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
There are seven Root-Races:
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).[1]
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.[2]
It is important to keep in mind that these Root-Races are different stages humanity as a whole goes through successively. As H. P. Blavatsky wrote: "The mankind of the First Root-Race is the mankind of the second, third, fourth, fifth, etc."[3]
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.[4]
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.[5]
Each Root-Race is in turn divided in seven sub-races.[6] Currently, humanity is undergoing the fifth Root-Race stage and five sub-races have been developed.
Seven sub-races
Each root-race is divided into seven minor cycles called sub-races, which are again subdivided into seven branch or family races.
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.[7]
First Root-Race
Second Root-Race
Third Root-Race
Fourth Root-Race
Fifth Root-Race
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.[8]
Sixth Root-Race
Seventh Root-Race
Notes
- ↑ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine vol. I, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 160.
- ↑ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine vol. II, (Adyar, Madras: Theosophical Publishing House, 1979), 697.
- ↑ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine vol. II, (Adyar, Madras: Theosophical Publishing House, 1979), fn. 146.
- ↑ Alfred Percy Sinnett, Esoteric Buddhism, (London: Theosophical Publishing House LTD, 1972), 48.
- ↑ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Collected Writings vol. V (Los Angeles, CA: Philosophical Research Society, 1950), 163-164.
- ↑ Vicente Hao Chin, Jr., The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett in chronological sequence No. 66 (Quezon City: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 174-175.
- ↑ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 298-299, fn.
- ↑ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Collected Writings vol. VI (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1989), 116.
Online resources
Articles and pamphlets
- Root Races at Theosopedia
- 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