Thus, if we are to believe Esoteric Teaching, universal geological disturbances and changes have not occurred for the last 120 million years, but the Earth, even before that time, was ready to receive her human stock. The appearance of the latter, however, in its full physical development, as already stated, took place only about 18,000,000 years ago, after the first great failure of Nature to create beings alone—i.e., without the help of the divine “Fashioners”—had been followed by the successive evolution of the first three Races.[699] The actual duration of the first two and a half Races is withheld from all but the higher Initiates. The history of the Races begins at the separation of the sexes, when the preceding egg-bearing androgynous Race perished rapidly, and the subsequent sub-races of the Third Root-Race appeared as an entirely new race physiologically. It is this “Destruction” which is allegorically called the great “Vaivasvata Manu Deluge,” when the account shows Vaivasvata Manu, or Humanity, remaining alone on Earth in the Ark of Salvation towed by Vishnu in the shape of a [pg 327] monstrous fish, and the Seven Rishis “with him.” The allegory is very plain.
In the symbolism of every nation, the “Deluge” stands for chaotic unsettled Matter—Chaos itself; and Water for the Feminine Principle—the “Great Deep.” As the Greek Lexicon of Parkhurst gives it:
Ἀρχὴ answers to the Hebrew rasit, or Wisdom ... and [at the same time] to the emblem of the female generative power, the arg or arca, in which the germ of nature [and of mankind] floats or broods on the great abyss of the waters, during the interval which takes place after every mundane [or racial] cycle.
Archê (Ἀρχὴ) or Ark is also the mystic name of the Divine Spirit of Life which broods over Chaos. Now Vishnu is the Divine Spirit, as an abstract principle, and also as the Preserver and Generator, or Giver of Life—the third Person of the Trimûrti—composed of Brahmâ, the Creator, Shiva, the Destroyer, and Vishnu, the Preserver. Vishnu is shown, in the allegory, under the form of a Fish, guiding the Ark of Vaivasvata Manu across the Waters of the Flood. There is no use in expatiating upon the esoteric meaning of the word Fish (as Payne Knight, Inman, Gerald Massey, and others have done). Its theological meaning is phallic, but the metaphysical, divine. Jesus was called the Fish, as were Vishnu and Bacchus; ΙΗΣ, the “Saviour” of Mankind, being but the monogram of the God Bacchus, who was also called ΙΧΘΥΣ, the Fish.[700] Moreover, the Seven Rishis in the Ark symbolized the seven “principles,” which became complete in man only after he had separated, and become a human, and thus ceased to be a divine creature.
But to return to the Races; details as to the submersion of the Continent inhabited by the Second Root-Race are not numerous. The history of the Third, or Lemuria, is given, as is also that of Atlantis, but the others are only alluded to. Lemuria is said to have perished about 700,000 years before the commencement of what is now called the Tertiary Age (the Eocene).[701] During this Deluge—an actual geological deluge this time—Vaivasvata Manu is also shown saving mankind, allegorically—in reality, a portion of it, the Fourth Race—just as he saved the Fifth Race during the destruction of the last [pg 328] Atlanteans, the remnants that perished 850,000 years ago,[702] after which there was no great submersion until the day of Plato's Atlantis, or Poseidonis, which was known to the Egyptians only because it happened in such relatively recent times.
It is the submersion of the great Atlantis which is the most interesting. This is the Cataclysm of which the old records, as in the Book of Enoch, say, “the ends of the Earth got loose”; and upon which have been built the legends and allegories of Vaivasvata, Xisuthrus, Noah, Deucalion and all the tutti quanti of the Elect Saved. Tradition, not taking into account the difference between sidereal and geological phenomena, calls both “Deluges” indifferently. Yet there is a great difference. The Cataclysm which destroyed the huge Continent of which Australia is the largest relic, was due to a series of subterranean convulsions and the breaking asunder of the ocean floors. That which put an end to its successor—the Fourth Continent—was brought on by successive disturbances in the axial rotation. It began during the earliest Tertiary periods, and, continuing for long ages, carried away successively the last vestige of Atlantis, with the exception, perhaps, of Ceylon and a small portion of what is now Africa. It changed the face of the globe, and no memory of its flourishing continents and isles, of its civilizations and sciences, have remained in the annals of history, save in the Sacred Records of the East.
Hence, Modern Science denies the existence of Atlantis. It even denies any violent shiftings of the Earth's axis, and would attribute the change of climate to other causes. But this question is still an open one. If Dr. Croll will have it that all such alterations can be accounted for by the effects of nutation and the precession of the equinoxes, there are others, such as Sir Henry James and Sir John Lubbock,[703] who feel more inclined to accept the idea that they are due to a change in the position of the axis of rotation. Against this the majority of the Astronomers are again arrayed. But then, what have they not denied before now, and what have they not denounced—only to accept it later on, whenever the hypothesis became undeniable fact?
How far our figures agree, or rather disagree, with Modern Science [pg 329] will be seen further in the Addenda to this Volume, where the Geology and Anthropology of our modern day are carefully compared with the teachings of Archaic Science. At any rate, the period assigned by the Secret Doctrine for the sinking of Atlantis, does not seem to disagree very much with the calculations of Modern Science, which, however, calls Atlantis “Lemuria” whenever it accepts such a submerged Continent. With regard to the pre-human period, all that can be said, at present, is, that even prior to the appearance of the “mindless” First Race, the Earth was not without its inhabitants. We might, however, add that what Science, which recognizes physical man only, has a right to regard as the pre-human period, may be conceded to have extended from the First Race down to the first half of the Atlantean Race, since it is only then that man became the “complete organic being he is now.” And this would make Adamic Man no older than a few millions of years.[704]
The author of the Qabbalah truly remarks that: “Man to-day, as an individual, is only a concatenation of the being-hood of precedent human life,” or lives, rather.
According to the Qabbalah, the soul sparks contained in Adam, went into three principal classes corresponding to his three sons, viz.: Hesed, Habel, Ge'boor-ah, Qai-yin and Ra'h-min Seth. These three were divided into ... 70 species, called; the principal roots of the human race.[705]