More Support for Atlantis!
Scott-Elliot also mentioned many of the achievements of the Atlanteans in his book, which tend to reinforce what I have already discovered about these amazing people. Apart from domesticating �leopard-like animals� (possibly South American jaguars, or perhaps African cheetahs?) and developing the banana plant, they were also great alchemists and manufactured rare and precious metals in vast amounts. Their scientists invented gas-bombs (as well as atomic devices, as we saw earlier), and they also created aircraft which were propelled by the so-called �Vril� force ( much sought after by Hitler�s weapon-scientists during world War II, in their quest for new secret weapons). This �vril� force was mentally-directed energy that was first assumed to have originated in the fevered-mind of some Victorian Novelist, but now appears to have been an actual, mentally-produced power, akin to that same psychokinesis believed to have been used to raise huge blocks of masonry in ancient building works!
At any rate, as we have seen elsewhere, their aircraft were capable of vertical take-off and hovering, rather like jump-jets of today, and, if Scott-Elliot is to be believed, they could fly at a speed of around 100 mph, up to a thousand feet in altitude! (Although, given all their other remarkably advanced technological powers, I am somewhat surprised that the Atlanteans should have been so greatly inhibited in both speed and height with their aircraft!)
Steiner�s Atlanteans.
There was one other controversial writer on Lemuria and Atlantis, who also gives highly-detailed accounts of both continents. This was an Austrian ex-theosophist, named Rudolph Steiner. He broke away from the Theosophists in 1907, and formed his own separate cult, the Anthroposophical Society. His book, �Cosmic Memory: Atlantis and Lemuria�, was published in 1923, and is apparently still in print and available through Rudolph Steiner Publications, which also publishes other classics on Atlantis, such as those of Ignatius Donelly and Le Plongeon.
Steiner�s view of Lemuria And Atlantis is alleged to stem from the �Akasha Chronicle� which is a spiritual record of the past, apparently available only to true psychic initiates. However, from all accounts, much of his concept has seemingly been culled from Madame Blavatsky�s original Theosophic writings. He describes the Lemurians as simple-minded, but possessed of enormous will-power which enabled them to raise and manipulate great weights, a faculty which they seemingly passed on to the Atlanteans. They also had souls, which their predecessors apparently didn�t have, and they had begun to develop some form of rudimentary speech. I�ll skip over their other biological and rather fantastic sexual and reproductive development, as this isn�t of any particular relevance to this study, and, to my mind, ruins an otherwise entertaining yarn!
Steiner goes on to claim that both the Lemurians and Atlanteans did not possess the ability to reason, but that they had excellent memories, and were educated in such a fashion as to be able to hold (like a computer) a vast store of mental images and data in their minds, and thus (again in the manner of the modern computer), they were able to solve problems by recalled precedents. However, new and unprecedented situations left them greatly bemused, since they simply �did not compute�! They apparently also possessed certain �magical word� powers of command, which they could employ to heal the sick or tame wild animals. This, of course, smacks very much of Jesus Christ, and I think Steiner might have been attempting to endow these people with Godlike powers beyond their station! He, too, like Scott-Elliot (from whom he clearly also borrowed as freely as from Madame Blavatsky), spoke of the Atlantean Semites evolving into the Aryan race, and acquiring, along the way, the ability to reason and develop consciences, and to refine these qualities up to our modern, human standard.
A Load of Nonsense, or a Grain of Truth?
It would be very easy to toss out all of these concepts as the ramblings of tortured minds, and dismiss their authors as demented cranks and lunatics, but I suppose the same could be (and has been) said of the world�s religions - especially of Christianity, since many of the world�s most sceptical people are of the white race, which largely chose Christianity above the other major religions. However, when one thinks of the vast multitude of people in the world who are entirely convinced of the existence of supernatural beings, with powers and forces that supervene those of nature, one has to ponder whether we really know enough about such unseen spiritual and psychic powers to be able to rule it all out as impossible! I feel one must keep an open mind on this.
Every day, we hear of amazing events and occurrences which seem to fly in the face of logic and common-sense. Things that simply cannot be explained by any rational means. Thus I believe that one needs to maintain an open mind about such things, and hope that one day, the real truth of such phenomena might be made clear to us. I certainly tend to believe personally that there is more to our universe and ourselves than we are currently aware of. Perhaps there is another dimension of mind and self which we have largely lost the ability to tap into - rather like that elusive �fifth dimension� of physics which plagued Albert Einstein ? Maybe this is what we call �spirituality�? At the risk of sounding repetitive, I can only quote again those famous words of Shakespeare�s �Hamlet�: �There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy!�
What then, are we to believe regarding the lost continent of Lemuria, and all its totally outlandish Root-Races and so forth? Is it all just a lot of balderdash produced by warped minds and fobbed on to a gullible public for the notoriety and aggrandizement of people like Blavatsky and her followers and imitators, such as Scott-Elliot, Steiner, etc? Or might there be a grain of truth in it all?
Conclusions on Lemuria.
Certainly, the famous occultists seem to comfortably accept that there was a large continent where Lemuria is purported to have been, and many ancient maps of the world showed a large continent in the Southern Hemisphere, long before the Theosophists got hold of the notion. This was the famous �Terra Australis Incognita� (Unknown Southern Land) which the geographers of bygone times believed to exist in order to �balance up� the globe. Many students think this was Australia, but alas, according to Captain James Cook, Australia, although as large as the USA, just wasn�t big enough to fill the bill, and he could find no other continent that did. Ironically, Cook sailed right around the Antarctic ice-shelf without realizing it concealed a gigantic land-mass! (Although, in my humble opinion, had he actually discovered it, the Antarctic continent might well have proved to be precisely the Terra Australis Incognita he was looking for!)
It�s also interesting to note that Lemuria was (and still is) frequently regarded as interchangeable with Mu, and we have read how Atlantis appears to have been considered to be an offshoot of Lemuria, so it does seem to have its place in the general scheme of things pertaining to �Lost Continents�. Even the famous clairvoyant-seer, Edgar Cayce, appears to have acknowledged Lemuria, but as �The Land of Mu�, rather than as any Indian Oceanic continent. He seems to have disagreed greatly with the Theosophic standpoint regarding Lemuria in all aspects, including their descriptions of the evolution of humans from jelly-like creatures! Though I must say that, in my opinion, there is really little to choose between either party, since they all drew their knowledge and information from occult, spiritual sources!
Casting The Final Vote.
I suppose that, if I had to make a casting-vote for or against the existence of such a vanished continent as Lemuria, I think I would have to vote against it ever having existed - at least in the form described by the Theosophists - and with the weird inhabitants it�s alleged to have had. Perhaps there was an isthmus or continent there once, which might conceivably linger in racial-memory, but if so, it was probably India itself, in its original situation as a separating portion of ancient Pangaea or Gondwanaland, when ocean-floor rifting and crustal-expansion of the planet began to separate the continents from each other.
We really have no true idea if mankind had, or had not yet appeared upon this planet at that far-off epoch, whether by Divine Fiat or by colonization from Mars. Every new hypothesis that comes along seems to push back the antiquity of our species by more millions of years. So only a brash fool with the arrogant self-assuredness of a Darwin or a Wallace would be so presumptuous as to state categorically that we couldn�t have been around in those early days! Thus, sadly, however much I would have wished to have believed it otherwise, I have to confess that I believe that �Lemuria� was simply another name for Mu!
Hyperborea And Ultima Thule.
Most of our quest for ancient civilizations has thus far been focused largely upon the Pacific region and the Southern Hemisphere. Now I think we should perhaps consider a couple of legendary lands which have been perpetuated in the folk-history of the Scandinavian and Germanic peoples, even though these legends owe some of their origins to the ancient Greeks and the Aryans of Central Asia. Two major mystic and magical lands spring to mind here; Hyperborea and Ultima Thule - which both feature greatly in Nordic mythology, besides having, from all accounts, actually existed somewhere within the Arctic regions of the world in ancient times! However, before we go in search of concrete evidence, let�s consider some of the legendary background for both of these places - which might well have been one and the same!
Hyperborea.
the first mention we find of the Hyperboreans, is in the mythology of ancient Greece, before the time of Homer. However, Herodotus mentions them as being part of the legendary Theban epic, and being in some way connected with the cult of Apollo, the sun-god, and that their homeland was in a paradise-like country �beyond the North Wind�, which indicates a region that may now lie within the Arctic Circle, or certainly in the far North Atlantic! The Hyperborians according to this same source, were alleged to live for a thousand years, but they had a tradition that any who tired of such a long life could end it in a ritual suicide ceremony, whereby the person involved was decked with floral garlands and allowed to jump off a high pinnacle into the sea!
Other legends seem to indicate that it was �that happy land lying to the west, towards the setting sun�, The Garden of the Hesperides, where trees bore golden fruit; the Elysian Fields or even the Happy Isles! Generally, it is believed to have been a veritable paradise on earth, and may have been an island lying somewhere between the Azores and Iceland, which, like Atlantis, sank beneath the waves after some great catastrophe. There are some scholars who directly connect the two, and claim that Hyperborea was, in fact, the lost continent of Atlantis!
My own view, after scanning some of the mythology surrounding Hyperborea and Thule, is that it�s possible that they could have been the same place. It really all depends upon how far back the original legends go. If they are traceable to the time of the establishment of the Egyptian nation, since they figure in the Theban epic, then it is possible that they go far back in time to the period prior to the last polar shift. In which case, much of the land that now lies within the Arctic Circle was then warm to temperate country, richly carpeted with grasslands and forests, and all of Nature�s bounty, both vegetable and animal.
It�s even possible that we need look no farther than the British Isles, since these would have been well to the �far north-west� of both Egypt and Greece! (We have to avoid the pitfall of allowing our northern European or American concept of the �north-west� to cloud our geographic thinking!) However, at that distant point in time, both Britain and Ireland would have been the most north-westerly part of the European land-mass, since, because much of the world�s ocean water was locked up in ice, the English Channel and the North Sea were both dry land then. However, there seems to be a distinct hint in the legends that both Hyperborea and Ultima Thule were always islands, so perhaps this would tend to rule out Britain and Ireland. My first conclusion is that both were actually the same place, with Greenland as Ultima Thule and Iceland as Thule. Although they are connected geologically, under the ocean, Ultima Thule and Thule seem to be separated in mythology into two distinct islands, and, since the name �Ultima� Thule implies �furthest away�, then Thule must have been closer to Europe than it. The obvious candidate for Thule then, must be Iceland. According to Pytheas, a famous Greek navigator of the 4th century BC, Thule was a six-day sea-voyage north of Britain, though whether by sail or by oar-power isn�t stated, but it seems to set the location of Thule as modern Iceland. Common sense would then suggest that Ultima Thule had to be Greenland. However, what if both were once united in one unsubmerged land-mass - the continent of Hyperborea?
The Arctic Homeland: Hyperborea.
To discover more about the mythos surrounding Hyperborea, we must look to the works of various older authorities on such somewhat esoteric mysteries. Jean-Sylvain Bailly, 1736-1793), who was an astronomer and a mystic, comments that: �It is a very remarkable thing that enlightenment appears to have come from the North, against the common prejudice that the earth was enlightened, as it was populated, from the South...� He then goes on to point out that, according to all the legends and ancient wisdom, �as humanity began to reconstitute itself after the Noahic Deluge, the purest stream of civilization descended from Northern Asia into India, which to this day carries evidence of having the most ancient astronomical system on earth�. He continues on to point out that, in most of the ancient mythologies of the world, there appears to be a race-memory of a racial origin in the far North and a subsequent gradual migration southward. |
