Page 97 (part 7)

He is born on the seventh of the month, and the swans of Myorica swim seven times around Delos singing that event; he is given seven chords to his Lyre -- the seven rays of the sun and the seven forces of nature. But this only in the astronomical meaning, whereas the above is purely geological. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 773 THE CYCLES OF TIME. than the rest, only mentions a people who slept for six months in the year, and remained awake the other half. Yet the Greeks knew well that there was a country in the north where the year was divided into a day and night of six months' duration each, for Pliny says so in his Fourth Book, c. 12. They speak of the Cimmerians and of the Hyperboreans, and draw a distinction between the two. The former inhabited the Palus Maeotis (between 45 [[degrees]] and 50 [[degrees]] latitude). Plutarch explains that they were but a small portion of a great nation driven away by the Scythians, which nation stopped near Tanais, having crossed Asia. "These warlike multitudes lived formerly on the ocean shores, in dense forests, and under a tenebrous sky. There the pole is almost touching the head, there long nights and days divide the year " ( in Mario ) . As to the Hyperboreans, these peoples, as expressed by Solinus Polyhistor ( c . 16), "sow in the morning, reap at noon, gather their fruits in the evening, and store them during the night in their caves." Even the writers of the Zohar knew of the fact (as shown in iii., fol. 10 a ), as it is written: "In the Book of Hammannunah, the Old, we learn . . . . there are some countries of the earth which are lightened, whilst others are in darkness; these have the day, when for the former it is night; and there are countries in which it is constantly day, or in which at least the night continues only some instants." (Isaac Myer's " Qabbalah, " p. 139). The island of Delos, the Asteria of the Greek mythology, was never in Greece, a country which, in its day, was not yet in existence, not even in its molecular form. Several writers have shown that it represented a country or an island, far larger than the small dots of land which became Greece. Both Pliny and Diodorus Siculus place it in the Northern seas. One calls it Basilea or "royal" ( Vol. II., p. 225 of Diod. ); the other, Pliny, names it Osericta ( Book xxxvii, c. 2) , a word, according to Rudbeck ( Vol. I., p. 462-464), having had "a significance in the northern languages, equivalent to the Island of the divine Kings or god-Kings," or again the "royal island of the gods," because the gods were born there, i.e. , the divine dynasties of the kings of Atlantis proceeded from that place. Let geographers and geologists seek for it among that group of islands discovered by Nordenskiold on his Vega voyage in the arctic regions.* The secret books inform us that the climate has changed in those regions more than once since the first men inhabited those now almost inaccessible latitudes. They were a paradise before they became hell; [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * These islands were "found strewn with fossils of horses, sheep, oxen, etc., among gigantic bones of elephants, mammoths, rhinoceroses," etc. If there was no man on earth at that period "how came horses and sheep to be found in company with the huge antediluvians?" asks a master in a letter. (" Esoteric Buddhism, " 67). The reply is given above in the text. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 774 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. the dark Hades of the Greeks and the cold realm of Shades where the Scandinavian Hel, the goddess-Queen of the country of the dead, "holds sway deep down in Helheim and Niflheim." Yet, it was the birth-place of Apollo, who was the brightest of gods, in heaven -- astronomically -- as he was the most enlightened of the divine kings who ruled over the early nations, in his human meaning. The latter fact is borne out in the Iliad IV., 239-62 , Vide "The Greater gods" -- wherein Apollo is said to have appeared four times in his own form (as the god of the four races) and six times in human form, i.e. , as connected with the divine Dynasties of the earlier unseparated Lemurians. It is those early mysterious peoples, their countries (which have now become uninhabitable), as well as the name given to man both dead and alive, which have furnished an opportunity to the ignorant Church fathers for inventing a hell, which they have transformed into a burning instead of a freezing locality.* It is, of course, evident that it is neither the Hyperboreans, nor the Cimmerians, the Arimaspes, nor even the Scyths -- known to and communicating with the Greeks -- who were our Atlanteans. But they were all the descendants of their last sub-races. The Pelasgians were certainly one of the root-races of future Greece, and were a remnant of a sub-race of Atlantis. Plato hints as much in speaking of the latter, whose name it is averred came from pelagus, the great sea. Noah's Deluge is astronomical and allegorical, but it is not mythical, for the story is based upon the same archaic tradition of men -- or rather of nations -- which were saved during the cataclysms, in canoes, arks, and ships. No one would presume to say that the Chaldean Xisuthrus, the Hindu Vaivasvata, the Chinese Peirun -- the "beloved of the gods," who rescued him from the flood in a canoe -- or the Swedish Belgamer, for whom the gods did the same in the north, are all identical as a personage. But their legends have all sprung from the catastrophe which involved both the continent and the island of Atlantis. The allegory about the antediluvian giants and their achievements in Sorcery is no myth. Biblical events are revealed indeed. But it is neither by the voice of God amid thunder and lightning on Mount [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * A good proof that all the gods, and religious beliefs, and myths have come from the north, which was also the cradle of physical man, lies in several suggestive words which have originated and remain to this day among the northern tribes in their primeval significance; but although there was a time when all the nations were "of one lip," these words have received a different meaning with the Greeks and Latins. One such word is Mann, Man, a living being, and Manes, dead men.