Three great nations claimed in antiquity a direct descent from the kingdom of Saturn or Lemuria, confused with Atlantis several thousands of years before our era; and these were the Egyptians, the Phœnicians (Sanchuniathon), and the old Greeks (Diodorus, after Plato). But the oldest civilized country of Asia—India—can likewise be shown to claim the same descent. Sub-races, guided by Karmic Law or destiny, repeat unconsciously the first steps of their respective mother-races. As the comparatively fair Brâhmans—when invading India with its dark-coloured Dravidians—have come from the North, so the Âryan Fifth Race must claim its origin from northern regions. The Occult Sciences show that the founders, the respective groups of the seven Prajâpatis, of the Root-Races have all been connected with the Pole Star. In the Commentary we find:
He who understands the age of Dhruva[1792] who measures 9090 mortal years, will understand the times of the Pralayas, the final destiny of nations, O Lanoo.
Moreover there must have been a good reason why an Asiatic nation should locate its great Progenitors and Saints in Ursa Major, a northern constellation. It is 70,000 years, however, since the Pole of the Earth pointed to the further end of Ursa Minor's tail; and many more thousand years since the seven Rishis could have been identified with the constellation of Ursa Major.
The Âryan Race was born and developed in the far North, though after the sinking of the Continent of Atlantis its tribes emigrated further South into Asia. Hence Prometheus is the son of Asia, and Deucalion, his son, the Greek Noah—he who created men out of the stones of mother Earth—is called a northern Scythe, by Lucian, and Prometheus is made the brother of Atlas and is tied down to Mount Caucasus amid the snows.[1793]
Greece had her Hyperborean as well as her Southern Apollo. Thus nearly all the Gods of Egypt, Greece, and Phœnicia, as well as those of other Pantheons, are of a northern origin and originated in Lemuria, towards the close of the Third Race, after its full physical and physiological [pg 813] evolution had been completed.[1794] All the “fables” of Greece would be found to be built on historical facts, if that history had only passed to posterity unadulterated by myths. The “one-eyed” Cyclopes, the giants fabled as the sons of Cœlus and Terra—three in number, according to Hesiod—were the last three sub-races of the Lemurians, the “one-eye” referring to the wisdom-eye;[1795] for the two front eyes were fully developed as physical organs only in the beginning of the Fourth Race. The allegory of Ulysses, whose companions were devoured while the king of Ithaca himself was saved by putting out the eye of Polyphemus with a fire-brand, is based upon the psycho-physiological atrophy of the “third eye.” Ulysses belongs to the cycle of the heroes of the Fourth Race, and, though a “Sage” in the sight of the latter, must have been a profligate in the opinion of the pastoral Cyclopes.[1796] His adventure with the latter—a savage gigantic race, the antithesis of cultured civilization in the Odyssey—is an allegorical record of the gradual passage from the Cyclopean civilization of stone and colossal buildings to the more sensual and physical culture of the Atlanteans, which finally caused the last of the Third Race to lose their all-penetrating spiritual eye. The other allegory, which makes Apollo kill the Cyclopes to avenge the death of his son Asclepius, does not refer to the three sub-races represented by the three sons of Heaven and Earth, but to the Hyperborean Arimaspian Cyclopes, the last of the race endowed with the “wisdom-eye.” The former have left relics of their buildings everywhere, in the South as much as in the North; the latter were confined to the North solely. Thus Apollo—pre-eminently the God of the Seers, whose duty it is to punish desecration, killed them—his shafts representing human passions, fiery and lethal—and hid his shaft behind a mountain in the Hyperborean regions.[1797] Cosmically and astronomically this Hyperborean God is the Sun personified, which during the course of the Sidereal Year—25,868 years—changes the climates on the Earth's surface, making frigid regions of [pg 814] tropical, and vice versâ. Psychically and spiritually his significance is far more important. As Mr. Gladstone pertinently remarks in his “Greater Gods of Olympos”:
The qualities of Apollo (jointly with Athenê) are impossible to be accounted for without repairing to sources, which lie beyond the limit of the traditions most commonly explored for the elucidation of the Greek mythology.[1798]
The history of Latona (Leto), Apollo's mother, is most pregnant in various meanings. Astronomically, Latona is the polar region and the night, giving birth to the Sun, Apollo, Phœbus, etc. She is born in the Hyperborean countries, wherein all the inhabitants were priests of her son, celebrating his resurrection and descent to their country every nineteen years at the renewal of the lunar cycle.[1799] Latona is the Hyperborean Continent, and its Race—geologically.[1800]
When the astronomical meaning cedes its place to the spiritual and divine—Apollo and Athene transforming themselves into the form of “birds,” the symbol and glyph of the higher divinities and angels—then the bright God assumes divine creative powers. Apollo becomes the personification of seership, when he sends the astral double of Æneas to the battle field,[1801] and has the gift of appearing to his seers without being visible to other persons present,[1802] a gift, however, shared by every high Adept.
The King of the Hyperboreans was, therefore, the son of Boreas, the North Wind, and the High Priest of Apollo. The quarrel of Latona with Niobe—the Atlantean Race—the mother of seven sons and seven daughters, personifying the seven sub-races of the Fourth Race and [pg 815] their seven branches[1803] allegorizes the history of the two Continents. The wrath of the “Sons of God,” or of “Will and Yoga,” at seeing the steady degradation of the Atlanteans was great;[1804] and the destruction of the children of Niobe by the children of Latona—Apollo and Diana, the deities of light, wisdom and purity, or the Sun and Moon astronomically, whose influence causes changes in the Earth's axis, deluges and other cosmic cataclysms—is thus very clear.[1805] The fable about the never-ceasing tears of Niobe, whose grief causes Zeus to change her into a fountain—Atlantis covered with water—is no less graphic as a symbol. Niobe, let it be remembered, is the daughter of one of the Pleiades, or Atlantides, the grand-daughter of Atlas therefore,[1806] because she represents the last generations of the doomed Continent.
A true remark, that of Bailly, which says that Atlantis had an enormous influence on antiquity. He adds: