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The Pedigree of Man

By Annie Besant

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The Human Races

WE HAVE SEEN that the sexes became separate in man in the middle third Race, some 18,000,000 years ago ; nevertheless, while the third eye was not entirely obstructed by dense matter, the Monad exercised some slight influence directly upon his vehicles ; this influence lessened as the density of matter increased, and the developing lower mind more and more took possession, thrusting the Monad into the background, and compelling all influence to pass through itself. When the time arrived for the birth of the fourth Race, the most advanced section of humanity had reached this point, and hence it is said that the Atlantean was the "first truly human and terrestrial race."
The Atlantean continent was slowly rising as the Lemurian was broken up by earthquakes and volcanic outbursts, the one emerging as the other sank. The most suitable types for the fourth Race - the most intellectually developed and the most robust and dense in body - were chosen out of the third Race by the Manu of the fourth, and were led away northwards to the Imperishable Sacred Land, to be isolated and evolved, and to settle, on leaving that cradle of the races, on the northern parts of Asia, unaffected by the great Lemurian catastrophes. The first two sub-races of the Atlanteans overlap the sixth and seventh sub-races of the Lemurian during the later part of the Secondary Age, ante-dating the great Lemurian catastrophe, which took place 700,000 years before the close of that age. The most glorious period as regards spirituality of the fourth Race - that under its divine dynasty - was in the Eocene Age, and the first great cataclysm which destroyed it, took place about the middle of the Miocene Age, some four million years ago. Another splendid civilisation - the Toltec - grew up after this first cataclysm, and was destroyed in the catastrophe of 850,000 years ago. Others, but none so splendid, followed. These we shall glance at presently.    The last remnant of Atlantis, the
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island called Poseidonis by Plato, was submerged el even       j thousand years ago, 9564 B.C.
The huge continent we call Atlantis, the continent of the fourth Race, named Kusha in the occult records, embraced northern Asia - untouched, as said, from Lemurian times - stretching far to the north of the great sea, now the Gobi Desert; it extended eastwards, in a solid block of land, including China and Japan, and passed beyond them across the present northern Pacific Ocean, till it almost touched the western coast of North America ; southwards it covered India and Ceylon, Burmah, and the Malay peninsula, and westwards included Persia, Arabia and Syria, the Red Sea and Abyssinia, occupying the basin of the mediterranean, covering southern Italy and Spain, and, projecting from Scotland and Ireland, then above the waters, into what is now sea, it stretched westwards, covering the present Atlantic Ocean and a large part of North and South America. The catastrophe which rent it, in the mid-Miocene, about four million years ago, into seven islands, of varying size, brought to the surface Norway and Sweden, much of southern Europe, Egypt, nearly all Africa, and much of North America, while sinking northern Asia, and breaking Atlantis off from the Imperishable Sacred Land. The lands later called Ruta and Daitya, the present bed of the Atlantic, were rent away from America, but a great belt of land still connected them, a belt submerged in the catastrophe of 850,000 years ago, in theiater Pliocene, leaving the two lands as. separate islands. These, again, perished, some 200,000 years ago, leaving Poseidonis in the midst of the Atlantic.
It must be remembered with regard to the dates of catastrophes, and the relative distribution of sea and land, that these vary according to the catastrophes selected for chronicling, and the point between widely separated periods at which a map is made. The available information is fragmentary, and is not always easily pieced together; hence the above outlines as existing at given dates must be taken provisionally.
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The Lemurians selected as the parents of the Atlantean stock, and led by their Manu to the Imperishable Sacred Land, separated off into groups, occupying the seven zones, or promontories, of the land. "Thus, two by two, on the seven zones," says the Book by Dzyan, "the third Race gave birth to the fourth," about eight million years ago, towards the later part of the Secondary Age. They were born under the Moon and Saturn - Soma and Shani - and much of the black magic developed among them, especially in the Toltec sub-race, was wrought by a skilled use of the "dark rays" of the moon, the emanations from the dark part of the moon. To Saturn was partly due the immense development of the concrete mind which marked the same sub-race, and much of Egyptian lore was gained under his influence. They were called also the "children of Padmapani," the flower of the lotus being a symbol of generation, an allusion to the fact that the fourth Race was produced by a union of the sexes. The marked density reached now by the human body brought about the clear recognition of impacts from solids, to which the subtler forms of earlier times had offered little resistance.
Into the first sub-race of the fourth Race, the Rmoahal, fair in color, came the Asuras ; and the first class of Solar Pitrs, ex-lunar Monads, also came crowding in. They moved southward after long ages, when the Atlantean type of their divine Kings, the Agnishvatta Pitrs, gradually established a powerful civilisation. They drove before them the Lemurians, still dwelling in Africa and in the adjoining lands which had risen from the Atlantic, building strong cities, and becoming a settled people. The third eye was still used, but the two ordinary physical eyes had developed and were replacing it ; the astral world was not yet shut out from the general vision, and much susceptibility to astral impressions remained, and much tractability as regarded the divine Rulers, looked up to, practically worshipped by those They guided and trained. The Asuras were not yet masters enough of their bodies to be able to turn their attention to the mastery of others, and the young civilisation went quietly on. The second sub-race, the Tlavatli, yellow in color, grew up on the land now beneath the Atlantic,
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still ruled and guided from above, by the divine Kings. The Asuras steadily came to the front of human evolution, as the ages went on, but were still obedient to the Lords of Light, ruling large districts and laboring for the improvement of agriculture and architecture, both of which made great progress under their brilliant leadership. There is nothing else in Atlantean civilisation so peacefully great as this early period, under the divine Kings. Meanwhile, under the western sky, were beginning to grow the seeds of a more intellectual but more densely physical sub-race, that called the Toltec, destined to carry the fourth Race civilisation to its highest material point, and also to experience is most tremendous fall. The most powerful of the Asuras and the best of the Solar Pitrs took birth in this, and settled on lands which did not come within the sweep of the mighty convulsion that rent Atlantis into the seven great islands. This convulsion destroyed the greater part of the first and second sub-races, leaving only remnants ; the first drifted northwards, dwindled in stature, and declined into barbarism. The second gravitated southwards and eastwards, intermarried with the Lemurians still left in the district into which they wandered, and gave rise to the Dravidian peoples.
Thus was cleared the theatre for the great Toltec sub-race, a race handsome and well cut in feature, gigantic still, some twenty-seven feet in height, but well-modelled in figure, red to re-brown in color. Their bodies and those of the fourth and fifth sub-races were denser in material than any before or since, of a hardness sufficient to bend a bar of the iron of the present day, were it launched against them, or to break a bar of our steel, were they heavily struck by it ; one of our knives would not cut their flesh, any more than it would cut a piece of present-day rock. Needless to add that the minerals of their day were so much harder than our own, that their relative hardness to these human bodies was much as that our minerals to our bodies now. Another peculiarity was the extraordinary recuperative power they possessed ; they recovered from the most ghastly and extensive wounds, received in battle or accident, the flesh joining and healing with the most astonishing rapidity ; nor did they at all suffer from nervous shock, consequent on serious
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laceration, nor suffer very keenly from physical torture, even that inflicted by deliberate' human cruelty. The nervous organisation was strong but not fine, nor was it delicately balanced in its internal co-ordinations ; hence it could stand, without injury, shocks which would prostrate a man of the fifth Race, and could endure strains and convulsions that would leave him a nervous wreck. Flesh like rock, nerves like wires of steel, would best describe the bodies of these sub-races. The developing sense of taste answered only to very powerful stimulants, and could not distinguish any delicate flavours ; putrid meat, strongly smelling fish, garlic and all herbs of very pungent flavor, the sharpest and most fiery solids and liquids, were, to them, the only delicious foods. All else was tasteless and vapid. As they possessed no sense of smell, they could dwell undisturbed amid the most appalling stenches, and although the higher classes were most scrupulously clean in their persons and dwellings, the neighbourhood of malodorous filth - provided it did not offend the eye - troubled them not at all. Traces of these physical peculiarities still remain in many of their descendants. The North American Indians recover from wound which would kill the fifth Race man, whether from injury to tissue or from nervous shock ; he can bear, unblenching, tortures under which the fifth Race man would incontinently faint away. The Burmans will bury fish and meat, and find them, in their putrid condition, a toothsome delicacy. And all can live amid smells that would turn the fifth Race man sick. The third eye, which, as we have seen, had retreated inwards and had been becoming more and more obscured with the increasing density of matter, disappeared altogether as physical organ during the Toltec sub-race, but remained functionally active for long ages in the succeeding sub-races. Even after it complete disappearance as a physical organ, much susceptibility to astral impulses remained, and superphysical impressionability was general. In the days of Toltec degradation, processes of black magic were resorted to by the upper classes, in order to deprive of this faculty those whom they oppressed and enslaved. They not only ceased to train it, as was done in the earlier days, but sought actively to stunt and even to destroy it.    Despite all,
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however, it still survives, to some extent, in many fourth Race nations and tribes.
Language was at this time .agglutinative, both among the Toitecs and among the fourth and fifth sub-races - the Turanian and Semitic - and this was the most ancient from of the Rakshasa language, so called as typical of the Turanian giants, to whom the name of Rakshasas was specially given. As time went on, language became inflectional, and this passed on to the fifth Race.
Stature, as said above, was gigantic - giants, Titans, are names often met with - but it gradually diminished, sub-race after sub-race. The Easter Island statues run to about twenty-seven feet in height, and represent fourth Race men in the middle period: the Bamian statues, five in number, are said, by H.P.B. to be the handiwork of fourth Race Initiates, and to represent the gradually diminishing height of the five Races; the first is 173 feet in height, representing the first Race; the second, that of the Sweat-born, is 120 feet high; the third, that of the third Race, 60 feet; the fourth and fifth are smaller, the last being a little over the height of a tall man of the fifth Race. The statues have been modelled over in plaster, and made to represent the Lord Buddha, but the rock-cut figures antedate His coming by ages.
Into this third sub-race, the Toltec, came some of the greatest Asuras, Intelligences of highly developed power and knowledge, and they found, in the splendid highest type of Toltec bodies, fit vehicles for their further evolution, and vehicles, moreover, that took on swiftly a still higher development, under the stimulating pressure from within. Behind them gathered the Asuras, who had already previously incarnated in the first and second sub-races, and also the Solar Pitrs, who had therein experienced their first terrene incarnations. Such were the higher classes of the early Toitecs, and below them a vast mass of less developed, but pliable and receptive peoples, ready to be led and guided. To these came the divine Kings, to aid them in the building of a great civilisation, and the Dragons of Wisdom watched this new development of the human race, so promising
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in the vigor of its splendid and eager youth. Hence this sub-race, named the Daityas in the Puranas, is said to have taught by Shukra, the divine Agnishattva Kings ruling it under the instruction and protection of the Dragons of Wisdom from Venus. Hence, too, is Shukra spoken of as the preceptor of the Asuras.
Under these favoring conditions of divine Instructors and Rulers and apt pupils, the Toltec civilisation grew and developed. In it appeared Asuramaya, greatest of astronomers, who began the astronomical records ever since guarded by the White Lodge, he who constructed the Zodiac, handing it down to the Atlanteans of Ruta, from whom it passed to the Egyptians after the lapse of ages. Among them, from time to time, appeared the mysterious Narada, Son of will and yoga, he who had learned the secret of appearing upon earth during incalculable ages, b stepping from one body to another, arbiter of the destiny of nations, guider of the whirling wheels of change, the sparks whereof are wars and natural convulsions. Study of the energies of nature was carried further by these quick pupils of the Stages than man has since been able to carry it. They yoked to their service the subtle energies that have the ether for their medium ; they learned to plough the air in airships as steamers plough the waves of oceans, and these air-ships were used in the great wards which marked the later ages of Toltec supremacy. Many a reference to these may be found in the ancient stories, telling of combats waged in air between contending hosts. In those later days also they used their knowledge of chemistry to construct weapons dealing out a wide-spreading destruction ; a war-ship, high in air over the heads of the combatants, would suddenly pour down a rain of heavy poisonous vapor, that would stupefy or slay thousands of hapless warriors ; or they would hurl down huge bombs that, on striking the ground, exploded, scattering in all directions hundreds of thousands of fiery arrows, spreading the ground with the mutilated corpses of the slain.
In earlier days, their scientific studies were turned in more beneficent directions : to the improvement of agriculture, the
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breeding of improved types of animals, the production of grain-stuffs, the cultivation of fruit-tress, the enriching of the soil, the use of light of various colors for the stimulation of the growth of animals and plants, and for the eradication of germinal diseases.
Nor must be forgotten the wide use of alchemy, the parent of chemistry, in the production of the metals now called 'precious,' but then esteemed merely for their beauty as decorative agents. Gold was freely used on houses and temples, and gilded pillars were seen in the houses of the wealthy, the palaces of rulers, the temples of religion. Many beautiful alloys were also made for decorative purposes, contributing their metallic glint to the splendor of the cities.
Architecture was the art that rose highest under the Toltecs, and some of their great cities were models of strength and beauty. Supreme among them all was the famous "City of the Golden Gates," built on a hill which was crowned by the gorgeous Golden Temple, at once a temple and a palace, for its pillared galleries and richly adorned courts wee the home of the divine Kings, who raised the Toltec Empire to its splendid height. Painting and gilding were largely used on the outside of the houses, and statuary, bas-reliefs and mouldings of all kinds were freely employed as decorations.
The social polity established by the divine Kings was based on the general idea that knowledge and power must bear burden and responsibility, and that weakness gave a claim for protection not a reason for oppression. Education was universal, but of many kinds, suited to the life which lay about the student. In the days of the zenith of the Toltec civilisation, every capital of a province had its central college, with a department for each art, science, and branch of literature, and with affiliated colleges through the whole province, by means of which was spread the knowledge of al discoveries that tended to improvement in the application of science to production. Progress in science was promoted by the rule that removed men from the active duties of executive work when they had passed the zenith of their physical powers and relegated them to the
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study and the laboratory, if not needed for the direction of great industrial enterprises, the discharge of judicial functions, the guiding of the State. The less developed classes were trained in agricultural, manufacturing, and all. kinds of manual labor, and their welfare and comfort, with the provision of abundant food and clothing, were regarded as among the first duties of government. A Governor whose people were discontented, unruly, ill-provided, was removed from his post, as being either incapable or neglectful, and for any serious troubles he was punished by fine or imprisonment.
Many traces of these methods and views are still to be found in the fragments of very ancient literature, embedded in the books of nations with an antique past. They appear in some of the Chinese books, and some of the fragments unearthed from comparatively modern, though now dead, civilisations, shew the paternal and minute care exercised by Rulers over their people. The beautiful, though effete, civilisation of Peru, destroyed by Pizarro arid his Spaniards, shews some faint traces of the elder world, whence it was derived.
The Toltec sway spread its centre in Atlantis proper - the land now beneath the Atlantic - westwards over the land now embraced in North and South America ; eastwards also it extended itself over northern Africa and Egypt, bringing under its rule many nations springing from the mixture of the second sub-race with the Lemurians, and of the younger fourth and fifth sub-races, growing up in their respective centres.
When the Toltec Empire had been raised to its highest point, the divine dynasty came to an end, for the wisdom of the great Hierarchy saw that the time had come when humanity should try to walk for a while aione, gaining knowledge by its experiments and strength from its falls. A long line of Adept Kings followed, disciples of the great Lords, but now the ahamkara of the incarnated Asuras, nourished by power and rule, began to assume dangerous dimensions as their strength and dominance increased, and as the strong hand of the divine Kings was removed, and the reins of empire fell into a weaker grasp.  The
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Stanzas tell the story in brief bold outline : Then the third and fourth became tall with pride". 'We are the Kings ; we are the Gods.' They took wives fair to look upon, wives from the mindless, the narrow-headed. They bred monsters, male and female, also khado, with little minds. They built temples for the human body. Male and female they worshipped. Then the third eye acted no longer. They built huge cities, of rare earths and metals they built. 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. They built great images, nine yatis high, the size of their bodies. Inner fires had destroyed the land of their fathers. The water threatened the fourth.
Let us fill in the outline. First I would suggest, with all deference, that "the third and fourth" does not mean, the third and fourth Races, but the third and fourth sub-races of the fourth Race. It is distinctly said in the first shloka of Stanza X: "the third Race gave birth to the fourth," and then mention is made of the first four sub-races, thus produced. To bring in at this stage the third race, of which the degraded remnants were scattered through the fourth Race Kingdoms, seems incongruous, and the story is thrown out of gear. Whereas, if we read "third and fourth" as applying to the sub-races, the whole story is then congruous and sequential. At this stage of the third sub-race, the Toltec the fourth sub-race, the Turanian, had risen into power in the eastern lands, though still tributary to the white Emperor of the City of the Golden Gates, and, in the later struggle, it allied itself with the southern rebels; these were the "third and fourth" that grew "tall and pride." The fifth sub-race was also differentiated, and was fighting its turbulent way to power in the north; we need not, however, concern ourselves with it at the moment.
Against the rule of the White emperor, the incarnated asuras gradually rebelled; at first secretly, disregarding the orders from the capital, spreading the idea that the far-off Sovereign was less useful to the people than the nearer Viceroys, themselves, assuming greater and greater state, and enchroaching in every direction on the imperial authority.    To increase their own
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greatness in the eyes of the people, they dazzled them with exhibitions of magical power, using their great resources of superphysical knowledge to aggrandise themselves, and to surround themselves with mystery, breeding awe in the minds of the ignorant. In order more fully to detach the hearts of the people from the White Emperor, they gradually introduced changes in religious worship, and substitutes luxurious feasts, dazzling spectacles, and sensuous pageantry for the stately and somewhat severe ritual instituted by the divine Kings. The early temples were of massive grandeur, splendid with gold and rich with jewels, but all was chaste, simple and grandiose. A dazzling Sun of gold was the central object, image and symbol of the celestial Sun, and that, in turn, but the symbol, the radiant garment, of the Lord of Light and Love, the Ruler of the solar system, in which He veiled His Presence of light ineffable. The worship was in sonorous chants and stately mazes of rhythmic dance, with flower-garlands and rolling clouds of fragrant incense, splendid and gorgeous indeed, but yet to chaste simplicity and stateliness. In connection with the Golden Temple in the capital city was the White Hall, or cave, of Initiation, wherein the disciples of the Dragons of Wisdom received the holy chrism, wherein shone the Star of Initiation over the head of the Hierophant wherein from time to time appeared the radiant forms of the Sons of the Fire. This it was which gave to the Temple its supreme sanctity, and made it the focus of spiritual power. To it turned the hearts of the people; round it ever shone the halo of their devotion; it was the visible symbol of the protecting care of the Dragons of Wisdom.
Well did the ambitious Asuras know that so long as the Golden Temple and the White Hall remained the cynosure of all eyes, the acknowledged heart of the Toltec Empire, the hearts of the people would still turn thither. Hence they determined to create a new capital, and to set up a rival Emperor - his name is recorded as Thevatat - building within his palace a new temple and a new hall of Initiation. To give to this new centre the sanction of the super-physical, they called to their aid the powerful Elementals of the lower astral world, to appear in their midst at high festivals, and receive, clad in dazzling guise, the
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offerings and adoration of the people; after a while, to bind these dread beings more closely to their service, they began to offer to them sacrifices of slain animals, and, on great festivals, even of slain men; then, in connection with these, began licentious practices, cruelty and lust having natural affinities, until orgies of the vilest kinds filled the nights, which followed days spent in spectacular combats and bloody sacrifices.
The next downward step was taken when the chiefs of the Asuras proclaimed themselves as objects of divine worship; "We are the Kings; we are the Gods" and, carving huge figures of themselves, they set these up in these temples as objects of worship, and the creative power of man, reflection of the divine, was substituted for that spiritual energy of which it was the physical correspondence;thus phalljcism arose.surrounded by all its attendant abominations.
The great super-physical powers of the Asuras, now become Magicians of the darkest and most terrible type, imposed a reign of terror over the portion of the earth they swayed. The blackest practices of magic were resorted to, to terrorise and to crush. Aided by the half-animal women of the narrow-headed of the third Race, and by magical processes of unspeakable loathsome-ness, they produced powerful monsters, with the strength of the brute and the cunning of the savage; and ensouled these gruesome forms with the worst type of elementals. These became their guards and their messengers, the terrible symbols of their power, and the Lord of the dark Face rose to the height of power, embodied ahamkara, veritable kings of Darkness.
Thus were all the forces of matter rallied round a single centre, while on the other side the White Emperor strengthened his forces to resist. In the higher spheres, preparations for the future were going on. Among the Sons of Light, several reached the supreme illumination, becoming Buddhas, a vast reserve of spiritual strength, ready for the uplifting of the world, after its plunge into matter. Two hundred thousand years had still to run their course before the great struggle, when the Dragons of
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Wisdom bade one of their number, Vaivasvata, choose out of the turbulent fifth sub-race, and lead them to the Imperishable Sacred Land, the cradle, as before said, of every Root Race. One million years have rolled away since the seeds of the fifth Race were thus separated out from the fourth. To that impregnable fortress were led successive emigrations of the Elect Race, to be guarded in safety though the coming tumults, far away from the scenes of strife. In that peaceful sunny land we may see Vaivasvata, presiding over His disciples and the infant, nay, embryonic Race. There is the future Zarathustra, the future Hermes, the future Orpheus, the future Gautama, the future Maitreya, with many another, watching over the growing seed. But we must turn away from that peaceful scene to the turmoil of the struggling fourth.
The armies of the Lords of the dark Face now began to advance northwards, and a long series of combats opened between these and the armies of the White Emperor. Now the dark, and now the white forces conquered, but the tide of victory set, none the less, northwards; for the cycle was against the triumph of Spirit, it was the time for the triumph of Matter. From every side flocked hosts to the banners of the Dark Lords, for they appealed to the passions of the animal side of man; fierce hatred arose against the clean living followers of the Good Law, the hatred ever felt by the luxurious for the "pale ascetic," the hatred of the unclean for those whose purity is a silent rebuke to themselves. Slowly, with ebb and flow, the tide rolled onwards; fierce combats, vast slaughters took place, but surely the dark forces won their way. At last the White emperor was driven from his capital, and the City of the Golden Gates, where divine Kings had ruled, sweetened by the feet of the Holy Ones, became the prey of the Lords of the Dark Face, and the Dark Emperor, the famous Hiranyaksha, was enthroned on the seat whence the Good Law had been proclaimed. The Cave of Initiation was found to be a heap of ruins, the great entrance pillars rent in twain, and the roof shivered into fragments; but in the Golden Temple, where a divine Priesthood had ministered, the blood of guiltless animals flowered in polluting streams, and
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the great statues of the dark magicians frowned where the Disk of the Sun had shone.
At last the cup of evil was full. Some 50,000 years had passed since the pollution of the Golden Temple ; sorcery had spread in all directions, and the lowest stage of materiality had been reached. It was time that the earth should be relieved from the weight of cruelty, lust and oppression under which she was sinking.
The Dragons of Wisdom saw that the time was come, and that the forces of nature must be turned against "the dark brood of sorcerers." From Shambhallah the word went forth, the signal for the overwhelming of the land, polluted beyond cleansing, and for the saving of any who would obey the summons to leave the doomed land. The Commentary tells the story : "And the 'great Kind of the Dazzling Face,' the Chief of all the yellow-faced, was sad, seeing the sins of the black-faced. He sent his air-vehicles to all his brother-chiefs, with pious men within, saying : 'Prepare. Arise, ye men of the Good Law, and cross the land while dry. The Lords of the Storm are approaching. Their chariots are nearing the land. One night and two days only shall the Lords of the Dark Face live on this patient land. She is doomed, and they have to descend with her. The nether Lords of the Fires are preparing their magic fire-weapons. But the Lords of the Dark Eye are stronger than they, and they are the slaves of the mighty ones. They are versed in weapons. Come and use yours. Let every Lord of the Dazzling Face cause the air-vehicle of every Lord of the Dark Face to come into his hands, lest any should, by its means, escape from the waters, avoid the rod of the Four, and save his wicked one. May every Yellow Face send sleep from himself to every Black Face. May even they avoid pain and suffering. May every man true to the Solar Gods bind every man under the Lunar Gods, lest he should suffer, on escape his destiny. And may every Yellow Face offer of his life-water to the speaking animal of the Black Face, lest he awaken his master. The hour has struck, the black night is ready...Let their destiny be accomplished. We are the servants of the great Four. May the Kings of Light return'...Stars
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showered on the lands of the Black Faces, but they slept. The speaking beasts kept quite. The nether Lords waited for orders, but they came not, for their masters slept. The waters arose, and covered the valleys from one end of the earth to the other. High lands remained, the bottom of the earth remained dry. There dwelt those who escaped ; the men of the Yellow Faces and of the straight eye. When the Lords of the Dark Faces awoke and bethought themselves of their air-vehicles in order to escape from the rising waters, they found them gone."
Such is a fragment of the story as told in the Commentary. The "speaking animals" are the monsters before mentioned, and the "life-water" is blood ; the "men of the Good Law" escaped from the impending disaster, and then the storm broke. Furious blasts of air lifted the ocean billows into mountain-heights : underground convulsions hurled vast tidal waves on the rocking lands ; deluges of rain swamped the valleys, and turned the rivers into cataracts ; hills, riven by earth-quakes, were flung high in air, and fell in avalanches of fragments on the vales beneath ; the earth itself seemed to shiver under the impacts of whirling waters and rushing rivers ; the deafening roar of waters mingled with the cries of drowning men, the howls of drowning animals, and the glory of Atlantis sunk beneath the waters, leaving memories of a deluge that crept into the literature of nations, giving rise to many a legend and song in later years.
Thus was the earth relieved of her burden, and the Black Art received a blow from which it has never recovered. And the Asuras themselves received a lesson which wrought their redemption, and sent them onwards in evolution on a sure ascent.
The fourth sub-race, the Turanian, need not delay us ; they were pre-eminently the Rakshasas, giants of a brutal and ferocious type, and their conflicts with the young fifth Race find much place in Indian Story. From the fifth sub-race, the Semitic, as we have seen, came the seeds of the fifth Race ; they were a turbulent, fighting, people, and a branch of one of their families, selected by Vaivasvata Manu as the seed of the fifth Race, and
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rejected again because of its lack of plasticity, is the far-off ancestor of the Hebrew people.
The sixth sub-race, the Akkadian, was born after the catastrophe that destroyed two-thirds of the Toltec race - one third going north and later blending with the evolving fifth Race. The Pelasgians came from these, with some admixture of seventh sub-race blood. The Etruscans and Carthaginians derived from the same root, whence also the Scythians.
The seventh sub-race, the Mongolian, developed from the Turanian, the fourth sub-race, stock, and from this have descended the inland Chinese - not those of the coasts - the Malays, Tibetans, Hungarians, Finns and Esquimaux ; some of their offshoots mixed with the Toltecs in North America, and thus the Red Indians have in them some Mongolian blood. The Japanese are one of their latest off-shoots. Many of this sub-race travelled westwards, settling down in Asia Minor, Greece, and adjoining countries ; there, improved by intermixture of fifth Race blood, from the second sub-race of the fifth, they gave rise to the old Greeks and the Phoenicians.
After the disappearance of Poseidonis, the deterioration of the scattered Atlantean tribes was rapid, though the Atlanteans in the east of Asia held their own. The Polynesians, Samoans and Tongas are surviving relics. Some of the tribes even sank so low as to intermarry with the hybrid creatures that sprang from the sin of the mindless. Others intermarried with the degraded remnants of the seventh Lemurian sub-race, and the Veddahs of Ceylon are the descendants from such unions, as are the hairy men of Borneo, the Andaman Islanders, Bushmen, and some Australian aborigines. The majority of the inhabitants of the earth are still fourth Race people, but the only ones that seem to have future are the Japenese, and perhaps the Chinese.
Let us go northward now, northward to the Sacred Land, and see our Manu, the holy Vaivasvata, evolving, with infinite patience, His chosen Race. For ages upon ages He labors thee, He and His band of co-workers, shaping the nucleus of the future
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humanity, repressing the undesirable, stimulating the desirable, encouraging, warning, persuading, rebuking. There the fifth sense is added to the other four, and man is shaped as we know him now. Thither He guides for re-birth the great Asuras, to turn their powers to nobler ends. Thither He calls the brightest intelligences, the purest characters, to take re-birth in the forms He is evolving. And there they dwell under the Pole-Star far away from the tumults of earth, slowly shaping into a new and finer type.
Meanwhile the surface of the globe is under going-manifold changes of land sea. The new continent Krauncha, the Europe, Asia, Africa, America, Australia, of our own age, is not yet born : with many throes one portion after another is up-heaved and others are submerged, until the great convulsion of 200,000 years ago left Poseidonis alone in Mid-Atlantic, and the outlines of the great continents much as they are to-day. This fifth "continent" -meaning by this word all the land surface prepared for a Root Race - will, in the course of ages, perish by earthquakes and by volcanic fires, much as Lemuria perished in the elder days. For fire and water destroy the world in turns, and our world will perish by fire, as did Lemuria.
Under Budha - Mercury - was the fifth Race evolved, for the development of the mind was its chief work, and the planet of knowledge shed its beneficent rays upon its birth-hour. Hence, in pauranic story, is Budha said to be the son of Indu - Indu, the Moon, being the Lord of the fourth Race, the progenitor, and Budha of the fifth Race, the progeny.
When the Manu had established the type of His Race, He led them southward to Central Asia, and there another age-long halt was made, and the home of the Race, whence its several streams should issue, was established.
Then came the first great emigration, perhaps some 850,000 years ago ; the first sub-race - often specifically called the Aryan, though the name applies to the whole fifth Race - was led southwards, across the mighty belt of the Himalayas, and settled
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in the northern India, in Aryavarta. At its head were the "seven Rshis," Marichi, Atri, Pulastya, Pulaha (?Kavi) Angiras (?Kratu,) Kardama, and Daksha - the names vary in different lists - who had long been guiding their evolution. In Manusmrti we find them given as above, save that Daksha is called Prachetas. With these were three, others, making up "ten Rshis," Vashishtha, Bhrgu and Narada. These led the sub-race into India, already built into the fourfold order by the Manu, the Barshishad Pitrs - as we saw, in studying physical evolution -having lent their aid in the shaping of the type of subtle body for each caste. We have not time to trace the long history of this great sub-race ; moreover it is, more or less, known to all of you. Under its divine Kings, it warred against the peoples occupying the lands into which it came, Titans left from the third Race, Daityas and Rakshasas of the fourth. Who does not know the story of Ramachandra, warring against the Rakshasas under their mighty King, Ravana, and establishing His kingdom from the Himalayas to the southern sea ? It must suffice us to recall that these Aryans received the Zodiac directly from the Sons of will and yoga, who came among them as Teachers - we are told of The Serpents who re-descended, who made peace with the fifth, who taught and instructed it, " that they had brought with them from Central Asia the Senzar language, the "secret sacerdotal tongue," the true "language of the Gods," from which Samskrt was derived, still the "mystery tongue" of Initiates ; that among them arose the twenty-four Buddhas, still reverenced among the Jains as the twenty-four Tirthamkaras.
The second sub-race of the fifth Race, the Aryo-Semitic, migrated westwards from Central Asia, peopling Afghanistan, passing along the'Oxus, and crossing the Euphrates into Arabia and Syria; these aryanised many of the Turanian and Akkadian tribes, dwelling along this route, and the great Empires of Assyria and Babylonia arose as the result of their impulse. The Phoenicians and the later Egyptians, and the old Greeks, arose from their intermixture with the seventh Atlantean sub-race, as has been already mentioned. "The last seven dynasties referred to in the Egyptian and Chaldean records," says H.P.B.. belonged to the fifth Race.    Some off-shoots of this Race travelled
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eastwards, and mingling with the Mongolian sub-race along the coasts of China, gave rise to the Chinese of the coasts, and also to the family which now sits on the Dragon Throne of China.
The third sub-race, the Iranian, led by Zarathushtra, went forth northwards and eastwards, following in the track of the second, but settling down for the most part in Afghanistan and Persia, the great Prophet dwelling in this latter country. Some wandered as far as Arabia and thence into Egypt, intermarrying there with the Egyptian Atlanteans.
Both these sub-races found the fourth Race people they settled among worshippers of Surya, the Sun, the priests bearing the name of Magas. These Magas claimed to have come from Shakudvipa, or Shvetadvipa, the White Island, and the claim was true enough, as regards their remote origin, for all true teaching was derived from the Dwellers in that Holy Land, whether the name be used for the Imperishable Sacred land, or, by substitution, for the Holy City, Shamballah, in the Gobi Desert. Taught by the Instructors of the second sub-race, these Empires followed Saboeanism, the worship of the Beings who rule the celestial bodies, the "Star-Angels," and the Chaldean worship rose to a splendid being of wisdom and purity, the Magi of Chaldea being astronomers and astrologers, versed profoundly in the science of the celestial bodies, and guiding the State by advice, based on a study of the stars.
The third sub-race, under its Instructors, headed by the first Zarathushtra - whose name descended to Teacher after Teacher, to the number of fourteen - was forbidden the worship of the Star-Angels, in consequence of the abuses which had arisen in connexion with it, and was given Fire as the sole permissible symbol of Deity. The wise men of Persia, often also called Magi, were followers more of chemistry than of astronomy, partly in consequence of its value in agriculture to which the Iranian sub-race was specially devoted. This led to a great development among them of alchemy, and many traces may be found in Egypt of their influence in this direction.
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The fourth sub-race, the Keltic, led by Orpheus, migrated westwards, beyond the track of its fore-runners, first peopling Greece with the later Greeks, and then spreading over Italy, northwards over France, still more northwards into the old Atlantean lands of Ireland and Scotland, and peopling also the younger land of England. It is interesting to notice how the familiar symbology of the Dragon and the Serpent, as names for high Initiates, appears among all these closely related peoples. The Hierophants of Babylon and of Egypt, the Druids, the Phoenicians, are all sons of the Dragon, or Serpents. The symbol came down from Atlantis, even from Lemura, and has ever been preserved, down to the fifth Race ; and in Mexico, and scattered over America, it recurs, one of the universal symbols, belonging to the early Teachers of humanity.
The fifth sub-race, the Teutonic, also migrating westwards, occupied all Central Europe, and is now spreading over the world ; it has occupied the greater part of North America, driving before it the old Atlantean stock ; it has seized Australia and New Zealand, the remnants of still more ancient Lemuria and the poor relics of that dying Race are vanishing before it. High is it rearing its proud head over the countries of the globe, destined to build a world-wide Empire, and to sway the destinies of civilisation.
Yet it too shall pass away, as the ages roll on their course, and Krauncha shall follow Plaksha, Shalmali and Kusha. Then shall Shaka rise to be continent of the sixth Root Race, emerging where North America now is, most of that land having been previously broken up by earthquakes and subterranean fires. Shaka shall also pass away, whelmed under floods, as was Kusha, and Pushkara, the seventh continent, shall emerge and flourish, its centre about where South America is now to be found. And then will come the end of our globe, the close of its long and eventful history, and it will sink peacefully to sleep, after its long day of waking. For worlds pass away, and Round succeeds Round, and Chain follows Chain, but the eternal Spirit, who now clothes himself in human bodies, he, he alone, remains, and he endureth for ever.
 
PEACE TO ALL  BEINGS