Fourth Root-Race

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

The Fourth Root-Race was the human evolutionary cycle (or Root-Race) that directly preceded our own. According to H. P. Blavatsky, the ancestral memory of this civilization is the origin of the "myth" of Atlantis. The Atlantean civilization, she claimed, developed for a few millions of years on a large continent which is now submerged in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

In Theosophical literature, the fourth Root-Race is presented as the first completely human species, since it was during this period that the physical body consolidated and attained its perfection. However, the Atlanteans were much larger in size than we are now, this race constituting the giants and titans mentioned in ancient scriptures. During this Root-Race the intellect developed and, along with it, speech. The Atlanteans were psychic, and their civilization was eventually destroyed due to the misuse of these powers.

Origins

Due to the fact that there is always an overlap between two successive Root-Races, the fourth began to gradually develop during the middle portion of the third, or Lemurian:

In the case of Race-evolution . . . no hard and fast line can be drawn where a new order ends and another begins. Continuity in natural processes is never broken. Thus the Fourth Race Atlanteans were developed from a nucleus of Northern Lemurian Third Race Men, centred, roughly speaking, toward a point of land in what is now the mid-Atlantic Ocean.

It is important to keep in mind that the Atlantean was not a race, but a Root-Race. This means that during this evolutionary cycle many different races developed from the original nucleus or "root" separated from the Lemurian civilization:

The term “Atlantean” must not mislead the reader to regard these as one race only, or even a nation. It is as though one said “Asiatics.” Many, multityped, and various were the Atlanteans, who represented several humanities, and almost a countless number of races and nations, more varied indeed than would be the “Europeans” were this name to be given indiscriminately to the five existing parts of the world; which, at the rate colonization is proceeding, will be the case, perhaps, in less than two or three hundred years. There were brown, red, yellow, white and black Atlanteans; giants and dwarfs (as some African tribes comparatively are, even now).

See also: Atlantis

Physical characteristics

During this Root-Race, the physical bodies that began to develop in the later part of the third Race proceeded now to consolidate and harden. While Lemurians had only one central eye, Atlanteans developed two additional frontal eyes as physical organs in the beginning of their Race. Their bodies decreased in height when compared to that of the previous Root-Race, but were still of a gigantic stature, giving rise to the legends about cyclops and titans mentioned in many ancient traditions:

The Titans and Cyclopes of old really belonged to the Fourth (Atlantean) Race, and . . . all the subsequent legends and allegories found in the Hindu Purânas and the Greek Hesiod and Homer, were based on the hazy reminiscences of real Titans—men of a superhuman tremendous physical power, which enabled them to defend themselves, and hold at bay the gigantic monsters of the Mesozoic and early Cenozoic times—and of actual Cyclopes—three-eyed mortals.

Even though the physical body with two separate sexes first developed with the late Lemurians, it is the fourth Root-Race that can be regarded as the first totally human species:

Strictly speaking, it is only from the time of the Atlantean, brown and yellow giant Races, that one ought to speak of MAN, since it was the Fourth race only which was the first completely human species, however much larger in size than we are now.

In this Root-Race humanity attained the apex of physical development:

Then came the Atlanteans; the giants whose physical beauty and strength reached their climax, in accordance with evolutionary law, toward the middle period of their fourth sub-race.

Atlanteans still possessed a third eye, developed during the third Root-Race, which had spiritual functions. This eye, however, was eventually lost as the races became more physically dense:

The possession of a physical third eye, we are told, was enjoyed by the men of the Third Root-Race down to nearly the middle period of Third SUB-race of the Fourth Root-Race, when the consolidation and perfection of the human frame made it disappear from the outward anatomy of man. Psychically and spiritually, however, its mental and visual perceptions lasted till nearly the end of the Fourth Race, when its functions, owing to the materiality and depraved condition of mankind, died out altogether before the submersion of the bulk of the Atlantean continent.

Because of the presence of this third eye, the races of the Atlantean Root-Race possessed psychic powers. Toward the end of this Root-Race the psychic powers were gravely misused, which led to the final demise of the Atlantean civilization.

Development

Languages

Lemurians did not have a language because their communication took place by psychic means. The fourth Root-Race saw a gradual growth of intellectuality and of materiality of their bodies, all of which produced a decrease in the activity of the third eye. These conditions furthered the development of speech:

The agglutinative languages . . . were spoken by some [early] Atlantean races. . . . While the 'cream' of the Fourth Race gravitated more and more toward the apex of physical and intellectual evolution [and developed] the inflectional, highly developed languages, the agglutinative decayed and remained as a fragmentary fossil idiom, scattered now, and nearly limited to the aboriginal tribes of America.

Atlantis, like modern Europe, comprised many nations and many dialects. . . The predominating element in Atlantis was a language which has now survived but in the dialects of some American Red-Indian tribes, and in the Chinese speech of the inland Chinamen, the mountainous tribes of Kiangsi—a language which was an admixture of the agglutinate and the monosyllabic as it would be called by modern philologists.

Technology

In one of his letters, Master K.H. wrote:

The 4th race had its periods of the highest civilization. Greek and Roman and even Egyptian civilization are nothing compared to the civilizations that began with the [late] 3rd race.

The Atlantean civilization accomplished remarkable achievements, among which is the development of flying vehicles called vimāna-s in the Mahabharata:

It is from the Fourth Race that the early Aryans got their knowledge of “the bundle of wonderful things,” the Sabha and Mayasabha, mentioned in the Mahabhârata, the gift of Mayâsur to the Pandavas. It is from them that they learnt aëronautics, Viwân Vidya (the “knowledge of flying in air-vehicles”), and, therefore, their great arts of meteorography and meteorology. It is from them, again, that the Aryans inherited their most valuable science of the hidden virtues of precious and other stones, of chemistry, or rather alchemy, of mineralogy, geology, physics and astronomy.

Psychism

The Atlanteans, possessing a third eye, had innate psychic powers, which were eventually misused for selfish reasons. In Blavatsky's words:

[Atlanteans] were born with a sight which embraced all hidden things, and was independent of both distance and material obstacle. In short, they were the fourth race of men mentioned in the Popol-Vuh, whose sight was unlimited and who knew all things at once. They were, perhaps, what we would now term “natural-born mediums,” who neither struggled nor suffered to obtain their knowledge, nor did they acquire it at the price of any sacrifice. . . . The born adepts of the Atlantis blindly followed the insinuations of the great and invisible “Dragon,” the King Thevetat [and] became a nation of wicked magicians.

It is explained in our Commentaries. “They (the sixth sub-race of the Atlanteans) used magic incantations even against the Sun”—failing in which, they cursed it. The sorcerers of Thessaly were credited with the power of calling down the moon, as Greek history assures us. The Atlanteans of the later period were renowned for their magic powers and wickedness, their ambition and defiance of the gods.

According to Blavatsky, this form of "derided Magic"--

. . . was practised in such ungodly ways by the Atlantean Sorcerers that it has since become necessary for the subsequent [fifth Root] Race to draw a thick veil over the practices which were used to obtain so-called magical effects on the psychic and on the physical planes.

The abuse of these powers and the actions that lead to the end of this civilization generated heavy karmic causes which humanity is still working out today. For this reason, Master K.H. wrote that Atlantis "is greatly connected with evil if not with its origin".

A highly respected associate of H. P. Blavatsky, T. Subba Row, wrote,

There are all the powerful elemental gods and goddesses worshipped by the Atlanteans, and these still exist. They are most ferocious things, but they cannot be evoked easily. It is fortunate for us that they do not interfere more than they do."

Demise

The Atlantean continent was destroyed by sinking into the ocean. This was a very gradual process, following the natural law that produces a change of continents for each new Root-Race. However, the last Atlantean island, Poseidonis, mentioned by Plato, was destroyed as a result of a war between Atlantean black magicians and the Adepts of the time, who were forced to intervene to stop the abuse of psychic powers. Blavatsky explains:

In consequence of this [black magic], war was declared, the story of which would be too long to narrate; its substance may be found in the disfigured allegories of the race of Cain, the giants, and that of Noah and his righteous family. The conflict came to an end by the submersion of the Atlantis; which finds its imitation in the stories of the Babylonian and Mosaic flood.

Before this war began, those who had not fallen into abusing their powers were saved by the Adepts of the time. The Secret Doctrine narrates it as follows:

He sent his air-vehicles (Viwan) to all his brother-chiefs (chiefs of other nations and tribes) with pious men within, saying: 'Prepare. Arise ye men of the good law, and cross the land while (yet) 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 (the Sorcerers) live on this patient land. She is doomed, and they have to descend with her. The nether Lords of the Fires (the Gnomes and fire Elementals) are preparing their magic Agneyastra (fire-weapons worked by magic). But the Lords of the Dark Eye ('Evil Eye') are stronger than they (the Elementals) and they are the slaves of the mighty ones. They are versed in Ashtar (Vidya, the highest magical knowledge). Come and use yours (i.e., your magic powers, in order to counteract those of the Sorcerers). Let every lord of the Dazzling Face (an adept of the White Magic) cause the Viwan of every lord of the Dark Face to come into his hands (or possession), lest any (of the Sorcerers) should by its means escape from the waters, avoid the rod of the Four, (Karmic deities) and save his wicked' (followers, or people).

Thus, after the just were saved, the last Atlantean island was sunk with all the sorcerers on it, in the year 9564 BCE.

See also Destruction of Atlantis

See also

• Atlantis
• Buddhas of Bamiyan
• Root-Race

Additional resources

Articles

• The Rise and Demise of Atlantis Compiled by C. A. Bartzokas

*The Lost Atlantis 

• Atlantis Then and Now by Richard Smoley
• Apes, Anthropoid in Theosophy World.

Books

• The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria by William Scott-Elliot