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'''Lemuria''' was a continent that existed about thirty-four million years ago, according to [[The Secret Doctrine (book)|''The Secret Doctrine'']], and was the home of the [[Third Root-Race]]. It was destroyed by volcanic fires and most of its land lies now under the ocean.


== Early Lemuria ==


Lemuria was a human civilization that existed about thirty-four million years ago.  It was the home of the Third [[Root-Race]] of humanity where great changes took place in human beings, both in their bodies and in their minds.  Lemuria's main continent was south of what is now Asia in the Pacific Ocean on land masses long submerged due to powerful volcanic activity that eventually destroyed and submerged the civilization.  Some of the lands that were part of Lemuria do still exist, like parts of the western United States, Australia, New Zealand, Madagascar, parts of Somaliland, the south of Africa, and the extreme southern portion of Patagonia.   Existing thirty-four million years ago places Lemuria in the Jurassic period, meaning the Lemurians coexisted with the dinosaurs at least during part of the life of this world. It also means that the Lemurian civilization lasted about thirty million years and predated [[Atlantis]].
The extension and shape of the continent of Lemuria varied throughout it evolutionary cycle. During the early stages it was an extensive island. According to [[H. P. Blavatsky]]:


[[File:Lemuria Maps.png|left|300px|thumb]]
<blockquote>Their Sweta-Dwipa [the White Island], during the early day of Lemuria stood out like a giant-peak from the bottom of the sea; the area between Atlas [in North Africa] and Madagascar being occupied by the waters till about the early period of Atlantis (after the disappearance of Lemuria), when Africa emerged from the bottom of the ocean, and Atlas was half-sunk.<ref>Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, ''The Secret Doctrine'' vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 264.</ref></blockquote>
Many people have heard of Atlantis if only in fables or science fiction but Lemuria, or Mu as it is sometimes called, is for the most part unheard of, yet it was on Lemuria during the development of the Third Root Race that the human body first took solid form. The First and Second Root Races, the Polarian and the Hyperborean, had ethereal rather than physical bodies.  During the Third Root Race the earth had not yet hardened into solid form so it was softer and more malleable. Human bodies, too, were soft and malleable at first and nothing slightly resembling what we are today.  It was also in Lemuria that the body divided into male and female beings and sexual reproduction began.  
The importance of Lemuria in the human story cannot be overemphasized yet we have less detail about it than we do about Atlantis.   We must rely on Theosophists like Mme. [[Blavatsky]], Rudolph Steiner and [[William Scott-Elliot]] for answers.  Physical proof pointing to the existence of an ancient landmass in the Pacific Ocean can be found but for the fascinating details of this awe-inspiring civilization we must turn to those who can read the Akaskic Records, or as Rudolph Steiner puts it, the Akasha Chronicle, and to the Masters who spoke in the Mahatma Letters.  


In 1858 a young zoologist by the name of Philip Lutley Sclater playing around with an idea and struck on the possibility of a lost continent. This led to one of the longest running and weirdest theories that Lemuria was a lost island of lemurs.  The name for the lost continent stuck.
== Middle Lemuria ==


[[File:Lemur in comtemplative pose.jpg|right|300px|thumb|Lemur in Contemplative Pose]]
Lemuria's main continent at the peak of its development included part of what is now Asia and South into the Pacific Ocean:


== Lemurian Life ==
<blockquote>“Lemuria,” as we have called the continent of the Third Race, was then a gigantic land. It covered the whole area of space from the foot of the Himalayas, which separated it from the inland sea rolling its waves over what is now Tibet, Mongolia, and the great desert of Schamo (Gobi); from Chittagong, westward to Hardwar, and eastward to Assam. From thence, it stretched South across what is known to us as Southern India, Ceylon, and Sumatra; then embracing on its way, as we go South, Madagascar on its right hand and Australia and Tasmania on its left, it ran down to within a few degrees of the Antarctic Circle; when, from Australia, an inland region on the Mother Continent in those ages, it extended far into the Pacific Ocean, not only beyond Rapa-nui (Teapy, or Easter Island) which now lies in latitude 26 S., and longitude 110 W.<ref>Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, ''The Secret Doctrine'' vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 323-324.</ref></blockquote>
[[File:Atlantic Ridge.png|right|300px|thumb|The Mid Atlantic Ridge rises 9,000 feet underwater.]]
However, the continent also extended North, showing the shape of a "horse-shoe":


The atmosphere the Lemurians live in was very different from what we know today.  The air was thicker and the water was thinner.  Large fern-like trees, similar to our palm trees, and great pine forests grew in the warm, wet climate.  Amphibians, birds and lower mammals roamed the earthAt some point in Lemurian history man also lived with larger lizards which may have been remnants of the dinosaurs.    If the dinosaurs lived during the early Lemurian times they probably found the bodies of early Lemurians not quite physically formed and later those bodies would have been gelatinous and probably would not have made a satisfying lunch for a huge predator.
<blockquote>Lemuria, which served as the cradle of the Third Root-Race, not only embraced a vast area in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, but extended in the shape of a horse-shoe past Madagascar, round “South Africa” (then a mere fragment in process of formation), through the Atlantic up to NorwayThe great English fresh-water deposit called the Wealden—which every geologist regards as the mouth of a former great river—is the bed of the main stream which drained Northern Lemuria in the Secondary Age.<ref>Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, ''The Secret Doctrine'' vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 333.</ref></blockquote>


When he first materialized into solid form man was a soft, non-boney mass.  In this pliable form he was genderless yet he could reproduce without fertilization from another.  His progeny was produced by a sort of egg that was “sweated” out.  The offspring was a smaller replica of parent which grew to adult size but required tending by his parent entity.  The organs of the small one were not fully developed outside the parent’s body and required heat to properly grow.
This "horse-shoe" became the basis for the future continent of [[Atlantis]]:


The large gelatinous body began to solidify and a soft bony structure developedEarly man could stand upright and had two eyes in the front of his head and a third eye in the back of back of his head.  The third eye remained an organ of vision until the end of the Lemurian period. After that the third eye became an internal organ of psychic ability which continued into the Atlantian epoch. Today it is the pineal gland.  
<blockquote>No more striking confirmation of our position could be given, than the fact that the ELEVATED RIDGE in the Atlantic basin, 9,000 feet in height, which runs for some two or three thousand miles southwards from a point near the British Islands, first slopes towards South America, then shifts almost at right angles to proceed in a SOUTH-EASTERLY line toward the African coast, whence it runs on southward to Tristan d’AcunhaThis ridge is a remnant of an Atlantic continent, and, could it be traced further, would establish the reality of a submarine horse-shoe junction with a former continent in the Indian Ocean.<br>
The Atlantic portion of Lemuria was the geological basis of what is generally known as Atlantis.  The latter, indeed, must be regarded rather as a development of the Atlantic prolongation of Lemuria, than as an entirely new mass of land upheaved to meet the special requirements of the [[Fourth Root-Race]].<ref>Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, ''The Secret Doctrine'' vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 333.</ref></blockquote>


The following is a description of probably the fifth sub-race of Lemurians.  "His stature was gigantic, somewhere between twelve and fifteen feet. His skin was very dark, being of a yellowish brown color. He had a long lower jaw, a strangely flattened face, eyes small but piercing and set curiously far apart, so that he could see sideways as well as in front, while the eye at the back of the head— on which part of the head no hair, of course, grew— enabled him to see in that direction also. He had no forehead, but there seemed to be a roll of flesh where it should have been. The head sloped backwards and upwards in a rather curious way. The arms and legs (especially the former) were longer in proportion than ours, and could not be perfectly straightened either at elbows or knees; the hands and feet were enormous, and the heels projected backwards in an ungainly way. Round his head, on which the hair was quite short, was twisted another piece of skin.<ref>Elliot, William S. The Story of Atlantis & the Lost Lemuria, Etc. (reprinted.). London: Theosophical Publishing House, 1954. Print. P. 112-113</ref>
<blockquote>[Lemuria] stretched, during the Third Race, east and west, as far as where the two Americas now lie, and since the present Australia is but a portion of it, as are also a few surviving islands sown hither and thither on the face of the Pacific and a large bit of California, which belonged to it.<ref>Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, ''The Secret Doctrine'' vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 328.</ref></blockquote>


== Division of the Sexes ==
As evidence for the existence of this lost continent Blavatsky refers to references present in the ancient legends of people in India, Greece, Madagascar, Sumatra, Java the Polynesia, and the Americas:


Beginning in the middle stages of the Lemurian civilization the split of the sexes took place and proceeded very gradually.  Long before individuals were born either male or female they carried the characteristics of both genders with one gender being more prominent and at this time self-impregnation was still possible. Slowly people began to be born either one gender or the other even as dual-gendered people were still being born. Around sixteen and a half million years ago humans began to reproduce as they do now.  
<blockquote>Both Malacca and Polynesia, which lie at the two extremities of the ocean, and which, since the memory of man never had, and never could have any intercourse with, or even a knowledge of each other, have yet a tradition common to all the islands and islets, that their respective countries extended far, far into the Sea.<ref>Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, ''The Secret Doctrine'' vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 788.</ref></blockquote>


Prior to the gender split man did not think; he had no brain yet so he had no organ for thought.  He operated on impulses.  His consciousness was dreamlike and dull.  He was more animal than human.  But also living among him were entities which Rudolf Steiner refers to as “superhumans.”  These higher entities acquired knowledge and wisdom from clairvoyance.  It was their task to impress upon man their own character which was love. Some superior beings incarnated in human form while others lived alongside and influenced humans through [[emanation]].
She also refers to the similarity of the Oceanic languages as a proof that these islands were once part of a common continent.  


When the genders were split half the person’s energy which was previously needed for single person reproduction was now available for other creations.  The same force man used to impregnate himself was now directed inward to develop a brain.  With the development of a brain finally, spirit, the faculty of thought, had an organ for exercising its function.  Humanity was now enlivened with spirit. 
== Late Lemuria ==


Not all bodies developed at the same rate.  Here is an interesting note about the apes.  According to Mme. Blavatsky humanity has had the assistance of higher beings to further our evolution.  At this time we had several classes to assist us.  One class of these are called the Dhyanis or Sons of Wisdom, who were destined to incarnate in human beings for the purposes of leadership.  Some of the Dhyanis delayed incarnating.  By this time some of the underdeveloped protohumans had bred with an extinct ape-like species and produced a hybrid race.  The late-comer Dhyanis had to incarnate into these human-animals.  These bodies were not properly developed to house the superior beings.  The descendant of this race are the apes; they failed to develop further and, in fact, degenerated.  “Thus the apes are men of a past epoch who have regressed. As man was once less perfect than he is at present, they were once more perfect than they are now.”<ref>Steiner, Rudolf. Cosmic Memory: Prehistory of Earth and Man. Englewood, N.J: Rudolf Steiner Publications, 1959. Print. P. P110</ref> This explains the striking similarities between men and apes but destroys Darwin’s idea of evolution.
Towards the end of its cycle, "the gigantic continent of Lemuria began separating into smaller continents":<ref>Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, ''The Secret Doctrine'' vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 324-325.</ref>  


The Lemurian Root Race, like all Root Races, consisted of seven sub-races which are not specifically named. And just as all Root Races have an overriding theme for development, for the Lemurians the focus was the will and the development of imagination. Once the Lemurians had separated into male and female the work of their race began in earnest with education of the children.  
<blockquote>In the epoch we are treating of, the Continent of “Lemuria,” had already broken asunder in many places, and formed new separate continents. There was, nevertheless, neither Africa nor the Americas, still less Europe in those days, all these slumbering yet on the Ocean floors. Nor was there much of present Asia; for the cis-Himalayan regions were covered with seas, and beyond this stretched the “lotus leaves” of Sveta-dwipa, the countries now called Greenland, Eastern and Western Siberia, etc., etc. The immense Continent, which had once reigned supreme over the Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans, now consisted of huge islands which were gradually disappearing one after the other, until the final convulsion engulfed the last remains of it. Easter Isle, for instance, belongs to the earliest civilisation of the Third Race. Submerged with the rest, a volcanic and sudden uplifting of the Ocean floor, raised the small relic of the Archaic ages untouched, with its volcano and statues, during the Champlain epoch of northern polar submersion, as a standing witness to the existence of Lemuria. It is said that some of the Australian tribes are the last remnants of the last descendants of the Third Race.<ref>Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, ''The Secret Doctrine'' vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 327-328.</ref></blockquote>


There was no memory and thus no language but Lemurians did have ideas which they could not hold for long.  But their ideas had a power for them and for others who could read those thoughts and that was their communication. 
== Destruction ==


The boys and girls were educated separately.  Boys were “hardened”.  They were made to learn to endure the pain and suffering of torture, accomplish dangerous feats and “the bearing of heat, even of a searing fire, the piercing of the body with pointed objects, were quite common procedures.”<ref>Steiner, Rudolf. Cosmic Memory: Prehistory of Earth and Man. Englewood, N.J: Rudolf Steiner Publications, 1959. Print. P.73</ref> Boys who could not endure were not considered useful members of society and were left to die in their efforts.
Following a reference in [[Mahatma_Letter_No._93b#Page_6|''The Mahatma Letters'']], [[Blavatsky]] wrote:


Girls were also hardened but it was nothing like what boys had to go through.  Girls were hardened by being exposed to a dreadful storm and expected to remain calm.  She had to witness the boys in combat and had to do so fearlessly and come to admire the strength and power she saw.  This was intended to cultivate the imagination but having no memory she was dependent on outside stimulation to create the imagination over and over again.
<blockquote>Lemuria is said to have perished about 700,000 years before the commencement of what is now called the Tertiary age (the Eocene), and it is during this Deluge also—an actual geological deluge this time—that Vaivasvata Manu is again shown as saving mankind (allegorically it is mankind, or a portion of it, the Fourth Race, which is saved).<ref>Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, ''The Secret Doctrine'' vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 327-328.</ref></blockquote>


Women developed special human powers. “Their faculty of imagination which was in alliance with nature, became the basis for a higher development of the life of ideas.  They took the forces of nature into themselves, where they had an after-effect in the soul. The germs of memory were formed.  With memory was also born the capacity to form the first and simplest moral concepts.<ref>Steiner, Rudolf. Cosmic Memory: Prehistory of Earth and Man. Englewood, N.J: Rudolf Steiner Publications, 1959. Print. P. 78</ref> It was from women that the first idea of “good and evil” arose.
The length of the Eocene age in the nineteenth century was different from what scientists believe today. Blavatsky regarded it to have started less than 9 million years ago.<ref>Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, ''The Secret Doctrine'' vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 710.</ref> Before the sinking of Lemuria, a group of people of the [[Third Root-Race]] was rescued by the [[Manu]] to form the seed of the [[Fourth Root-Race]].


At first men knew nothing of this way of being.  They followed instinctively either natural impulses or the influence of emanation from the initiated ones.
Blavatsky talks about "the destruction of 'Lemuria' by subterranean fires"<ref>Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, ''The Secret Doctrine'' vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 331.</ref> (volcanoes), which caused the continent to sink:
Women began to exercise a sort of judgment and came to love things that had a positive impression on imagination and abhor other things that did not impress the imagination favorable.   From this the seeds of law and morals began. In her soul woman accessed a kind of spiritual power and clairvoyance unlike the will of men.  She had memory.


When the superhuman beings who sorted out the beginnings of what would become the first Atlantian Race, they put women in charge of the smaller groups they were divided into.  Through memory she could put the past to use.  Through her understanding of good and evil she led with justice.  “Through her thoughtful life she had acquired and understanding of nature, those ideas developed in her according to which she directed the actions of men.  The leaders had arranged things in such a way that through the soul of woman, the willful nature of men was ennobled and refined.<ref>Steiner, Rudolf. Cosmic Memory: Prehistory of Earth and Man. Englewood, N.J: Rudolf Steiner Publications, 1959. Print. P. 80</ref>
<blockquote>The immense Continent, which had once reigned supreme over the Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans, now consisted of huge islands which were gradually disappearing one after the other, until the final convulsion engulfed the last remains of it.<ref>Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, ''The Secret Doctrine'' vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 327.</ref></blockquote>


Through the awakened soul life of women, the leaders also awakened it in men.  Women took this even further connecting with the powers of spirit.  “Everything was animated for them and showed itself to them in soul powers and apparitions. They abandoned themselves to the mysterious weaving of the soul forces.  That which impelled them to their actions were “inner voices……”<ref>Steiner, Rudolf. Cosmic Memory: Prehistory of Earth and Man. Englewood, N.J: Rudolf Steiner Publications, 1959. Print. P. 81</ref> In dreams the secrets of nature were divulged to them.
She mentions that the land to which the Easter Island belonged was "destroyed in one day by its volcanic fires and lava."<ref>Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, ''The Secret Doctrine'' vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 326.</ref> Later, part of the land resurfaced to form the island we know today:
Others began to gather round her to listen to her song, the beginning of language being song-like.  They listened eagerly to the utterances of these “wise-woman”, “the priestess.”  Here is the beginning of religion. One can also see a matriarchy in action.  And it is easy to imagine the Oracle of Delphi singing her strange unintelligible song to an enthralled audience millions of years later. 


== The End of Lemuria ==
<blockquote>Submerged with the rest, a volcanic and sudden uplifting of the Ocean floor, raised the small relic of the Archaic ages untouched, with its volcano and statues, during the Champlain epoch of northern polar submersion, as a standing witness to the existence of Lemuria.<ref>Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, ''The Secret Doctrine'' vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 328.</ref></blockquote>


In the beginning, the Lemurians lived where ever nature provided, in caves, for example.  Later as the civilization progressed they began to purposefully build structures to live in, in areas where the volcanic activity was less.  The volcanic activity was so widespread throughout Lemuria the people could not settle for long in one place without new eruptions causing them to move on.  It was this constant volcanic activity that finally tore the world apart and sunk Lemuria.
Blavatsky also explained:


Some Lemurians did escape the destruction and migrated.  They left descendants in Capoid race, the Congoid race, the Dravidians, and the Australoid race.   Other Lemurians were deliberately relocated to specific area to prepare to seed the next race of Atlantians.  The end of the Lemurian civilization marked the end of phenomenal development for mankind both by achieving physical existence and then splitting the individual into two genders.  
<blockquote>The sinking and transformation of Lemuria beginning nearly at the Arctic Circle (Norway), the Third Race ended its career in Lanka, or rather on that which became Lanka with the Atlanteans. The small remnant now known as Ceylon is the Northern highland of ancient Lanka, while the enormous island of that name was, in the Lemurian period, the gigantic continent described a few pages back.<ref>Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, ''The Secret Doctrine'' vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 332.</ref></blockquote>


The Tamil people of southern India are descendants of the Dravidians race.  In their culture they have a legend of a sunken continent called Kamari Kandam which they say was the cradle of civilization.  It was located just south of India in the Indian Ocean precisely were part of Lemuria is said to have been. 
== See also ==
 
* [[Lemuria (Steiner)]]
[[File:Kamari Kandam Small.png|center|300px|thumb|Kamari Kandam]]
 
Early man had a great deal of help in his development from higher entities, both in physical and non-physical form.  In the Third Race long before speech Lemurians were directed telepathically by superior beings in all aspects of their everyday life. Atlanteans too enjoyed a close direct link with beings of great intelligence murmuring in their ears but the experience of the Fifth Race has not been like that of our predecessors.  The higher beings are still with us but they do not direct us anymore or as Julian Jaynes lamented the gods stopped talking to us.
 
Being denied such communication may seem as though we are unworthy or that we are not spiritual enough or perhaps we are not meditating properly but Rudolph Steiner has another explanation.  We in the Fifth Race are developing thought and with thought comes judgment. We have the freedom to think for ourselves and make decisions for ourselves.  We have freedom Lemurians and Atlanteans could never have dreamed of.  We can excel or degenerate.
 
 
== Bibliography and Further Reading ==
 
 
Blavatsky, H.P. The Secret Doctrine II – Anthropogenesis, Theosophical University Press, Pasadena, California, 1970 (1888).
 
Elliot, William S. The Story of Atlantis & the Lost Lemuria, Etc. (reprinted.). London: Theosophical Publishing House, 1954. Print.
 
Godwin, Joscelyn. Atlantis and the Cycles of Time: Prophecies, Traditions, and Occult Revelations. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2011. Print.
 
Steiner, Rudolf. Cosmic Memory: Prehistory of Earth and Man. Englewood, N.J: Rudolf Steiner Publications, 1959. Print.
 
==Web Sites==
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_race


== Additional resources ==
*[https://www.literaryblog.net/documentary-blog/item/2857-watch-full-documentary-the-hidden-history-of-humanity "The Hidden History of Humanity"] by Mehmet Şentürk. 30 June 2019. "Focuses on the evolution of consciousness over millions of years while revealing the secret chronology of human history from ancient Lemuria and Atlantis to our current root race."
* [https://www.theosophy.world/encyclopedia/lemuria Lemuria] in Theosophy World.


== Notes ==
== Notes ==
<references/>
<references/>


[[Category:Places]]
[[Category:Places]]
[[Category:Theosophical concepts]]

Latest revision as of 04:20, 23 November 2023

Lemuria was a continent that existed about thirty-four million years ago, according to The Secret Doctrine, and was the home of the Third Root-Race. It was destroyed by volcanic fires and most of its land lies now under the ocean.

Early Lemuria

The extension and shape of the continent of Lemuria varied throughout it evolutionary cycle. During the early stages it was an extensive island. According to H. P. Blavatsky:

Their Sweta-Dwipa [the White Island], during the early day of Lemuria stood out like a giant-peak from the bottom of the sea; the area between Atlas [in North Africa] and Madagascar being occupied by the waters till about the early period of Atlantis (after the disappearance of Lemuria), when Africa emerged from the bottom of the ocean, and Atlas was half-sunk.[1]

Middle Lemuria

Lemuria's main continent at the peak of its development included part of what is now Asia and South into the Pacific Ocean:

“Lemuria,” as we have called the continent of the Third Race, was then a gigantic land. It covered the whole area of space from the foot of the Himalayas, which separated it from the inland sea rolling its waves over what is now Tibet, Mongolia, and the great desert of Schamo (Gobi); from Chittagong, westward to Hardwar, and eastward to Assam. From thence, it stretched South across what is known to us as Southern India, Ceylon, and Sumatra; then embracing on its way, as we go South, Madagascar on its right hand and Australia and Tasmania on its left, it ran down to within a few degrees of the Antarctic Circle; when, from Australia, an inland region on the Mother Continent in those ages, it extended far into the Pacific Ocean, not only beyond Rapa-nui (Teapy, or Easter Island) which now lies in latitude 26 S., and longitude 110 W.[2]

The Mid Atlantic Ridge rises 9,000 feet underwater.

However, the continent also extended North, showing the shape of a "horse-shoe":

Lemuria, which served as the cradle of the Third Root-Race, not only embraced a vast area in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, but extended in the shape of a horse-shoe past Madagascar, round “South Africa” (then a mere fragment in process of formation), through the Atlantic up to Norway. The great English fresh-water deposit called the Wealden—which every geologist regards as the mouth of a former great river—is the bed of the main stream which drained Northern Lemuria in the Secondary Age.[3]

This "horse-shoe" became the basis for the future continent of Atlantis:

No more striking confirmation of our position could be given, than the fact that the ELEVATED RIDGE in the Atlantic basin, 9,000 feet in height, which runs for some two or three thousand miles southwards from a point near the British Islands, first slopes towards South America, then shifts almost at right angles to proceed in a SOUTH-EASTERLY line toward the African coast, whence it runs on southward to Tristan d’Acunha. This ridge is a remnant of an Atlantic continent, and, could it be traced further, would establish the reality of a submarine horse-shoe junction with a former continent in the Indian Ocean.
The Atlantic portion of Lemuria was the geological basis of what is generally known as Atlantis. The latter, indeed, must be regarded rather as a development of the Atlantic prolongation of Lemuria, than as an entirely new mass of land upheaved to meet the special requirements of the Fourth Root-Race.[4]

[Lemuria] stretched, during the Third Race, east and west, as far as where the two Americas now lie, and since the present Australia is but a portion of it, as are also a few surviving islands sown hither and thither on the face of the Pacific and a large bit of California, which belonged to it.[5]

As evidence for the existence of this lost continent Blavatsky refers to references present in the ancient legends of people in India, Greece, Madagascar, Sumatra, Java the Polynesia, and the Americas:

Both Malacca and Polynesia, which lie at the two extremities of the ocean, and which, since the memory of man never had, and never could have any intercourse with, or even a knowledge of each other, have yet a tradition common to all the islands and islets, that their respective countries extended far, far into the Sea.[6]

She also refers to the similarity of the Oceanic languages as a proof that these islands were once part of a common continent.

Late Lemuria

Towards the end of its cycle, "the gigantic continent of Lemuria began separating into smaller continents":[7]

In the epoch we are treating of, the Continent of “Lemuria,” had already broken asunder in many places, and formed new separate continents. There was, nevertheless, neither Africa nor the Americas, still less Europe in those days, all these slumbering yet on the Ocean floors. Nor was there much of present Asia; for the cis-Himalayan regions were covered with seas, and beyond this stretched the “lotus leaves” of Sveta-dwipa, the countries now called Greenland, Eastern and Western Siberia, etc., etc. The immense Continent, which had once reigned supreme over the Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans, now consisted of huge islands which were gradually disappearing one after the other, until the final convulsion engulfed the last remains of it. Easter Isle, for instance, belongs to the earliest civilisation of the Third Race. Submerged with the rest, a volcanic and sudden uplifting of the Ocean floor, raised the small relic of the Archaic ages untouched, with its volcano and statues, during the Champlain epoch of northern polar submersion, as a standing witness to the existence of Lemuria. It is said that some of the Australian tribes are the last remnants of the last descendants of the Third Race.[8]

Destruction

Following a reference in The Mahatma Letters, Blavatsky wrote:

Lemuria is said to have perished about 700,000 years before the commencement of what is now called the Tertiary age (the Eocene), and it is during this Deluge also—an actual geological deluge this time—that Vaivasvata Manu is again shown as saving mankind (allegorically it is mankind, or a portion of it, the Fourth Race, which is saved).[9]

The length of the Eocene age in the nineteenth century was different from what scientists believe today. Blavatsky regarded it to have started less than 9 million years ago.[10] Before the sinking of Lemuria, a group of people of the Third Root-Race was rescued by the Manu to form the seed of the Fourth Root-Race.

Blavatsky talks about "the destruction of 'Lemuria' by subterranean fires"[11] (volcanoes), which caused the continent to sink:

The immense Continent, which had once reigned supreme over the Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans, now consisted of huge islands which were gradually disappearing one after the other, until the final convulsion engulfed the last remains of it.[12]

She mentions that the land to which the Easter Island belonged was "destroyed in one day by its volcanic fires and lava."[13] Later, part of the land resurfaced to form the island we know today:

Submerged with the rest, a volcanic and sudden uplifting of the Ocean floor, raised the small relic of the Archaic ages untouched, with its volcano and statues, during the Champlain epoch of northern polar submersion, as a standing witness to the existence of Lemuria.[14]

Blavatsky also explained:

The sinking and transformation of Lemuria beginning nearly at the Arctic Circle (Norway), the Third Race ended its career in Lanka, or rather on that which became Lanka with the Atlanteans. The small remnant now known as Ceylon is the Northern highland of ancient Lanka, while the enormous island of that name was, in the Lemurian period, the gigantic continent described a few pages back.[15]

See also

Additional resources

  • "The Hidden History of Humanity" by Mehmet Şentürk. 30 June 2019. "Focuses on the evolution of consciousness over millions of years while revealing the secret chronology of human history from ancient Lemuria and Atlantis to our current root race."
  • Lemuria in Theosophy World.

Notes

  1. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 264.
  2. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 323-324.
  3. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 333.
  4. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 333.
  5. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 328.
  6. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 788.
  7. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 324-325.
  8. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 327-328.
  9. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 327-328.
  10. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 710.
  11. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 331.
  12. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 327.
  13. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 326.
  14. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 328.
  15. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine vol. II, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 332.