PRELIMINARY NOTES

ON THE FOUR PREHISTORIC CONTINENTS

The Stanzas and Commentaries in this Book are drawn from the same archaic records as those in Book I. As far as possible, a verbatim translation is given, but where they are too obscure to be understood without explanation, an attempt is made to make them clearer by words in brackets added to the text.

As regards the evolution of mankind, the Secret Doctrine postulates three new propositions, which stand in direct antagonism to modern science as well as to current religious dogmas; it teaches (1) the simultaneous evolution of seven human groups on seven different portions of our globe; (2) the formation of the astral before the physical body, the former being a model for the latter; and (3) that man, in this Round, preceded all the mammalia-including the anthropoids. In Genesis, chap. ii., we find that man was created before the animals, for the socalled "animals" of chap. i. are the signs of the Zodiac, while "man, male and female," is not man, but the Host of Forces or Angels "made in God's image and after His likeness." Adam, the man, is not made in that image, nor is it so asserted in the Bible. Moreover, the second Adam is esoterically a septenary, which represents seven human groups. The first Adam, Adam-Kadmon, is the synthesis of the ten Sephiroth (or Creative Powers). Of these, the upper triad remains in the Archetypal World as the future "Trinity," while the seven lower

Powers create the manifested material world, and this septenate is the second Adam. Genesis, and the Mysteries upon which it was fabricated, came from Egypt. The "God" of the first chapter of Genesis is the Logos, and the "Lord God" of the second chapter, the creative Elohim, the lower Powers.

The Secret Doctrine is not alone in speaking of primeval Men born simultaneously on the seven divisions of our globe. In the " Divine Pymander " of Hermes we find the same seven primeval Men evolving from Nature and "Heavenly Man" in the collective sense of the word, that is, from the Creative Spirits; and in the fragments of Chaldean tablets collected by George Smith, on which is inscribed the Babylonian Legend of Creation, seven human beings with the faces of ravens " (black, swarthy complexions), whom "the seven great gods created, are mentioned.

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These are the seven Kings of Edom to whom reference is made in the Kabala; or the First Race, which was imperfect-i.e., was born before" the balance" (sexes) existed, and which was therefore destroyed. They were destroyed as a race by being merged in their own progeny, that is to say, the sexless race reincarnated in the (potentially) bisexual; the latter in the androgynes; these again in the sexual, the later Third Race. (For further explanation vide infra.)

It has become undeniable of late that the Jews, who obtained their primitive ideas about creation from Moses, who had them from the Egyptians, compiled their Genesis and first cosmogenic traditions from the Chaldeo-Akkadian account. And we find, scattered through the Babylonian and Assyrian inscriptions, not only the original meaning of the word Adam (v. Book II., Part IV., § XVI.), but also the creation of seven Adams or roots of men, born

of mother Earth, physically, and of the divine fire of the progenitors, spiritually or astrally. In his Chaldean Account of Genesis, George Smith says: "The word Adam used in these legends for the first human being is evidently not a proper name, but is only used as a term for mankind."

Moreover, neither the Chaldean nor the Biblical Deluge is based on the universal or even on the Atlantean deluge. They are the exoteric allegories based on the esoteric mysteries of Samothrace. Samothrace is known to have been overflowed very suddenly by the waters of the Euxine Sea, regarded up to that time as a lake. (v. Pliny, Strabo, et al.) But the Israelites had, moreover, another legend upon which to base their allegory, the " deluge that transformed the present Gobi desert into a sea for the last time, some 10,000 or 12,000 years ago, and drove many Noahs and their families to the surrounding mountains. The Babylonian fragments corroborate almost every one of our teachings; certainly these three:

1. That the race that was the first to fall into generation was a dark Race, which was called the Adami (dark race), and that the light Race remained pure for a long while afterwards.

2. That the Babylonians recognized two principal Races at the time of the Fall, the Race of the Gods (the ethereal doubles of the Progenitors) having preceded these two. These are our Second and Third Root-Races.

3. That the seven Gods, each of whom created a man or group of men, were "the gods imprisoned or incarnated."

There are two "Creations," so-called, in the Babylonian fragments, and Genesis having adhered to this idea, one finds its first two chapters distinguished as the Elohite and Jehovite creations. Their proper order, however, is not preserved in

these or any other exoteric accounts. These "Creations," according to the occult teachings, refer respectively to the formation of the primordial seven men by the progenitors (the Elohim or Creative Spirits); and to that of the human groups after the fall. All this will be examined in the light of the ancient scriptures and of modern science as we proceed. Meanwhile, before we begin upon the Anthropogenesis of the prehistoric Races, it may be well to decide upon the names to be given to the "Continents" (or conditions of the earth's surface), on which the four great Races preceding our Adamic Race were born, lived and died. Their archaic and esoteric names were many, and varied of course with the language of each nation that referred to them.

Therefore, to avoid confusion, it is thought best to adopt, for each of the four "Continents," a name more familiar to the cultured reader. It is proposed then to call the first "continent," or rather the first terra firma on which the first Race was evolved by the divine Progenitors

I." The Imperishable Sacred Land."

This "Sacred Land" is said to be the only one whose destiny it is to last from the beginning to the end of the life-cycle throughout each Round. It was the cradle of the first man, and is to be the dwelling of the last divine mortal chosen as a teacher for the future humanity. One of the Commentaries says: "The pole-star has its watchful eye upon it from the dawn to the close of the twilight of a day' of the GREAT BREATH."

II. The "Hyperborean " is the name chosen for the Second Continent, the land which stretched south and west from the North Pole to receive the Second Race, and comprised the whole of what is now known as Northern Asia.

III. The third Continent we propose to call Lemuria, a name proposed by Mr. P. L. Sclater, who asserted (between 1850 and 1860), on zoological grounds, the actual existence in prehistoric times of a continent extending from Madagascar to Ceylon and Sumatra. Except some portions which are now part of Africa, this gigantic Continent has wholly disappeared beneath the waters of the Pacific, leaving only some mountain-tops, now islands.

IV. The fourth Continent is Atlantis. Plato's famous island of that name was a small fragment of this great continent. (vide Esoteric Buddhism.)

V. The fifth Continent was America, but it is Europe and Asia Minor, almost coeval with it, which are generally referred by the Aryan Occultists as the Fifth. If the teachings followed the appearance of the Continents in their geological order, this classification would have to be altered. But as the sequence of the Continents is made to follow the order of evolution of the Races from the First to the Fifth (our own Aryan Race), Europe must be called the Fifth great Continent. Since the destruction of the great Atlantis, before the end of the Miocene period, the face of the earth has changed more than once. The last important change occurred some 12,000 years ago, and was followed by the submersion of the Atlantic island called by Plato Atlantis, after its parent Continent. Geography was part of the Mysteries in the days of old. The Zohar says: "The secrets of sea and land were divulged to the men of the secret science, but not to the geographers.",

The claim that physical man was originally a colossal pre-Tertiary giant, and that he existed 18,000,000 years ago, must appear preposterous to modern biologists, who will turn away from the conception of this Third Race Titan of the Secondary age. The