
the "City of Waters." There was no exhibition of goods
for sale as in modern streets. All transactions of buying and
selling took place privately, except at stated times, when large
public fairs were held in the open spaces of the cities. But
the characteristic feature of the Toltec house was the tower
that rose from one of its corners or from the centre of one of
the blocks. A spiral staircase built outside led to the upper
stories, and a pointed dome terminated the tower--this upper
portion being very commonly used as an observatory. As already
stated the houses were decorated with bright colours. Some were
ornamented with carvings, others with frescoes or painted patterns.
The window-spaces were filled with some manufactured article
similar to, but less transparent than, glass. The interiors were
not furnished with the elaborate detail of our modern dwellings,
but the life was highly civilized of its kind.
The temples were huge halls resembling more than anything
else the gigantic piles of Egypt, but built on a still more stupendous
scale. The pillars supporting the roof were generally square,
seldom circular. In the days of the decadence the aisles were
surrounded with innumerable chapels in which were enshrined the
statues of the more important inhabitants. These side shrines
indeed were occasionally of such considerable size as to admit
a whole retinue of priests, whom some specially great man might
have in his service for the ceremonial worship of his image.
Like the private houses the temples too were never complete without
the dome-capped towers, which of course were of corresponding
size and magnificence. These were used for astronomical observations
and for sun-worship.
The precious metals were largely used in the adornment
of the temples, the interiors being often not merely inlaid but
plated with gold. Gold and silver were highly valued, but as
we shall see later on when the subject of the currency is dealt
with, the uses to which they were put were entirely artistic
and had nothing to do with coinage, while the great quantities
that were then produced by the chemists--or as we should now-a-days
call them alchemists--may be said to have taken them out of the
category of the precious metals. This power of transmutation
of metals was not universal, but it was so widely possessed that
enormous quantities were made. In fact the production of the
wished-for metals may be regarded as one of the industrial enterprises
of those days by which these alchemists gained their living.
Gold was admired even more than silver, and was consequently
produced in much greater quantity.
Education
A few words on the subject of language will fitly prelude
a consideration of the training in the schools and colleges of
Atlantis. During the first map period Toltec was the universal
language, not only throughout the continent but in the western
islands and that part of the eastern continent which recognized
the emperor's rule. Remains of the Rmoahal and Tlavath speech
survived it is true in out-of-the-way parts, just as the Celtic
and Cymric speech survives to-day among us in Ireland and Wales.
The Tlavatli tongue was the basis used by the Turanians, who
introduced such modifications that an entirely different language
was in time produced; while the Semites and Akkadians, adopting
a Toltec ground-work, modified it in their respective ways, and
so produced two divergent varieties. Thus in the later days of
Poseidonis there were several entirely different languages--all
however belonging to the agglutinative type--for it was not till
Fifth Race days that the descendants of the Semites and Akkadians
developed inflectional speech. All through the ages, however,
the Toltec language fairly maintained its purity, and the same
tongue that was spoken in Atlantis in the days of its splendour
was used, with but slight alteration, thousands of years later
in Mexico and Peru.
The schools and colleges of Atlantis in the great Toltec
days, as well as in subsequent eras of culture, were all endowed
by the State. Though every child was required to pass through
the primary schools, the subsequent training differed very widely.
The primary schools formed a sort of winnowing ground. Those
who showed real aptitude for study were, along with the children
of the dominant classes who naturally had greater abilities,
drafted into the higher schools at about the age of twelve. Reading
and writing, which were regarded as mere preliminaries, had already
been taught them in the primary schools.
But reading and writing were not considered necessary for
the great masses of the inhabitants who had to spend their lives
in tilling the land, or in handicrafts, the practice of which
was required by the community. The great majority of the children
therefore were at once passed on to the technical schools best
suited to their various abilities. Chief among these were the
agricultural schools. Some branches of mechanics also formed
part of the training, while in outlying districts and by the
sea-side hunting and fishing were naturally included. And so
the children all received the education or training which was
most appropriate for them.
The children of superior abilities, who as we have seen
had been taught to read and write, had a much more elaborate
education. The properties of plants and their healing qualities
formed an important branch of study. There were no recognized
physicians in those days--every educated man knew more or less
of medicine as well as of magnetic healing. Chemistry, mathematics
and astronomy were also taught. The training in such studies
finds its analogy among ourselves, but the object towards which
the teachers' efforts were mainly directed, was the development
of the pupil's psychic faculties and his instruction in the more
hidden forces of nature. The occult properties of plants, metals,
and precious stones, as well as the alchemical processes of transmutation,
were included in this category. But as time went on it became
more and more the personal power, which Bulwer Lytton calls vril,
and the operation of which he has fairly accurately described
in his Coming Race, that the colleges for the higher training
of the youth of Atlantis were specially occupied in developing.
The marked change which took place when the decadence of the
race set in was, that instead of merit and aptitude being regarded
as warrants for advancement to the higher grades of instruction,
the dominant classes becoming more and more exclusive allowed
none but their own children to graduate in the higher knowledge
which gave so much power.
Agriculture
In such an empire as the Toltec, agriculture naturally
received much attention. Not only were the labourers taught their
duties in technical schools, but colleges were established in
which the knowledge necessary for carrying out experiments in
the crossing both of animals and plants, was taught to fitting
students.
It is said that wheat was not evolved on this planet at
all. It was the gift of the Manu who brought it from another
globe outside our chain of worlds. But oats and some of our other
cereals are the results of crosses between wheat and the wild
grasses of the earth. Now the experiments which gave these results
were carried out in the agricultural schools of Atlantis. Of
course such experiments were guided by high knowledge. But the
most notable achievement to be recorded of the Atlantean agriculturists
was the evolution of the plantain or banana. In the original
wild state it was like an elongated melon with scarcely any pulp,
but full of seeds as a melon is. It was of course only by centuries
(if not thousands of years) of continuous selection and elimination
that the present almost seedless plant was evolved.
Among the domesticated animals of the Toltec days were
creatures that looked like very small tapirs. They naturally
fed upon roots or herbage, but like the pigs of to-day, which
they resembled in more than one particular, they were not over
cleanly, and ate whatever came in their way. Large cat-like animals
and the wolf-like ancestors of the dog might also be met about
human habitations. The Toltec carts appear to have been drawn
by creatures somewhat resembling small camels. The Peruvian llamas
of today are probably their descendants. The ancestors of the
Irish elk, too, roamed in herds about the hill sides in much
the same way as our Highland cattle do now--too wild to allow
of easy approach, but still under the control of man.
Constant experiments were made in breeding and cross-breeding
different kinds of animals, and, curious though it may seem to
us, artificial heat was largely used to force their development,
so that the results of crossing and interbreeding might be more
quickly apparent. The use, too, of different coloured lights
in the chambers where such experiments were carried on were adopted
in order to obtain varying results.
This control and moulding at will by man of the animal
forms brings us to a rather startling and very mysterious subject.
Reference has been made above to the work done by the Manus.
Now it is in the mind of the Manu that originates all improvements
in type and the potentialities latent in every form of being.
In order to work out in detail the improvements in the animal
forms, the help and co-operation of man were required. The amphibian
and reptile forms which then abounded had about run their course,
and were ready to assume the more advanced type of bird or mammal.
These forms constituted the inchoate material placed at man's
disposal, and the clay was ready to assume whatever shape the
potter's hands might mould it into. It was specially with animals
in the intermediate stage that so many of the experiments above
referred to were tried, and doubtless the domesticated animals
like the horse, which are now of such service to man, are the
result of these experiments in which the men of those days acted
in co-operation with the Manu and his ministers. But the co-operation
was too soon withdrawn. Selfishness obtained the upper hand,
and war and discord brought the Golden Age of the Toltecs to
a close. When instead of working loyally for a common end, under
the guidance of their Initiate kings, men began to prey upon
each other, the beasts which might gradually have assumed, under
the care of man, more and more useful and domesticated forms,
being left to the guidance of their own instincts naturally followed
the example of their monarch, and began to prey more and more
upon each other. Some indeed had actually already been trained
and used by men in their hunting expeditions, and thus the semi-domesticated
cat-like animals above referred to naturally became the ancestors
of the leopards and jaguars.
City of the Golden Gates
The "City of the Golden Gates" and its surroundings
must be described before we come to consider the remarkable system
by which its inhabitants were supplied with water. It lay, as
we have seen, on the east coast of the continent close to the
sea, and about 15º north of the equator. A beautifully wooded
park-like country surrounded the city. Scattered over a large
area of this were the villa residences of the wealthier classes.
To the west lay a range of mountains, from which the water supply
of the city was drawn. The city itself was built on the slopes
of a hill, which rose from the plain about 500 feet. On the summit
of this hill lay the emperor's palace and gardens, in the centre
of which welled up from the earth a never-ending stream of water,
supplying first the palace and the fountains in the gardens,
thence flowing in the four directions and falling in cascades
into a canal or moat which encompassed the palace grounds, and
thus separated them from the city which lay below on every side.
From this canal four channels led the water through four quarters
of the city to cascades which in their turn supplied another
encircling canal at a lower level. There were three such canals
forming concentric circles, the outermost and lowest of which
was still above the level of the plain. A fourth canal at this
lowest level, but on a rectangular plan, received the constantly
flowing waters, and in its turn discharged them into the sea.
The city extended over part of the plain, up to the edge of this
great outermost moat, which surrounded and defended it with a
line of waterways extending about twelve miles by ten miles square.
It will thus be seen that the city was divided into three
great belts, each hemmed in by its canals. The characteristic
feature of the upper belt that lay Just below the palace grounds,
was a circular racecourse and large public gardens. Most of the
houses of the court officials also lay on this belt, and here
also was an institution of which we have no parallel in modern
times. The term "Strangers' Home" amongst us suggests
a mean appearance and sordid surroundings, but this was a palace
where all strangers who might come to the city were entertained
as long as they might choose to stay--being treated all the time
as guests of the Government. The detached houses of the inhabitants
and the various temples scattered throughout the city occupied
the other two belts. In the days of the Toltec greatness there
seems to have been no real poverty--even the retinue of slaves
attached to most houses being well fed and clothed--but there
were a number of comparatively poor houses in the lowest belt
to the north, as well as outside the outermost canal towards
the sea. The inhabitants of this part were mostly connected with
the shipping, and their houses, though detached, were built closer
together than in other districts.
It will be seen from the above that the inhabitants had
thus a never-failing supply of pure clear water constantly coursing
through the city, while the upper belts and the emperor's palace
were protected by lines of moats, each one at a higher level
as the centre was approached. It was from a lake which lay among
the mountains to the west of the city, at an elevation of about
2,600 feet, that the supply was drawn.
Now it does not require much mechanical knowledge in order
to realise how stupendous must have been the works needed to
provide this supply, for in the days of its greatness the "City
of the Golden Gates" embraced within its four circles of
moats over two million inhabitants. No such system of water supply
has ever been attempted in Greek, Roman or modern times--indeed
it is very doubtful whether our ablest engineers, even at the
expenditure of untold wealth, could produce such a result.
Air-Ships
If the system of water supply in the "City of the
Golden Gates" was wonderful, the Atlantean methods of locomotion
must be recognised as still more marvellous, for the air-ship
or flying-machine which Keely in America, and Maxim in this country
are now attempting to produce, was then a realised fact. It was
not at any time a common means of transport. The slaves, the
servants, and the masses who laboured with their hands, had to
trudge along the country tracks, or travel in rude carts with
solid wheels drawn by uncouth animals. The air-boats may be considered
as the private carriages of those days, or rather the private
yachts, if we regard the relative number of those who possessed
them, for they must have been at all times difficult and costly
to produce. They were not as a rule built to accommodate many
persons. Numbers were constructed for only two, some allowed
for six or eight passengers. In the later days when war and strife
had brought the Golden Age to an end, battle ships that could
navigate the air had to a great extent replaced the battle ships
at sea--having naturally proved far more powerful engines of
destruction. These were constructed to carry as many as fifty,
and in some cases even up to a hundred fighting men.
The material of which the air-boats were constructed was
either wood or metal. The earlier ones were built of wood-the
boards used being exceedingly thin, but the injection of some
substance which did not add materially to the weight, while it
gave leather-like toughness, provided the necessary combination
of lightness and strength. When metal was used it was generally
an alloy--two white-coloured metals and one red one entering
into its composition. The resultant was white-coloured, like
aluminium {sic}, and even lighter in weight. Over the rough framework
of the air-boat was extended a large sheet of this metal, which
was then beaten into shape, and electrically welded where necessary.
But whether built of metal or wood their outside surface was
apparently seamless and perfectly smooth, and they shone in the
dark as if coated with luminous paint.
In shape they were boat-like, but they were invariably
decked over, for when at full speed it could not have been convenient,
even if safe, for any on board to remain on the upper deck. Their
propelling and steering gear could be brought into use at either
end.
But the all-interesting question is that relating to the
power by which they were propelled. In the earlier times it seems
to have been personal vril that supplied the motive power--whether
used in conjunction with any mechanical contrivance matters not
much--but in the later days this was replaced by a force which,
though generated in what is to us an unknown manner, operated
nevertheless through definite mechanical arrangements. This force,
though not yet discovered by science, more nearly approached
that which Keely in America used to handle than the electric
power used by Maxim. It was in fact of an etheric nature, but
though we are no nearer to the solution of this problem, its
method of operation can be described. The mechanical arrangements
no doubt differed somewhat in different vessels. The following
description is taken from an air-boat in which on one occasion
three ambassadors from the king who ruled over the northern part
of Poseidonis made the journey to the court of the southern kingdom.
A strong heavy metal chest which lay in the centre of the boat
was the generator. Thence the force flowed through two large
flexible tubes to either end of the vessel, as well as through
eight subsidiary tubes fixed fore and aft to the bulwarks. These
had double openings pointing vertically both up and down. When
the journey was about to begin the valves of the eight bulwark
tubes which pointed downwards were opened--all the other valves
being closed. The current rushing through these impinged on the
earth with such force as to drive the boat upwards, while the
air itself continued to supply the necessary fulcrum. When a
sufficient elevation was reached the flexible tube at that end
of the vessel which pointed away from the desired destination,
was brought into action, while by the partial closing of the
valves the current rushing through the eight vertical tubes was
reduced to the small amount required to maintain the elevation
reached. The great volume of current, being now directed through
the large tube pointing downwards from the stern at an angle
of about forty-five degrees, while helping to maintain the elevation,
provided also the great motive power to propel the vessel through
the air. The steering was accomplished by the discharge of the
current through this tube, for the slightest change in its direction
at once caused an alteration in the vessel's course. But constant
supervision was not required. When a long journey had to be taken
the tube could be fixed so as to need no handling till the destination
was almost reached. The maximum speed attained was about one
hundred miles an hour, the course of flight never being a straight
line, but always in the form of long waves, now approaching and
now receding from the earth. The elevation at which the vessels
travelled was only a few hundred feet--indeed, when high mountains
lay in the line of their track it was necessary to change their
course and go round them--the more rarefied air no longer supplying
the necessary fulcrum. Hills of about one thousand feet were
the highest they could cross. The means by which the vessel was
brought to a stop on reaching its destination--and this could
be done equally well in mid-air--was to give escape to some of
the current force through the tube at that end of the boat which
pointed towards its destination, and the current impinging on
the land or air in front, acted as a drag, while the propelling
force behind was gradually reduced by the closing of the valve.
The reason has still to be given for the existence of the eight
tubes pointing upwards from the bulwarks. This had more especially
to do with the aerial warfare. Having so powerful a force at
their disposal, the warships naturally directed the current against
each other. Now this was apt to destroy the equilibrium of the
ship so struck and to turn it upside down--a situation sure to
be taken advantage of by the enemy's vessel to make an attack
with her ram. There was also the further danger of being precipitated
to the ground, unless the shutting and opening of the necessary
valves were quickly attended to. In whatever position the vessel
might be, the tubes pointing towards the earth were naturally
those through which the current should be rushing, while the
tubes pointing upwards should be closed. The means by which a
vessel turned upside down, might be righted and placed again
on a level keel, was accomplished by using the four tubes pointing
downwards at one side of the vessel only, while the four at the
other side were kept closed.
The Atlanteans had also sea-going vessels which were propelled
by some power analogous to that above mentioned, but the current
force which was eventually found to be most effective in this
case was denser than that used in the air-boats.
Manners and Custom
There was doubtless as much variety in the manners and
customs of the Atlanteans at different epochs of their history,
as there has been among the various nations which compose our
Aryan race. With the fluctuating fashion of the centuries we
are not concerned. The following remarks will attempt to deal
merely with the leading characteristics which differentiate their
habits from our own, and these will be chosen as much as possible
from the great Toltec area.
With regard to marriage and the relations of the sexes
the experiments made by the Turanians have already been referred
to. Polygamous customs were prevalent at different times among
all the sub-races, but in the Toltec days while two wives were
allowed by the law, great numbers of men had only one wife. Nor
were the women--as in countries now-a-days where polygamy prevails--regarded
as inferiors, or in the least oppressed. Their position was quite
equal to that of the men, while the aptitude many of them displayed
in acquiring the vril-power made them fully the equals if not
the superiors of the other sex. This equality indeed was recognised
from infancy, and there was no separation of the sexes in schools
or colleges. Boys and girls were taught together. It was the
rule, too, and not the exception, for complete harmony to prevail
in the dual households, and the mothers taught their children
to look equally to their father's wives for love and protection.
Nor were women debarred from taking part in the government. Sometimes
they were members of the councils, and occasionally even were
chosen by the Adept emperor to represent him in the various provinces
as the local sovereigns.
The writing material of the Atlanteans consisted of thin
sheets of metal, on the white porcelain-like surface of which
the words were written. They also had the means of reproducing
the written text by placing on the inscribed sheet another thin
metal plate which had previously been dipped in some liquid.
The text thus graven on the second plate could be reproduced
at will on other sheets, a great number of which fastened together
constituted a book.
Food
A custom which differs considerably from our own must be
instanced next, in their choice of food. It is an unpleasant
subject, but can scarcely be passed over . The flesh of the animals
they usually discarded, while the parts which among us are avoided
as food, were by them devoured. The blood also they drank--often
hot from the animal--and various cooked dishes were also made
of it.
It must not, however, be thought that they were without
the lighter, and to us, more palatable, kinds of food. The seas
and rivers provided them with fish, the flesh of which they ate,
though often in such an advanced stage of decomposition as would
be to us revolting. The different grains were largely cultivated,
of which were made bread and cakes. They also had milk, fruit
and vegetables.
A small minority of the inhabitants, it is true, never
adopted the revolting customs above referred to. This was the
case with the Adept kings and emperors and the initiated priesthood
throughout the whole empire. They were entirely vegetarian in
their habits, but though many of the emperor's counsellors and
the officials about the court affected to prefer the purer diet,
they often indulged in secret their grosser tastes.
Nor were strong drinks unknown in those days. Fermented
liquor of a very potent sort was at one time much in vogue. But
it was so apt to make those who drank it dangerously excited
that a law was passed absolutely forbidding its consumption.
Weapons
The weapons of warfare and the chase differed considerably
at different epochs. Swords and spears, bows and arrows sufficed
as a rule for the Rmoahals and the Tlavatli. The beasts which
they hunted at that very early period were mammoths with long
woolly hair, elephants and hippopotami. Marsupials also abounded
as well as survivals of intermediate types--some being half reptile
and half mammal, others half reptile and half bird.
The use of explosives was adopted at an early period, and
carried to great perfection in later times. Some appear to have
been made to explode on concussion, others after a certain interval
of time, but in either case the destruction to life seems to
have resulted from the release of some poisonous vapour, not
from the impact of bullets. So powerful indeed must have become
these explosives in later Atlantean times, that we hear of whole
companies of men being destroyed in battle by the noxious gas
generated by the explosion of one of these bombs above their
heads, thrown there by some sort of lever.
Money
The monetary system must now be considered. During the
first three sub-races at all events, such a thing as a State
coinage was unknown. Small pieces of metal or leather stamped
with some given value were, it is true, used as tokens. Having
a perforation in the centre they were strung together, and were
usually carried at the girdle. But each man was, as it were,
his own coiner, and the leather or metal token fabricated by
him and exchanged with another for value received, was but a
personal acknowledgment of indebtedness, such as a promissory
note is among us. No man was entitled to fabricate more of these
tokens than he was able to redeem by the transfer of goods in
his possession. The tokens did not circulate as coinage does,
while the holder of the token had the means to estimate with
perfect accuracy the resources of his debtor by the clairvoyant
faculty which all then possessed to a greater or less degree,
and which in any case of doubt was instantly directed to ascertain
the actual state of the facts.
It must be stated, however, that in the later days of Poseidonis,
a system approximating to our own currency was adopted, and the
triple mountain visible from the great southern capital was the
favourite representation on the State coinage.
Land Tenure
But the system of land tenure is the most important subject
under this heading. Among the Rmoahal and Tlavatli, who lived
chiefly by hunting and fishing, the question naturally did not
arise, though some system of village cultivation was recognized
in the Tlavatli days.
It was with the increase of population and civilization
in the early Toltec times that land first became worth fighting
for. It is not proposed to trace the system or want of system
prevalent in the troublous times anterior to the advent of the
Golden Age. But the records of that epoch present to the consideration,
not only of political economists, but of all who regard the welfare
of the race, subject of the utmost interest and importance.
The population, it must be remembered, had been steadily
increasing, and under the government of the Adept emperors it
had reached the very large figure already quoted; nevertheless
poverty and want were things undreamt of in those days, and this
social well-being was no doubt partly due to the system of land
tenure.
Not only was all the land and its produce regarded as belonging
to the emperor, but all the flocks and herds upon it were his
as well. The country was divided into different provinces or
districts, each province having at its head one of the subsidiary
kings or viceroys appointed by the emperor. Each of these viceroys
was held responsible for the government and well-being of all
the inhabitants under his rule. The tillage of the land, the
harvesting of the crops, and the pasturage of the herds lay within
his sphere of superintendence as well as the conducting of such
agricultural experiments as have been already referred to.
Each viceroy had round him a council of agricultural advisers
and coadjutors, who had amongst their other duties to be well
versed in astronomy, for it was not a barren science in those
days. The occult influences on plant and animal life were then
studied and taken advantage of. The power, too, of producing
rain at will was not uncommon then, while the effects of a glacial
epoch were on more than one occasion partly neutralized in the
northern parts of the continent by occult science. The right
day for beginning every agricultural operation was of course
duly calculated, and the work carried into effect by the officials
whose duty it was to supervise every detail. The produce raised
in each district or kingdom was as a rule consumed in it, but
an exchange of agricultural commodities was sometimes arranged
between the rulers.
After a small share had been put aside for the emperor
and the central government at the "City of the Golden Gates,"
the produce of the whole district or kingdom was divided among
the inhabitants-the local viceroy and his retinue of officials
naturally receiving the larger portions, but the meanest agricultural
labourer getting enough to secure him competence and comfort.
Any increase in the productive capacity of the land, or in the
mineral wealth which it yielded, was divided proportionately
amongst all concerned--all, therefore, were interested in making
the result of their combined labour as lucrative as possible.
This system worked admirably for a very long period. But
as time went on negligence and self-seeking crept in. Those whose
duty it was to superintend, threw more and more responsibility
on their inferiors in office, and in time it became rare for
the rulers to interfere or to interest themselves in any of the
operations. This was the beginning of the evil days. The members
of the dominant class who had previously given all their time
to the state duties began to think about making their own lives
more pleasant. The elaboration of luxury was setting in.
There was one cause in particular which produced great
discontent amongst the lower classes. The system under which
the youth of the nation was drafted into the technical schools
has already been referred to. Now it was always one of the superior
class whose psychic faculties had been duly cultivated, to whom
the duty was assigned of selecting the children so that each
one should receive the training, and ultimately be devoted to
the occupation, for which he was naturally most fitted. But when
those possessed of the clairvoyant vision, by which alone such
choice could be made, delegated their duties to inferiors who
were wanting in such psychic attributes, the results ensuing
were that the children were often thrust into wrong grooves,
and those whose capacity and taste lay in one direction often
found themselves tied for life to an occupation which they disliked,
and in which, therefore, they were rarely successful.
The systems of land tenure which ensued in different parts
of the empire on the breaking tip of the great Toltec dynasty
were many and various. But it is not necessary to follow them.
In the later days of Poseidonis they had, as a rule, given place
to the system of individual ownership which we know so well.
Reference has already been made, under the head of "Emigrations,"
to the system of land tenure which prevailed during that glorious
period of Peruvian history when the Incas held sway about 14,000
years ago. A short summary of this may be of interest as demonstrating
the source from which its groundwork was doubtless derived, as
well as instancing the variations which had been adopted in this
somewhat more complicated system.
All title to land was derived in the first instance from
the Inca, but half of it was assigned to the cultivators, who
of course constituted the great bulk of the population. The other
half was divided between the Inca and the priesthood who celebrated
the worship of the sun.
Out of the proceeds of his specially allotted lands the
Inca had to keep up the army, the roads throughout the whole
empire, and all the machinery of government. This was conducted
by a special governing class, all more or less closely related
to the Inca himself, and representing a civilization and a culture
much in advance of the great masses of the population.
The remaining fourth--"the lands of the sun"--provided
not only for the priests who conducted the public worship throughout
the empire, but for the entire education of the people in schools
and colleges, for all sick and infirm persons, and finally, for
every inhabitant (exclusive, of course, of the governing class
for whom there was no cessation of work) on reaching the age
of forty-five, that being the age arranged for the hard work
of life to cease, and for leisure and enjoyment to begin.
Religion
The only subject that now remains to be dealt with is the
evolution of religious ideas. Between the spiritual aspiration
of a rude but simple race and the degraded ritual of an intellectually
cultured but spiritually dead people, lies a gulf which only
the term religion, used in its widest acceptation, can span.
Nevertheless, it is this consecutive process of generation and
degeneration which has to be traced in the history of the Atlantean
people.
It will be remembered that the government under which the
Rmoahals came into existence, was described as the most perfect
conceivable, for it was the Manu himself who acted as their king.
The memory of this divine ruler was naturally preserved in the
annals of the race, and in due time he came to be regarded as
a god, among a people who were naturally psychic, and had consequently
glimpses of those states of consciousness which transcend our
ordinary waking condition. Retaining these higher attributes
it was only natural that this primitive people should adopt a
religion which, though in no way representative of any exalted
philosophy, was of a type far from ignoble. In later days this
phase of religious belief passed into a kind of ancestor-worship.
The Tlavatli, while inheriting the traditional reverence
and worship for the Manu, were taught by Adept instructors of
the existence of a Supreme Being whose symbol was recognised
as the sun. They thus developed a sort of sun worship, for the
practice of which they repaired to the hill-tops. There they
built great circles of upright monoliths. These were intended
to be symbolical of the sun's yearly course, but they were also
used for astronomical purposes--being placed so that, to one
standing at the high altar, the sun would rise at the winter
solstice behind one of these monoliths, at the vernal equinox
behind another, and so on throughout the year. Astronomical observations
of a still more complex character connected with the more distant
constellations were also helped by these stone circles.
We have already seen under the head of emigrations how
a later sub-race--the Akkadians--in the erection of Stonehenge,
reverted to this primitive building of monoliths.
Endowed though the Tlavatli were with somewhat greater
capacity for intellectual development than the previous sub-race,
their cult was still of a very primitive type.
With the wider diffusion of knowledge in the days of the
Toltecs, and more especially with the establishment later on
of an initiated priesthood and an Adept emperor, increased opportunities
were offered to the people for the attainment of a truer conception
of the divine. The few who were ready to take full advantage
of the teaching offered, after having been tried and tested,
were doubtless admitted into the ranks of the priesthood, which
then constituted an immense occult fraternity. With these, however,
who had so outstripped the mass of humanity, as to be ready to
begin the progress of the occult path, we are not here concerned,
the religions practised by the inhabitants of Atlantis generally
being the subject of our investigation.
The power to rise to philosophic heights of thought was
of course wanting to the masses of those days, as it is similarly
wanting to the great majority of the inhabitants of the world
to-day. The nearest approach which the most gifted teacher could
make in attempting to convey any idea of the nameless and all-pervading
essence of the Cosmos was necessarily imparted in the form of
symbols, and the sun naturally enough was the first symbol adopted.
As in our own days too, the more cultivated and spiritually-minded
would see through the symbol, and might sometimes rise on the
wings of devotion to the Father of our spirits, that
while the grosser multitude would see nothing but the symbol,
and would worship it, as the carved Madonna or the wooden image
of the Crucified One is to-day worshipped throughout Catholic
Europe.
Sun and fire worship then became the cult for the celebration
of which magnificent temples were reared throughout the length
and breadth of the continent of Atlantis, but more especially
in the great "City of the Golden Gates"--the temple-service
being performed by retinues of priests endowed by the State for
that purpose.
In those early days no image of the Deity was permitted.
The sun-disk was considered the only appropriate emblem of the
godhead, and as such was used in every temple, a golden disk
being generally placed so as to catch the first rays of the rising
sun at the vernal equinox or at the summer solstice.
An interesting example of the almost unalloyed survival
of this worship of the sun-disk may be instanced in the Shinto
ceremonies of Japan. All other representation of Deity is, in
this faith, regarded as impious, and even the circular mirror
of polished metal is hidden from the vulgar gaze save on ceremonial
occasions. Unlike the gorgeous temple decorations of Atlantis,
however, the Shinto temples are characterized by an entire absence
of decoration--the exquisite finish of the plain wood-work being
unrelieved by any carving, paint or varnish.
But the sun-disk did not always remain the only permissible
emblem of Deity. The image of a man--an archetypal man--was in
after days placed in the temples and adored as the highest representation
of the divine. In some ways this might be considered a reversion
to the Rmoahal worship of the Manu. Even then the religion was
comparatively pure, and the occult fraternity of the "Good
Law" of course did their utmost to keep alive in the hearts
of the people the spiritual life.
The evil days, however, were drawing near when no altruistic
idea should remain to redeem the race from the abyss of selfishness
in which it was destined to be overwhelmed. The decay of the
ethical idea was the necessary prelude to the perversion of the
spiritual. The hand of every man fought for himself alone, and
his knowledge was used for purely selfish ends, till it became
an established belief that there was nothing in the universe
greater or higher than themselves. Each man was his own "Law,
and Lord and God," and the very worship of the temples ceased
to be the worship of any ideal, but became the mere adoration
of man as he was known and seen to be. As is written in the Book
of Dzyan, "Then the Fourth became tall with pride. We are
the kings it was said; we are the Gods.... They built huge cities.
Of rare earths and metals they built, and out of the fires vomited,
out of the white stone of the mountains and of the black stone,
they cut their own images in their size and likeness, and worshipped
them." Shrines were placed in temples in which the statue
of each man, wrought in gold or silver, or carved in stone or
wood, was adored by himself. The richer men kept whole trains
of priests in their employ for the cult and care of their shrines,
and offerings were made to these statues as to gods. The apotheosis
of self could go no further.
It must be remembered that every true religious idea that
has ever entered into the mind of man, has been consciously suggested
to him by the divine Instructors or the Initiates of the White
Lodge, who throughout all the ages have been the guardians of
the divine mysteries, and of the facts of the supersensual states
of consciousness.
Mankind generally has but slowly become capable of assimilating
a few of these divine ideas, while the monstrous growths and
hideous distortions to which every religion on earth stands as
witness, must be traced to man's own lower nature. It would seem
indeed that he has not always even been fit to be entrusted with
knowledge as to the mere symbols under which were veiled the
light of Deity, for in the days of the Turanian Supremacy some
of this knowledge was wrongfully divulged.
We have seen how the life and light giving attributes of
the sun were in early times used as the symbol to bring before
the minds of the people all that they were capable of conceiving
of the great First Cause. But other symbols of far deeper and
more real significance were known and guarded within the ranks
of the priesthood. One of these was the conception of a Trinity
in Unity. The Trinities of most sacred significance were never
divulged to the people, but the Trinity personifying the cosmic
powers of the universe as Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer,
became publicly known in some irregular manner in the Turanian
days. This idea was still further materialized and degraded by
the Semites into a strictly anthropomorphic Trinity consisting
of father, mother and child.
A further and rather terrible development of the Turanian
times must still be referred to. With the practice of sorcery
many of the inhabitants had, of course, become aware of the existence
of powerful elementals--creatures who had been called into being,
or at least animated by their own powerful wills, which being
directed towards maleficent ends, naturally produced elementals
of power and malignity. So degraded had then become man's feelings
of reverence and worship, that they actually began to adore these
semi-conscious creations of their own malignant thought. The
ritual with which these beings were worshipped was bloodstained
from the very start, and of course every sacrifice offered at
their shrines gave vitality and persistence to these vampire-like
creations--so much so, that even to the present day in various
parts of the world, the elementals formed by the powerful will
of these old Atlantean sorcerers still continue to exact their
tribute from unoffending village communities.
Though inaugurated and widely practised by the brutal Turanians,
this blood-stained ritual seems never to have spread to any extent
among the other sub-races, though human sacrifices appear to
have been not uncommon among some branches of the Semites.
In the great Toltec empire of Mexico the sun-worship of
their forefathers was still the national religion, while the
bloodless offerings to their beneficent Deity, Quetzalcoatl,
consisted merely of flowers and fruit. It was only with the coming
of the savage Aztecs that the harmless Mexican ritual was supplemented
with the blood of human sacrifices, which drenched the altars
of their war-god, Huitzilopochtli, and the tearing out of the
hearts of the victims on the summit of the Teocali may be regarded
as a direct survival of the elemental -worship of their Turanian
ancestors in Atlantis.
It will be seen then that as in our own days, the religious
life of the people embraced the most varied forms of belief and
worship. From the small minority who aspired to initiation, and
had touch with the higher spiritual life--who knew that good
will towards all men, control of thought, and purity of life
and action were the necessary preliminaries to the attainment
of the highest states of consciousness and the widest realms
of vision--innumerable phases led down through the more or less
blind worship of cosmic powers, or of anthropomorphic gods, to
the degraded but most widely extended ritual in which each man
adored his own image, and to the blood stained rites of the elemental
worship.
It must be remembered throughout that we are dealing with
the Atlantean race only, so that any reference would be out of
place that bore on the still more degraded fetish-worship that
even then existed--as it still does--amongst the debased representatives
of the Lemurian peoples.
All through the centuries then, the various rituals composed
to celebrate these various forms of worship were carried on,
till the final submergence of Poseidonis, by which time the countless
hosts of Atlantean emigrants had already established on foreign
lands the various cults of the mother-continent.
To trace the rise and follow the progress in detail of
the archaic religions, which in historic times have blossomed
into such diverse and antagonistic forms, would be an undertaking
of great difficulty, but the illumination it would throw on matters
of transcendent importance may some day induce the attempt.
In conclusion, it would be vain to attempt to summarize
what is already too much of a summary. Rather let us hope that
the foregoing may lend itself as the text from which may be developed
histories of the many offshoots of the various sub-races-histories
which may analytically examine political and social developments
which have been here touched on in the most fragmentary manner.
One word, however, may still be said about that evolution
of the race--that progress which all creation, with mankind at
its head, is ever destined to achieve century by century, millennium
by millennium, manvantara by manvantara, and kalpa by kalpa.
The descent of spirit into matter--those two poles of the
one eternal substance--is the process which occupies the first
half of every cycle. Now the period we have been contemplating
in the foregoing pages--the period during which the Atlantean
race was running its course--was the very middle or turning point
of this present manvantara.
The process of evolution which in our present Fifth Race
has now set in--the return, that is, of matter into spirit--had
in those days revealed itself in but a few isolated individual
cases--forerunners of the resurrection of the spirit.
But the problem, which all who have given the subject any
amount of consideration must have felt to be still awaiting a
solution, is the surprising contrast in the attributes of the
Atlantean race. Side by side with their brutal passions, their
degraded animal propensities, were their psychic faculties, their
godlike intuition.
Now the solution of this apparently insoluble enigma lies
in the fact that the building of the bridge had only then been
begun--the bridge of Manas, or mind, destined to unite in the
perfected individual the upward surging forces of the animal
and the downward cycling spirit of the God. The animal kingdom
of to-day exhibits a field of nature where the building of that
bridge has not yet been begun, and even among mankind in the
days of Atlantis the connection was so slight that the spiritual
attributes had but little controlling power over the lower animal
nature. The touch of mind they had was sufficient to add zest
to the gratification of the senses, but was not enough to vitalize
the still dormant spiritual faculties, which in the perfected
individual will have to become the absolute monarch. Our metaphor
of the bridge may carry us a little further if we consider it
as now in process of construction, but as destined to remain
incomplete for mankind in general for untold millenniums--in
fact, until Humanity has completed another circle of the seven
planets and the great Fifth Round is half way through its course.
Though it was during the latter half of the Third Root
Race and the beginning of the Fourth that the Manasaputra descended
to endow with mind the bulk of Humanity who were still without
the spark, yet so feebly burned the light all through the Atlantean
days that few could be said to have attained to the powers of
abstract thought. On the other hand, the functioning of the mind
on concrete things came well within their grasp, and as we have
seen it was in the practical concerns of their every-day life,
especially when their psychic faculties were directed towards
the same objects, that they achieved such remarkable and stupendous
results.
It must also be remembered that Kama, the fourth principle,
naturally obtained its culminating development in the Fourth
Race. This would account for the depths of animal grossness to
which they sank, whilst the approach of the cycle to its nadir
inevitably accentuated this downward movement, so that there
is little to be surprised at in the gradual loss by the race
of the psychic faculties, and in its descent to selfishness and
materialism.
Rather should all this be regarded as part of the great
cyclic process in obedience to the eternal law.
We have all gone through those evil days, and the experiences
we then accumulated go to make up the characters we now possess.
But a brighter sun now shines on the Aryan race than that
which lit the path of their Atlantean forefathers. Less dominated
by the passions of the senses, more open to the influence of
mind, the men of our race have obtained and are obtaining a firmer
grasp of knowledge, a wider range of intellect. This upward arc
of the great manvantaric cycle will naturally lead increasing
numbers towards the entrance of the Path, and will lend more
and more attraction to the transcendent opportunities it offers
for the continued strengthening and purification of the character-
strengthening and purification no longer directed by mere spasmodic
effort, and continually interrupted by misleading attractions,
but guided and guarded at every step by the Masters of Wisdom,
so that the upward climb when once begun should no longer be
halting and uncertain, but lead direct to the glorious goal.
The psychic faculties too, and the godlike intuition, lost
for a time but still the rightful heritage of the race, only
await the individual effort of reattainment, to give to the character
still deeper insight and more transcendent powers. So shall the
ranks of the Adept instructors--the Masters of Wisdom--be ever
strengthened and recruited, and even amongst us today there must
certainly be some, indistinguishable save by the deathless enthusiasm
with which they are animated, who will, before the next Root
Race is established on this planet, stand themselves as Masters
of Wisdom to help the race in its upward progress. |