Authenticity

WE NOW COME to a consideration of the authenticity of this plan of the Four World Ages, in the light of known history and the evidence of pre-history, including that dim stretch of time which begins about 6000 B.C., when the "Dawn of History" appears.

What reason have open-minded students to believe in the truth of this ancient Hindu system of Yuga-chronology, based on the Equinox-Precessional Cycle? Are we really, in our present era, on the Ascending Arc of progress? Has mankind truly emerged, in 1698 A.D., from the Iron Age of Kali into the brighter Bronze Age of Dwapara? Was there actually a Golden Age of the world which ended in 6702 B.C.? Why should we believe in the validity of this Cycle-plan, which conflicts with many others offered in various standard metaphysical and astrological writings, and is unsupported by modern historical interpretation? In short, what are the facts, records and events of the immediate past and of far-distant ages, which can reasonably be admitted as valid evidence of a profound connection between a 24,000 year Equinox-Precessional Cycle of the heavens, and the rise and fall of nations and civilizations on this earth?

In an attempt to answer these questions we must, first of all, consider the orthodox historical view and background, as furnished by our leading anthropologists, geologists, archaeologists, and scholars today.

H. G. Wells, in his "Outline of History," says, "Chronology only begins to be precise enough to specify the exact year of any event after the establishment of the eras of the First Olympiad (776 B.C.) and the building of Rome (753 B.C.)."

These dates roughly coincide with the beginning of the Dark Age, Kali Yuga of the Descending Arc, in 702 B.C. (It will be necessary for the reader to refer back to the Equinautical World Age Chart, in order to properly understand these date-references.)

Thus, we may say that the beginning of history, so far as our modern era has been able to establish an exact chronology is concerned, is coincident with one of the time or Yuga-divisions of the Equinox-Precessional Cycle, whose reliability we shall presently test. The scope of history extends, however, in a far less exact and comprehensive way, to a period about 6000 B.C., which is the date given by modern archaeologists to the Sumerian cities of Nippur and Eridu in Mesopotamia. "Perhaps the earliest people," writes Wells, "to form real cities . . . in any part of the world, were a people of mysterious origin called the Sumerians . . . They developed their civilization, their writing, and their shipping, through a period that may be twice as long as the whole period from the Christian era to the present time. The first of all known empires was that founded by the high priest of the god of the Sumerian city of Erech . . . There flourished the first temples and the first priest-rulers that we know of among mankind."

If, then, we take the year 6000 B.C. as marking the "dawn of history," we shall see that this date roughly corresponds to the beginning of the Treta of Silver Age of the Descending Arc, which began in 6702 B.C. In this way, the records of history, starting from the Sumerian empire of a vague 6000 B.C., down to the present day, reveals, completely or partially, the story of mankind for a period of years that would include, by the Age Time-Chart we are using, the entire Yugas of Treta, Dwapara and Kali of the Descending Arc, as well as of the entire Kali and a brief span of Dwapara of the Ascending Arc. Thus, four whole Ages and part of a fifth Age are within the historical period, to whose records we shall presently go in our effort to determine whether or not the distinctive influences of the Yugas can be traced in the life of mankind.

Geologists assign to the earth an age of about 1,600,000,000 years. (Einstein, however, has recently stated his estimate as ten billion years.) Anthropologists and other specialists claim that nearly all of that span was without any human life, and put the time of the first appearance of a true human type, the neanderthal man, at about 50,000 B.C., when the fourth and last Glacial Age was disappearing. By 20,000 B.C., man is represented as having reached, in Egypt and Mesopotamia, the beginning of the agricultural state, the Neolithic or New Stone Age. Finally we arrive, about 6000 B.C., at the "dawn of history" and the first-known cities and civilization of the Sumerians. From then down to the present day, historians claim to discern a more or less steady growth and expansion of civilization and progress among men.

"There are set-backs, massacres, pestilence;" writes Wells, "but the story is, on the whole, one of enlargement. For 4000 years (B.C.) this new thing, civilization, . . . grew as a tree grows; now losing a limb, now stripped by a storm, but always growing and resuming its growth."

This theory of Wells is the theory of nearly all representative modern scholars. Their conception of civilization as a growing tree, first planted, like an acorn-seed of an oak, not earlier than 10,000 B.C., and increasing in stature by slow degrees to the majestic elevation and girth it has now attained, is their primary premise, from which are drawn all their conclusions about the relative importance and height of all civilizations within historical limits. Stated as a syllogism in logic, the argument of historians is this:

Simple, isn't it? It is also a passably accurate and workable hypothesis, so far as it concerns the evidence of the really well-known historical periods, which date, as we have seen, only from the founding of Rome and the beginning of the Kali Yuga of the Descending Arc. Alas, for a theory of such simplicity and one so flattering to the builders of modern culture, "heir to all the ages,"—it is not true. It will not and cannot fit the facts and records of those mighty civilizations which passed through their Golden, Silver and Bronze Ages during the years 11,502 B.C. to 702 B.C.

Civilization, the practical outcome of man's capacity to understand and utilize the powers of knowledge, does not pursue the straight, upward line claimed by historians. Instead, it follows a circular (rather, a spiral) course, with upward and downward half-circles which blend into each other as naturally and inevitably as day follows night, and season succeeds season.

Scholars grant that a cycle of growth and decadence is evident in the history of all past empires and cultures, but they have not yet perceived that the trend of civilization as a whole follows a similar cycle.

The Hermetic axiom, "As above, so below; as in heaven, so on earth," from the Hermetic Law of Correspondences, is the clue. All creation, everything under nature (i.e., Maya), is under a cyclical law. All planets and suns swing around their orbits to complete and resume their individual cycles. The sphere or circle represents perfection of form, and is the archetype of universal structure.

"A philosophy of the history of the human race, worthy of its name," writes Friedrich Ratzel in his History of Mankind, "must begin with the heavens and descend to the earth, must be charged with the conviction that all existence is one—a single conception sustained from beginning to end upon one identical law." Though Ratzel does not perceive the grand implications of his thought, and fails completely to grasp any connection between the heavens and the earth in any sense deeper than the physical realms, yet his words are profoundly true.

Our modern historians and scholars do not understand the universal laws which govern all mundane matters, nor have they yet been able to trace the true and immensely ancient story of civilization during innumerable Equinox-Precessional Cycles or even during one 24,000 year Cycle. Spiritual perception must precede the discovery of truth in even the material worlds, and no human knowledge is ever a certainty until the spiritual law which underlies it is comprehended. To err is human, to know, divine.

"Those who have not practiced devotion conceive erroneously of the nature of the world," runs a passage from the ancient Hindu Puranas. "The ignorant, who do not perceive that this Universe is of the nature of Wisdom, and judge of it as an object of perception only, are lost in the ocean of spiritual darkness.

Viewing civilization as a "new thing" in the story of mankind, and comparing it, as Wells has done, to a tree, starting from an acorn-seed beginning some 6000 or 10,000 years ago and growing steadily, weathering all storms to achieve its present grandeur of size and extent, is a misconception which future historians, in the light of much fuller research and more unfettered minds, will discard.

It is true, however, that the increase of civilization during the 12,000 years of the Ascending Arc of a complete 24,000 year Equinox-Precessional Cycle, can well be likened to a growing tree. Thus, starting with the year 498 A.D., when the Autumnal Equinox had reached the nadir of its circle and began a climb which will culminate in the year 12,498 A.D., we can discern a slow and gradual improvement of civilization, in comparison with the turmoil and decadence of the world in the preceding 1200 year period of Kali Yuga of the Descending Arc, which lasted from 702 B.C. to 498 A.D.

But the other half of any 24,000 year Equinox-Precessional Cycle, the side represented by the Descending Arc, will never be accompanied by an increase of the general civilization and enlightenment of the world, but will witness the immense spiritual heritage of the Descending Golden Age gradually being lost through the period of the still-glorious Silver Age, and the wonderful material civilizations and achievements of mankind during the Descending Bronze Age being slowly but inexorably broken up and lost during the dark Iron Age. Thus, the last Descending Arc of history measured from 11,502 B.C. to 498 A.D., and the inconceivably high (to our present understanding) Golden Age civilization, which lasted until 6702 B.C., vanished so completely that modern historians will not admit it ever existed. Year by year, during the passage of the Autumnal Equinox down the Descending Arc of it cycle, the knowledge and power of mankind dwindled and perished, until the lowest point of the cycle had been reached, in 498 A.D., and the world was plunged into the near-barbarism that accompanied the fall of Rome and the smash-up of the Western Empire, and the ancient light of India, Egypt and China was nearly extinguished.

If we compare the civilization of the Ascending Arc period to a tree which grows from an acorn-seed to a giant oak in 12,000 years, then we may follow the illustration further and liken the civilization of the Descending Arc to a mighty oak which revolves back to its original state of an acorn-seed, in a manner similar to that shown by a backward exposure of motion picture film. Another comparison would be to a magnificent tree, slowly cut down through the 12,000 year period, its sap drying up and its roots dying in an increasingly barren soil.

The cyclical law necessitates both evolution and involution, progression and retrogression, regeneration and degeneration. The Sun, sole external life-giver to our planet, wheels around its own orbit, regulating the position of the Autumnal Equinox on the zodiacal path. When the autumnal equinoctial point is falling on the ascending half of its circle of the Zodiac, mankind rises from ignorance to enlightenment, and when it falls on the descending half, the mind of man gradually sinks from illumination to darkness.

This is the law; this is the key to the correct interpretation of the story of mankind through the ages.

This key—an understanding of the connection of the Equinox-Precessional Cycle with the rise and fall of civilizations—has been hidden from the world for over 2400 years, during the course of the two 1200 year periods of the last two Kali Yugas, one of the Descending Arc and one of the Ascending Arc. Now, in our present year of 234 Dwapara Yuga of the Ascending Arc, this knowledge is here being brought to light, for the first time in the Western World, so far as the present writer is aware.

With this key, the historian of some not far distant day in our own Dwapara Yuga, will unlock the door which now separates us from a true understanding of the ancient civilizations whose grandeur could, and will instruct and inspire us.

MODERN representative historians, lacking knowledge of the cyclical law which governs the rise and fall of civilizations, and blinded by a fallacious theory that a primitive humanity emerged from a Paleolithic Age and entered a Neolithic or New Stone Age of rudimentary agriculture and the first faint beginnings of human culture about 15,000 B.C., are totally unable to trace the evidences of the glorious civilizations that were actually approaching the full flower of an Ascending Golden Age at that time. Even the more abundant evidence of the civilizations of the Golden and Silver Ages of the last Descending Arc, whose combined periods lasted from 11,502 to 3,102 B.C., has been either misinterpreted or ignored by modern scholars. To understand the folly of their hasty conclusions that the ancient world must have been in a comparatively "backward" stage, it is only necessary to remember that the science of modern Archaeology is still in its infancy.

"Until the beginning of the 19th century," writes Professor Morris Jastrow, "Egypt, Babylonia and Assyria were little more than names. The spirit of skepticism which accompanies the keen desire for investigation led scholars to question the tales found in classical writers about the great achievements of the Babylonians and Egyptians," and hence gave impetus to actual archaeological research. Egypt, so far, has received the lion's share of archaeological attention, and has yielded, through the Tutankhamen, Gizeh Pyramid and other excavations, enough evidence of the splendor of the Egyptian past to warrant a radical change in modern historical attitude. But India, China, Mongolia, the American continents and other sites of ancient civilizations are still largely unknown and untouched archaeological gold-mines. Until they have been explored and excavated for the evidence of their bygone culture, the present dogmatic opinion of the modern historian concerning the role these lands have played in the story of mankind is not only premature but utterly worthless. Future archaeological research in these countries will reveal the unsoundness of the present-day historical views of the past.

The cyclical law in history, whereby the general civilization of mankind rises and falls with the ascent and descent of the Autumnal Equinox on the circle of the Zodiacal Constellations, can shed valuable light on such historical puzzles as the disappearance of the continents and tremendous civilizations of Lemuria and Atlantis. The same Law of Cycles accounts for the lack of continuity in the progress of mankind, and makes it clear why the evidence of the past reveals, at one stage, man in a primitive stage of development, while an earlier stage reveals him as the possessor of mighty arts and sciences far superior to our own. It is the present fashion of scholars to laugh at the idea of cyclical law in history, for to acknowledge its validity would be to destroy their prized theory of a "straight, upward trend of civilization" since the imaginary dawn of a "New Stone Age" about 15,000 B.C.

"The Indian mind," writes Wells in his Outline of History, "was full of the idea of cyclic recurrence; everything was supposed to come round again. This is a very natural supposition for men to make; so things seem to be until we analyze them. Modern science has made it clear to us that there is no such exact recurrence as we are apt to suppose; every day is by an infinitesimal quantity a little longer than the day before; no generation repeats the previous generation precisely; history never repeats itself; change, we realize, is inexhaustible; all things are eternally new."

With such puerile argument, the historian complacently closes his eyes to the cyclical key which alone is fitted to unlock the door to a true interpretation of history, and to solve the many embarrassing problems, such as Atlantis, with which scholars are at present unable to cope. The law of cyclic recurrence, far from being the "natural supposition" which Wells would make it out, could only dawn in the minds of men with vast trenches of astronomical observation behind them as proof and guide-posts. "Modern science has made it clear to us that there is no such exact recurrence . . ."—the astronomical constants, like the invariable length of the Sidereal Year and of the absolute daily revolution of the earth on its axis, are apparently not recognized by Wells, especially since he goes on to say, "Every day is by an infinitesimal quantity a little longer than the day before." Evidently he is not aware that about half the days of a year are marked by an increasing shortness in length. Further, he can not even grasp the idea that such cyclic law in an astronomical sense is not from day to day, but from solar year to year, or, in an historical sense, not from "generation to generation," but from Equinoctial Age to Age. "History never repeats itself"—this statement of dogmatic finality is given out by one who admits that the really well-known periods of history start only with the founding of Rome in 753 B.C. but who nevertheless evidently believes himself capable of establishing dogmas on the history of mankind of the last million years.

Though archaeological research has just begun, and has only scraped the surface in a few places in the world, leaving the far greater portion untouched and unknown, and though the evidence of many towering civilizations lie almost inaccessibly hidden under the oceans of the world, yet there is no lack of written and traditional evidence of these ancient cultures. Here again, it is the fashion among present-day scholars to ridicule, misrepresent and misinterpret these venerable sources which, rightly understood, could illuminatingly present the life and knowledge of bygone ages to our modern gaze.

Thus, Plato's account of Atlantis is treated as historically valueless, and a modern commentator, Jowett, has called it one of Plato's "noble lies." Herodotus, the Greek "father of history" (born 484 B.C.) who visited Persia, Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt and Scythia to study the records of their pasts, wrote an extensive History which is accepted in certain of its parts as authentic fact by modern historians, but rejected as "absurd" and "incredible" wherever Herodotus relates accomplishments of the ancients which modern scholars consider "impossible" of achievement in such early days. Yet every fact given by Herodotus bearing on the high civilizations of ancient lands long past their prime even in his day are being fully confirmed by modern archaeological research. Wells writes: "A...wonderful Phoenician sea voyage, long doubted but now supported by some archaeological evidence, is related by Herodotus, who declares that the Pharaoh Necho of the 26th Dynasty commissioned some Phoenicians to attempt the circumnavigation of Africa," a trip successfully completed.

Herodotus and other Greek historians record the dynastic chronology of the Egyptians as being divided into four periods—those under the influence of gods, demi-gods, heroes and mortal men. This four-fold division likens up clearly with Egyptian history during the 12,000 years of the last Descending Arc of the Equinoctial Cycle, and Egypt passed through her Golden, Silver, Bronze and Iron Ages from 11,502 B.C. to 498 A.D.

"Though the origins of ancient Egypt are unknown, she is found to have been, at the most distant periods within the reach of historical research, in possession of her great laws, her established customs, her cities, her kings and gods; and behind, far behind, these same epochs we find ruins belonging to other still more distant and higher periods of civilization. At Thebes, portions of ruined buildings allow us to recognize remnants of still anterior structures, the materials of which had served for the erection of the very edifices which have now existed for thirty-six centuries!" So wrote Champollion-Figeac, famous archaeologist and brother of the Champollion before referred to. These illustrious French scholars did not, like the majority of our modern historians, despise the historical facts contained in such ancient compilations as the Books of Hermes, which "truly contain," wrote Champollion-Figeac in his Ancient Egypt, "a mass of Egyptian traditions which are constantly corroborated by the most authentic records and monuments of Egypt of the hoariest antiquity." He goes on to ask (referring to the initiated Egyptian priests who were the custodians of the sacred Hermetic books), "whether there ever was in the world another association or caste of men which could equal them in credit, power, learning and capability?"

Referring to Egyptian temple carvings, an article entitled What the Old Egyptians Knew, has the following to say: "Every one of these stones is covered with hieroglyphics, and the more ancient they are, the more beautifully we find them chiseled. Does not this furnish a new proof that history got its first glimpse of the ancients when the arts were already fast degenerating among them? . . . that all of these works, in which solidity rivals the beauty of their execution, were done before the days of the Exodus, there now remains no historical doubt whatever." Sir Gardner Wilkinson adds his testimony, that "he can trace no primitive mode of life, no barbarous customs, but a sort of stationary civilization from the most remote periods."

"Mechanism," writes Salverte, "was carried by the ancients to a point of perfection that has never been attained in modern times. . . . Have we not been assailed by numerous difficulties in striving to place on a pedestal one of those monoliths that the Egyptians, forty centuries ago, erected in such numbers?" Many of the hundreds of pyramids, those "stupendous and beautiful erections," as Professor Carpenter calls them, with a "vastness and beauty . . . still impressive after the lapse of thousands of years," will be proven eventually to have been built during the last Golden Age. Baron Bunsen, one of the best authorities, admits that "there is nothing improbable in itself in reminiscences and records of great events in Egypt 9000 years B.C." A certain pyramid is described in one of the Books of Hermes as facing the sea, "the waves of which dashed in powerless fury against its base." This passage implies "an origin antedating the upheaval of the Sahara desert."

These colossal structures, which "symbolized the creative principle of Nature, and illustrated also the principles of geometry, mathematics, astrology and astronomy," but which are uncomprehendingly referred to by H. G. Wells as "unmeaning sepulchral piles . . . erected in an age when engineering science had scarcely begun," nevertheless present numerous features of engineering skill and technical knowledge unapproached anywhere in our modern world. "The geometrical knowledge of the pyramid-builders," says Professor Smyth, "began where Euclid's ended." Their methods of making imperishable cement and of transporting the huge monoliths from tremendous distances are only two of the many riddles which remain unsolved to this day.

G. R. Gliddon writes, "Philologists, astronomers, chemists, painters, architects, physicians, must return to Egypt to learn the origin of language and writing, of the calendar and solar motion, of the art of cutting granite with a copper chisel, and of giving elasticity to a copper sword, of making glass with the variegated hues of the rainbow, of moving single blocks of polished syenite, 900 tons in weight, for any distance, by land and water, of building arches with masonic precision unsurpassed at the present day, of sculpturing a Doric column 1000 years before the Dorians are known in history, of fresco painting in imperishable colors, of practical knowledge in anatomy, and of time-defying pyramid-building." They also made time-proof papyrus paper, as thin as and tougher than our foolscap paper.

These quotations, and numerous others of similar import, are to be found in Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled, a work which abounds in unassailable evidence of the past glories and knowledge of the ancient world.

H. G. Wells, with his ridiculous assumption that the first civilization and the first known empire of history belong to a mysterious Sumerian people whose beginnings he traces about 6,000 B.C., sees fit to ignore the proven priority of Egyptian civilization, just as he ignores the fact that the almost total absence of archaeological research in India and elsewhere leaves him unfree to draw any sound conclusions or "outline of history" insofar as the story of ancient civilization is concerned. The point cannot be overstressed here, that no proper historical perspective can be gained without a knowledge of the cyclical law which links the Equinoctial Cycle to the periods of growth and decadence among mankind. Only thus can we understand how it is that the highest civilizations of Atlantis, Lemuria, India, Egypt, Assyria, Chaldea, Phoenicia, China, the old Cretan culture of which Cnossus was the center, and the Mongoloid civilizations in ancient Mexico and Peru, so far anterior in time to our present era, were yet superior to any culture of a later growth—just as our own present stage of world development is superior to that which will prevail during the period of the next Kali Yuga of the Descending Arc, from 23, 298 to 24,498 A.D.

The discovery of Neolithic remains which appear to date from the periods which our Equinoctial World Age Chart would assign to the high ancient civilizations of the last Golden, Silver and Bronze Ages of the descending Arc, is no more indicative of the prevalence of a world-wide primitive stage of development during those periods than the presence of Stone-Age men, such as the Bushmen and Hottentots, the pygmies of the Congo and the natives of Dutch New Guinea and Paupa, in our own present era, can reasonably be said to be representative of world progress today. It is necessary here to repeat that before archaeologists can speak trustworthily on ancient "World-wide" conditions, they must undertake extensive excavations and research work in those lands of ancient culture which have at present received practically no attention. Even Egypt has yielded only a small part of her evidence, and even that belongs mostly to her later and inferior Bronze Age civilization.

Further, archaeologists manifest the most inexcusable reluctance to admit the true dates of their findings, and nearly every date they give for ancient kings and cultures is too close to modern times by several thousands of years. For example, when the Sumerian inscriptions of Sargon I (who founded the Akkadian empire and conquered the Sumerians during the last Silver Age of the world) were first deciphered, scholars would not grant them an antiquity of more than 1,600 years B.C. It is now generally admitted, by Hilprecht and other authorities, that Sargon I must be assigned of the period around 3,800 B.C., a date which agrees well with the one (3,750 B.C.) given by Nabonidus, last monarch of the Chaldean Empire who flourished about 545 B.C. and conducted antiquarian researches into the history of civilizations past their peak long before his own time.