Root-Race

Root-Race is a Theosophical concept that refers to successive evolutionary stages through which humanity goes in its pilgrimage on our earth. Seven of such root-races take place before completing the evolutionary cycle on this globe.

General description

In the Theosophical view there are seven Root-Races or evolutionary cycles through which humanity evolves. Mme. Blavatsky wrote:

Every life-cycle on Globe D (our Earth) is composed of seven root-races. They commence with the Ethereal and end with the spiritual on the double line of physical and moral evolution—from the beginning of the terrestrial round to its close. (One is a “planetary round” from Globe A to Globe G, the seventh; the other, the “globe round”, or the terrestrial).

The Root-Races go through a process of cyclic evolution going from subtlety to materiality and back to subtlety:

These Races evolve from ethereality to materiality, and from the latter back again into relative physical tenuity of texture, so every living (so-called) organic species of animals with vegetation included, changes with every new Root-Race.

Let us remember that the First Race is shown in Occult sciences as spiritual within and ethereal without; the second, psycho-spiritual mentally, and ethero-physical bodily; the third, still bereft of intellect in its beginning, is astro-physical in its body, and lives an inner life, in which the psycho-spiritual element is in no way interfered with as yet by the hardly nascent physiological senses.

These cycles take place throughout the seven Rounds, and they vary in lentgth:

The seven Rounds decrease and increase in their respective durations, as well as the seven races in each. Thus the 4th Rounds as well as every 4h race are the shortest, while the 1st and 7th Rounds as the 1st and 7th root races are the longest.

It is important to keep in mind that the term Root-Races does not refer to ethnicities. They are different evolutionary stages humanity as a whole goes through successively. Besides, the same individuals that compose the current humanity have been reborn in all the previous Root-Races. In H. P. Blavatsky's words: "The mankind of the First Root-Race is the mankind of the second, third, fourth, fifth, etc."

Each Root-Race succeed each other, although there is a period of overlapping between the old forms dying out and the new forms beginning to be more and more dominant. The end of a Root-Race and the beginning of a new one is marked by important geological changes:

The periods of the great root races are divided from each other by great convulsions of Nature, and by great geological changes.

Every root-race is separated by a catastrophe, a cataclysm—the basis and historical foundation of the fables woven later on into the religious fabric of every people, whether civilized or savage, under the names of “deluges,” “showers of fire” and such like.

Early civilizations

In this view, there have been on Earth many civilization of which we know knothing at the moment. Master K.H. wrote to A. P. Sinnett:

We affirm that a series of civilizations existed before, as well as after the Glacial Period, that they existed upon various points, of the globe, reached the apex of glory and — died.

The Master was aware that all these teachings contradicted those of modern science. However, he stood by his knowledge:

You cannot think that we, who have such tremendous odds against the acceptance of our doctrine would deliberately go on inventing Races and sub-races (in the opinion of Mr. Hume) were not they a matter of undeniable fact.

As to why we do not find remains of the previous civilizations, one of the reasons is that the Root-Races live on a different parts of the earth, many of which cyclically sink as a new piece of land rises to lodge the new Root-Race:

Our present continents, have — like "Lemuria" and "Atlantis" — been several times already, submerged and had the time to reappear again, and bear their new groups of mankind and civilization; and that, at the first great geological upheaval, at the next cataclysm — in the series of periodical cataclysms that occur from the beginning to the end of every Round, — our already autopsized continents will go down, and the Lemurias and Atlantises come up again.

Besides, as Master K.H. explains, "every object of the civilized portions of humanity that inhabited those regions hav[e] been pulverized to dust by the great masses of travelling glaciers" leaving behind "only such rude implements as now found among those savage tribes". This is what geologists usually find when they come upon some ancient remains in regions of the modern continents that where inhabited by past Root-Races.

Sub-races

Each root-race is divided into seven minor cycles called sub-races, which are again subdivided into seven branch or family races. These sub-divisions is related to the modern concept of races and ethnicities.

It must be remembered that the sub-races refer to cultural qualities and not to the level of evolution of the soul. People incarnate successively in different sub-races to gather different experiences.

Currently, humanity is undergoing the fifth Root-Race stage, and has developed five sub-races. However, the majority of human beings are incarnated in cultures that derive from previous Root-Races. Mahatma K.H. wrote:

The majority of mankind belongs to the seventh sub-race of the fourth Root race, — the above mentioned Chinamen and their off-shoots and branchlets (Malayans, Mongolians, Tibetans, Javanese, etc., etc., etc.) and remnants of other sub-races of the fourth — and the seventh sub-race of the third race.

Third Root-Race

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!

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.

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.

Fourth Root-Race

In the Eocene Age — even in its "very first part," the great cycle of the fourth Race men, the Atlanteans — had already reached its highest point, and the great continent, the father of nearly all the present continents — showed the first symptoms of sinking — a process that occupied it down to 11,446 years ago, when its last island, that, translating its vernacular name, we may call with propriety Poseidonis — went down with a crash.

What do you know of America, for instance, before the invasion of that country by the Spaniards? Less than two centuries prior to the arrival of Cortez there was as great a "rush" towards progress among the sub-races of Peru and Mexico as there is now in Europe and the U.S.A. Their sub-race ended in nearly total annihilation through causes generated by itself; so will yours at the end of its cycle.

The Chinese — I now speak of the inland, the true Chinaman, not of the hybrid mixture between the fourth and the fifth Races now occupying the throne — the aborigines, who belong in their unallied nationality wholly to the highest and last branch of the fourth Race, reached their highest civilization when the fifth had hardly appeared in Asia.

Fifth Root-Race

In one of the Mahatma Letters, Master K.H. writers that "the fifth race — ours — began in Asia a million years ago."

The Master regarded that the Indian civilization was the most evolved spiritually while the European was the one most developed on the intellectual level:

I told you before now, that the highest people now on earth (spiritually) belong to the first sub-race of the fifth root Race; and those are the Aryan Asiatics; the highest race (physical intellectuality) is the last sub-race of the fifth — yourselves the white conquerors.

As to the point in the the current cycle of the fifth Root-Race, Mme. Blavatsky wrote:

Humanity is on the descending pathway of its cycle. The rear-guard of the 5th race is crossing slowly the apex of its evolution and will soon find itself having passed the turning point. And, as the descent is always more rapid than the ascent, men of the new coming (the 6th) race are beginning to drop in occasionally.

As every sub-race and nation have their cycles and stages of developmental evolution repeated on a smaller scale, it must be the more so in the case of a Root-Race. Our race then has, as a Root-race, crossed the equatorial line and is cycling onward on the Spiritual side; but some of our sub-races still find themselves on the shadowy descending arc of their respective national cycles; while others again—the oldest—having crossed their crucial point, which alone decides whether a race, a nation, or a tribe will live or perish, are at the apex of spiritual development as sub-races.

Sixth Root-Race

There is a prophecy in certain Asiatic old books couched in the following terms, the sense of which we may make clearer by adding to it a few words in brackets.
"And as the fourth (race) was composed of Red-yellow which faded into Brown-white (bodies), so the fifth will fade out into white-brown (the white races becoming gradually darker). The sixth and seventh Manushya (men?) will be born adults; and will know of no old age, though their years will be many. As the Krita, Treta, Dvapara and Kali (ages) have been each decreasing in excellence (physical as well as moral) so the ascending—Dvapara, Treta and Krita will be increasing in every excellence. As the life of man lasted 400 (years in the first, or Krita Yuga), 300 (years in Treta), 200 (years in Dvapara) and 100 (in the present Kali age); so in the next (the 6th Race) (the natural age of man) will be (gradually increased) 200, then 300 and 400 (in the two last yugas)".

Online resources

Articles and pamphlets

• Root Races at Theosopedia
• Humans, Apes, and the Felix Culpa by John Algeo
• The Coming Race by Annie Besant
• The Next Stages in Human Spiritual Evolution, Part One by Robert Ellwood
• The Next Stages in Human Spiritual Evolution, Part Two by Robert Ellwood
• On the Future: A Few Reflections by William Q. Judge
• Rounds and Races by William Q. Judge
• Why Races Die Out by William Q. Judge

Books

• The Pedigree of Man by Annie Besant