THE BOOK OF EARTHS

By

EDNA KENTON

New York: William Morrow & Company

[1928, No renewal]

Mountains of the World

IN MANY OF THESE WORLD TREE PICTURES we have seem World Mountains as well, but northern ones mostly. Yet the concept of the antipodal polar mountains of Earth is very old. They stand opposed to each other in the Babylonian Universe (Plate VIII ). They are inherent in the very idea of an Underworld to this Over-world, whether the idea is carried to its logical conclusion or not. As above, so below. If the World Mountain of the North was the abode of gods, the abode of demons was--the World Mountain of the South. Fig. 53 illustrates not only the antipodal mountains of a spherical Earth, but also the "four quarters of the Earth," the abode of gods, of living men, of dead men, and of demons, beginning with the northern mountain and descending to the south.

FIGURE 53. The Antipodal Polar Mountains.
(From Paradise Found; William Fairfield Warren, 1885.)

PLATE XXIV. THE ROSE TREE OF THE ROSICRUCIANS
(Frontispiece, Summum Bonum; Robert Fludd, 1629)

It may be it is only because the popular concept of the figure of Earth swung more or less uniformly to that of a sphere after the western world was discovered, and all the continents of the Earth were mapped out, that we are apt to think the spherical concept is a modern one. As a matter of historical fact the Greeks established it in the minds of philosophers by at least 500 B.C., and it is certain that the idea did not originate with them. Its origin, like the origin of most of these concepts, is trackless, if for no other reason than that the concept of Earth as the Mundane Egg--a spheroid form--goes back into untraceable antiquity. More and more it seems that, in order to explain any of these recurrences, we must take almost literally Fechner's conception of a great reservoir in which lie pooled the memories of all of the Earth's vanished inhabitants, which now and then "opens," to let a little spill out into the minds of a few living men. For more and more it begins to appear as if always, somewhere on the Earth, all of these figures of Earth have existed in the minds of some of its people. Perhaps it may mean that the Earth has been all of these things, at different stages of its development, that it is constantly changing, never the same; that its changes are its life, and that, far from being a disintegrating, dying planet, it is a continuously evolving one, always undergoing the mysterious process of creation. But this is only a guess.

Certainly, thanks to the symmetrical speculations of the Pythagorean and Platonian Greeks, the theory of the antipodal region and the antipodal race of beings was so much a part of the science of the day, that it seemed necessary to St. Augustine, a thousand years later (fifth century A.D.) to establish some sort of a theory of the figure of the Earth, which, although retaining its supposed spherical form, should nevertheless cast the theory of the antipodes into everlasting disrepute.

FIGURE 54. The Theory of Two Centres. Spherical Earth with no Antipodes.(After Rainaud.)
(From The Siege of the South Pole; H. R. Mill, 1905.)The theory of two centres," or the theory that the Earth was composed of two spheres, one of land, and one of water, contained one within the other, but not concentric, solved the problem exactly of retaining the sphere and rejecting the antipodes. The terrestrial globe rose a little from the watery sphere, and it was, of course, the northern part of the Earth which so rose. When it was objected to, by some, on the ground that only lighter elements rise to the surface of water, and the denser irresistibly sink, the two-centre theorists promptly replied that the terrestrial sphere rose only a little from the water, as an egg, plunged into a water-filled basin, would rise a little to the surface; and they asserted farther that these two spheres signified the true meaning of the "separation" of land from water. But Strabo, several hundred years before, facing the problem of the density of the elements, accounted for it much more simply. It was true, he said, that by nature the water was higher in situation than the Earth, and in the beginning of things compassed it all about like a sphere. But since Providence designed to create animals and chiefly man, a creature not belonging to the water, God therefore "raised the Earth," and caused it to dwell in diverse places; and in others he sunk it and made it hollow, that the waters might lie hid, and that dry land might appear over it and thus afford a seat for man and other animals of the land.

What made the Early Church combat the idea of a southern habitable hemisphere was not so much the difficulty of explaining how men could stand "feet to feet," as the difficulty of explaining why races of men, all sons of Adam, should be utterly cut off and separated from each other by the impassable belt of fire that circled the Earth. There seemed no reason or purpose in this that could be called divine; this was the heresy. But it was also true that the literal mechanics of an inhabited antipodal region, without the convenient theory of gravitation to explain everything, was too much for reasonable man to accept without an admirable struggle.

FIGURE 55. ''Feet to Feet.''
(From Physiologia Kircheriana Experimentalis, 1680.)"What are they," said Lactantius, a fourth-century Father of the African Church, "that think there are Antipodes, such as walk with their Feet against ours? do they speak with any likelihood; or is there any one so foolish as to believe that there are Men whose Heels are higher than their Heads? that things which with us do lie on the Ground, do hang there? that the Plants and Trees grow downwards, that the Hail, and Rain, and Snow fall upwards to the Earth? and do we admire the hanging Orchards among the Seven Wonders; whereas here the Philosophers have made the Fields and Seas, the Cities and Mountains hanging? What shall we think, that Men do cling to that Place like Worms, or hang by their Claws as Cats? or if we suppose a Man a little beyond the Center, to be digging with a Spade, is it likely (as it must be according to this Opinion) that the Earth which he loosened, should of itself ascend upwards? Or else suppose two Men with their Middles about the Center, the Feet of one being placed where the Head of the other is, and so two other Men cross them, yet all these Men thus situated, according to this Opinion should stand upright; and many other gross Consequences would follow, which a false Imagination is not able to fancy as possible."

IN THE Universe of the Lamas(Plate XXV ) we come upon the very greatest of the Mountains of the World, Mount Meru, the universal hub, the support of all the worlds. Meru is also the "Garden of the Tree of Life," for the Jambu or Rose Apple World Tree springs from it. This Tibetan Universe is not only a beautiful but a complex universe as well, and it is going to be difficult to describe its many divisions simply and directly. 1

But first of all, say the Lamas of Tibet, this world of ours is merely one of a series, which all together form a universe or Chiliocosm of which again there are many. Each universe is set like a jewel in illimitable space, upon a warp or woof of "blue air" or wind. Crossed thunder-bolts are the symbols of this "blue air," which is hard and indestructible, like a diamond. Upon this "warp" or "woof" is set "the body of the waters," and upon this is a foundation of pure gold, on which is set the Earth. From the Earth's axis soars Mount Meru, crown of the world, which rises to a height of 84,000 miles before it is surrounded by the heavens. It is likened to "the handle of a millstone," and half way up its southern side is the Jambu, or Rose Apple Tree, the object of combat between the gods and the Titans. From its root four inexhaustible rivers take their source. It bears an immortal fruit, like gold, which falls into the rivers, and from its scattered pips comes the golden seed which is carried down to the sea, and is, sometimes, washed up again on its shores.

In the ocean about Mount Meru lie the four continents, each with two attending "satellites," and all with bases of solid gold in the form of a tortoise. But the continents are separated from the sacred Meru by seven "stages" or golden mountains, between which flow seven oceans of seven substances: fragrant milk which is churned by the gods, curds, butter, blood or sugar-cane juice, poisons or wine, fresh water, and salt water. Encircling all these divisions is a double iron wall which shuts off the light of the Sun and the Moon of each universe from all the space which intervenes between it and the succeeding universe. No ray of light illumines the void between the "thousand-thousand" universes. This is the "outer darkness."

The orbit of the Sun or "glazed fire," and of the Moon or "glazed water," is the summit of the innermost ring of mountains, called "The Yoke." Between these two heavenly bodies hang the jewelled umbrella of the kings and the banner of Victory--these are shown in the figure. In their realm of air, on this same plane, live the eight angelic "mothers."

PLATE XXV. THE UNIVERSE OF THE LAMAS
(From The Buddhism of Tibet, or. Lamaism; L. Austine Waddell, 1899)

The "four continents" are placed exactly in each of the four directions, and they are of four different shapes, corresponding to the four forms of the four elements (Fig. 1 ). To the north lies the cube or earth-shaped body; to the west the sphere or water-shaped body; to the south the triangle or fire-shaped body, and to the east the crescent or air-shaped body. Of the four continents, they say that all except Jambudvipa (F) are fabulous, but they are described as follows:

THE UNIVERSE OF THE LAMAS
(From The Buddhism of Tibet, or. Lamaism; L. Austine Waddell, 1899, p.78)

"On the Eastis Videha, or 'vast body' (P). This is shaped like the crescent moon, and is white in colour. It is 9,000 miles in diameter, and the inhabitants are described as tranquil and mild, and of excellent conduct, and with faces of the same shape as this continent, i.e., crescentic, like the moon.

"On the Southis Jambudvipa(F), or our own world, and its centre is the Bodhi-tree at Budh Gaya. It is shaped like the shoulder-blade of a sheep . . . is blue in colour; and it is the smallest of all, being only 7,000 miles in diameter. Here abound riches and sin as well as virtue. The inhabitants have faces of similar shape to that of their continent, i.e., somewhat triangular.

"On the Westis Godhanya, or 'wealth of oxen' (I), which in shape is like the sun and red in colour. It is 8,000 miles in diameter. Its inhabitants are extremely powerful and (as the name literally means cow + ox + action) they are believed to be specially addicted to eating cattle, and their faces are round like the sun.

"On the Northis Uttara-Kuru, or 'northern Kuru'--tribe (M), of square shape and green in colour, and the largest of all the continents, being 10,000 miles in diameter. Its inhabitants are extremely fierce and noisy. They have square faces like horses; and live on trees, which supply all their wants. They become tree-spirits on their death; and these trees afterwards emit 'bad sounds.'

"The satellite continents resemble their parent continent in shape, and each is half its size. The left satellite of Jambudvip, namely, 'The ox-tail-whisk continent,' is the fabulous continent of the Rakshas, to which Padmasambhava is believed to have gone and to be still reigning there. And each of the latter presents towards Mount Meru one of the following divine objects respectively, viz., on the east (? south) the mountain of jewels, named Amolikha, shaped like an elephant's head, and on the south, the wish-granting tree, on the west the wish-granting cow, and on the north the self-sprung crops."

As for Mount Meru--some say that these four gifts of the left satellites are situated on the sides of Meru itself--which has square sides of gold and of jewels. Its eastern face is crystal or silver, like the colour of the eastern continent. The southern face is sapphire or lapis lazuli. The west side is of ruby, and the north side is gold. Mount Meru is always covered with fragrant flowers and herbs.

It has four lower compartments under the heavens. The lowest is inhabited by the Yaksha genii holding wooden plates. Above live the "wreath-holders." Above these dwell the "Eternally exalted ones," and above them the Titans, the race of beings who contend always with the gods for the Jambu or Rose Apple Tree. Originally gods, the Titans were, like Satan, thrown out of heaven, and their place in the Tibetan system is intermediate between heaven and Earth.

Above the Titans, at a distance of 168,000 miles, are the realms of the gods. In the lowest compartment are the "four great guardian kings of the quarters," the white guardian of the East, the green guardian of the South, the red guardian of the West, and the yellow guardian of the North, who forever guard the heavens against attacks of outer demons. The eight great classes of supernatural beings are subjects of these kings, and these guardians of the four quarters are aided by the ten Lokpalswho watch the ten directions, that is, the eight points of the compass, and above, and below.

FIGURE 56. A Kalmuck World-picture.
(From Mythology of All Races, Vol. IV, 1927.)A Kalmuck World-picture (Fig. 56 ) is quite worth comparing with this. Universe of the Lamas, for the Kalmucks, now of Russia, primitively inhabited China. They arrived on the shores of the Caspian Sea about 1600, but they brought with them their own conception of the world, with its colours and shapes. This drawing shows Mount Su-meru in the centre of the world, through whose centre the World Tree springs. Sometimes they will say that each of the four mountain sides bears a tree. Su-meru is shaped, they believe, like a truncated pyramid, and around it are seven mountains and seven seas not represented in this drawing. The nearer a mountain ring is to the central mountain, the higher it is, they believe; and the higher the mountain rings, the farther they are from each other. The Kalmucks say also that the distance of each from the central mountain is the same as its height.

The colours of the four sides of the truncated Su-meru are like those of the Tibetan Meru, and the Kalmucks also place four continents in the four quarters, each of a different shape, and each accompanied by two smaller "islands" of like shape; so that again the total number of islands surrounding the centre of the world is the zodiacal twelve. The Tibetan Jambudvip--the southern continent--which was "shaped like the shoulder-blade of a sheep," and whose inhabitants had faces shaped similarly, "somewhat triangular," is slightly modified in the Kalmuck picture to an oval continent inhabited by an oval or "egg-faced" race. But it is almost the same; an "oval" such as this is hardly more than an expanded or expanding triangle and the egg-shaped islands and faces may be called with a fair accuracy "somewhat triangular."

No claim for particular beauty and certainly no claim for any antiquity is made for the Chinese hemisphere shown in Fig. 57 , drawn, says Dr. Du Bose, by a monk in Soochow, who perceived that times were changing, that the new geography was of a spherical Earth and not of a "World Mountain," but who realised that the North Pole is permanent--if anything is. He therefore drew a conventional modern hemisphere with its lines of latitude and longitude, over which he traced Europe-Asia-Africa; and then, upon the top of the world, raised his World Mountain, peerless Su-meru, spine and marrow of "the thirty-three heavens," and situated in the very centre of the world.

FIGURE 57. Mount Su-Meru of the Chinese.
(From Dragon, Image and Demon; H. C. Du Bose, 1887.)

Its shape is ordinarily that of an inverted cone, whose medial line is cut by the Earth's surface, whose base is above, and whose apex penetrates the Earth to a distance equalling the distance of its base from the Earth. Or, as the Chinese explain it, "Its depth in the sea is equal to its altitude (in the air)." In the undersea division are the countless hells. The unknown monk of Soochow made his Sacred Mountain resemble a pagoda more than a cone when he compromised with a new age, but a simple projection of the pagoda lines will result in a figure quite cone-like.

Footnotes

127:1 L. Austine Waddell's reading of this picture is followed here, as given in his Buddhism, or The Lamas of Tibet, pp. 77-121.

THE BOOK OF EARTHS

By

EDNA KENTON

New York: William Morrow & Company

[1928, No renewal]

Trees of the World

THERE ARE TWO UNIVERSAL WORLD-FIGURES, found everywhere, among all races--the World Tree, and the World Mountain. For man could draw analogies--his traditions Evidence it almost better than his written records. He knew that he had been born, that he was living, that he must die; yet of birth he remembered nothing, and death he would not know until too late. But in the animal world--above all in the vegetable world, he could watch the recurrent miracles of life and death, rebirth and growth, sleeping and waking states more easily than he could note the same miracles in his own sphere. And so he came very early and easily to see a correspondence between humanity, greatest of the animal world, and the Tree, mightiest of its kingdom. It is true that in every great cosmological system and in great and lesser cosmogonies, there stands the figure of the World Tree, with its seed, its roots, its trunk, its resting perches, its knitting knots, its pith, its main branch, its leaves, its flowers and their sweet smell, its refreshing shade, its immortal sap, and the spot where it grows, all brought into close and exquisite analogy with man and his universe.

"Without doubt," sings one of the greatest of the Vedic poets, "though possessed of density, trees have space within them. The putting forth of flowers and fruits is always taking place in them. They have heat within them in consequence of which leaf, bark, fruit and flower are seen to droop. They sicken and dry up. That shows they have perception of touch. Through sound of wind and fire and thunder, their fruits and flowers drop down. Sound is perceived through the ear. Trees have, therefore, ears, and do hear. A creeper winds round a tree and goes all about its sides. A blind thing cannot find its way. For this reason it is evident that trees have vision. Then again trees recover vigour and put forth flowers in consequence of odours good and bad, of the sacred perfume of various kinds of dhupas. It is plain that trees have scent. They drink water by their roots. They catch diseases of divers kinds. Those diseases again are cured by different operations. From this it is evident that trees have perception of taste. As one can suck up water through a bent lotus stalk, trees also, with the aid of the wind, drink through their roots. They are susceptible of pleasure or pain, and grow when cut or lopped off. From these circumstances I see that trees have life. They are not inanimate. Fire and wind cause the water thus sucked up to be digested. Accordingly again, to the quantity of water taken up, the tree advances in growth and becomes humid. In the bodies of all subtile things the five elements occur. In each the proportions are different."

According again to the races of men, the type of the World Tree varied. The Date-palm was the sacred Asherah of the Assyrians. To the Greeks, and to the Norsemen, the cosmic Ash was the World Tree. But also to the Greeks, and to the Germans, the Oak was the life-giver and the life-sustainer. And the Greeks made the vine the "sacred tree" of Dionysos. Persian legends centre about the haoma tree, and the Egyptians had a mythical golden gem-bearing tree of the heavens, where the Sky goddess Nut had her abode. The Japanese believed that a great metal-pine grew far to the north at the centre of the world, and the Russians have a legend of an Iron Tree whose root "is the power of God," and whose head sustains the three worlds--the heavenly ocean of air, the Earth, and Hell with its burning fire. To the branches of the Jambu or Rose Apple tree, the Hindu dead clung and climbed to immortality. India has also her incredible banyan tree, declared to be more like man than man himself. Unlike plants, man can move at will over the surface of the Earth, but this sacred Indian Fig Tree bears the name of the Tree of Many Feet, because its seed, rarely rooting in the ground, ordinarily sends down its hanging garden of roots from its nest in the crown of palms, where it has been deposited by birds. These aerial roots, touching the Earth, sink into it, glide through it and from it spring upward again to send down other drooping branches that root themselves, and so, over and over, until the prodigious grove--myriad parts of a single tree sprung from one air-nested seed--eventually destroys the Palm that cradled it.

Countless books have been written about the origin of the myth of the Cosmic Tree, but the gist of them all can be stated very briefly. First of all, Heaven and Earth are separated. They must be, therefore, at one and the same time held apart--lest the heavens fall down and crush the Earth--and they must be also united by some subtle path of communication, some bridge over the monstrous interval. If a mushroom, delicate as a butterfly, can work a miracle in a night and raise a rock, a tree rooted in the Earth may support the sky. But no tree of Earth could reach to heaven unless it were itself divine, born somehow of the gods; and so we find a host of literal "parent trees," said to be produced from the body moisture of deities, and capable therefore, in their turn, of producing man. In its more developed form, this parent tree became the Tree of Life, the Tree of Knowledge, offering men immortality and the wisdom of the gods. There is a Tibetan tree called Tarayanaor the Way of Safety which grows by the side of the great river separating the worlds, and only by grace of its overhanging branches may men pass from the mortal to the immortal bank.

PLATE XVIII. Yggdrasil, the World Tree of the Norsemen. After Finn Magnusen's

The oldest World Tree? who shall say? When in search of the "oldest" we always think of the ancient East; but no one can assert--and Evidence--that Yggdrasil, the Cosmic Ash, the World Tree of the Norsemen, had its origin in the Orient, however remarkably its ideas coincide with the sacred trees of Asia. Let us begin for a change with the Occident and Yggdrasil.

"The chief and most holy seat of the gods," say the Eddas, "is by the Ash Yggdrasil. There the gods meet in council every day. It is the greatest and best of all trees. Its branches spread over the world and reach above heaven. Three roots sustain the tree and stand wide apart; one is with Asa; the second is with the Frost giants; the third reaches into Niflheim, and under it is Hvergelmar, where Nidhug gnaws the roots from below. But under the second root, which extends to the Frost giants, is the well of Mimir, wherein knowledge and wisdom are concealed. The third root of the Ash is in Heaven, and beneath it is the most sacred fountain of Urd. Here the gods have their doomstead. The Asa ride thither every day over the Bi-frost, which is also called Asa-bridge. There stands a beautiful hall near the fountain beneath the Ash. Out of it come three maids. These maids shape the lives of men, and we call them the Norns. On the boughs of the Ash sits an eagle, who knows many things. Between his eyes, sits the hawk, called Vedfolner. A squirrel, by name Ratatk, springs up and down the tree and bears words of hate between the eagle and Nidhug. Four stags leap about in the branches of the Ash and bite the buds. The Norns that dwell by the fountain of Urd every day take water from the fountain, and clay that lies around the fountain, and sprinkle therewith the Ash, in order that its branches may not wither or decay." 1

FIGURE 44. Yggdrasil, the Cosmic Ash(From Finn Magnusen's''Eddalen.'')
(From The Sacred Tree, or The Tree in Religion and Myth; Mrs. J. H. Philpot, 1897.)There are a number of interesting things to note here, because of their constant recurrence in other world-concepts widely separated in time and race. One is the close association of the World Tree with the World Mountain; one springs from the other, take them in what order we will. Another is the division of the Universe into nine worlds. Another, for the sake of comparison with a Mayan World Tree farther on, is the squirrel Ratatk. Another is the Bi-frost or Asa-bridge.

In the beginning of all things, says the Norse story of the Creation, there were two worlds, Niflheim, the world of ice in the north, and Muspelheim, the world of fire in the south, with all the space between an empty abyss, called Ginungagap. The fierce flames in Muspelheim blew constantly over into the abyss many sparks which confronted only nothingness, until, from the ice-bound Niflheim, a great spring opened and sent down twelve rivers, some of which flowed into the abyss and formed great layers of frozen vapour. At last the sparks of fire met the frozen air, and Ymir the giant was created, and then, in turn,

From Ymir's flesh
the earth was formed,
and from his bones the hills,
the heaven from the skull
of that ice-cold giant
and from his blood the sea.

Of the nine worlds Asgard was the highest and was the world of the gods. Below it was Mitgard or Earth, the world of men, a flat disc surrounded by the River Ocean.

Beyond the River Ocean, but surrounding Mitgard, was Junheim, the upper giant world, and, beneath the Earth plane, was the great underworld divided into four worlds. In the North was the lower giant world of Niflheim; at the South Urd and her two sisters ruled over the kingdom of the dead, and between North and South was Mimir's land, where dwelt the wisest of the gods, and, with him, Day, Night, Dawn and the Sun and Moon. Below Niflheim again was the world of torture, and below Urd's realm of the dead, the land of subterranean fire.

FIGURE 45. Diagram of the Nine Worlds, supported by the World Tree Yggdrasil.
(From The Nine Worlds; Mary Elizabeth Litchfield, 1890.)Just two things bound these worlds together, the tree Yggdrasil, and the Asa-bridge, or Bi-frost. And a third--the spirit of heaven, the great Energiser, passing ever to and fro, guiding, controlling all the universe, from the first world to the ninth; at home everywhere, abiding no-where, stirless when moving and moving when still; that without which there would be nothing--here shown as merely a tiny timid nimble squirrel.

FIGURE 46. Diagram of the Scandinavian Cosmos.1 Spring Hvergelmir, in Niflhel or Niflheim, under Yggdrasil's northern root.
2 Well of Wisdom in Mimir's Realm, under Yggdrasil's middle root.
3 Urd's Well in her Realm, under Yggdrasil's southern root.
4 Home of the Vanir.
5 Home of the Elves in Mimir's Realm.
6 Castle where Baldur dwelt with the Asmir.
7 Northern End of Bifrt, guarded by Heimdall.
8 Southern End of Bifrt, near Urd's Well.
(From The Nine Worlds; Mary Elizabeth Litchfield, 1890.)

But what was the binding and the separating bridge, the Bi-frost?

Again, who knows? Its arch was over Asgard, world of the gods; its northern tip resting upon the mountains of the ice-girt Niflheim; its southern end in the realm of the dead, where Urd and her sisters ruled. Some say the Milky Way is the original of Bi-frost or the Trembling Bridge, as some say the Milky Way is the very trunk of the Celestial Tree. Others believe that the Rainbow is the prototype for Bi-frost and all the "bridges of the world." For the World bridges are as universal as the "trees" and "mountains" of the world. Earth was cut off from Heaven--yet somewhere, if man could only find it, there was a path that might lead back home. The Bi-frost at its northern end was inviolately guarded by the great Heimdall, "World-Judge" or "World-Divider," "whose ears were so good that he could hear the grass pushing up through the ground, and the wool growing on the backs of sheep, and he needed less sleep than a bird." The gods crossed it every day on their way to the judgment hall in the realm of Urd, but the way was barred against all others, lest some thief in the night should find his way into Heaven. Yet it was the bridge also on which the souls of all the dead began their passage to the land of Urd.

The Persians had their Chinvat bridge, which is to say also, the Bridge of the Judge, over which all souls, good and evil, passed--"that bridge," says one of their sacred books, "like a beam of many sides, of whose edges there are some which are broad, and there are some which are thin and sharp; its broad sides are so large that its width is of twenty-seven reeds, and its sharp sides are so contracted that in thinness it is just like the edge of a razor." Mohammed too placed a way over the middle of hell, "which is sharper than a sword and finer than a hair, over which all must pass."

Certainly the North American Indians considered the Milky Way to be the "bridge" to the Land of Souls--a great village situated "where the Sun sets." "They call the milky way Tchipai meskenau, the path of souls, because they think that the souls raise themselves through this way in going to that great village," wrote Paul Le Jeune in 1634 of the Montagnais. One hundred years later Pierre Aulneau wrote of the Crees of upper Lake Superior, that they believed in a paradise of feasts and great hunts for the immortalsouls of the dead. "But, before reaching it, there is a spot of extreme peril--the souls have to cross a wide ditch. One side of the way it is full of muddy water, offensive to the smell and covered with scum; while on the other the pit is filled with fire, which rises in fierce tongues of flame. The only means of crossing it is on a fir tree, the ends of which rest. on either bank. Its bark is ever freshly moistened and besmeared with a substance which makes it as slippery as ice. If the souls who wish to cross to the enchanting plains have the misfortune to fall at this dangerous passage, there is no help left; they are doomed forever to drink of the foul stagnant water or to burn in the flames, according to the side on which they fall." Sometimes the "bridge-building fiend" made the bridging spar a snake or a swinging log.

A "Sketch of the World," by a Thompson River Indian, illustrates this exactly. They believe that the Earth is square, level in the centre and rising towards the north from whence comes the cold, that it rises also in great mountain ranges about its borders, and that these mountains or lands are topped by mountains of air--the clouds and mists rising from the encircling lake of the world. All the rivers of the world rise in the north and flow south.

FIGURE 47. Sketch of the World, by a Thompson River Indian.
a. Trail leading from the earth to the land of the ghosts, with tracks of the souls; b. River and log on which the souls cross; c. Land of the ghosts and dancing souls; d. Lake surrounding the earth; e. Earth, with rivers and villages; N. S. E. W. points of the compass.

This trail to the soul-world has been minutely described by James Teit in his The Thompson River Indians of British Columbia. 1 According to him, the country of souls is underneath us, towards the sunset, and its path is one of perils, storms, narrow bridges, and gaping chasms. The trail leads through a dim twilight; along it are always visible the tracks of the people who last went over it, and also the tracks of their dogs, if they had any with them. It winds along until it meets another road, which the shamans, or medicine-men (their nearest approach to priests) use as a short cut when trying to intercept a soul. From here on, the trail is much smoother and straighter, and is painted red with ochre. Farther on it winds to the westward, descends a long gentle slope, and ends at a wide shallow stream of very clear mirror-like water. This stream is spanned by a long slender log, on which the tracks of souls may be seen again. After crossing the "bridge," if the traveller is fortunate enough to hold his footing on the slippery edge between the worlds, he finds himself again on the trail, which is now an ascending one. At a certain height is heaped a great pile of clothes; this marks the spot on the journey where the souls must leave behind them all that they have brought from the other world. And from here on the trail not only seems level, but little by little the dimness and twilight confusion disappear.

Three guardians are stationed along the trail of the souls--one on each side of the river that must be crossed, and the third at the very end of the trail of the ghosts.

The first of these, on the hither side of the stream, has built for himself a sweat house where he spends most of his time. It is the duty of all three to send back to the land of the living any soul not yet ready to enter the land of the dead, even though he may have by some miracle of accident crossed the bridge. For sometimes it happens that a soul succeeds in passing the first two guardians, only to be turned back by the third, who is the chief of the three, and who now and then, being a great orator, sends back messages to the world of the living through the medium of souls who, having survived all other tests of courage and merit, fail in the final test of being judged worthy by the guardian of the gate of life to pass through.

But, having been permitted by him to pass, the soul at last reaches a large lodge at the end of the trail. It is made of a hard white material, like limestone or white clay. It extends a long distance from east to west, and is much shorter from north to south. Its top is "like a round mound or ant-hill." The doors to this white lodge are at the east and west, and the trail leads up to the eastern door, which is very small, barely large enough to let a soul pass through. But the western door, through which the soul passes to the land of ghosts, is much higher and wider. Through the entire length of the lodge there is a double row of fires, for when the deceased friends of a person expect his soul to arrive, they go in a body to this lodge to talk about his death and prepare to welcome him. As the newly arrived soul reaches the entrance to the lodge of the dead, he finds some one standing at the door to greet him and call him by name, while others sing, dance, and beat upon drums. The air is always pleasant and still, and it is always light and warm. There are sweet smells of flowers, an abundance of grass, and berry-bushes laden with ripe fruit. The rest is hunting, feasting, and dancing through eternity, for the dancing, or immortal, souls.

The Wakwak Tree is a fabulous tree growing on a fabulous island somewhere in the Southern Ocean--or somewhere near Japan, or near the western (or the eastern) coast of Africa--it all depends on the traveller who tells the legend. It appears to have had nothing to do with America or the American Indians; yet here is a curious bit of Sioux lore, which, in connection with one of the legends of the lost continent of the Pacific, has an odd interest here.

The Sioux Indians have a special reverence for what they call the waka dacedar. Waka da, according to W. J. McGee, 1 who has made a special study of the word in his The Siouan Indians, is a very curious word indeed. It has, he says, as many connotations as the Sanscrit word Karma, and, like Karma, is not to be translated by any single English word. The Sun, for instance, is not "the" or "a" waka da, but simply waka da. So is thunder, so is lightning, the stars, the winds, and especially waka dacedar, by which they mean precisely the state of being which makes a cedar human and more than human. Even a man might be waka da. The term, he says, may be translated by "mystery" more satisfactorily than by any other single English word; nevertheless, with its vague implications of "power," "sacred," "ancient," "grandeur," "animate," "immortal," "not even an English sentence of ordinary length could quite convey the sum total of the aboriginal idea expressed by the term waka da." Perhaps all its meaning is conveyed when, applied to the cedar, they say it is that state of being which makes a cedar human and more than human.

Now of the Wakwak tree which bore human fruit, Turkey, Arabia, Persia, and India all had a tradition; that in the Southern Ocean--or some other unexplored waste of waters--was an island called Wakwak--or a great mountain called Wakwak--because on it grew a tree which produced fruit with a human head, or fruit in the form of a human body, or even in the form of animals, and these beings, at dawn and at sunset, cried aloud, so that all might know the passage of the Sun, "Wak! wak!" The island and the mountain are mentioned in The Thousand and One Nights--Hasan al-Basri went there to find his wife and children. The tree is described without being named by Friar Odorico of Pordenone who in the fourteenth century left Italy to make the grand tour of the East. Arrived at Malabar, he wrote thus: "And here I heard tell that there be trees which bear men and women like fruit upon them. They are about a cubit in measurement, and are fixed in the tree up to the navel, and there they be; and when the wind blows they be fresh, but when it does not blow they are all dried up. This I saw not in sooth, but I heard it told by people who had seen it." Plate XIX gives a drawing of the Wakwak tree, taken from an old Turkish History of Western India and Its Wonders, published at Constantinople in 1729. It represents the fruit of this fabulous tree not by human heads but by seven pendent bodies. The two great birds at the foot of the tree are as fabulous as the rest of it.

PLATE XIX. THE WAKWAK TREE
(From Tarikhal-Hind al-Gharbi. Constantinople, 1729)

FIGURE 48. The Tree of Judas.
(From Maundevile's Voiage and Travailes, 1839 reprint.)Sometimes these souls were imagined as suspended with their heads downwards, alive, but clinging and climbing on a reversed path back to heaven. In an old Hindu legend it is related that Garuda, lord of all birds, coursing one day towards a gigantic banyan tree, with the fleetness of the mind, to sit thereon and "eat the elephant and the tortoise," in alighting broke one of the branches. As it broke he caught it and saw to his wonder that a tribe of Rishis called Valikhilyas were hanging from it head downwards, engaged in "ascetic penances." And gathering together all of his strength, the lord of birds soared high into the heavens with his burden of hanging men, and saved them. Sometimes, when the air is quiet, trees will move and their leaves rustle--this very common phenomenon had for the ancients a mystic meaning; at such times the invisible souls were talking to each other of their trials and triumphs on the journey back to heaven.

FIGURE 49. Osage Chart of the Universe, drawn by Red Corn.
(From Picture-Writing of the American Indians; Garrick Mallery, 1894, p. 251.)
In their "Sketch of the World," the Thompson River Indians incorporated one form of the World Tree, in the bridge between the worlds, literally, "the path of life." The Osage Indians, in their chart of the universe, have another. Few world-pictures can be found more simply and beautifully drawn than this by Red Corn, with its Earth plane, its "stages" or heavens, and its Tree of Life. Like the Lenape pictograph, it is the "score" of a tradition chanted by members of a secret society of his tribe. It is explained by J. Owen Dorsey as follows: 1

The tree at the top represents the tree of life. By this flows a river. The tree and the river are described later in the degrees. When a woman is initiated, she is required by the head of her gens to take four sips of water (symbolising the river), then he rubs cedar on the palms of his hands, with which he rubs her from head to foot. If she belongs to a gens on the left side of a tribal circle, her chief begins on the left side of her head, making three passes, and pronouncing the sacred name three times. Then he repeats the process from her forehead down; then on the right side of her head; then at the back of her head; four times three times, or twelve passes in all.

Beneath the river are the following objects: The Watse tuka, male slaying animal (?), or morning star, which is a red star. 2. Six stars called the "Elm rod" by the white people in the Indian Territory. 3. The evening star. 4. The little star. Beneath this are the moon, seven stars, and sun. Under the seven stars are the peace pipe and war hatchet; the latter is close to the sun, and the former and the moon are on the same side of the chart. Four parallel lines extending across the chart represent four heavens or upper worlds through which the ancestors of the Tsicu people passed before they came to this earth. The lowest heaven rests on an oak tree; the ends of the others appear to be supported by pillars or ladders. The tradition begins below the lowest heaven, on the left side of the chart, under the peace pipe. Each space on the pillar corresponds with a line of the chant; and each stanza (at the opening of the tradition) contains four lines. The first stanza precedes the arrival of the first heaven, pointing to a time when the children of the "former end" of the race were without human bodies as well as human souls. The bird hovering over the arch denotes an advance in the condition of the people; then they had human souls in the bodies of birds. Then followed the progress from the fourth to the first heaven, followed by the descent to earth. The ascent to our heaven, and the descent to three, makes up the number seven.

When they alighted, it was on a beautiful day, when the earth was covered with luxuriant vegetation. From that time the paths of the Osages separated; some marched to the right, being the war gentes, while those on the left were peace gentes, including the Tsicu whose chart this is.

Then the Tsicu met the black bear, called in the tradition Ke-wsan' (Crow-bone-white), in the distance. He offered to become their messenger, so they sent him to the different stars for aid. According to the chart, he went to them in the following order: Morning star, sun, moon, seven stars, evening star, little star.

Then the black bear went to the Wacia-cutse, a female red bird sitting on her nest. This grandmother granted his request. She gave them human bodies, making them out of her own body.

The earth-lodge at the end of the chart denotes the village of Haa utakantsi, who were a very war-like people. Buffalo skulls were on the tops of the lodges, and the bones of the animals on which they subsisted whitened on the ground. The very air was rendered offensive by the decaying bodies and offal.

The whole of the chart was used mnemonically. Parts of it, such as the four heavens, and the four ladders, were tattooed on the throat and chest of the men belonging to the order.Another Siouan tribe, the Sia Indians of New Mexico, believe that in each of the six regions of the world--they name these as the four quarters, zenith and nadir--there was a giant mountain bearing a giant tree, at whose foot was a spring, in which dwelt one of the "cloud-rulers," each attended by one of the six primal priestesses of the Sia, who interceded constantly with the six cloud rulers to send rain to the Sia. The six varieties of their World Trees were the spruce, the pine, the aspen, the cedar, and two varieties of the oak.

It would be a brave, not to say a reckless scientist, who would say to-day how young or how old the Mayan civilisation is. Thirty years ago, answers would have come easily enough; but that was before the excavations of the great buried cities in Central America began, which may very well result in the uncovering of records which ante-date the oldest we have. Already we know that America, youngest of the continents historically, is older prehistorically than we yet dare to say. And, although we never knew more than a little about the Mayas and their beliefs, we know to-day how fragmentary and isolated those bits of knowledge are, and how untrustworthy the conclusions we have drawn from them.

Nevertheless, under the date of 1640, there has come down to us a picture of the Mayan Universe, copied by Father Cogolludo from the central design of the Chilam Balam, or Sacred Book, of Mani, and inserted in his Historia de Yucathan, written at the end of twenty-one years spent among the Mayas (Plate XX ).

At the bottom of the "universe" lies a cube, which has long been recognised as representing in the Mayan cosmogony the Earth. Above the Earth cube, resting on four legs which rest in turn on the four quarters of the Earth, is the heavenly vase, Cum, which holds the celestial waters--the treasures of the snow and of the hail, of the rains and the showers, on which all life, vegetable, animal and human, depends. Above this vase hang the rain clouds, and within it grows the Yax che, the Green Tree or the Tree of Life, its upper branches bearing on their tips the flowers or fruits of life on Earth, olor yol; that is to say, the soul or immortal principle of man. Under the Green Tree Yax che, the souls who have passed through Mitnaor the underworld, dwell in happiness, while the others sink into a region where they suffer eternal cold and hunger. In Brinton's Primer of Mayan Hieroglyphics, the inner figure of the cube, the vase, the clouds and the tree, is reproduced, lettered according to readings from other of the Sacred Books. The Earth cube in that picture is not lettered IUM, Earth, but tem, the Altar. "The Earth signifies the great Altar of the gods, and the offering upon it is Life."

PLATE XX. THE WORLD TREE OF THE MAYAS
(From Historia de Yucathan; Diez Lopez Cogolludo, 1640)The thirteen heads surrounding the World Tree signify, according to Brinton, the thirteen ahau katuna, or greater cycles of years. They also may signify the thirteen possible directions of Space. That is, the complete terrestrial globe is symbolised by the four cardinal points, zenith, and nadir, with man in the centre making the seventh, and the complete celestial sphere is symbolised by adding the six directions, with man, the focal point, remaining the same. "The border therefore," says Brinton, "expresses the totality of Time and Space, and the design itself symbolises Life within Time and Space."

Another Mayan world-picture is shown in Fig. 50 , which is the central design of the Tableau of the Bacabs. Instead of the thirteen ahau katunaor greater cycles of years, this design is surrounded by "the signs of the twenty days," which extend in the original design, beyond the figure here given, to the four cardinal points and to the gods and time-cycles connected with them. "Again," says Brinton, "it is Life within Time and Space."

Here, sitting beneath the shade of the Green Tree, at its root, are the divine First Pair, Cuculcan, the feathered or winged serpent god, and Xmucanehis spouse,--"the Creator and the Former," says the Popol Vuh, "Grandfather and Grandmother of the race . . . two-fold grand-mother, two-fold grandfather . . . the Maker, the Former, the Ruler, the Serpent clothed in feathers, they who beget, they who impart life, they rest upon the waters like a glowing light, they are clothed in colour green and blue, therefore their name is Gucumatz, 'Feathered Serpent.'"

FIGURE 50. Our First Parents. From the Codex Cortesianus.
(From A Primer of Mayan Hieroglyphics; Daniel G. Brinton, 1894.)

The resemblances between the divisions of this Mayan tree and the Norse tree Yggdrasil are obvious, but here is a correspondence in ideas that is very curious. Between the nine Norse worlds, it will be recalled, from the roots of the tree to its topmost branch, ran Ratatk, scamperer between men and gods, matter and spirit, Space and Time--the great Energiser under the guise of a tiny squirrel. It is rather interesting to discover that under the green cosmic tree Yax cheof Yucatan sits a figure whose name, Cuculcan, is derived from a Mayan verb, cucul, meaning to "revolve," "to move round and round," as they moved their great calendar wheels to accomplish the rotation of time; and that this rotation itself is called cuceb, "the squirrel," derived directly from the same verb cucul, "to revolve, to move round and round."

One more Mayan Tree of Life, too beautiful not to be included in any group of "Cosmic Trees," particularly as it shows the mystery of metamorphosis almost in the act of transmutation from one form to another is given in Fig. 51 . In the original drawing the god of the north star rests upon it, as it rises from the heavenly vase that holds the heavenly waters. And, to show that Egypt and Yucatan were not separated in fancy at least by oceans]Atlantic or Pacific, here is a little drawing of the Sacred Tree of the Egyptians, with Heaven, or the Sky goddess Nut, bestowing knowledge on man and his soul.

FIGURE 52. Sacred Tree of the Egyptians.
(From Egyptian Mythology and Egyptian Christianity; Samuel Sharpe, 1863.)"THE WHOLE WORLD," says an old Hebrew writing, "is like a gigantic tree full of branches and leaves, the root of which is the spiritual world of the Sphroth; or it is like a firmly united chain the last link of which is attached to the upper world; or like an immense sea, which is constantly filled by a spring, everlastingly gushing forth its streams."

When we take up the Kabbala, to interpret anything in it, we touch a book on which literally thousands of interpretative books have been written. The Arber Sephirothecais perhaps its keystone figure, and the interpretations of the relation and meaning of the ten Sephiroth which compose the "tree" differ so that any summary of them is not only hopeless but useless here. It is possible, however, to sketch largely and with no detail, a general explanation of this Hebrew World Tree.

PLATE XXI. ARBER SEPHIROTHECA
(From Utriusque Cosmi; Robert Fludd, 1621. Vol. II)

First of all, what are the ten Sephiroth? First of all then, they are indicated by the first ten letters of the primitive alphabet in which, as we have noted before, Gods were Letters, Letters were Ideas, Ideas were Numbers, and Numbers were perfect Signs. They may mean either "to count" (that is, they may mean "numbers"), or "brilliance" or "spheres." Or they may mean "qualities," standing for the several grades or stages of wisdom. Or they may mean "emanations."

The Arber Sephirotheca(Plate XXI ) shows the Hebrew scheme of Creation--the esoteric side of the Genesis story, beginning with the assumption that Creation began, not from the act of God, but from the emanation of God, due to his voluntary self-withdrawal in order that the universe might be created. "When the Holy Aged, the concealed of all concealed," says the Zohar, "assumed a form, he produced everything in the form of male and female, for Wisdom expanded, and Intelligence, the third Sephirah, proceeded from it, and thus were obtained male and female, viz., Wisdom the father, and Intelligence the mother, from whose union other pairs of Sephiroth successively emanated." The first Triad, then, which is represented, is Hochma or Wisdom, Binah, or Intelligence, and Cheter the Crown or the equilibrising force. These three in one are the Balance of forces, otherwise the Reason of the Universe. This Reason is not represented separately. It is held to be inherent in the relation existing between and in the first group of three.

Then, from this first group of three forces, or its result, Reason, came the second group of three, Chesed or Mercy, the father, Geburah or Justice, the mother, which together produce Tipherets, or Beauty. This sixth again represents Balance or equilibrium in forms about to be materialised, the mediator between the Crown or Creator and the Kingdom or Creation.

The third triad consists of Netzeth or Victory, the father (explained sometimes as the eternal triumph of Intelligence and Justice, the two mothers), Hod or Glory, the mother, from which two springs Iesod, the Foundation, the Absolute.

The three triads, three forms each of the intellectual, the spiritual, and the material qualities, combine to form the tenth Sephirah, Malcuth or the Kingdom--or Sovereignty over the Kingdom or universe, manifested in the ten branching leaves. These branching leaves manifest, in turn, the direct relation existing between the ten Sephiroth and Adam Kadmon, the primordial, heavenly, incorruptible man, created in this way only "in the image of God." Adam Kadmon is the branching fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and holds the middle place between the En Soph or All in All and the ten emanations; holds, that is, the point of Balance or equilibrium. In this sense Adam Kadmon here, as in Plate IV , is regarded as the supporter and upholder of the universe. Nothing could be at first sight more unlike than these two images of the three worlds, but there are enormous likenesses between them.

Another way of expressing this interrelation between the ten emanations is that the first Sephirah, by virtue of its equilibrising power, unites the second and third--Wisdom and Intelligence; that the sixth Sephirah, Beauty, by the same virtue, unites the fourth and fifth--Mercy and Justice; that the ninth Sephirah, Foundation or Absolute, unites the seventh and eighth--Victory and Glory, and by union with all, sends forth the tenth Sephirah, the Kingdom or the Universe. Again, the first three Sephiroth form the world of Reason; the second three, the world of Spirit; the last four, the world of the Body.

A tree must have a soil in which to grow; soul and spirit must have a body; moving energy must take a form. And a very beautiful and subtle interpretation of the World Tree myth may be found in an old black-figured kylix by Exekias, dating from the sixth century B.C. It is called "Dionysos in the Ship," and its reading depends entirely on an understanding of what the story of Dionysos meant to the Greeks and all the peoples who came under their influence (Plate XXII ).

The story of Dionysos is always the story of Dionysos-and-Apollo. There is not such a thing as even half of this story; one without the other does not exist. It veiled one of the greatest of the Greek mysteries, this conflict between these two gods, and the final reconciling of their struggle. It symbolised the conflict between light and darkness, between spirit and form--quite literally, the conflict between spirit and body. It was a mythological drama based on the old cry of man, "I feel two natures struggling within me." The first impulse of antagonism is to defeat, even to destroy; it seldom occurs to two opponents that there is a middle point, an equilibrium or balance, where peace abides. The story of Dionysos-Apollo is not one of destruction, but of final reconcilement between two opposing forces. Neither was to be rightly judged on the basis of "good" or of "evil," but on the basis of incompleteness only. Each needed the complementary force of the other; without the other neither was whole. It was not Dionysos alone, nor Apollo alone, but the two reconciled and united that solved the struggle. In this kylix, Dionysos-Apollo floats on the aethereal ocean. The body or boat--a great fish--carries the unified god. The two are one, and from them united spring two great vines laden with fruit and leaves. About the living boat seven dolphins, "spies of the sea," keep guard to forecast storms and to warn the pilot. In this Dionysian vine picture the myth-cycle of the World Tree rounds upon itself. The Tree, given by the gods to mortal man, is itself re-born through man reconciled and made immortal, and is given back to heaven as a celestial vine. Dionysos-Apollo had escaped the Wheel of Fate, and could forever mediate between the remnants of man still bound to it, and the Olympian gods.

The mystery of the relation between Darkness and Light, which is the mystery of Dionysos-Apollo, had another representation in the seventeenth century, when Robert Fludd based the whole scheme of Creation upon it (Plate XXIII ). It will be interesting to compare this drawing with some Chinese conceptions of the primal causal cosmic struggle between Light and Darkness (pp. 147 -150).

PLATE XXII. DIONYSOS IN THE SHIP
A black-figured kylix by Exekias(6th cen. B.C.). in Munich(Furtwgler-Reichhold; Griechische Vasenmalerei, No. 42).
(From Mythology of All Races, 1927. Vol. I, Plate XLIX)

"At the top of the figure," says Fludd, "is expressed the Head, or the Root, of all things, both in the simplicity of His unity and the duality of His universal attributes, namely, One God, One Supreme Being, One Essence or Divine Mind, whether willing or non-willing. In the negative aspect it withdraws within itself, and refrains from sending Itself forth from Itself.

"B. is the effect of the divine potency, or non-willing, in which state all things were formless and in potency only, before the beginning of the world. B., in other words, is a hieroglyphic Image of God thus far altogether non-willing; in which stage God is in His true Essence, shining within Himself, but not sending Himself forth from Himself. Such was the primal Chaos, from the bowels of which the materials of the Universe were originally drawn forth.

"Just as B. was the hieroglyph of the latent God, so C. is the representation of His glorious Emanation for the Creation of the World. This Emanation is the Word of God.

"From the union of these two comes one World [D. E.] in the Image of One Who participates in it both in His positive and negative aspects. That is to say, from the two opposites the World is born in the Image of its Creator. The World is in God, which means that the World is partly created and partly uncreated. Created, if we consider the material World, but uncreated if we consider its Maker.

"According to the mystical theology of Orpheus, Hesiod, Euripides, and chylus (who involved the divine mysteries in allegory), the Sun is taken in Archetype, as that divine source from which all ornament and beauty, embracing a multiple harmony of life, is derived. In His right hand is pity and benevolence, in His left, severity and punishment [F. G.]."

One aspect of this divine mystery of the Sun visible and the Sun invisible, they concealed, he says, under the name of Apollo, god of Day and of Light, the other under the name of Dionysos, god of Night and of Darkness. Each was but half of the other; only the two are one; yet each one, though separate, had within him the seeds of Darkness and Light. Hence, they argued that God is both destruction and creation, corruption and generation, author and actor; that "just as he composes by the number 7, so he destroys by the number 7, for the sacred number 7 is attributed to the God of life." Night in its darkness, or Dionysos, symbolised God in His negative aspect of withdrawal within Himself, and Day in its light, or Apollo, symbolised God in his positive aspect of giving forth by emanation from himself.

PLATE XXIII. ''And God said, Let there be Light, and there was Light.''
(From Medicina Catholica; Robert Fludd, 1629)

THE FAMOUS ROSE TREE of the Rosicrucians has a Dionysian connection, for the Rose as well as the Vine was sacred to this god. It has also a Peruvian connection; the Peruvian Eve--there is a native drawing of her later on--sinned not by eating the apple, but by picking roses, which were, in the Peruvian tradition, the fruit of the Tree." The bee is almost as much a part of this drawing (Plate XXIV ) as the Rose Tree--here are a few odd myths of this marvellous being. According to Porphyrios, the Moon was called a bee; according to Virgil, the bee alone of all animate things descended from Paradise, is a part of the mind of God, never perishes, and alone of all animate things, ascends alive into heaven. Dionysos is sometimes identified with the Moon, and is said in some traditions to have been born again as a bee. Again, the wax of bees produces light, hence bees are those that feed on fire. As for the rose, its bud resembles the acuminated or pointed sphere that symbolises ether in the ancient Stupa (Fig. 1 ), and the opened rose, to the Rosicrucians, symbolised the Universe spread out like a book, which he who could might read.

This representation of the universe by a rose appears to be a later development of a very ancient figuration of the universe by an onion--also a plant sacred to the old gods. Rather, the universe was represented by the layers of the onion--the Egyptians and the Hebrews and the Tibetans have used this over and over again. The core, to which the layers cling, may be the axis of the world, or the polar mountain of the world. In the Tibetan universe the onion's core is Mount Meru, surrounded by fifteen opaque, semi-transparent layers of oceans and mountains and oceans again until the outer skin is reached, which is the wall of iron about the universe. And all the heavens are one above the other, like the layers of an onion," says the Kabbala. ". . . And our companions who live in the South, have seen in the First Book and in the Book of Adam, that all these earths which are Below, are like the firmaments Above, that upon that, and this upon this, and between each earth, a heaven (firmament) is spread out between each other (like the fine skin of the layers on the onion)."

Footnotes

94:1 The Prose of Younger Edda, translated by G. W. Dasent, p. 16.
101:1 Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History, Vol. II, 1900, pp. 342-43.
103:1 U.S. Bur. Ethnol. Rep., 1893-94, p. 182."
107:1 Picture Writing of the American Indians: Garrick Mallery, 1894, pp. 251-252.

THE BOOK OF EARTHS

By

EDNA KENTON

New York: William Morrow & Company

[1928, No renewal]

Lost Land of the West

But there is another obscure tradition of a fifth catastrophe which seems to have antedated the sinking of Atlantis. This concerns another lost continent in the Pacific Ocean, a great catastrophe in the western waters. Old records are riddled with allusions to vanished "Lands--and peoples--of the West." Old Aztec and Mayan records, that is; the Asiatic records speak of the vanished lands and peoples "of the East." This old tradition appeared first in modern times through the assumption of Sclater, an Englishman seeking for some "lost links," that long, long ago a great southern continent lay stretched about the South Pole very much as the continental land to-day surrounds the arctic zone. He named this continent Lemuria, to fix more firmly thereby his supposition that on such a continent animals of the Lemuroid type must have been developed. It is a curious instance in scientific history that when Ernst Haeckel, most material of materialistic scientists, came upon this Lemurian hypothesis, he promptly incorporated it into his own working scheme, and in his The History of Creationand The Evolution of Manhe speaks of Lemurian creatures and Lemurian traces as if the existence of such a land had been already scientifically Evidenced. His explanation, which failed to satisfy all scientists, was that the Lemurian time-cycle was the only supposable thing that explained certain otherwise inexplicable gaps in the evolutionary theory.

This prehistoric, pre-Atlantean continent, existing--if it existed--hundreds of thousands of years ago, has also been called the Continent of Pan. In Oahspe, A New Bible in the Words of Jehovih, published by John Ballou Newbrough in 1882, there is a world-map showing the location of this lost Pan in the Pacific Ocean. Oahspemakes its sinking coincident with the Deluge. The sacred people of Pan, the Ihins--otherwise the Algonkins--had been warned of the coming flood, and were building ships in which to escape--138 Arks of the Deluge set out from this Continent of Pan. ". . . in the same day the gates of heaven and Earth were opened.

THE SUBTERRANEAN BRIDGE
(From Mundus Subterraneus; Athanasius Kircher, 1678).

FIGURE 42. Outline map showing the locality of Pan, the submerged continent.
(From Oahspe, A New Bible in the Words of Jehovih; John Ballou Newbrough, 1891, Plate 62.)

And the Earth rocked to and fro, as a ship at sea, and the rains fell in torrents, and loud thunderings came up from beneath the floor of the world. . . . And the vortex of the Earth closed in from the extreme, and lo, the Earth was broken! A mighty continent was cut loose from its fastenings, and the fires of the Earth came forth in flames and clouds with loud roarings. And the land rocked to and fro like a ship at sea. And again the vortex of the Earth closed in about on all sides, and by the pressure the land sank down beneath the water, to rise no more." The Algonkins, oddly enough, have a fascinating word with a fascinating meaning for just such shadowy fables as these. "It is only Nitatahakau," they say; which is to say, "I relate a fable. I am telling an old story invented for amusement."

FIGURE 43. The geographical position of Mu.
(From The Lost Continent of Mu; James Churchward, 1926.)This dim continent has also been called the Continent of Mu. And by "this dim continent" I do not mean to say that Lemuria and Pan and Mu, or even that conjectural "western crust" of the Earth from which the Moon hypothetically sprang, are identical except in this way; that they all hang together on the same thread of tradition, that something at some far distant time happened in the centre of the space that is now called the Pacific basin. We have already seen that a serious modern scientific theory assigns the origin of the Moon to this planet, and that a supplementary theory suggests the Pacific basin as the place of the split. We have seen too that a southern continent, antipodal to Atlantis, has been assumed by evolutionists because something like it had to be assumed. Col. James Churchward's recent book on The Lost Continent of Muis a unique and serious study of this traditional catastrophe in the western waters, carried on over a period of fifty years, during which time he collected all the collectable evidence on this theme, that once upon a time in the western ocean a great continent went down to rise no more.

His material is very interesting. Long-forgotten sacred tablets of India describe, he says, among other things, the creation of man in the land of Mu, the mother country of humanity--which land was not the land of Asia. Records of later date describe the destruction of the land, "when the earth's crust was broken up by earthquakes, and then sank into a fiery abyss. Then the waters of the Pacific rolled in over her, leaving only water where a mighty civilisation had existed." He finds the land of Mu mentioned by Plato; he finds "the Land of Mu," or "Lands of the West" in the Troano Manuscript, an ancient Mayan book, and in the Codex Cortesianus, another Mayan book; he finds it in the Lhasa record, and in hundreds of other writings in all parts of the world, including India, Egypt, Greece, Central America, and Mexico.

He says that this continent was a vast one, extending from the north of Hawaii down towards the south. A line between Easter Island--with its massive sculptured stones for which no man has ever accounted--and the Fijis formed its southern boundary. It measured over 5,000 miles from east to west, and over 3,000 miles from north to south. The continent consisted of threeareas of land, separated from each other by narrow seas or channels, and on it dwelt 64,000,000 people divided into "ten tribes" or "peoples." It was called the "Empire of the Sun," and it was the centre of the whole Earth's civilisation, of its learning, its art, and its commerce. Its great cities were seven, and its people, being skilled navigators, had sent out colonists to all parts of the Earth.

But the final one of a series of earthquakes came to Mu, and Col. Churchward quotes from old records: "'The whole continentheaved and rolled like the ocean's waves. The land trembled and shook like the leaves of a tree in a storm. Temples and palaces came crashing to the ground and monuments and statues were overturned. The cities became heaps of ruins.' As the land rose and fell, quivered and shook, the fires of the underneath burst forth, piercing the clouds in roaring flames three miles in diameter. There they were met by lightning shafts which filled the heavens. A thick black pall of smoke overshadowed the land. 'Huge cataclysmic waves rolled in over the shores and extended themselves over the plains.' Cities and all things living went down to destruction before them. 'Agonizing cries of the multitude filled the air. The people sought refuge in their temples and citadels only to be driven out by fire and smoke, and the women and the men in their shining garments and precious stones cried: "Mu, save us!"' . . . 'During the night' the land was torn asunder and rent to pieces.

PLATE XVII. A Conjectural Geography of the Translation of the Earth after the Deluge.
(From Arca No Athanasius Kircher, 1665).

With thunderous roarings the doomed land sank. Down, down, down she went, into the mouth of hell, 'a tank of fire.' As the broken land fell into that great abyss of fire, 'flames shot up around and enveloped her.' The fires claimed their victim. 'Mu and her 64,000,000 people were sacrificed.'" 1

These are the five great traditional catastrophes of the Earth. After each one of them, according to tradition, the generation of man began again. Again he began to rebuild his world; again began the quest for the knowledge--even for the crafts--that he had lost. Almost like the first men of Earth, he questioned the silent heavens, with no knowledge or wisdom of his own to aid him in his questions or their answers--nothing but vague old tales of something that had happened in a recordless past which had robbed his fathers of a heritage, and had put him where he was, ignorant and alone. What? and how? and why?

Footnotes

83:1 The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria: W. Scott-Elliot. 1925.
89:1 The Lost Continent of Mu: James Churchward, 1926, pp. 29-30.

THE BOOK OF EARTHS

By

EDNA KENTON

New York: William Morrow & Company

[1928, No renewal]

The Lost Atlantis

The fourth--or the third--catastrophe of the world-tradition is the sinking of Atlantis, the great prehistoric continent. A generation ago scientists would have smiled at the idea of taking this particular tradition seriously. But they do not smile to-day; they give the theory the Scotch verdict--"not Evidencen." Even that conservative storehouse of factual knowledge, the Encyclopia Britannica, says of this tradition, "It is impossible to decide how far this legend is due to Plato's invention, and how far it is based on facts of which no record remains." Fortunately for us, however, world-pictures are not based on Evidencen facts, or they would never have been drawn, and Plato's story of the lost Atlantis, even if eventually Evidenced "true," will always remain one of the most charming of fantasies. If you have not read it, in the Timaeusand the Critias, read it--his story of a golden world, when men were sons of gods and had not lost their heritage; of a civilisation that soared to heights of knowledge ours has never known--and sank. A few escaped this continental Deluge--Atlas escaped, says the old story, to support Heaven and Earth, in order that the Universe might not sink also.

Every one has seen somewhere Kircher's drawing of the Island of Atlantis--this was the last remnant of the continent, which tradition says sank 12,000 years ago--but it is doubtful that any one has ever seen it reproduced as it appeared in his Mundus Subterraneusof 1678 (Plate XV ).

It is always reversed, relettered, and made to conform to the right geography. The ship in the upper right-hand corner is turned bottom side up, and made to lie at anchor in the lower left-hand corner. Let the old mistake stand, if mistake it was--and mistake it was surely. Turning it upside down will put everything into right relation with modern geography. Only the ship will be wrong, like a mirage in the waters. Plate XVI is Kircher's accompanying illustration of "Ocean mountains," whose highest peaks may be island remnants of sunken continents, a little ground plan of the ocean floor.

Kircher, whose bold "guesses" on things he could not Evidence brought him less fame than blame, guessed again on the combined problems of the Deluge and lost continents, and in his Arca No 1665, presented, in a world-map, a "conjectural geography of the Earth's translation after the Flood, from the opinions of various geographers, to which the author subscribes" (Plate XVII ). This is a very odd map, by the way, and one evidently little known to modern geographers. Imagine a little German scholar, sitting in Rome under the shadow of St. Peter's during the Thirty Years' War, and guessing simply, not only at the form and extent of the then discovered but by no means explored Americas, and not only at the form and extent of the still unknown Arctic and Antarctic "continents," but also at the conformation and extent of the "ocean-mountains," and of the sunken antediluvian continents. To say he guessed wrong is to say a little less than nothing.

PLATE XV Situation of the Island of Atlantis, according to the ideas of the ancient Egyptians and the description of Plato.
(From Mundus Subterraneus; Athanasius Kircher, 1678)
This map represents more clearly than his little drawing of Atlantis, his then novel theory that the Lost Island had been situated west of Gibraltar, and that the Canaries and the Azores are to-day its only remnants. But what it really does, of course, is to send the conjectural Atlantean continent straight west into the Americas, and almost across them. Who knows? We are still guessing, and the Mayan excavations are furnishing golden material for further guesses. It may very well be that half a century from now this old "guess-map" of Kircher's will be even more interesting than it is to-day.

According to the beautiful maps of W. Scott-Elliot --Kircher's map may serve as a guide for Scott-Elliot's slightly different theory--the Atlantean continent extended from a point a few degrees east of Iceland to, approximately, the site of Rio de Janeiro in South America, and across the ocean to the African Gold Coast. It took in Texas, and the Gulf of Mexico, the southern and eastern States of America up to and including Labrador, and stretched across the Atlantic to the British Isles, embracing Scotland, Ireland, and part of northern England. Atlantis is, by this assumption, the parent land of America--a great continent surrounded by water at a time so far away as that in which the Sahara Desert was an ocean floor.