Page 72 (part 11)

Oriental tradition is ever referring to an unknown glacial, gloomy sea, and to a dark region, within which, nevertheless, are situated the Fortunate Islands, wherein bubbles, from the beginning of life on earth, the fountain of life ( Herbelot, p. 593 ; Armenian Tales, p. 35 ) . But the legend asserts, moreover, that a portion of the first dry island (continent), having detached itself from the main body, has remained, since then, beyond the mountains of Koh-kaf, "the stony girdle that surrounds the world." A journey of seven months' duration will bring him who is possessed of "Soliman's ring" to that "fountain," if he keeps on journeying North straight before him as the bird flies. Journeying therefore from Persia straight north, will bring one along the sixtieth degree of longitude, holding to the west, to Nova Zemblia; and from the Caucasus to the eternal ice beyond the Arctic circle would land one between 60 and 45 degrees of longitude, or between Nova Zemblia and Spitzbergen. This, of course, if one has the dodecapedian horse of [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Mergain, or Morgana, the fairy sister of King Arthur, is thus shown of Oriental descent. ** Where we find her, indeed, in Great Britain, in the romance of the Knights of the Round Table. Whence the identity of name and fairy-hood, if both heroines did not symbolize the same historical event which had passed into a legend? [[Vol. 2, Page]] 399 THE ARCTIC CONTINENT. Huschenk or the winged Simorgh of Tahmurath (or Taimuraz), upon which to cross over the Arctic Ocean.* Nevertheless, the wandering songsters of Persia and the Caucasus will maintain, to this day, that far beyond the snow-capped summits of Kap, or Caucasus, there is a great continent now concealed from all. That it is reached by those who can secure the services of the twelvelegged progeny of the crocodile and the female hippopotamus, whose legs become at will twelve wings **; or by those who have the patience to wait for the good pleasure of Simorgh-anke, who promised that before she dies she will reveal the hidden continent to all, and make it once more visible and within easy reach, by means of a bridge, which the Ocean Devs will build between that portion of the "dry island" and its severed parts.*** This relates, of course, to the seventh race, Simorgh being the Manvantaric cycle. It is very curious that Cosmas Indicopleustes, who lived in the sixth century A.D ., should have always maintained that man was born, and dwelt at first in a country beyond the Ocean, a proof of which had been given him in India, by a learned Chaldean ( Cosmas Indicopleustes in Collect. nova Patrum, t . ii, p. 188; also see Journ . des Savants, Suppl. 1707, p. 20.) He says: " The lands we live in are surrounded by the ocean, but beyond that ocean there is another land which touches the walls of the sky ; and it is in this land that man was created and lived in paradise. During the Deluge, Noah was carried in his ark into the land his posterity now inhabits. " ( Ibid. ) The twelve-legged horse of Huschenk was found on that continent named the dry island. ( Supra, p. 154.) The "Christian topography" of Cosmas Indicopleustes and its merits are well known; but here the good father repeats a universal tradition, now, moreover, corroborated by facts. Every arctic traveller suspects a continent or a "dry island" beyond the line of eternal ice. Perhaps now the meaning of the following passage from one of the Commentaries may become clearer. [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * To this day the aborigines of Caucasus speak of their mountains as Kap-kaz, using the consonant p instead of the usual v (Kavkaz or Caucasus). But their bards say that it requires seven months for a swift horse to reach the "dry land" beyond Kaf, holding north without ever deviating from one's way. ** Bailly thought he saw in this horse a twelve-oared ship. The Secret Doctrine teaches that the early Third Race built boats and flotillas before it built houses. But the "horse," though a much later animal, has, nevertheless, a more occult primitive meaning. The crocodile and the hippopotamus were held sacred and represented divine symbols, both with the ancient Egyptians and with the Mexicans. Poseidon is, in Homer, the God of the Horse, and assumes that form himself to please Ceres. Arion, their progeny, is one of the aspects of that "horse," which is a cycle. *** The severed parts must be Norway and other lands in the neighbourhood of the Arctic Circle. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 400 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. " In the first beginnings of (human) life, the only dry land was on the Right end * of the sphere, where it (the globe) is motionless. ** The whole earth was one vast watery desert, and the waters were tepid . . . . There man was born on the seven zones of the immortal, the indestructible of the Manvantara. *** There was eternal spring in darkness. (But) that which is darkness to the man of today, was light to the man of his dawn. There, the gods rested, and Fohat **** reigns ever since . . . . Thus the wise fathers say that man is born in the head of his mother (earth) , and that her feet at the left end generated (begot) the evil winds that blow from the mouth of the lower Dragon . . . . Between the first and second (races) the eternal central (land) was divided by the water of life. ***** " It flows around and animates her (mother earth's) body. Its one end issues from her head ; it becomes foul at her feet (the Southern Pole). It gets purified (on its return) to her heart -- which beats under the foot of the sacred Shambalah, which then (in the beginnings) was not yet born. For it is in the belt of man ' s dwelling (the earth) that lies concealed the life and health of all that lives and breathes. ****** During the first and second (races) the belt was covered with the great waters. (But) the great mother travailed under the waves and a new land was joined to the first one which our wise men call the head-gear (the cap). She travailed harder for the third (race) and her waist and navel appeared above the [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * The two poles are called the right and left ends of our globe -- the right being the North Pole -- or the head and feet of the earth.