Third Root-Race

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Third Root-Race is a Theosophical concept described by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine and other writings.

Description by Blavatsky and Mahatmas

Mme. Blavatsky wrote:

Now compare the evolution of the Races, the First and the Second of which are of the nature of Atma-Buddhi, their passive Spiritual progeny, and the Third Root-Race shows three distinct divisions or aspects physiologically and psychically: the earliest, sinless the middle portions awakening to intelligence; and the third and last decidedly animal: i.e., Manas succumbs to the temptations of Kama.[1]

Mahatma K.H. said that some of the more primitive populations today are "side-shoots" of the third Root-Race:

The Australian, the Esquimaux, the Bushmen, the Veddahs, etc., are all side-shooting branchlets of that Branch which you call "cave-men" — the third race.[2]

However, in the height of its cycle, the Third Root-Race developed great civilizations. In the words to the same Master:

Greek and Roman and even Egyptian civilization are nothing compared to the civilizations that began with the 3rd race.[3]

Lemuria

The continent in which this Root-Race lived is called Lemuria:

The third Continent, we propose to call “Lemuria.” The name is an invention, or an idea, of Mr. P. L. Sclater, who asserted, between 1850 and 1860, on zoological grounds the actual existence, in prehistoric times, of a Continent which he showed to have extended from Madagascar to Ceylon and Sumatra. It included some portions of what is now Africa; but otherwise this gigantic Continent, which stretched from the Indian ocean to Australia, has now wholly disappeared beneath the waters of the Pacific, leaving here and there only some of its highland tops which are now islands. Mr. A. R. Wallace, the naturalist, extends the Australia of tertiary periods to New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, and perhaps to Fiji;” and from its Marsupial types infers “a connection with the Northern Continent during the Secondary period,” writes Mr. C. Gould in “Mythical Monsters,” p. 47.[4]

Lemuria can no more be confounded with the Atlantic Continent [Atlantis] than Europe with America. Both sunk and were drowned with their high civilizations and "gods," yet between the two catastrophes, a short period of about 700,000 years elapsed; "Lemuria" flourishing and ending her career just at about that trifling lapse of time before the early part of the Eocene Age, since its race was the third. Behold, the relics of that once great nation in some of the flat headed aborigines of your Australia![5]

Cities

The Stanzas of Dzyan state:

They (the Lemurians) built huge cities. Of rare earths and metals they built. Out of the fires (lava) vomited. Out of the white stone of the mountains (marble) and the black stone (of the subterranean fires) they cut their own images, in their size and likeness, and worshipped them.[6]

Blavatsky elaborates explaining:

We find the Lemurians in their sixth sub-race building their first rock-cities out of stone and lava. One of such great cities of primitive structure was built entirely of lava, some thirty miles west from where Easter Island now stretches its narrow piece of sterile ground, and was entirely destroyed by a series of volcanic eruptions. The oldest remains of Cyclopean buildings were all the handiwork of the Lemurians of the last sub-races; and an occultist shows, therefore, no wonder on learning that the stone relics found on the small piece of land called Easter Island by Captain Cook, are “very much like the walls of the Temple of Pachacamac or the Ruins of Tia-Huanuco in Peru,” (“The Countries of the World,” by Robert Brown, Vol. 4, p. 43); and that they are in the CYCLOPEAN STYLE. The first large cities, however, appeared on that region of the continent which is now known as the island of Madagascar.[7]

Additional resources

Notes

  1. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 254, fn.
  2. Vicente Hao Chin, Jr., The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett in Chronological Sequence No. 62 (Quezon City: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 160. See Mahatma Letter No. 62 page 4.
  3. Vicente Hao Chin, Jr., The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett in Chronological Sequence No. 93b (Quezon City: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 310. See Mahatma Letter No. 93b page 9.
  4. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 7-8.
  5. Vicente Hao Chin, Jr., The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett in Chronological Sequence No. 93b (Quezon City: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 309. See Mahatma Letter No. 93b page 6.
  6. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 316.
  7. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 317.