Page 69 (part 8)

He knows nothing, through exact Science, of what took place nearly 10,000 years ago; yet he may find consolation in the knowledge or -- if he so prefers -- speculation on the fate of every one of the modern nations he knows of -- about 16,000 years hence. [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * There are other cycles, of course, cycles within cycles - - and this is just that which creates such a difficulty in the calculations of racial events. The circuit of the ecliptic is completed in 25,868 years. And, with regard to our Earth, it is calculated that the equinoctial point falls back fifty minutes ten seconds, annually. But there is another cycle within this one. It is said that "as the apsis goes forward to meet it at the rate of eleven minutes twenty-four seconds, annually," (see the article on Astronomy in Encyclopaedia Britannica ), "this would complete a revolution in one hundred and fifteen thousand three hundred and two years (115,302). The approximation of the equinox and the apsis is the sum of these motions, sixty-one minutes thirty-four seconds, and hence the equinox returns to the same position in relation to the apsis in 21,128 years." We have mentioned this cycle in Isis Unveiled, Vol. I., in relation to other cycles. Each has a marked influence on its contemporary race. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 331 PRE-HISTORIC STATUES. Our meaning is very clear. Every sidereal year the tropics recede from the pole four degrees in each revolution from the equinoctial points, as the equator rounds through the Zodiacal constellations. Now, as every astronomer knows, at present the tropic is only twenty-three degrees and a fraction less than half a degree from the equator. Hence it has still 2 1/2 degrees to run before the end of the Sidereal year; which gives humanity in general, and our civilized races in particular, a reprieve of about 16,000 years.* After the Great Flood of the Third Race (the Lemurians) -- " Men decreased considerably in stature, and the duration of their lives was diminished. Having fallen down in godliness they mixed with animal races, and intermarried among giants and Pigmies (the dwarfed races of the Poles) . . . Many acquired DIVINE, more -- UNLAWFUL knowledge, and followed willingly the LEFT PATH. " (Commentary xxxiii.) Thus were the Atlanteans approaching destruction in their turn. How many geological periods it took to accomplish this fourth destruction? Who can tell. . . . But we are told that -- ------- (44.) T HEY ( the Atlanteans ) BUILT GREAT IMAGES, NINE YATIS HIGH (27 feet ) -- THE SIZE OF THEIR BODIES ( a ). L UNAR FIRES HAD DESTROYED THE LAND OF THEIR FATHERS ( the Lemurians ). W ATER THREATENED THE F OURTH ( Race ) ( b ) . ( a ) It is well worth noticing that most of the gigantic statues discovered on Easter Island, a portion of an undeniably submerged continent -- as also those found on the outskirts of Gobi, a region which had been submerged for untold ages -- are all between 20 and 30 feet high. The statues found by Cook on Easter Island measured almost all twenty-seven feet in height, and eight feet across the shoulders. ( See § " Stones, Witnesses to Giants, " at the end of this Stanza.) The writer is well aware that the modern archaeologists have decided now that "these statues are not very old," as declared by one of the high officials of the British Museum, where some of them now are. But this is one of those arbitrary decisions of modern science which does not carry much weight. We are told that it is after the destruction of "Lemuria" by subterranean fires that men went on steadily decreasing in stature -- a process already commenced after their physical F ALL - - and that finally, some millions of years after, they reached between six and seven feet, and are now dwindling down (as the older Asiatic races) to nearer five than [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * See at the end of this Stanza "On the Duration of Ages and Cycles." [[Vol. 2, Page]] 332 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. six feet. As Pickering shows, there is in the Malay race (a sub-race of the Fourth Root Race) a singular diversity of stature; the members of the Polynesian family (Tahitians, Samoans, and Tonga islanders) are of a higher stature than the rest of mankind ; but the Indian tribes and the inhabitants of the Indo-Chinese countries are decidedly below the general average. This is easily explained. The Polynesians belong to the very earliest of the surviving sub-races, the others to the very last and transitory stock. As the Tasmanians are now completely extinct, and the Australians rapidly dying out, so will the other old races soon follow. ( b ) Now, how could those records have been preserved? we may be asked. Even the knowledge of the Zodiac is denied to the Hindus by our kind and learned Orientalists, who conclude that the Aryan Hindus knew nothing of it, before the Greeks brought it into the country. This uncalled-for slander was so sufficiently refuted by Bailly, and what is more, by the clear evidence of facts, as not to need very much additional refutation. While the Egyptians have on their Zodiacs (See Denon ' s " Voyage en Egypte " Vol. II. ) irrefutable proofs of records having embraced more than three-and-a-half sidereal years -- or about 87,000 years -- the Hindu calculations cover nearly thirty-three such years, or 850,000 years. The Egyptian priests assured Herodotus that the Pole of the Earth and the Pole of the Ecliptic had formerly coincided. But, as remarked by the author of the Sphinxiad, "These poor benighted Hindoos have registered a knowledge of Astronomy for ten times 25,000 years since the (last local) Flood (in Asia), or Age of Horror, " in the latitude of India. And they possess recorded observations from the date of the first Great Flood within the Aryan historical memory -- that which submerged the last portions of Atlantis, 850,000 years ago. The floods which preceded are, of course, more traditional than historical. 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. As a M ASTER says (See " Esoteric Buddhism, " p . 65): -- "Why should not your geologists bear in mind that under the continents explored and fathomed by them . . . .