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).

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.

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."

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.

Each Root-Race is in turn divided in seven sub-races. Currently, humanity is undergoing the fifth Root-Race stage and five sub-races have been developed.

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.

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.

Third Root-Race

Mahatma K.H. said that some of the more primitive populations today are "off-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.

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.

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