The Chinese Traditions of Paradise

 

 

Peach blossoms float down the secret streams,

From skies and earths other than those of mortals.

Li Bo (701-762)

The Phoenix in China

Father Martini, in his History of China, reports the legend of the Thunderbird in almost the same words as Marco Polo, who also learned of it in his famous voyage to China. Borchart does the same in his Hierozoikon, (“History of the Sacred Animals”). So did Pigafetta, whose text on Garuda we comment on elsewhere. In China the Phoenix is called Feng-huang, a word obviously related to its Greek name. Feng means “wind”, being the same radix that figures in the one of tai-fung (“typhon”). ^[1]

Chinese texts mentioning the Phoenix go back to the second millennium BC, being thus extremely old. Chinese scholars consider that the Feng-huang was originally a wind god, for its name is spelled with the glyphs for “wind” (feng). Some believe that the Feng-huang is androgynous, the “wind”(feng) being the male half, and the “gold” (huang) the female moiety. In fact, the Chinese Phoenix is often portrayed as a winged dragon dueling with its wingless counterpart. (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1 – The Duel of the Phoenix and the Dragon
(W. Eberhard, Did Chin. Symbol., pg. 85)

As such, the two creatures correspond to the Ouroboros. In Shang times (before about 1,000 BC) the wind was worshipped in the guise of a god called Feng-bo. Feng-bo was an early form of the Phoenix (Feng-huang) and was figured as an eagle-winged human quite like Garuda (Fig. 2). Feng-bo, the wind god was often identified with the god of thunder (Lei).

Fig. 2 – Feng-Bo, the God of Thunder and Winds
(W. Eberhard, Ibid., pg. 270)

The Chinese have known the myth of the eagle Garuda from the deepest antiquity. They identify Garuda with the thunderbolt and with the winged dragon. In India, the Eagle is for them the emblem of the Hero and of imperial power. They often portray the eagle perched on a rock in the middle of the seas as the symbol of the hero that fights a lone battle.

In our view, this quaint traditional picture is an allegory of Atlantis sunken under the waves by the Flood cataclysm, with only a few mountain tops remaining emerse. The Eagle with its outspread wings represents the fiery smoke plume of the huge volcanic peak, the “atomic mushroom” of the supervolcanic explosion. Several clues support this conclusion of ours: the enormous importance attached to the eagle symbolism in China, its connection with the myth of the Phoenix and of the eagle Garuda; it connection with the Hero and hence, with Eros, as we already explained elsewhere.

Furthermore, the Hero and Eros are often identified with the Red Races and the Kshatryas (“Warriors”), particularly in the Far East. As proof of this fact, the god of thunder and windy storms, Feng-bo (see Fig. 2), the personification of the Eagle, was often portrayed with red hair. Red-headed nations such as the Tocharian were well known in ancient China and indeed inhabited the region before they were expelled by the Chinese or absorbed into the prevalent black-haired populations.

But several red-haired mummies dating from extreme antiquity have recently been found in Mongolia, and now prove our contention beyond a reasonable doubt. Moreover, the red-headed races identified with the Phoenix and the Phoenicians (“reds”) were indeed the same as the Chamites, the Fallen Angels, the original inhabitants of Taprobane, the Pious Ethiopians of Pliny, Solinus and other ancient authorities.

In China, the Phoenix is associated with the South (the region of Indonesia). Some texts speak of the Cinnabar-Red Phoenix that inhabits the Cinnabar Cave at the South Pole. The Cinnabar Cave is located under the Cinnabar Mountain and is often identified with the Cosmic Yoni. Cinnabar (tan, in Chinese) was used in Chinese Alchemy in admixture with gold (chin) for the manufacture of the Elixir of Life, due to its bright red color and volcanic association. ^[2]

The Cinnabar Mountain is clearly the same as Mt. Kumeru, “the Southern Meru”, likewise situated in the (mythical) South Pole. The Cinnabar Cave, from where the Cinnabar Red Phoenix rises is clearly the volcanic caldera of Mt. Sumeru, the sunken, collapsed Pillar of the world. And the Red Phoenix in fact allegorizes two things: the fiery red “pillar of fire and smoke” that rose to the very skies when Atlantis was destroyed and the dreaded Chamitic races, the “Reds” that were forced out of their Primordial Cave by the cataclysm.

These “reds” later came to inflame the whole world with their superior civilization and the heat of their fiery God of Love. Cinnabar, like other such red dyes and pigments, was called “dragon blood”, certainly in connection with the Phoenix and with Indonesia, the true site of the Cinnabar Cave and the Cinnabar Mountain located in the mythical South Pole. ^[3]

In China, the Dragon (wingless) is associated with the Emperor, whereas the Phoenix (winged) is associated with the Empress, particularly when the two creatures are united as in the Ouroboros (Fig. 16). The connection of the Chinese Phoenix with gold (jin, huang) and femininity is, again, an allusion to Sumatra as both the Great Mother (Su-matra) and as the Island of Gold (Suvarna-dvipa).

The Chinese expression “the two Phoenixes pierce the blossom” is a euphemism for coition. In a strange legend of Hindu origin, Paradise is located in Uttarakuru, “beyond Mt. Meru and the realm of the Kurus”. The Kurus (or Kauravas) are the “Golden Ones” (or “Solars”) who fight the great war of the Mahabharata against the Purus (or Pauravas), the “Silvery (or Pale) Ones”. Uttarakuru is the Hindu Paradise placed in the Far South, the legendary homeland of the Aryans, who moved to India and China after its demise. ^[4]

The Mahabharata is really telling the Great War of Atlantis, waged between the Lunars and the Solars, the two races of Atlantis. These later became the Reds (or Chamites) and the Whites (or Aryo-Semites), and split in two moieties. They divided the world among themselves in two separated hemisphere (East and West), and this division prevailed until the times of Columbus, when the White moiety broke the ancient covenant and invaded and conquered the realm of the red races of Cham, the New World.

The White Island of Chinese Traditions

All these things are told in Hindu (and other) traditions under the guise of myths. But myths are, once decoded properly, the higher form of truth, the secret history of Mankind told through allegories. Chinese traditions also affirm that once there existed a White Island located beyond the Sun, Tcheou, in which dwelt the Immortals (xian). Eventually, this White Island turned black due to the sins of its inhabitants, who had become corrupt and evil. The island was then destroyed by cataclysm, and only a few of its inhabitants survived, taking refuge in the Gobi Desert, where they still live, invisible to the world.

The Chinese range this island among the Islands of the Blest (Xian Dao), which they place in the South China Sea, that is, in Indonesia. These islands are the Chinese version of Paradise, and there the souls of the dead enjoy a carefree existence together with the Immortals (Xian). This, we see that the White Island and the Islands of the Blest (Xian) precisely correspond to the ones of Hindu traditions, likewise called Svetadvipa or Sakadvipa, both of which names mean “White Island”, a name that passed to most mythologies.

The Islands of the Blest also figure centrally in Greco-Roman traditions on the netherworld. These islands are also the “Atlantic Islands”, which many experts mistakenly place in the Atlantic Ocean. However, I have demonstrated in detail that Atlantis was in fact located in the South Seas. In reality, the Isles of the Blest and the Atlantic Islands of Greco-Roman traditions are the same as the White Islands of Chinese and Hindu traditions, and are identical except for the fact that they are (correctly) located in the South China Sea. The Islands of the Blest (or Elysian Fields) correspond to the legendary Paradise that later became identified to the “Atlantic Islands” or “Islands of the Seven Cities”, precisely the seven islands where the seven adventures of Sindbad take place.

Plato (Laws 14:713; Statesman 269; 271; etc.) speaks of the reign of Kronos (Saturn) as a reality. In these passages the great philosopher tells of its destruction by the Flood, in terms that are closely reminiscent of his own account of the demise of Atlantis. Hesiod (Works 169) makes the Islands of the Blest the abode of the dead Heroes. And the Orphic traditions tell how these blessed islands are governed by Kronos, freed from bondage by Zeus. The Chinese likewise portray the Immortals feasting eternally in their castle or pavilion built upon lofty peak of their island, the White Island of the Blest, as shown in Fig. 4 below.

Fig. 4 – The Chinese Immortals (Xian) Feasting on the White Island
(Eberhard, Dict. of Chinese Symbols, pg 150)

In this figure we also see the Phoenix, ridden by Shou-xing, the god of longevity. Shou-xing lives in the South Pole, in a garden full of aromatic herbs, including the one of the Elixir. In Chinese cosmological thought, the South is associated with life and happiness, whereas the North is the region of strife and pain. The lofty palace of the Immortals in an allegory of Atlantis, whose Sanskrit name (Atala) means precisely “lofty tower”, “watch tower”, “terrace”, “altar”. And their legend is taken almost verbatim from the Indian ones on Shveta Dvipa (“White Islands”), the Hindu Paradise.

We already saw how the South Pole and its Polar Mountain are an allegory of Golden Meru (Kumeru), the site of Sunken Lanka. The garden of aromates and of the Elixir is the Garden of Eden, itself an allegory of the site of Paradise, placed in the Mountain of Perfumes in Hindu traditions. The Phoenix is the same as Garuda or as Brahma’s swan (Hamsa), and is in fact an allegory of the volcanic cataclysm which destroyed Atlantis.

After its demise, Atlantis was turned into the realm of the dead known as the invisible immortals who roam freely among us as some sort of Guardian Angels. True or not, this belief is absolutely universal. The concept of Guardian Angels survives in Judeo-Christianity. As is apparent to all who study the matter in detail, these guardians are in fact our Atlantean ancestors from the Golden Age, Justas Hesiod affirms in his remarkable The Works and the Days (125f.). They also correspond to our ka in Egyptian traditions and the similar concepts of the Mesopotamians and other ancient peoples.

Interestingly enough, the survivors of the Atlanteans cataclysm, in the Chinese legend just told, took refuge in the Gobi Desert. And, as we already commented, this tradition seems to correspond to actual fact, for the red-headed Tocharians whose mummies were recently found in the region of the Gobi and the Takla Makan deserts are clearly of Aryan descent. They were the inhabitants of Uttarakuru, the Hindu Paradise that we discussed above, and which was the legendary homeland of the Aryans.

So, it is at least a remarkable coincidence to see that the Chinese traditions and those of the Hindus concur precisely with the Greek and the Romans ones on the Islands of the Blest. Moreover, what is apparently sheer myth unsupported by geological and archaeological fact in the West finds a substantial confirmation in the Far Orient, even despite the fact that research there has barely been undertaken down to the present date.

The Chinese god of longevity, Show-xing is definitely a stellar god. As shown in Fig. 5 below, Shou-xing rides a star-bedecked deer. This deer is precisely the same as the Venado (“deer”) that the Amerindian shamans see in their “trips” to Paradise or the likewise surreal deer of the Arthurian traditions. Show-xing is also the regent of the South Pole, and is known as Nan-ji Shou-xing = “the Immortal of the South Pole”. Shou-xing is a very tall man with a long beard and an absolutely bald head. This badness recalls the one of Hu Gadarn, the Celtic Hero of the Flood known as “his Eminent Baldness”.

Fig. 5 – Shou-xing, the Chinese God of Longevity
(Eberhard, ibid., pg 167

This baldness – almost invariably represented in Chinese and Japanese art and also shown in Fig. 4 and 5 – is not an accident. His exaggeratedly elongated skull is intended to represent the phallus, another usual emblem of stability and long life in the Orient. Now, the phallus (linga) is indeed an allegory of Mt. Atlas as the Pillar of the World. It represents the Shivalinga, the phallus of Shiva as the Axis of the World.

Topped by the Pole Star, the Shivalinga, alias Mt. Atlas, is the Polar Axis. around which all things whirl, even when it is as invisible as Atlantis presently is. As such, the Shivalinga is Agastya-Canopus, the Pole Star that represented Atlantis, as we discuss in detail elsewhere. And Canopus was in fact the Pole Star some 12,000 years ago, as we have demonstrated in detail elsewhere. And this is precisely the epoch when Atlantis flourished, falling later alongside its mighty star, just as Lucifer was also seen falling down from heaven, perhaps along with his twin brother, Jesus Christ, whose star has risen since.

We have been so thoroughly brainwashed against accepting facts such as the reality of Atlantis that it takes likewise thorough, revolutionary revisions of our values before we become able to see the obvious truth. Such is in fact the reason why so many people have to resort to hallucinogenic drugs in their quest of the ulterior reality disclosed by Plato and other such mystics. Further below in this chapter, we discuss in some detail the initiatic disclosures of Plato in connection with drug cults and their close connection with Atlantis and America.

The Holy Mountain of Paradise

In ancient China mountains were the object of special veneration, as they still are, even today, both there and in Japan. Mountains played, in Chinese Cosmology, the same role that the Emperor did in society: they ensured cosmic order and harmony. The Five Mountains represent the Five Cardinal Directions: the usual four plus the all-important Center forming a quincunx. Mountains have served as altars for sacrifices from time immemorial. The cult of the Five Mountains (Wu Yue) has been practiced in China and persists down to the present times, though reprimanded by the Communist rulers as sheer superstition.

Fig. 6 – Chinese Mandala Representing the Five Mountains
(Wisdom and Compassion, pg, 382)

These five mountains (Wu Yue) were adapted from the Hindu-Tibetan cult of Mt. Meru and its four subsidiary mountains, which is also practiced in China. Mt. Meru and its four subsidiary mountains placed at the Four Cardinal Points in fact corresponds to the place of the pristine Paradise: the four dvipas and the central one destroyed by the Flood. These are endlessly represented in the mandalas of the type called Kalachakra or Pure Land (Shveta Bhumi). In Fig. 6 above we show a beautiful Chinese representation of the Five Mountains. It is made of gold and dates from the 18^th century AD.

This mandala is a model of the Buddhist Cosmos, itself identical to the Hindu one. At the center we have Mt. Meru representing the Center of the World. Mt Meru is crowned by a stupa (Buddhist temple) topped by a tower, in turn topped by the syllable OM represented as some sort of a trident. At the four sides of Mt. Meru – itself located at the Center – we have the four subsidiary Paradises represented by groups of three pavilions each.

As is clear, the Chinese traditions on Paradise are not just similar to the Hindu ones. They are precisely the same, and are due to Buddhist missionaries of prehistoric times, some of which date from soon after the demise of Atlantis. The same thing also occurred in the Americas and in Oceania. These missionaries are in fact the “gods” and ‘angles mentioned in the local mythologies as semi-divine heroes such as Quetzalcoatl, Viracocha, Bochica, Kukulkán, Sumé, Tamandaré and so on.

The Four Subsidiary Paradises of Hindu-Buddhist traditions are Purva Videha to the east; Jambudvipa to the south; Apara Godanya to the west; and Uttarakuru to the north. All these paradises are represented by islands entirely surrounded by water, which are indicated by the waves engraved on the surface of the beautiful mandala. ^[5]

The Peaches of Immortality

In China these paradisial mountains were physically identified with Tai-shan in the East, Heng-shan in the South, Song-chan in the Center, Hua-shan in the West and Heng-shan in the North. In antiquity, Paradise was placed in the mysterious Kunlun Shan. The mighty Kunlun Shan range is the divide between Tibet in the south and the Takla Makan Desert (Xingiang) in the north. It was the former abode of the mysterious Tocharians, who seem to have been the true ancestors of the Aryans, as we argue elsewhere in detail.

In the fabled Kunlun Mountains (Shan) were palaces, hanging gardens, springs, lakes just like the ones of Lanka and of other Hindu Paradises. From these lakes and springs flowed the water of life, the Elixir, just as in Jambudvipa. Whoever ascended to these heights and drunk from these sources obtained immortality. From this Paradise the “ten thousand things” originated. There, yin and yang alternate with each other forever.

The Great Mother of the West (Xi-Wang-Mu) resides in this Holy Mountain and is the only deity visible to visitors. The palace of Xi-Wang-Mu, the Great Mother of the West, is the place where the Immortals periodically gather in order to obtain their quota of the Elixir. Mu is some sort of fairy goddess. There are many tales and legends concerning her. Sometimes she is an ogress, and often assumes the guise of a tiger. She is also the goddess of the dead, and she often spreads the plague in order to reduce human populations.

The goddess is also said to live inside a cave, like a witch, and to roar like a tiger. But it is from her that one obtains the herb of immortality. In other traditions, Xi-Wang-Mu lives in a splendid jade palace, high up in the mountains, inside a beautiful garden. In this dazzling palace, the Immortals gather for their feasts (see Fig. 4) coming from their individual residences. In Fig. 7 we show Xi-Wang-Mu in her palace of jade, located high above the clouds. We also show her riding the Phoenix, as she frequently does.

Fig. 7 – The Great Mother Goddess Xi-Wang-Mu
(Eberhard, ibid.. pg. 319)

In her hands, the goddess often bears the peaches of immortality that she offers her guests. One day, during a party, the monkey Sun-Wu-Kong broke into her garden and stole all the peaches. In another legend, a fisherman sees peach petals floating down a stream. He follows them to the source, inside a cave, where he finds another world whose people lead a quiet, immortal existence. In China the expressions “peach-blossom cave” or “Peach-blossom spring” are an euphemism for “vagina”.

The monkey that breaks into the Garden of the Great Mother and eats the peaches of Immortality evoke the monkey Hanumant breaking into the gardens of paradisial Lanka which he later destroys. In fact, Lanka, the Lioness, closely evokes queen Xi-Wang-Mu, the Tigress. Both are in fact the Queen of the Dead whom the Greeks identified with the terrible Persephone. The Monkey Siu also evokes Hercules breaking into the Garden of the Hesperides, killing the dragon, and stealing the Golden Apples kept by the daughters of Atlas.

The Mother of the Golden Tortoise

Xi Wang Mu, the “Queen Mother of the West”, was also called “Mother of the Golden Tortoise”. This title identifies her with Atlantis, represented by the Golden Turtle just about everywhere in the world. In India, this turtle is Kurma, the second avatar of Vishnu or, alternatively, Kashyapa, the great ancestor of both gods and humans. In the dual figure of Xi Wang Mu we discern the one of Durga-Kali, the Great Mother of Hindu traditions. In her charming avatar, Durga is a charming girl (Gauri) who grants gifts to all. In her evil shape, she is the spreader of plague and war, just like Xi Wang Mu.

The connection of the Turtle with “gold” is again a confirmation of this connection with Atlantis. In Mongolian mythology, the Golden turtle supports the World Mountain which is the Center of the Universe. This myth is clearly a variant of the Hindu one of Kurma supporting Mt. Mandara, the Cosmic Mountain, on his back during the churning of the Ocean of Milk. In indigenous American mythology – for instance the one of the Lakota (Sioux) – the world was equated with a turtle (Turtle Island). In Huron cosmology, a tortoise supports the world.

The same belief is held by the Munda of South India, who add that a turtle fetched the earth when it was submerged under the waters of the primordial ocean. This is in fact the same myth as the one of Varaha the Boar, with the cosmophorous animal changed into a turtle. The Iroquois hold that, once, the Great Mother of all men fell into the sea from heaven. There was no earth then, and a turtle rescued the Great Mother in her back.

The musk rat fetched some silt in the bottom of the sea, and little by little formed the first land, which gradually became the whole earth. Kriekberg affirms that this Iroquois myth is of Algonkin origin. But it is clearly identical to the Hindu one just mentioned. In fact, the Great Mother is a personification of Atlantis, the true site of the Terrestrial Paradise of all traditions. And the waters of the Primeval Ocean are in fact those of the Flood inundating the whole world, more or less as told in the opening words of the Book of Genesis.

This myth also tells that the Great Turtle reappeared twice again in order to insure the development of mankind. In this way, the Cosmophorous Hero is gradually transformed into the Creator Hero, the mythical ancestor of humans. In the first of these appearances, the Turtle takes the shape of a boy.

The Cosmic Turtle in Amerindian Traditions

The Amerindian earth-monster – usually a turtle or alligator or shark or whale, much as in India – is called Cipactli in the Aztec traditions. In the traditions of the Marajoan Indians of the Amazon River mouth which we comment further below, the Turtle is specifically identified with the site of Paradise. In fact, the turtle, an amphibious animal, symbolizes the idea that Indian is periodically sunken under the seas, and later rises again, when the Indian resumes, lowering sea levels.

The Iroquois – who also have precisely this kind of myth – actually depict the mythical turtle as a close replica of Atlantis: a round shell divided into four quarters by the four legs of the animal. Of course, this is far more than a sheer coincidence. These Indians, like most others, well know the secret of Atlantis. Except that they cannot tell anyone, being sworn to secrecy. And so, they quietly await for the right time, when all these secrets will be unveiled.

In a related symbolism – which they call The Circle of Life – the Iroquois represent what in other traditions is called the Whirling Mountain. “The design represents”, they say, “all colors of humankind, the colors of Mother Earth, the sun and other circular celestial bodies and the four directions of life”. This design in fact literally corresponds to Mt. Meru, the Holy Mountain of Hindu traditions, as we argue in detail in our Atlantis site.

The connection cannot be denied, not only because the inherent symbolism is the same, but also because the four colors used – white, yellow, red and black – are exactly those of the Hindu traditions. “Coincidentally” enough, the Iroquois also associate this sacred design with the Elders, which is just a way of saying “Ancestors” or “Atlanteans”, the people of old. These four colors correspond, in Hindu traditions, both to the Four Directions of Space and to the four colors (varnas) of humans: whites, yellows, blacks and reds.

Mt. Meru, the Holy Mountain of the Hindus, is often decorated with these four colors or others equivalent to them. As is clear, these coincidences are too literal to be attributable to chance. And they could not have been taught by the missionaries to these Indians, as they ignore this symbolism in both shape and meaning. So, the only alternative – after we discard an impossible “sheer coincidence” – is what anthropologist call “diffusion”, the direct transmission.

When, where and how, we again ask, did this type of myth and symbolism pass into the Americas, since this tradition is so well attested since pre-Columbian times? The Iroquois design they call Spirit Quest also deserves commenting, as it is also connected with the theme at hand. “This unique design portrays”, they say, “petroglyphs found along the mighty Columbia River dating back over 10,000 years”.

This date takes us back to the times of Atlantis, and thoroughly precludes an European influence. It shows “a young brave’s quest in seeking his destiny through a vision into the Spirit World of their Creator”. This shamanic quest is normally undertaken with the help of drugs such as peyote and datura in rituals which are close parallels of the Old World one of Holy Communion.

But here, the meaning is quite clear to those who are not too blinded by brainwashing into being unable to see the obvious truth, even when i is presented to them. The young brave is crowned with the sun, more or less like the Woman of Revelation. This “sun” is the light of the netherworld. Its thirteen rays represent the completion of the [zodiacal] eras, the allotted time given us in the present era, whose end is fast approaching.

What is most amazing, though, are the two “Atlantises” so clearly shown in this remarkable design. And these two Atlantises presented as a choice to the brave are the ones offered us all: you either stick with the purely “Celestial Paradise” promised us all by the Pope, or you seek for the real one of which all traditions speak. The choice is yours to make, dear reader, just as it is the brave’s in this design.

The Iroquois Golden Turtle is also shown in the design called The People of the Longhouse. Here the Turtle is shown surrounded by a circle of animals. These animals represent the zodiacal eras, which are reduced to eight here, plus the Turtle, at the center. As such, these animals also represent the Nine Directions of Space, just as they do in Hindu traditions: the usual four, the four intermediate ones, plus the all-important Center. What is interesting here is the fact that the Turtle supports, in his back, the World Mountain.

This symbolism exactly corresponds to the one of Kurma, the Turtle, and requires no further comments. Here, as in the Old World, the Turtle represents Hell (Atlantis) and the eagle, on top the Holy Mountain represents the Aryans races in the usual symbolism. Pease note the eagle perched atop the Cosmic Tree, and about to take off. This symbolism is also usual in the Old World. “King of all birds”, says Pindar, “the eagle perches atop the scepter of Zeus, whence it carries his commands to mortals”.

The eagle is hence the intermediary between gods and humans. The shaman of the Pavitso Indians of North America uses a stick from whose tip hangs an eagle’s feather in order to cure diseases. This he places on the head of the sick, and it carries, like an eagle, the possessing disease spirit back to the celestial regions where it belongs. This winged stick is also used by the shaman in his trances as some sort of a winged chariot to carry him to the celestial regions beyond in his magic flights induced by hallucinogenic drugs.

Cipactli and the Entrance to the Netherworld

The symbolism of Cipactli is also closely related to the one of Hell both in the Old and in the New Worlds. In Australia, the boys being initiated are ritually “devoured” by the Rainbow Serpent, who later vomits them alive and restored. This procedure is said to impart immortality to the initiatiants, more or less as assured by Baptism. An ancient Greek vase which we comment in detail elsewhere shows Jason being vomited by a bearded dragon. The same symbolism is also found in Indonesia, among the Dayaks, as we comment in some detail further below in the present chapter.

This symbolism is highly interesting. In the book of J. E. S. Thompson referenced further below (pg. 264 and 273) are shown some images of the Mayan earth monster – a giant crocodile or serpent called Itzam Na (itzam = “dragon, lizard, crocodile”). The symbolism closely correspond to the Greek one down to the detail of making the dragon bearded. Now, this is a strange notion, given the fact that the Mayas, like most Indians, were beardless. In three of these remarkable figures, the dragon is shown vomiting a god or hero which seems very much alive after his difficult ordeal.

In the Finnish Kalevala, Ilmarinen, the Celestial Smith, is devoured by a seamonster and is later vomited, probably after being rendered immortal. This symbolism is clearly the same as the one of the New World. This type of myth also passed into Judeo-Christianity (though somewhat disfigured) as the myth of Jonah and the Whale. An Irish tradition, also adopted by Christianity, tells how St. Brendan and his mates, on their way to the Isles of the Blest (i. e., Atlantis as the netherworld) met a giant whale, which they mistook for an island.

They landed their ship on its back, celebrated the Mass on it, and then prepared to sleep, lighting a fire there. The whale – whose name is Jasconius – then dove, and they barely escaped on their ship, on which they later made for the Isles of the Blest. This legend is taken from Far Eastern ones such as the similar account attributed to Sindbad, the Sailor in the Thousand and One Nights.

As is so often the case, the ultimate source of this strange symbolism is India. Better yet, it is Atlantis or, rather, Indonesia, the “insular India” from which the Hindus originally came. When the region sunk away under the seas – much as the ordinary turtles do – the survivors of the cataclysm moved to the safer, continental regions such as India. But they also moved to the rest of the world, to the distant Americas on the east sided, and to India, Central Asia, the Near East and Europe on the west side.

In traditional Hindu iconography (cf. for instance, W. J. Wilkins, Hindu Mythology, London, 1882; pg. 142 and 149), Vishnu is shown emerging from either the Turtle’s mouth (as Kurma) or from the one of the Fish (as Matsya), in what is clearly the same symbolism. Such is clearly the source of the Amerindian symbolism, which undeniably passed to the Americas in pre-Columbian times.

In the Ramayana, it is told how Hanumant, the heroic ape, is swallowed by a seamonster (the devilish Sainhikeya), but is later able to free himself, much as did Pinocchio in the famous tale. The same story is also obscurely told in the Rig Veda (1:32:12), where Indra is devoured by Vritra, the evil dragon, and manages to escape unscathed, splitting the monster asunder, and liberating the waters withheld by the monster. The usual translations are so poor as to be unrecognizable. But its real meaning seems to be the one just given.

The motif of the all-swallowing monster’s maw is taken directly from the Hindu one of the kalamukha (“black mouth”) or kritimukha (“glory hole”). The entrance to Hell is likewise represented by the mouth of a monster – usually a lion or a dog – in the Egyptian symbolism of the Double-Lion (Acker or Ruty). It also passed into Judeo-Christianism, where it is often thus represented in Medieval iconography.

But the best instances by far are the ones of the Amerinds and, above all, the ones of the Aztecs. An excellent Internet article on the subject has an interesting figure of the Earth Monster (Cipactly) as the entrance to hell. This symbolism has only recently been recognized, as the author affirms. This mouth, often likened to a quatrefoil, was in fact the passage to the otherworld. Even more exactly, it represents the Holy Mountain as the Axis of the World, the link between the earth with heaven above, and hell below.

It should be noted that this symbolism is also widespread in the Old World. For instance, the Mesopotamian ziggurats were called by names such as Etmenanki (“the house linking to heaven and hell”). The Egyptian pyramids also portray the same symbolism, with subterranean galleries leading directly to hell itself, while their lofty tops served as the very ladder to heaven. The kivas of the Hopi Indians likewise serve the same purpose, with their sipapus leading to hell below, just as did their Egyptian counterparts, for instance in the Great Pyramid itself (the so-called “subterranean chamber” with its unfinished pit). The article just linked is worth quoting and commenting on:

A crucially important part of both Olmec and Mayan cosmological traditions in Mesoamerica was the notion of a cosmic opening shaped like a quatrefoil, or four petaled flower, linking this world to the Otherworld. Through this portal shamans, divine ancestors, the maize spirit, and other gods could pass at appropriate times from one plane of the cosmos to another. This doorway between worlds was depicted metaphorically as the maw of a reptilian zoomorph guarded by a pair of reptilian jaws. A pectoral ornament carved in rare translucent green jasper, and here identified as an image of the cosmic portal, has surfaced in a private collection known as the Ahaw collection…

The Ahaw Pectoral’s image (Figure 1) is strikingly similar to the incised design on a matched pair of green jade earplugs found in a tomb at the same Olmec site of La Venta as illustrated in Figure 5 (Covarrubias 1967:94). An additional iconic motif found on the earplugs but not on the pectoral, a dotted circlet with two curved lines sprouting from one end, surely represents sprouting maize, an image that is consistent with the interpretation given here for the iconography of the Ahaw pectoral.). Presumably, by wearing an icon of the zoomorphic maw or cosmic portal on his upper body, a Maya ruler could demonstrate his control over access to the Otherworld and powerful entities associated with it.

Rulers at Copan apparently wore such an icon either on the chest or in front of the mouth. For example Copan Stela 1 shows a Maya ruler wearing a pectoral that is also part of the body of the serpent bar symbol of rulership held in the ruler’s arms. Its bottom surface has an “inverted ahaw” or la glyph, glyph, that in form and placement recalls the removable bottom central piece of the Ahaw Pectoral (Figure 6). Copan Stela C also shows a Maya ruler wearing a pectoral (Figure 7). A Classic Maya ruler with his head emerging from the maw, whether held in the hand in front of the face or worn as a pectoral is not so very different from modern Mayan conceptions of the neckline or collar area of the female garment as a symbolic portal (see Morris 1988:108). Such notions are not necessarily consciously manifested today, but they can be retrieved from iconographic evidence.

What this interesting pectoral shows, in an unequivocal way is that, besides being masterful gemstone cutters, the Mayas also shared with the Aztecs and other cultures of both the New and the Old World the symbolism of the netherworld as being enterable through a monster’s mouth. Several Aztec iconographies show a person – perhaps the king – being vomited by a monstrous serpent or dragon which is identified with Quetzalcoatl, often so figured. This motif is the exact counterpart of the Jason one just linked.

The quatrefoil shape is of tremendous importance, as we argue next. The monster’s mouth allowed, just as the author affirms, an easy access to the otherworld to shamans, kings, heroes, divine ancestors, and gods and spirits. Ordinary people could also attempt to pass at their own risk, if daring enough. The connection of the otherworld with maize is also extremely interesting. What it shows is that the Mayas believed that maize originated in the netherworld, whence it passed to this world through the monster’s mouth.

The other Amerindian cultures also had similar beliefs which they expressed in a myriad mythical ways. In fact, they also held the same traditions concerning the other domesticated plants and animals having originated in the netherworld. It is highly unlikely that they were all lying or that they had forgotten how they themselves had achieved these fantastic developments themselves, and then suddenly had forgotten all about it. But, if the otherworld is indeed a reality, rather than a ghostly chimaera, what else but Atlantis-Eden?

But what the pectoral symbolism also shows, beyond reasonable doubt, is the fact that the ruler or king had also came from the netherworld, much as did Jason and other such heroes shown resurrecting from inside the monster’s maw, just as is the case here. In fact, what this symbolism shows is the victory over death effected by these heroes. Atlantis died in the great cataclysm that brought it under, and transformed it into the netherworld, into the very site of hell, of Paradise Lost, into the Land of the Dead.

Such is the reason why true heroes – among them Jesus Christ himself – are said to have descended into the netherworld, where they vanquished Lord Death himself. This story is told of the Twins in the Mayan Popol Vuh. It is told of Quetzalcoatl by the Aztecs of Mexico. And, above all it is told of Shiva as Yamantaka, the “defeater of death” (Yama), the great Hindu god who is the true archetype of all such heroes.

Curiously enough, the author of the document under discussion here – Prof. Brian Stross of the University of Texas – argues that the glyph represented by the maw of the Mayan earth monster should be read as “way”, a word meaning “hole, portal, void, maw, mouth”, perhaps in connection with the world axis through which the shamans and the spirits pass from one realm to the other.

And, as we pointed out to him, it is perhaps more than a coincidence that in Dravida – the pristine tongue of the region of Atlantis – the word vay- (read: “way”) means: “womb, belly, stomach, paunch, entrail, interior, center” and that vây (read: “waay”) means “mouth, maw, beak, lips, opening, passage, crack, hole, cave gateway, doorway, entrance”. The idea of “womb” also closely suggests a connection with the Great Mother (Atlantis) as the Hiranya Garbha (“Golden Womb”) where all things originated, according to Hindu mythology.

The agreement could be not better, closely suggesting a pristine connection between the two places, Atlantis or not. But if Indonesia is in fact the place whence the Amerindians originally came – and the native types of both places look remarkably alike – soon after the end of the Pleistocene, why not accept the hypothesis of Atlantis and let all the pieces of the puzzle suddenly fall into place? The eminent Professor goes on to assert:

The Pectoral as a Portal to the Otherworld: Like the cosmos of the classical shaman, the world of the Classic Maya was composed of three domains. One below the other, they were: “the starry arch of Heaven, the stony Middleworld of earth made to flower and bear fruit by the blood of kings, and the dark waters of the Underworld below” (Schele and Freidel 1990:66) … The three domains were linked through a central axis known to the Maya as Wakah Chan (‘six snake’ and/or ‘raised sky’) and symbolized by a World Tree, sometimes a “Crocodile Tree”, with roots in the Underworld and branches high in the Skyworld (Figure 8)…

An important aspect of Classic Maya cosmology is that this world in which we live is connected to the Otherworld (including the underworld) by means of a portal conceived as the open maw of a great reptilian monster; a zoomorph that has, like all else of importance, its counterpart in the sky. The Preclassic Mesoamerican Olmecs also symbolized this portal as the open maw of a reptilian monster flanked in the corners by maize (Figure 9a), and frequently conflated the reptilian mouth image with that of a cave… The Ahaw Pectoral has reptile heads much like the Olmec crocodile monster, and this monster can be seen full figure on a stone sarcophagus from the Olmec heartland site of La Venta (Figure 11)…

In contemporary Mayan cosmology, the earth contains many examples of portals between cosmic levels. Among these representatives of “the portal” are sacred cave entrances and springs as well as mountain tops, and these are often marked by crosses (Vogt 1969:387-90). In Classic times such portals interfacing what we could call the natural and supernatural orders, symbolized by quatrefoils – in essence short-armed crosses – were opened by means of blood sacrifice (Schele and Freidel 1990:68). For today’s Mayans, in addition to the portal on earth there is also a portal in the sky, said to open at critical times during the cyclic passage of time (e.g. noon and midnight), The Yucatec Maya, for example, refer to the sky portal as u hol gloria ‘heaven’s cavity’.

We quoted this interesting article in detail because it is so important for the issues under discussion here. We note that the Mayan conception of the cosmos – composed of three realms, Heaven, Earth, Netherworld – is precisely identical to the Hindu one. Moreover, these three realms are interconnected by the magical “door” represented by the World Axis, which is also likened to a giant serpent or some such monster. Interestingly enough, the Mayan netherworld is placed under the waters of the sea, just as it is in India. This world conception is also found among several other Amerindian nations, including the ones of South America (Desana, etc.). Similarly, it is also widespread in the Old World, as we already argued above.^[6]

To finish this extremely interesting subject, we next mention two important features of Prof. Stross’ article. The first one is illustrated in his Figure 5 (La Venta Altar 4). This allegedly shows the ruler or a god issuing from within a cave figured as the giant mouth of the earth monster (way), a jaguar (“lion”), instead of a serpent. A close inspection of the figure reveals that the personage is not really issuing from the cave, but is instead supporting its top – here figured as a replica of the sky – upon his head.

This type of symbolism is common in Mayan and Aztec art, as illustrated, for instance, in J. E. S. Thompson, Historia y Religión de los Mayas, Mexico, 1975, pg. 339). The Atlas figure corresponds to the Bacabs, who are indeed said to support the sky in Mayan cosmology. This figure closely evokes the passage in Hesiod concerning Atlas, the fallen king of Atlantis supporting the celestial sphere on his head at the very gate of Hades (Theog. 714). If Atlas fails, the skies fall down and the world is destroyed. This is of course a metaphor for the eruption of volcanic Mt. Atlas, when it exploded and collapsed into a giant caldera.

The second feature we want to comment is the one of his Figure 9, which shows the frontal and profile views of the Middle Classic Olmec earth-monster’s maw and cosmic portal in the form of a quatrefoil. An inspection of this interesting figure shows that the quatrefoil is a clever combination of a cross and a stepped pyramid seen from above. This pyramid corresponds to Mt. Meru in Hindu mythology.

At its four corners we have the four subsidiary peaks, here replaced by the four Cosmic Trees, as is so often the case in Mayan cosmology (see his Figure 8). Note also, in this figure, that the Central Tree has a quetzal bird perched on its top, much as the eagle of the Iroquois symbolism discussed further above. The symbolism is evidently the same, with the eagle or the quetzal representing the Dravidian races of Atlantis, and the serpent, its dual, the Nagas or Aryo-Semites, the serpent-people of Hindu traditions, or perhaps vice-versa.

The quatrefoil pattern perhaps originated the legend concerning the four-leafed cloves bringing luck to its finders: the dubious luck of finding the way that leads either to heaven or to hell, according to the finder’s luck. But the important image here is the one of the stepped pyramid. Pyramids are, everywhere, the ladder that leads to heaven or, conversely, the one which leads down to hell, as we already argued above.

In Dante’s Divine Comedy, these ladders – leading both to heaven above and to hell below were converted into spiral stairs, which closely recall the ones of the Great Mosque of Samarra (Iraq). This mosque’s design was copied from the one of the ziggurats which prevailed there before Muslimism became the official religion of the country. In fact, the symbolism of ziggurats, mosques, stepped pyramids, like the ones of trees and mountains is a representation of the World Axis interlinking the three realms of space.

The upright shapes lead to heaven above, and the inverted counterparts lead down, into hell. Please note the whisps of smoke issuing from the monster’s mouth. This is an unequivocal indication that this mouth is in fact a volcanic crater, much as we argued above. In other words, the connection with hell below is effected by descending into the mouth of the cave, much as the heroes of all times have done, since the dawn of time.

The ascent to heaven is accordingly done by climbing up the whisps of smoke that in fact ascends all the way to the stratosphere, at least in major volcanisms. In this case we have the generation of a volcanic “mushroom” very much alike the one of nuclear bombs, except that far larger. This “mushroom” is also portrayed as a palm tree, a lotus flower, a rose, a papyrus stem and, in Mexico, by a corn plant. This ascent is of course symbolic, much as was the one of Jack in his beanstalk.

But the Land of Giants is of course Atlantis, here changed into a fairy tale. This trip also evokes the ascent of the Siberian shamans and others in their ladders, and their initiatic “trips” in their symbolic horses or, more usually, through the magic of hallucinogens smoked from the sacred pipe or some such device. Real or imaginary, these “trips” to Paradise are always intended to be visits to Atlantis, the true site of Paradise and the source of all drugs, medicinal or hallucinogenic. Real heroes undertake the real trip – or at least try – whereas phony heroes and dreamers perform the virtual, easy ones offered by the usual religions.

In connection with the World Tree, it is worthwhile to comment the author’s Figure 12, which shows the well-known design on the lid of Pacal’s sarcophagus from Palenque, now in Mexico’s Museum. This is important, as they are so many wild speculations – Erich von Dänniken’s in particular – that Pacal in fact riding a spaceship or an UFO, given his unusual position and the obscure Mayan symbolism used here.

Professor Stross makes the important point – confirmed by several other illustrations he shows – that Pacal is not really inside such a ship, but instead emerging from the monster’s jaw, the way. And that interpretation is quite clear on hindsight, as most things are. The reader who takes the trouble to read his article in detail will no doubt agree with us that his analysis is definitive.

But we also take advantage of the opportunity to add our own comments on the important issue, so crucial for our understanding of Mayan mentality. The World Tree has the shape of a cross, the usual marker of the site of Paradise. This tree, the Mayas placed in Paradise (Tlalocán) at the center of the world, just as do all peoples everywhere. Under its shade the blest dead spent a quiet, happy life, in abundance and bliss. And it served as the link between the three realms of space, Heaven, Earth and Hell.

This tree is generally the ceiba (or yaxché = Ceiba pentandra). On top the sacred tree is shown the quetzal, already commented. The ceiba is of the same genus as the kapok, the famous tree from Java and other Indonesian islands. The main attribute of the ceiba is its giant size, which reaches 60 meters in height and 10 meters in diameter, being a real giant of the Amazonian rain forest.

But the real reason for the choice of the ceiba as the World Tree by the Mayas apparently lies in the fact that the tree – typical of rain forests – is common to both the Far East and the Americas. In fact, the Indonesian tree is the Bombax ceiba or kapok, and its American counterpart is the closely related Ceiba pentandra, also called Bombax pentandra or silk cotton tree.

This commonality would provide a nice connection between the original homeland and the new one. Not improbably, the plant was originally brought from the East Indies to the Americas, as so many others. Here it thrived, being spread in the forests and elsewhere by the Indians themselves. Of course, this is just a tentative proposal, one that requires further in situ research by the specialists. No matter what, the close connection of the two species provides a direct connection between it’s the two sites. And here I leave this matter rest, passing to the similar subject of Dayak cosmogony.

Dayak Cosmogony

Le monde extérieur s’offre a lui [le sauvage] avec un relief puissant, une netteté de contours, une richesse de couleurs admirable.

Baudelaire, Les Paradis Artificiels

 

The Dayaks of Borneo are an Indonesian aboriginal people of Malay affinities. As Indonesians, they live in the very site of Paradise, so that their cosmogonic myths are of a great interest. The mythology of the Ngadju Dayaks of south Borneo has been studied in detail by Hans Schärer (Die Gottesidee der Ngadju Dajak in Süd-Borneo, Hague, 1946). The author lived many years together with the Dayaks, and got to know their mythology in great detail.

It is unfortunate that Schärer died early, and his intimate knowledge of the Dayaks will be greatly missed, though much of it is until unpublished. Mircea Eliade comments Schärer’s book in detail in his charming booklet entitled The Quest (Chicago, 1969). As is generally the case, Eliade discusses the Dayak religious symbolism from the viewpoint of Comparative Mythology and Religion, a science he euphemistically names “History of Religions”.

After all, as an academic scholar, Eliade did not want to place his career in jeopardy by pointing out the obvious fact that Judeo-Christian religion is in fact no different from the mythologies of the other nations deemed pagan or primitive by scholars and theologians alike. In fact, the only difference is that the Jews and Christians both fanatically affirm that the myths told in the Bible and the Gospels are actual history and should be taken as verbatim truth, whereas all other accounts of the same events are sheer superstitions attributable to devilish temptations.

The cosmogony of the Dayaks tells, like the ones of all peoples, of the moment of Creation itself, when the world was still young and fresh. We note the flagrant contrast of these primitive cosmogonies with the one of the Judeo-Christians as professed by the so-called Creationists. Most Christians normally hold that Creation, as told in Genesis (ch. 1 and 2), started ex nihilo, some 6,000 years ago or so. Some Christians even give the date to the day and hour, and even affirm that God created the world with fossils and geologic sequences in order to fool the more arrogant scientists.

The Dayaks and other primitives affirm, instead, that Creation in fact refers to the start of the present era, the last one of a sequential series of such formations and dissolutions of the world. In other words, they affirm that the new world is created from the residues of the former eras, the “seeds” from which all things in fact derives, more or less as told in myths such as the ones of the Flood, which we again find among essentially all primitives of the world.

No scientist today will deny the reality of such global, geologically recent cataclysms, despite the fact that Darwinism – which holds precisely the contrary, with its infamous “Principle of Uniformity” – is yet far from dead, at least among the academics and scholars, who fear to denounce its inaneness, and keep on teaching it to their students as an expression of truth.

Anyone who stops to ponder the matter over, will readily realize that it is, once more, the “stupid natives” who are right, and that it is the superior religions such as Judeo-Christianity and the scientific doctrines that support this kind of buncombe that are utterly wrong and unconforming to actual facts. In other words, the primitives preserved the pristine essence of their cosmogonic myths unchanged, whereas we moderns attempted to reinterpret and correct these myths according to “reality” and ended up bungling the whole thing altogether.

It is sufficient to read a book like Schärer’s to realize how the mythology of primitive peoples such as the Dayak of Borneo forms a coherent whole which serves to orient their whole life, both at the individual level and the communal one. Based on their cosmogonic myth, the Dayaks of Borneo are able to understand the complex structures of Reality in a way which is far more pleasing and far more reliable than our own scientific studies of the physical sciences wholly destitute of a religious and even a philosophical fundament.

Dayak Philosophy

According to Dayak philosophy – and in fact, according to primitive philosophy in general – whatever happened in the beginning of time will happen again and again, in an eternal repetition of the archetypical events. The sequence of these primordial events dictate the destiny of the world as a whole and, at a microcosmic level, the one of each and every individual in the entire world. “In the beginning”, so their cosmogony goes, “the entire cosmos lay inside the mouth of the Cosmic Serpent, coiled within the waters of the primeval sea”.

Everything was still in a chaotic, undivided state. In time, two mountains arose out of this chaos and started to clash. From their repeated collisions were born all things: the sun, the moon, the stars, the clouds, the mountains, etc.. The two mountains are the seats of the two supreme deities, Mahatala and his wife, Putir, who are also identified to these mountains themselves. The true form of these deities is only revealed at the end of the process of Creation, when they assume a human shape.

Having assumed this human form, Putir and Mahatala finish the cosmogonic process and create both the upper world and the netherworld. But a central portion, the middle world which is to be the habitation of mankind, is still missing, and so are humans and the other creatures which inhabit it. This third phase of the creative process is carried on by Putir and Mahatala after they assume the form of two birds, and two hornbills (Buceros bicornis). ^[7]

Mahatala – whose name means “great earth (or surface)” in Sanskrit – then causes the Tree of Life to spring at the center of the world, separating the upper from the nether world. The two hornbills fly to this giant tree and perch on its branches. A furious fight eventually develops between the two birds, and the Tree of Life is damaged, and eventually destroyed. The two birds end up killing each other. From the pieces of the damaged tree and the froth that oozes from the beak of the female bird arise a young man and a girl, who become the ancestors of the Dayaks.

This cosmogonic myth needs to be explained before it can be understood. The two clashing mountains or floating islands are in fact the Symplegades (or “Clashing Rocks”) of Greek traditions. Even more exactly, they correspond to the two serpents of mountains – or floating islands, Benben and Caicai – of the Pampa Indians of South America, whose mythology we explain in detail elsewhere. In their mythology, the two “snake-mountains” are in fact volcanoes, whose “froth” (ejected pumice stone) forms a floating island where the survivors of the cataclysm climb in order to save themselves.

This motif also occurs in the mythology of the Guarani Indians and, in fact, in many other mythologies the world over. The fiery mouth of the Coiled Serpent corresponds to the Vadavamukha (or “Fiery Mare”) also often equated to the one of the Serpent Shesha, just as is the case here. This mouth is here disguisedly equated with the link between Heaven and Hell with the Earth itself. This “door” has of course many local replicas the world over. But only the Indonesian ones – the two giant calderas of the Krakatoa and the Toba volcanoes – are the real ones which in fact provide a link with both heaven and hell and are hence the true Pillars of Hercules and Atlas.

The Two Birds and the Great War of Atlantis

The “two birds” are the duals of the two snakes which we also find in similar cosmogonic myths the world over. They are the two birds which figure in the Rig Veda (1:164:20) as well as many other related mythologies, the world over. These two birds often become two snakes (as in the caduceus) or, even more often, a bird and a serpent or a bird and an elephant (Garuda).

What the two birds and their deadly dispute means is the War of Atlantis, where each half or moiety killed the other one, in the suicidal combat described by Plato and other mythographers. In fact, this primeval war is the archetype of all later wars, just as the Dayaks explain in their cosmogonic mythology. The three levels of space: Heaven, Earth, Hell are precisely the same as the ones of Hindu mythology (Bhur, Bhuvas, Svar).

But they are also found elsewhere particularly in the Americas, where the Mayas and the Aztecs, for instance, held identical believes. Moreover, these Indians also held the belief that these three realms are interconnected at the center by the Tree of Life. Sometimes, the Tree of Life is substituted by the Holy Mountain – on whose top grows the Tree of Life – or by a fork or cross upon which the saviour god is said to have been impaled.

In Amerindian mythology, as in the one of the Dayaks and many other peoples, the god or gods (usually twins), this Supreme God is often portrayed as a bird and, even more particularly, an eagle or a crow. Such is also the case of the eagle which, according to Pindar, perches on the top of Zeus’s staff. In the Taro we also have precisely the same symbolism, expressed by the spread-winged crow or vulture about to take off from the Tree of Life (Arcane no 17, The Star).

Here, the Androgyne (Aquarius) is shown pouring the Flood from his two pitchers, one golden, the other one silvery. Aquarius is placed under the Pole Star surrounded by seven other stars (the Pleiades). In the background, two trees are shown, one with the crow on top, and about to take off, just as the Phoenix does when the eras are about to end and start anew. We explain this symbolism in detail elsewhere, and hence limit ourselves to directing the interested reader thereto.

The Essence of the Trinity

We note that during the work of Creation, the deities revealed themselves in three different dualistic shapes: Cosmic (as the twin mountains); Theomorphic (Mahatala and Putir); and Teriomorphic (the two birds). But the two also figure as a single, dual entity: the Coiled Serpent; the Tree of Life and the Cosmos itself, before its separation into Heaven and Hell. This undivided entity in fact corresponds to the Primordial Androgyne, the Whole Cosmos.

The Trinity formed by the Androgyne and its dual manifestations (the Twins) in fact corresponds to the one of Hindu and other traditions. In Hindu mythology, Brahman or Purusha (the Androgyne) splits into two halves, one male, the other one female, to from the Trinity (Trimurti) comprised of Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu. In Judeo-Christian terms the Trinity corresponds to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, his feminine dual and counterpart.

This Whole or Totality – which Schärer called “Divine Whole” or “Ambivalence”, constitutes the fundamental principle of Dayak religious life. This ambivalence or dualism is manifested in all things, and in different contexts. Mahatala has its dual and counterpart in Putir, and vice-versa. The Coiled Snake has its dual in the Hornbill, and so on and on, down to the minutest things.

Even the Dayak Tree of Life is double and dual, more or less as told in the Book of Genesis and in Hindu religion. Aztec religion also speaks of dual cosmogonic trees, one planted by Quetzalcoatl, the other one by Tezcatlipoca, his evil twin. And so do the mythologies of most Amerindian nations, which often speak of dual trees or poles, of a forked pole or of the Cross itself. The Christian Cross is often identified to the Tree of Life, and is said to be planted at the Center of the world, as the link between heaven, earth and hell. Its two beams are also said to be duals of each other, as in the Vedic arani, where one stick is “male” and the other one “female”.

In Chinese terms this universal dualism corresponds to the Yin and Yang of Chinese traditions. In Hindu terms the two principles correspond to the Male and Female Principles manifested in the dualism of the Yoni and the Linga. Though opposite in principle, the two only work and procreate when united in harmony, just as they do in the sex act. In fact, the word “sex” means “separation” (sexus = septus), more or less as exemplified in the myth of the Primordial Androgyne as told by Plato and as so often glossed in the ancient alchemical treatises.

In Dayak philosophy, the world is the result of the eternal combat of the two opposite polar principles, one “male” and “positive”, the other one “female” and “negative”. One of these is black and deadly, whereas the other one is luminous and vital. Of course, this symbolism has very little to do with skin color, and in fact refers to the choice made by the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness. Like most black-skinned peoples, the Dayaks in fact consider themselves to be Solar and hence luminous, while equating us whites to the nightly Lunars.

To the Dayaks, the present world is the result of the combat of these two moieties which, as we already said, refers back to the War of Atlantis and its mythical aliases, the eternal disputes of the “reds” or “blacks” with the “whites” or “golden”. This symbolism is exactly the same one expressed by the Amerindian nations in their religious cults such as the Ghost Dances and the Peyote religion which we discuss in more detail elsewhere in the present book. It is hard, if not impossible, not to see the inherent identity of the Dayak cosmogonic myths with the ones of the Amerindian nations which we just argued. And this basic identity can only be the result of diffusion.

For that matter, there is also a clear connection with the beliefs of the so-called “superior religions” such as Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism and even Christianism. Given that the Old World became effectively separated from the Old World shortly after the cataclysmic end of the last Ice Age, the only possibility we can think of is that these traditions in fact originated in the common abode where these peoples formerly lived, before the diaspora caused by that very cataclysm.

And this common homeland can only have been the very site of Paradise, that is the one of Atlantis-Eden. What else? In fact, the death of the two birds and the fall of the Tree of Life in fact correspond to the destruction of Paradise which took place in the dawn of time itself, the star of the present era. This death is the prerequisite to the start of the present era, here allegorized by the birth of the Dayak ancestors from the remainders of the dead bodies of the former ancestors, represented by the two supreme gods, the All-Creators who represent, as usual, the Atlanteans themselves.

The Dead Ancestors and the Age of Monads

These dead ancestors or gods correspond to the Age of Monads, the Krita Yuga, when all things were “androgynous” and complete, and the two races lived together, in perfect harmony. The age that followed was the Dvapara Yuga, the Age of Dualities, characterized by the division of all things in dualistic pairs. We presently live in the Kali Yuga, the fourth, when all thing have been divided into fourths, and are hence far lesser and inferior than formerly. As is clear, the Dayaks, along with all peoples, borrowed and adapted their religious mythology from India or, more exactly, from Indonesia, the “insular India” which the ancients called India extra Gangem.

It is important to note, in Dayak cosmology, the fact that death is a necessity and that it is in fact a prerequisite for the renovation of all things and a fresh start.. All things start again then, and run their courses just as they did in the previous eras, which repeat themselves again and again, down the course of Cyclical Time. In the cosmovision of the Dayaks, all things replicate the primordial events.

Their villages correspond to the Cosmos, and so do their houses, which are also miniature replicas of it. The village and their houses are built on the back of the Primordial Serpent, much as the Primeval Cosmos was built on the back of the Coiled Serpent. in the Americas, the same symbolism is also found, with the world being built on the back of a marine monster such as a dragon, an alligator or a giant sea turtle (Cipactli, etc.). The roof tops of their houses are exaggeratedly lofty, so as to represent the primordial mountain where Mahatala throned in the primeval epoch.

As we already saw, this mountain was in reality a volcano, much as is the case of the case of the Amerindian teepees, which likewise represent volcanic peaks with the smoke of burnt tobacco and incenses issuing from their tops during the Peyote rituals. To believe that such exact symbolic correspondences could have resulted from sheer coincidence or from similar forms of reasoning borders the irrational now that the close parallels have been pointed out in detail. The only rational explanation is, we insist, the one of diffusion from a common, pristine source such as Atlantis-Eden itself. How could these exact parallels – which are far from obvious and in fact almost impossible to decipher – have developed in the primitive minds, but not in the allegedly far more evolved ones of the modern humanity of which we Westerners partake?

In the Dayak houses, a magnolia tree placed on their tops represents the Tree of Life. On it two birds perch, much as Mahatala and Putir did, in the preternatural era which all later ones replicated. All the main events in their life also parallel the archetypical events. During their marriage, the couple returns to the Primordial Time and both grab a symbolic Tree of Life, much as Mahatala and Putir also perched on its branches, becoming one with it. Birth is likewise identified with First Time.

The baby’s room and its cradle is identified to the Ark, afloat in the Cosmic Ocean of the dawn of times. The room where the initiants are locked during their initiation ceremony is also compared to some sort of ark afloat in the Primeval Ocean or perhaps with the bowels of the Coiled Serpent. The initiant symbolically descends into the netherworld, and later reemerges from it renewed and ready to initiate an altogether new life both socially and personally.

The Australian, Indian and Amerindian Parallels

This initiatic practice of the Dayaks closely resembles the ones of the Australian Aboriginals and very clearly derives from a common source. As we argue in detail elsewhere, this Oceanian initiatic complex also reached the Old World and even the distant Americas. For instance, we witness in a Greek vase, Jason emerging from the mouth of a bearded dragon in what is clearly a ritual context identical to the one in question here.

The same image – down to the detail of the dragon being bearded – is also found in the Americas, for instance in the Mayan and Aztecan iconographies of the Cosmic Serpent or Earth (Cipactli) vomiting the Hero, often figured as the Corn God. We already commented this symbolism further above in the present chapter, and the Indonesian origin of this worldwide symbolism is clearly shown in he adduced examples. Interestingly enough, the initiants so “devoured” by the Primordial Serpent or Dragon thereby become dragons or serpents themselves.

Such is also the idea in Old World myths of the Hero and the Dragon, where the hero kills the dragon, and later becomes a dragon himself, much as was the case of Hercules, of Jason, of Cadmus, and so on. The main idea is that the fully initiated worshipper becomes a naga (or nagual), a Sanskrit word which in fact refers to the Serpent People of Hindu mythology. The nagas are the same as the Yavanas, the white races of Indonesia who are in reality no other than the Atlanteans themselves.

In death, the Dayak returns to the Primordial Time and to Paradise, the place that exists in a dimension parallel to our own. This passage is attested in the shape of their coffin, shaped like a boat, and having the Primeval Serpent painted on its sides. Also depicted are the Tree of Life and the twin Holy Mountains, which closely correspond to the twin-peaked Hill of Sunrise of Egyptian mythology. In other words, the dead return to integrated the Cosmic Unity that exist at the dawn of time, and the process of Creation is started all over again, as some sort of recycling or feedback process.

The end of the year is, as Schärer notes (p. 94), a symbolic re-start of the eras much as they also were in Mesopotamia (akitu) and, above all, in ancient India. This time of the year is particularly sacred to the Dayaks. They cal helat nyelo, “the time between the years”. During this time there is a symbolic return to the Primordial Whole represented by the Coiled Water Snake and by the Tree of Life and the Twin Mountains. A replica of the tree is erected at the center of the village, and the whole community returns to the “Primordial Time”.

During this time, all things become confused and chaotic, sexual behaviour included. “The orgiastic character of this interval between the years does not”, Schärer affirms, “consist of disorder (even though it may so seem to us) but of an altogether different era”. This orgy accords to the divine commandments for the period, and those who partake in them reencounter the total unity with the primordial deity.

As is known, this chaotic, promiscuous behaviour is characteristic of the New Year just about everywhere. In Mesopotamia, the King mated with the Whore at the shrine constructed for the purpose on top the ziggurat, their replica of the Holy Mountain. This unholy union of duals at the akitu (“new year festival”) was symbolic of a return to the Golden Age and of a fresh start of all things.

The same type of ritual mating also took place in Egypt, during the New Year Festival, characterized by the five epagomenal days. So in India during New Year Festivals such as Diwali and Holi. Carnival with its follies and bacchanalian behaviour is a relict of the Saturnalia of the sober Romans. The festival is commemorated during the Spring Equinox (March 21), the traditional start of the New Year. The date of the event has been somewhat garbled due to the corrections of the calendar which took place at the introduction of the Gregorian Calendar which we presently use.

The Bataks of Lake Toba

The Batak of Lake Toba, in Sumatra – another site intimately connected with the one of Atlantis-Eden – also holds beliefs that closely parallel the ones of the Dayaks of Borneo. To them too, Creation results from the combat of the dual powers ruling the upper and the nether worlds. Here, instead, the process does not end in the death of the two rivals, as is the case with the Dayaks, but in their integration or merging in what we might call a Cosmogonic Hierogamy. ^[8]

According to Tobing, the Supreme God of the Bataks comprises the whole Trinity, and rules over the three realms of the Cosmos: the upper, the middle and the lower. Their Cosmic tree also penetrates the three levels, its roots in hell, its trunk on earth, and its top on heaven. With the Nias instead, the supreme deities are dual, with golden Lowalangi ruling heaven, and embodying good and light, and dark Lature Danö ruling the netherworld, and embodying evil and death.

The two are incomplete without each other, and Lowanlangi misses a tail, whereas his counterpart misses the head, so that they only function together. In Indonesia, the pristine dualism is reflected in the sacred geometry of the village itself, as well as in most other things. An example is provided in Ambryna, one of the Moluccas, the village is divided into two halves, and so is the community itself. The equilibrium is maintained by a superior synthesis, which combines the two elements in a whole. The same scheme also prevails in Bali and in Java.

Among the Dayak of Borneo, this dualism is emphasized during the festival of the dead. This festival ends with the ritual combat between two masked groups around a barricade erected for the purpose at the center of the village. This festival is a ritual enactment of the Primordial Combat which took place at the dawn of time, in the Cosmogonic Era. The barricade represents the Tree of Life, and the two groups represent the two hornbills who fought each other to death at this time and also destroyed the Tree of Life.

This destruction was, however, seminal, as it resulted in the creation of the successive eras of mankind, where the process of creation was resumed. This type of ritual combat between the two moieties of the society was/is commonplace in several regions of the world. Herodotus reports one such combat which took place among the Libyans, in his own time.

We comment this and other similar ritual combats elsewhere, and will not redo this discussion here, despite their enormous importance. What these ritual combats reenact is the War of Atlantis which Plato reported in some detail. According to Plato, this war is also the one allegorized as the war of the Gods and the Titans which is in turn no other than the War of the Devas and the Asuras so often described in Hindu mythology.

Plato affirms that this war ended in disaster for the two sides, which were both engulfed by the earth, which then raged, and opened its ugly mouth (or vagina) to swallow both armies en masse (Plato’s own expression). What this engulfing – which Plato calls an earthquake or seism – in fact represents can only be a giant volcanic eruption followed by the collapse of the region into the empty magma chamber, to for a giant caldera.

The Greeks called this type of event chasmata, (a word related to “chasm”) and grouped them all under the name of “earthquake” or “seism”, since they also literally caused major earth motions, towards the bottom, in the present case. The islands of Indonesia in fact correspond to the “Fire Belt” that delimits the Pacific Ocean in this region of the world, and is hence full of giant volcanoes fully able to cause a major cataclysm of the nature of the one discussed here.

Given the mythical importance of ritual combats in Indonesia and their intimate connection with the myth of Atlantis, it seems safe to conclude that the seminal events just argued in fact took place there. The fact that Indonesia is precisely the place where we have located Atlantis – it is again logical to conclude that he myth originated and later spread, by diffusion, to the other regions of the earth, with Europe (Greece), Africa (Libya) and even the Americas (Amerindians) included.

The hidden meaning of these myths is never explained to profanes, as it forms a central part of the secret of the Mysteries in essentially all religions. This community of purpose is again telltale of a single origin and a diffusion by contact, rather than by means of an independent development. It is highly unlikely that different nations would independently develop such a complex mythology and independently conclude that they formed such a shameful stain on the human past that they must in fact be kept secret to all, but a small minority of trusted disciples.

Eliade affirms that only rarely is such a perfect expression of the Hegelian dialectic found among primitive communities. And we heartily agree with him on that, as well as on the fact that for the Indonesians, the “third term” – the new synthesis of the dual polarities – represents a new stage in relation to the previous but also embodies a regression to the pristine state when the two opposites also formed a single totality.

Hence, in contrast to the Hindu thought, which went far further, the Indonesians – or perhaps their Atlantean instructors, who knows – elucidated the mystery of Life and Creation as a process of successive syntheses and analyses and went no further than that. These concepts – which the Hindus call kalpa and pralaya and equate to the breathing of the Cosmic Man (Purusha) – are far more evolved in India, where they accord to the complex but highly realistic scheme discussed further above.

It is highly unlikely, we repeat, that the ancient Hindus – or, even less the primitives Bataks and Dayaks of Indonesia – would have reached, by sheer reasoning at such a highly advanced knowledge of the processes which govern the evolution of life on earth. These processes indeed govern evolution in the whole universe. In contrast, modern scientists such as Darwin and his many academic followers could go no further than their far more stupid Evolution Theory, which so frontally collides with facts now established beyond the possibility of doubt.

These advanced philosophico-empirical systems of though, so far ahead of Hegel and of Darwin and Lyell are, in our view, the greatest evidence that Atlantis in fact existed and in fact disposed of a highly advanced Science and Technology. Besides that, they also disposed of a highly developed Philosophy and a great Wisdom to ago along with it.

With these gifts, they were able to effect the great synthesis of Science and Religion which we are able to observe in the fantastically well-devised ancient cosmogonies which we are barely able to understand anymore nowadays, despite all our great arrogance and cocksureness.

We also note that this equilibrium of opposites, this coincidentia oppositorum, is also the main fact of Hinduism. This idea is expressed by symbols such as the yoni-lingam, where the sex symbols which express this essential dualism of all things is so vividly portrayed. This inherent equilibrium on which all things depend is also extended to a cosmic scale, for instance in Sankhya Philosophy, where it is expressed by the contrast of priority (“matter”) and purusha (“spirit” or perhaps “field”).

The Sankhya system apparently embodies deep concepts of Modern Physics, as we argue elsewhere in detail. This despite the fact that it was developed many thousands of years ago, and hence far in advance of the feat of the modern physicists like Lorentz, de Broglie and Poincaré. At the geologic level, the equilibrium of the antithetical principles is expressed by the Vadavamukha, the Cosmic Womb where Fire (volcanic) is kept in check by Water (marine), with one consuming the other in what the Hindus often equate with the Cosmogonic Hierogamy of Fire and Water.

The fact that the Vadavamukha – or, more realistically, the giant submarine caldera of the Krakatoa volcano – behaves in precisely this way is a proof definite that the ancient Hindus were either the greatest guessers of all or, more likely, the best and most astute observers of Nature that ever were. No matter, what, the Vadavamukha – which the Hindus equate to the Fire of Doomsday – is kept in check by the equilibrium just mentioned. Eventually, this equilibrium is disrupted, and the Mare goes haywire, destroying the entire world with her dispensations of Fire and Water.

The Battle of Indra and Vritra

At another level, the inherent dualism of all things is expressed by the battle of Indra and Vritra. Indra represents the Watery Principle, the dual of the Fiery Principle represented by Vritra, who is indeed the same as Shiva or, better, yet, as Agni himself. The disputes of Indra and Vritra form the core and essence of the Rig Veda, and are often told in considerable detail. In fact, this Vedic combat was the archetype from which all similar duels of the Hero and the Dragon in fact developed.

As examples, we have the one of Zeus and Typhon, that Cadmus and the Dragon, the one of Siegfried and Fafnir, of Horus and Seth, and so on and on. As usual, this duel is again an allegory of the Great War of Atlantis itself. But this exemplary duel also works at a cosmogonic level as well. In this context, Indra represents the dry principle (Fire) which keeps the waters in check, imprisoned in his sanctuary on the mountaintops. Indra, the watery principle, kills the monster, and releases the waters, which happily run back to the ocean;

We discuss this myth in detail elsewhere, and the interested reader is direct to the works in question. Suffice it to say that we have interpreted this duel of Fire and Water in a serpentine shape with the fight of the two dragons, the Water Snake and the Fiery Dragon of which he disputes of the serpents Benben and Tenten of the Pampa Indians serves as an archetype.

Even more exactly, the waters imprisoned by Vritra on the mountain tops correspond to the immense glaciers of the Pleistocene, which in fact considerably drained the oceanic waters, causing a global drop in sea level which attained 130 meters and more. In this context, Indra apparently corresponds to the other volcano, the watery one (Krakatoa) which caused the giant tsunami which in fact carried the continental glaciers back to the ocean, in the process known to geologists as the Heinrich Events. ^[9]

Eliade, in the work just referenced (p. 19), concluded that the duel of Indra and Vritra in fact embodies a cosmogonic structure. By releasing the waters imprisoned by the dragon, Indra saves the world and symbolically starts a new era for mankind. Eliade also argues that the duel of Indra and Vritra also corresponds to the start of the New Year and, hence, of the new era. And this start corresponded, as we said above, with the vernal equinox, when the world exits the Winter season and enters Spring, when all things are reborn and start again.

In connection with this duel Eliade also affirms (p. 193) that the Tibetan traditions concerning the New Year also meant the same thing. For this purpose he bases himself on the remarkable work of Stein (p. 441) referenced further above. Stein noted that the Tibetan rituals of the New Year comprise several sorts of disputes and duels such as fights, verbal disputes, horse racing, beauty contests, cock fights, bow shooting contests and so on.

The Cosmogonic Myth was recited at the occasion, and the dead ancestors were worshipped. The essential mythical theme of the cosmogonic myth was the combat between the Celestial God and the Devils, both represented by two mountains. This report is doubly interesting. First of all, it establishes a direct link with the Dayak cosmogony and the one of the Pampa Indians, where the two gods are also represented as mountains and, even more exactly, as twin volcanoes, one submarine, the other one terrestrial.

Second, it affords a connection with Plato’s report that the battle of the gods and the devils or Titans is in fact an allegory of the War of Atlantis. In Tibet, the defeat of the devils by the celestials assured the start of the new era and the new year, its mythical counterpart. In the Tibetan disputes the participants all felt linked to their mythical past and the ancestors, as well as their mythical habitations (the twin mountains).

In Tibetan mythology, as in the Hindu one, these two mountains are represent by the twin Merus, Mt. Sumeru in the north (Mt. Kailasa) and Mt. Kumeru in the south (the Vadavamukha). Even more realistically, these two mountains represent the Toba volcano, at the north of Sumatra, and the Krakatoa volcano, at its extreme south, the Sunda Strait. Rolf Stein points out, in the work just mentioned (pg. 390-1), that the Tibetan New Year Festival embodies certain Iranian influences.

Far more likely, the resemblances are real, but are both due to an Indian influence on both. A similar ritual was held in India, in early epochs, but eventually fell in disuse for some unknown reason. The ritual combats of the Tibetans correspond, in India, to the duel of Indra and Vritra, as we just saw. But they are also mythified as the combats of the devas and the asuras, as we already commented further above.

This dualism is further expressed by the one of Mitra and Varuna. Varuna formerly embodies the Celestial Principle. But he fell down from heaven, and became the Lord of the Waters, the alias and archetype of Poseidon. Mitra in turn rose from the ground – just as did Mithras, his Iranian counterpart – to became the new Lord of Heaven.

What this means is the interesting fact that gods, like the two races they represent, alternate in power, and take turns as the lords of heaven and of hell. It is in this context that Mitra and Varuna correspond, one to the Day, the other one to the Night. In modern times, the dualism of Mitra and Varuna has been replaced by the one of Shiva and Kali, one diurnal, the other one nocturnal.

Taoism and the Chinese Connection

Are you able to open and to close the Celestial Gateway?

Lao-tze

In Taoism, the above duality is expressed by the Yin-Yang, one principle black and female, the other one white and male. As in America and in Indonesia, the yin-yang dualism was commemorated in China by a series of myths and rites, and served for the classification of the entire cosmos and each and every thing in it. This pair of contraries became a cosmological principle used as the foundation of several yogic disciplines as well as of philosophical ones. According to Chinese thought, the alternance of the yin-yang is dictated by the Tao, the supreme Order.

The history of the yin-yang polarity is extremely ancient in China, and probably predates Taoism there. The origin of the symbolism seems to be derived from India, from Vedic concepts such as the one of Purusha, the Primordial androgyne. This polar symbolism is widely attested in the Shang bronzes (dated at 1,400-1,122 BC). According to Hentze, the yin-yang symbolism is found on bronze objects which predate the first written documents of China.

In a variant of the yin-yang, the “third term” arises as a solution of the duality, instead of their union or combination. This symbolism is widely used in the Far East, and even figured in a former flag of South Korea. In Japan, this symbol is called mitsu tomoe (“three commas”). This symbol closely evokes the triskele of the Celts, which obviously has an identical symbolism. In fact, one should note the sequence specified in Taoist traditions: the One becomes the Two, which becomes the Three, which engenders plurality.

In other words, the primordial unity of Atlantis, the Cosmic Egg, eventually split into the dualism of the yin-yang. This again parted, and engendered the triplicity of the triskele and, later the quadruplicity expressed in the Swastika and the Cross. This fourfold symmetry is already apparent in Atlantis, in the usual symbolism. As such, it expresses the four races of mankind (reds, whites, blacks and yellows) as well as the four castes of India (varnas), that “museum of early mankind”.

Marcel Granet cites the Kouei Tsang, an archaic manual of divination which mentions a dualism which closely evokes the one of the Ecclesiastics: “a time of light, and a time of darkness; a time of plenitude, and a time of decrepitude; a time of refinement, and a time of grossness; a time to live and a time to die” (p. 132). Granet affirms that the idea of alternance may have led to the one of opposition, and cites the ancient philosophers, who affirm that during the Winter, the yang, defeated by the yin, spends the time inside the frozen soil, and emerges, in Spring, full of vigor and sap.

In ancient China, the dualism of the yin-yang was often likened to the one of the two sexes. The refined Chinese substituted the physical disputes of the Tibetans by the verbal ones of different choral groups organized according the dualism of the yin-yang.

During the seasonal festivals of Spring and Autumn, the two groups were placed front to front, and defied each other. “The yang called, and the yin responded”, affirms Granet. According to Lao-tze’s Tao-te-ching, the two principles emerged from the Cosmic Egg, represented by the Primeval One, the Monad (Tai-chi). The Tai-chi (or Yin-yang diagram) is the well-known representation of the yin-yang forming the Cosmic Egg (Fig. XXX).

Fig. – The Tai-chi (or Yin-Yang) Diagram
(W. Eberhard, Dict. Chin. Symbols, p.283)

This diagram acquired a fundamental importance in Confucianism from the 11^th. century BC onwards. But even before that it was already used to represent the Original Unity from which all things arose. Now, as we already said, this diagram originated in India, where it represents the Cosmic Womb (or Golden Egg = Hiranya-garbha).

According to the ancient treatise on Chinese philosophy just mentioned: “there was in the beginning the Greatest and the Highest (tai-ji), whence sprung the Great Monad (tai-yi). This in turn split in two halves, from which sprung the Two Principles, yin and yang. From the union of these two principles, arose the five Elements which then engendered the ten thousand things (wan wu)”.Now, this is the Chinese way of saying that everything emerged from them.

The Chinese see the egg as an emblem of fertility, as the source whence all things originated. Like most peoples, the world over, the Chinese associate eggs with the New Year, much as we do in Easter. To them, the world is supposed to have been formed from an egg (the Yin-Yang) which split in two halves which became Heaven and Earth.

After the Flood, the Chinese say, only a boy and a girl, his sister, were left alive. In due course, they came to the conclusion that they had to commit incest in order to prevent humanity from becoming altogether extinct. This they did, and the woman bore an egg from which issued a host of children. As usual, this allegory associates the Egg – that is, Atlantis – with the Flood and with the insemination of the earth with Civilization by the survivors of the cataclysm.

An interesting diagram, the Tai-chi t’ou, due to Tcheou-Toue-yi, represents the yin-yang in a way that is clearly a metaphor for Atlantis. Here the dualism is represented by three concentric circles separated in two halves by a diameter. The rings are alternatingly painted half black and half white, forming what is obviously an image of Atlantis’ capital as described by Plato, but already subdivided by the duality that led to its doom.

In some variants of the symbolism, the black portions are changed to golden, rendering the symbolism even closer to Atlantis as the “Land of Gold”. One such diagram was used in a former flag of Korea, the oldest of them all. Once more we encounter a metaphoric connection between the Cosmic Egg and Atlantis as the source of things. Is this connection real, or is it due to a hallucinated vision induced by drugs in all these sober philosophers?

Lao-tze as well as some Confucian thinkers alike affirmed that the One is the Undivided, the Perfect Entity. “Great”, they said, “is the original power of the Creative One, to whom all things owe their existence” And they add that: “This power flowed directly from Heaven”. According to the I-ching, this Creative One formed a single mass, where all things existed in an undivided stage:

There is a thing confusedly formed,

Born before Heaven and Earth.

Silent and void, it stands alone,

And undergoes no change at all.

It goes round and round, and does not weary

And is able to become the Mother of the World.

I know not its name, so that I limit myself

To style it with the name of Tao, “the Way”.

As we just said, this Cosmic Egg, which we find in essentially all mythologies the world over is the same as the Golden Embryo (or Hiranya Garbha) of Hindu traditions. In reality, this great, undivided, chaotic One where all things existed in a potential state is no other than Atlantis-Eden itself. Isolated in its majesty, it failed to spread and diffuse, and kept its material and mental progress to itself. As the poem affirms, the Egg – which the Shivaites equate with Svayambhu, the Self-standing Linga – existed before Heaven and Earth became separated into the two isolated moieties, much as illustrated in the yin-yang diagram just shown.

The idea that the Egg goes “round and round” without ever wearing out intends to say that it is placed at the Center, more or less like the Holy Mountain which also later split into two halves, the sumeru and the Kumeru. The Separation of Heaven and Earth is again a universal motif found just about everywhere, both in the Old and in the New Worlds. The “thing confusedly formed” expresses the chaotic state of things in Atlantis, in its latter days, the dissolution of customs represented in traditions such as the one of the Dionysian Bacchanals and of Carnival, as we already commented.

Atlantis is in fact “the Mother of the World” which it civilized with its godly heroes, after it was destroyed in the Great War, and sunk away, driving out the scant survivors of the cataclysm. It is interesting to note that the poet refuses to disclose the name of Atlantis, which he simply dubs “the Tao”, or “Way”. The Tao is a fundamental concept of an extremely ancient and still flourishing philosophical system of the Chinese people.

In a more strict sense, the word “Tao” expresses the idea of the “correct way”, or “road to Heaven”. In other words, the Tao shows the way to find Heaven and, by antithesis, Hell as well. And this in fact means Paradise, that is, Atlantis-Eden. From this primordial sense, the system evolved to include the morally correct way to behave. In Taoism, the concept of Tao takes on a metaphysical sense which came to transcend the human realm itself.

The Tao-the-ching opens with the following phrase: “The Tao which can be spoken about is not the absolute Tao”. What this means is that the true meaning of the Tao – the one we just gave – cannot be told to anyone but the trusted disciples, sworn to secrecy. This is precisely what the poet did in the above quoted poem, where he limited himself to calling it Tao, “the Way”. It is not that the Tao cannot be understood, as many believe. It is simply that it cannot be told except to those who are trusted disciples, and hence deserving of initiation into these secrets.

Lao-tze, the illustrious author of the Tao-te-ching wrote his book in the 6^th. century BC, according to a widespread tradition. The name means something like “the Power of Tao (the Way)”. In it the philosopher explains the concept of Tao in a way that is far more mystical than rational. The book is hence hard to understand by any but the most dedicated adepts. In rough terms, it may be said that the Tao represents very much the same as the rta of the Rig Veda and the dharma of later Hindu traditions. In Egyptian terms, this Cosmic Order was personified as Mahat.

The Buddhists call it the Wheel-of-the-Law. In a very simplified way, we might say that the Tao represents the concept of the Law of Evolution expounded in the Puranic Doctrine of the Ages which we succinctly explained further above. By the Law of Evolution these systems mean not the foolishness propounded by Darwin and Lyell, but the far deeper doctrines having to do with the perfecting of the Self and the achievement of Perfection, as expressed by concepts such as Purusha and Priority, the essential dualism of things.

Hinduism is a difficult religion. And it is one that is not interested in making adepts. It works at several levels and is hence able to satisfy the psychological needs of both atheist philosophers like myself and pious humble people like the millions of Hindus that live according to its maxims. The philosophical foundations of Hinduism derive from systems (darshanas) such as Sankhya and Vedanta. These systems are so subtle and so advanced that they are very hard to understand by anyone but the most dedicated adepts.

Taoism likewise derives from these Hindu philosophical systems. The Tao is the concept that gives existence its meaning; the primeval power that forms the foundation of all there is. For the more pious people, the Tao may be likened to the Supreme God, the source of all Order, all Good. Its dual is the Devil, the source of all Chaos, all Evil. For the skeptical physicists and philosophers like myself, the Tao (or rta or dharma) is dictated by physical concepts such as Entropy and Negentropy and, not impossibly, some sort of Élan Vital which governs the living processes as a whole.

It is also worth mentioning that we are, ourselves, able to discuss these things overtly because we discovered them on our own, and hence owe no obligation to any system whatsoever. Besides, the time has come when these things are starting to unfold and the veil which covered and disguised the ancient secrets is being ripped apart just about everywhere. Most unfortunately, it also seems that it is already much too late to change things, since the events foretold in books such as Revelation are already beginning to take place. All we can do is to sit tight and prepare for Armageddon.

According to Taoism, an acute observation of the visible processes of Nature – which are just a manifestation of the immanent Tao – allows one to intuit the existence of an inherent substratum which is in fact the source of all things and all processes of change. And this immanent abstract Reality is indeed the Soul of the World, the inherent Purusha who is in fact no other than Atlantis itself.

The Twin “Dragons” as Volcanoes

When looked at objectively, this new era can only correspond to the Holocene, the present geological era, the one which followed the Pleistocene. The Pleistocene was in fact the age of drought, since the colder temperatures lead to less evaporation and hence a reduction of atmospheric water and, consequently, rains. Accordingly, most of Africa went dry and desertic, and very much the same thing also happened all around the Indian Ocean region, with the collapse of the monsoon system which in fact brings the rains to the entire region.

Vritra, the other “dragon” was in fact the volcano which caused the last Ice Age. This glacial period start about 70,000 years or so, and is now known to have been caused by the giant supervolcanic explosion of the Toba Volcano, in Sumatra. Together with his “twin” and dual, the Krakatoa, the two volcanoes cogently represent the two dragons or serpents Benben and Caicai, one marine, the other one continental.

Sumatra formed part of the Asian continent during the Pleistocene, and the explosion of its supervolcano, the Toba really reduced global temperatures, as is usually the case with continental supervolcanisms, due to the dust they loft. The opposite is true of submarine volcanoes such as the Krakatoa, when the process leading to Heinrich Events really dictates the consequences of their supereruptions.

All in all, the two volcanoes perfectly serve their function as imperfectly personified “serpents” or “dragons” and, even more exactly, as serpentine deities personified as Indra and Vritra. As such, the two also form the twin Pillars of Heaven and the twin Trees of Life which figure in all the mythologies, the ones of the Dayaks and the Bataks included. Since modern specialists have not yet been able to guess what really causes the Ice Ages and even less the processes leading to their abrupt terminations, it is sobering to realize that the ancients were not able to discover these mechanisms, but also encode their superior science in myths such as the ones we have been examining.

It is with a tribute to the superior science of the ancient Atlanteans that I want to end this section on Dayak cosmogony and its real signification. It is clear that I could never have guessed the real cause of the Ice Ages or even less the ones leading to their termination, had I not been guided by the detailed information so clearly encoded in the ancient cosmogonies. So much so, that far better, far more specialized and far better equipped specialists have also not been able to guess the solution of the riddle, despite all their supercomputers, their spy satellites, and their impressive laboratories.

In fact, the scientific information encoded in the cosmogonic myths of the region is so detailed and so perfect as to allow the discovery of the very volcanoes which, among the myriad such possibilities, actually caused both the start and the end of the last Glacial Age, the Wisconsin: the Toba and the Krakatoa. It is also interesting to note that the Bataks live precisely inside the giant caldera of the Toba Volcano, in Sumatra, and that the Dayaks of Borneo, in turn live next to the site of the Krakatoa volcano, the giant submarine caldera that presently forms the Sunda Strait.

Now, this is precisely the site where Atlantis’ capital, Lanka, was formerly located before it was blown to smithereens by its volcano, the Krakatoa. Is anyone really able to believe that these uncanny coincidences are no more than a sheer lucky guess of our clever ancestors or just an astute guess based on a superficial observation of facts?

One should keep in mind that these facts of course date back to as much as 75,000 years ago and are of a nature so complex as to be able to invariably fool the best scientists we presently have gathered and equipped for the specific purpose of solving the riddle posed by the Ice Ages?

Or am I dreaming and the geological processes I so laboriously decrypted are no more than an illusion created by the magic of Maya, the personification of our clever ancestors? Time alone will tell. It may take long, I know realize, for people are slow in accepting novel ideas, even when they are crucial for their own survival. But, after two decades of waiting for the recognition of my work, I am reconciled with the idea that this recognition is probably not coming within my own lifetime.

What really matters to me is the joy of discovery. And, as Goethe once said, it is too much to expect that the enormous aesthetic pleasure of such seminal discoveries should also be followed by the surplus joy of public recognition, something that seems confined to those that faithfully serve the establishment, in contrast to myself. Well, I at least have the pleasure of knowing that I did it my way.

Recapitulating what we just affirmed. There can hardly be any doubt that the two “serpents” or “dragons” of the cosmogonic myths we just discussed are imperfectly personified volcanoes. Again, it cannot be doubted that the two correspond to the Principle of Drought (Vritra) and the Principle of Wetness (Indra). Furthermore, the two also corresponded to the principles that bring on and terminate the eras of mankind which, as we now know, in fact correspond to the climatological episodes presently known as Ice Ages or, according to others, Glacials and Interglacials.

What these indisputable facts leads us to conclude is that the message encoded is in fact the one that it is the volcanoes that cause the Ice Ages and their no less drastic terminations. Or is someone better to give a better solution to the riddle? Or is there something I am somehow missing?

Once these obvious facts are accepted, we could go on with our next inquiry, and attempt to solve the riddle of which two volcanoes in the world could have been actually be responsible for the events in cause, one dated to about 75,000 years ago, and the other one to about 11,600 years ago the date of the catastrophic end of the Pleistocene.

That the Toba supereruption in fact caused the Wisconsin Glacial is a fact that has now been established by Science, and which can hence be doubted no more by anyone not blinded by foolish theories such as literal Creationism or even Darwinism, which holds that such cataclysms are a geological impossibility.

It is true that we have little more than an abundant mythical material to identify the Krakatoa as the volcano actually responsible for the cataclysmic end of the Pleistocene. But the exact coincidence of the date of this event with the one of the demise of Atlantis as quoted by Plato leaves very little room for doubting that both events are one and the same and actually confirm each other.

Moreover, we also have abundant geological information – which we argue in detail elsewhere – that the real cause of the catastrophic end of the Pleistocene was caused by a volcanic paroxysm which in fact marks the event and caused the Heinrich Event labeled H0. It matters little if the volcanism that triggered the series explosion or the giant tsunamis included the Krakatoa or not. But it has to be accepted that this volcano (or volcanoes) is submarine and able to cause the tsunamis just mentioned.

The definitive confirmation of the Krakatoa pends further in situ research which is probably forthcoming, as I have been able to determine. And the mythical evidence – which I hope people have learnt to look with more graceful eyes by now – in favour of our choice of the Krakatoa is really impressive, as I argue in detail elsewhere. Such is really the reason for my choice of this volcano, which is every bit as treacherous and as is to be expected of the fearful “Child of the Waters” or, as others will, the Vadavamukha.

Creation, Dissolution and Universal Evolution

It should be noticed that the ancient Atlanteans are usually blamed for sodomy and sexual profligateness, at least after the moral decay which ultimately led to their downfall. This fact is attested, for instance, in the firing of Sodom of Gomorrah, yet another allegory of the destruction of Atlantis by means of Fire and Water, in the Flood cataclysm. These traditions somehow reached the distant Americas, witness the Peruvian myth of the Atumurunas, the vicious, sodomitic blond giants that invaded their land in remote prehistoric times. Mircea Eliade affirms, in commenting on this passage of Schärer, that:

This orgy takes place in accordance with the divine commandments. Those who partake in it reencounter in them the total divinity. As is known, in many other religions, both primitive and historical, the periodic orgy is considered the instrument of excellence to reach the perfect totality. It is by departing from this totality that a new Creation will take place. Both for the Dayaks and the Mesopotamians.

Eliade is referring to the Babylonian akitu, which we already mentioned, and which he comments in detail in one of his many books on the fascinating subject. The great expert never really realized that the underlying unity of myths is due not to universal archetypes as he and Jung believed, but really to a worldwide diffusion from the common source where all such sacred traditions first developed in Paradise itself. In fact, we had started to correspond over the issue, when he, lucid as always, unfortunately passed away, to the sadness of all his fans and disciples, myself included.

But I am sure that, given enough time, he too would become convinced of this fact, which is as logical as it is irrefutable. Eliade was a great scholar, and had already come to realize, as so many have done since, that primeval archetypes are as unscientific and as implausible as all such metaphysical arguments ultimately are. They may work as a religious explanation that satisfies the curiosity of the faithful, but which are far from acceptable by the more skeptical, scientifically- minded researcher.

As the above comments showed in some detail, the Dayaks are obsessed by two concepts which they deem fundamentally associated with the sacred: Primordiality and Totality. To them, the world only makes sense because it is an endless repetition of the primordial events which took place during the process of Creation. In fact, these two concepts only make sense if we postulate a First Time, like all peoples do, primitive or not.

And this first time – the one which the Egyptians call Zep Tepi and the Australians name “Dream Time” – can only have been the one of Paradise itself, as all mythologies concur. By Totality, one should understand the Unity which prevailed before the Primordial Split took place, the one which led to the War of Atlantis and the Dvapara Yuga, the Age of Dualities.

By Primordiality we must understand the fact that the process of Creation did not take place as a series of independent events occurring in the different civilizations the world over, much as presently held in consensus by most academic scholars. Instead, this civilizing influence occurred in a single place and in a single occasion, whence it later diffused to all places and all nations on earth.

Real or not, that is what the Dayak cosmogony literally affirms with all possible clarity. In fact, this is also what all other sacred Cosmogonies likewise affirm the world over. In other words, civilization did not develop in an independent way in any known nation, in contrast to what anthropologists consensually affirm nowadays, maybe as a courtesy to tourist agencies. Civilization in fact developed – perhaps over an enormous span of time – at a single place an n a single occasion in a definite place on earth, the Terrestrial Paradise.

Such is the actual meaning to be attached to the ideas of Primordiality and the Totality attached to Dayak cosmogony. Man was everywhere a savage before the advent of Atlantis-Eden, the Lost Continent which we have located, after a very laborious quest, sunken under the shallow, murky waters of the South China Sea, in the region of Indonesia itself, the region now inhabited by the Dayaks and other such primitive peoples who preserved the memory of the primordial events which they themselves deem of such a supreme importance.

Dayak philosophy underlying the process of Creation is in fact identical to the Hindu one expressed in the Puranic Doctrine of the Yugas (or Eras of Mankind). Eliade sees Dayak cosmogony as slightly more optimistic than the Hindu one. To them the eras just repeat themselves over and over again, apparently with no improvement or decay. The Hindu scheme is far more complex and apparently far more realistic than that.

Hindu cosmogony also works as an unending succession of eras. But, rather than identical, this unending succession has periodic, catastrophic ups and downs which may, however, ultimately lead to a global evolution. In other words, Cosmic Evolution, in Hindu philosophy, works more or less like the samsara, the cycle of reincarnations of an individual. According to this doctrine, the soul of an individual is immortal, and reincarnates over and over again, eternally seeking evolution.

In this endless process the soul may reach essential perfection, and even become a god, like Indra, Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahma. This evolution is the results of an individual’s deeds while alive. Good deeds lead to a reduction of karma, the burden of the sinful actions he commits on earth or perhaps other worlds as well. Bad deeds result in the accumulation of karma, and an involution, which may result in one person incarnating in a lowlier form, say, an insect or a tree.

Just as some virtuous individuals may evolve into gods, evil ones may involve so much as to literally become devils. All in all, a balance is reached, and evil generally compensates good. When evil threatens to annihilate good – and probably vice-versa – Vishnu or Shiva descend in an avatar themselves (as Saviours), in order to restore the equilibrium all over again.

Cosmic evolution follows more or less along these lines. The serial yugas endlessly repeat themselves in a fourfold sequential way, with virtue decreasing by 1/4 in passing from the Satya Yuga (Golden Age) to the Treta Yuga, 2/4 in the Dvapara Yuga, 3/4 in the Kali Yuga, and so on. This decrease is continued within the eras themselves, so that virtue is reduced to zero at the end of the Kali Yuga, the Dark Age in which we presently live.

When this is about to happen, Vishnu or Shiva descend, as just told, in order to end the era, restore morality and inaugurate the new era that ensues. But they too age, and apparently become demonic at the end of the respective era, so that a new avatar takes place, and so on. In a broader context, more or less the same thing happens when a cycle of four yugas (a mahayuga) is completed.

These in turn form ever increasing cycles within cycles within cycles, more or less as in a clockwork of cosmic dimensions. It is easy to see that in this process, good and evil infinitely develop, each towards his own side, in a perfect dualism and always in an essentially perfect equilibrium with each other. Real or not, this is what Hindu doctrines actually affirm, except perhaps for matters of detail. And this philosophy of Cyclical Time and Cosmic Evolution is also much the same one which we encounter in Buddhism, Jainism and even in Mayan and Aztecan philosophy.

All in all, we might compare Hindu philosophy (darshana) on Time and Evolution with the other ones thus:

1) Western Thought (Contemporaneous): Time is linear and uniform. Evolution (Darwinian) is steady, gradual, and uniform, so all organisms are eternally evolving, according to the Uniformity Principle. No cataclysms of global or unprecedented proportions may ever happen according to this principle, so no involution may ever take place.

2) Dayak Thought: Time is perfectly cyclical, so that all things and events are perpetually repeated, in an unending succession. No evolution ever takes place, as all things are (or should be) unchanging. The gods probably descend and intervene in order to restore equilibrium when this order of things is threatened. This is also the order of things we encounter in most primitive cosmologies, for instance, the ones of the Australians and that of the North American Indians (Peyote). Again, these cosmologies are a simplification of the Hindu scheme discussed next.

3) Hindu Doctrine: Time is cyclical, but also advances more or less linearly, in ever-increasing cycles (yugas, mahayugas, kalpas, mahakalpas, etc.). Catastrophism is the rule, and takes place every time a cycle is completed, in ever-increasing proportions. Even the gods themselves are mortal and are subject to evolution or decay according to their deeds. One can have evolution or involution, and even extinctions at these global cataclysms, where even entire worlds may go. Good evolves towards Absolute Good, and unreachable goal or limit, much as evil evolves towards Absolute Evil. All in all, they both evolve in parallel, and in what may be called a secular equilibrium.

4) Reality (Observed Facts): Global cataclysms of ever-increasing proportions (up to the Big Bang) are an unavoidable facet of all Nature, with the earth presenting no exception, despite the rosy blinders placed upon us all by Darwin and Lyell. Evolution is a gross misnomer, and what we have in fact is Adaptation. In times of crisis, the best-adapted, more specialized organisms suffer the most and are often exterminated, just as was the case with the dinosaurs and the greater mammals of the Pleistocene Age such as the mammoth and the saber-toothed tiger. Some organisms evolve in time, and some involve. Many life forms decay in size and may even become extinct as the result of major cataclysms such as the Ice Ages which periodically afflict the earth. Man himself is no exception and apparently experienced an involution in both bulk and brains at the end of the Pleistocene, some 11,600 years ago, just as the ancient traditions of all peoples emphatically tell us (the Fall).

All in all, when we carefully ponder the above resumé, the unavoidable conclusion is that the Hindus well knew what they were talking about from the earliest epochs. Their theories on the nature of reality are far ahead of the pseudo-scientific ones of Darwin and Lyell in what concerns both Geological facts and Evolution itself.

These Victorian Age theories were in fact devised to supply a pseudo-scientific foundation to Colonialist ambitions of the western powers bent on pursuing the ones of the conquistadors of the preceding Renaissance Age, which used the need to christianize the infidels as an excuse for their conquests both in the Americas and the Far East. Darwin’s Evolution theory also suffers from an incurable ailment, at least insofar as it aims to be considered scientific.

The idea of “evolution” implies a definite goal towards which organisms ultimately tend, either individually or globally. But such teleological goals have no place in Science, as they imply a divine purpose which is at best metaphysical, and hence unscientific and untestable. Darwin’s evolution had, as its main purpose, the one of Polygenism: placing white man on the top of the evolutionary scale, and hence in a position to demand more Lebensraum in the name of pseudo-scientific principles such as the “survival of the fittest” and the infamous “white man’s burden”.

The Sioux Star and the Sacred Pipe

The Sioux design called The Sioux Star is likewise remarkable. This “star” is in fact a mandala of the so-called Kalachakra type we discuss in our Atlantis page just linked. This “star” is in fact a clever disguise of the cross, as an attentive observation will disclose. The Cross is the traditional marker of the site of Paradise the world over. Here, it also represents the Holy Mountain (Meru) as some sort of four-sided pyramid, the usual convention.

The next design shows the Sacred Pipe of the Iroquois and other Indians. The text accompanying the design deserves to be quoted in full:

In 1999 Pendleton celebrated the legend of the Sacred Pipe, which is often referred to as the Native Indian Peace Pipe. This important instrument in lore and culture is believed to have mystical powers. No prayer or ceremony takes place without the Sacred Pipe. According to legend, the breath of the Great Spirit rises upwards to a connection with the Spirit World and Our Creator through the smoking of the sacred pipe. This blanket design commemorates the traditional Peace Pipe, which is featured in the center with the smoke ascending upwards. The stem of the sacred pipe is inlaid with silver and turquoise designs, while the brown and white feathers are of the Hawk and Eagle. The four main blanket colors represent humankind (red, white, black and yellow). The border design features opposing arrowheads which designate war. The diamonds at the bottom symbolize a French peace belt, and the tree represents balance and harmony

The symbolism of the Indian pipe is again connected with Atlantis. Tobacco, like hallucinogens in general provides a bridge with the otherworld, just as the above text affirms. The Indians, of course, smoke both tobacco as well as far less innocent drugs such as datura, either alone or in combination with it. The plume of smoke rises upwards, establishing a link with Spirit World and Our Creator. And this is of course Atlantis-Eden itself, now turned into a spiritual reality only, but about to resurge from among the dead.

At a more esoteric level, the holy pipe represents the volcano of Atlantis, the one which utterly destroyed the site of Paradise. This volcano is Mt. Atlas or, in Hindu traditions, Mt. Meru, the Holy Mountain of Paradise. Such is in fact the reason why this volcano is called the Pillar of Heaven: its smoke plume serves to establish a link between this world and the other, just as it did just after the Flood, with Noah’s sacrifice, which so pleased God.

The symbolism here is precisely the one of the remarkable drawing of the Brazilian Amerind snuffing a hallucinogenic powder from an Atlantis-shaped tray, which we discuss elsewhere in this book. Placed at the Center of the World, the Holy Mountain establishes, just as it did in Egyptian and in Mesopotamian traditions, a direct link between Heaven above and with Hell below. Ascending by its means, the shaman is thus able to visit Spirit World during his visions of “dream time”. And this visit can be achieved by simple dreaming or, more intensively, with the help of vision-inducing, entheogenic drugs.

The brown and the white feathers of the eagle and the hawk at the middle of the pipe’s stem serve as some sort of “wings” which the shaman and his disciples put on in order to ascend to heaven, taking the shape of these birds. The dark feathers of the brown eagle or hawk (female) symbolizes the gloomy netherworld, the lunar realm of death and of night.

The white feathers instead are male, solar, and celestial. This interesting symbolism is exactly the same in the Old World as well. For instance, the Egyptian Book of the Dead tells of the pharaoh taking on a falcon’s wings and becoming Horus the Falcon, in his ascent to heaven, after his death, when he returned to the ancestral abode.

The Chief Eagle and the Great Seal of the USA

In Egypt, as elsewhere, the falcon was the symbol of the rising sun (Horus) and of the Celestial Principle. It also symbolized, just as it did in America, the “double” (or ka or soul) of the person in question. According to the Peruvian historian Sarmiento, the Inca emperors had a double, a sort of winged guardian angel shaped like a falcon called Inti, which they likened to the sun itself. “When the Egyptians”, writes Horapollo, “want to represent a god, superiority, rank or victory, they depicted a falcon as their symbol.

The next blanket portrays the Chief Eagle. It was dedicated in 197, in honor in honor of the memory of Chief Seelatsee, a main chief of the Yakima Nation as a testimony of his dedication to the education of the young. The spread eagle closely evokes the similar Old World symbolism, for instance, as portrayed in the Great Seal of the USA. Far from being a copy, though, the Amerindian symbol far predated the European presence in the New World, where it is attested from the earliest times.

The inherent symbolism is also identical (except for the Star of David topping the American Eagle). The fourteen arrows that the Indian eagle carries contrast with the thirteen that the USA eagle does. These numbers were carefully chosen, and mean far more than stated. They in fact mean the Fourteen Eras of Mankind (Manvataras) of Hindu traditions.

Here, the idea seems to be the one that the Indians quietly await the time when the present era (the ill-fated thirteenth) passes away, and the new era starts, bringing peace and harmony to all. But the most interesting symbolism in this ceremonial blanket lies in the fretting decoration. The arrowheads pointing towards each other symbolize war (opposition). And the twenty four squares symmetrically placed around the eagle in fact represent Atlantis, here figured by its Holy Mountain.

Atlantis is often thus figured, for instance in the Triple-Walled Enclosure of Celtic traditions. Note, above all, the Cross at the center of the squares, the usual marker of Paradise, as we already argued. The square shape in fact represents the Holy Mountain (Meru), traditionally portrayed as a square pyramid. Mt. Meru is in fact the true archetype of pyramids everywhere. It corresponds to Mt. Atlas as the Pillar of the World. And Mt. Atlas is in fact a volcanic peak, as the glowing shape here suggests. This motif should be compared to the pyramidal representations of Mt. Meru in the usual Hindu and Navajo mandalas.

Stonehenge, Swastikas and Rock Art

For completeness’ sake we also comment the last of these ceremonial Indian blankets, the motif poetically named They Sang for Horses. The decoration shows a white horse at the center of a circle. This horse is running and is surrounded by four other horses placed at the Four Cardinal Directions. This motif quaintly evokes the similar decorations found, from the earliest epochs, in Mesopotamian ceramics such as the ones we discuss elsewhere for instance, the swastikas found in Samarra and in El Halaf (Fig. 7; 4; 5) and dated at the 5^th. millennium BC.

This motif is closely akin to the Swastika, an extremely archaic symbolism of universal diffusion. The motif in fact evokes the idea of rotation and, more exactly, of the Holy Mountain whirling at the center of the world. The only difference is that in the Mesopotamian swastikas, the running horses are substituted by ibexes or other animals. The horse provides an interesting connection with Atlantis, which is the place of domestication of the horse, according to the writings of Plato on the Lost Continent.

A Celtic coin shown in the site just linked has precisely four horses forming a swastika (Fig. 18; cf. Fig. 20), just as is the case here. The main difference is that the central horse is replaced by the emblem of Atlantis. The connection with Atlantis is highly interesting. It leaves little room for doubting that the swastika symbolism in fact aims at the return of the Golden age, the one of Atlantis. Right or wrong, this was also the wish of Hitler and the Nazis, as fed up with oppression as we all are nowadays.

The four and five [ placed ahead and behind the central horse symbolize the Four Eras of Mankind passing onto the fifth, the next one. The eight V’s placed around the periphery of the framing circle represent the Eight Cardinal Directions [nine, if we include the Center]. The swastika is a very holy, ancient symbol. Its desecration by the improper use made of it by the Nazis does not detract from its sacredness, as argued in the site just linked.

Besides, the swastika is a universal symbolism, and all peoples in fact thirst for the return of Atlantis. It is not a racist symbol, despite the contrary assertions we daily witness in the media. As such, the swastika deserves to be rescued as a symbol of great expectations on the return of the Golden Age. Moreover, it seems that the constant propaganda we hear against this symbolism is really intended to preclude us from dreaming, like the Amerinds, about the return of the Millennium, an ancient promise made us all, Jews included.

It is also interesting to observe the constant connection of the swastika and the Atlantean symbolism of the concentric circles, as instanced in Portugal (Portela da Laxe, etc.) and other places. The Iberian Peninsula was inhabited by Iberian Celts, a race that was oppressed by the Romans and other nations from oldest epochs. Similar symbols engraved on rocks are also found in the Americas, particularly in Brazil.

They are essentially identical to the Old World ones, so that there can be no question about their identical origin. Similar rock art can also be seen by clicking here and here and here and here and here and here. These petroglyphs are generally of the Neolithic Age. They are hence extremely old, and hence attest an ancient connection with Atlantis which long predates the times of Plato. As some symbols show, there is also a direct connection of this type of symbolism with the representation of heaven and, more exactly, of the Celestial Pole, with the stars whirling around it.

The idea here is to portray Atlantis as the Center of the World, around which all things whirl. It is for this reason that Atlantis is often imaged by the Pole Star, a central symbolism in many religions. This symbolism should be compared to the one of the Sioux Star commented further above. Stone circles such as Stonehenge (England) in fact represent the same symbolism, and are indeed accurate representations of Atlantis which Plato describes as a three-ringed structure.

The Terrestrial Paradise and Some Modern Lies

As is clear, the ancients spoke of Paradise – and, for that mater, of Hades as well – as a real place which they could visit, deal with, and even commingle with the local people. This place was also known as the Islands of the Blest, where the dead spend a pleasurable life until the time they were scheduled to reincarnate once more. So, the other world had both a spiritual reality and a terrestrial reality as the land of origin of all peoples on earth. It was thus that they spoke both of the Terrestrial Paradise and the Celestial Paradise. And these they located in the other hemisphere of the earth, the eastern one.

It was only with the advent of Judeo-Christianism that the otherworld was transformed into a purely spiritual concept existing only in the never-never-land of religious mythology. The Realm of the Dead – formerly pleasant and blessed – was transformed into a terrible place of eternal punishment or for an elected few foolish enough to take this fable at face value. With these lies, the powers that be did away with two things. One, they ended with metempsychosis, the doctrine of reincarnation and eternal perfecting of humans.

Two, they also did away with the Terrestrial Paradise, which they transformed into Hell and a small section where the chosen ones – they themselves, of course – led a blissful, eternal life for having served well they obscure lord. By this means, they also achieved two further results. First, they created an internal police in the minds of all, which prevented them from revolting in the face of injustice, for fear of an eternal punishment to be reaped by those who did so and which also encouraged all to be humble and obedient and servile.

Second, by so nicely disposing of Atlantis (Paradise) they were able to keep people ignorant. And they well knew that ignorance is bliss and that knowledge is the key to power. A power that they exercise for their own benefit the world over, without having to atone for the evil they once perpetrated, destroying the entire world with their wars and their insatiable greed and their lust for power. Well, those who forget their history are doomed into reliving it over and over again, until they learn better…

The Legends on the “Land of Gold”

The region which we have identified with the one of Atlantis, in Indonesia was of old called “Land of Gold” (Suvarna-dvipa in Sanskrit; Chryse Chersonesos in Greek, Aurea Chersonesus in Latin, etc.). This name has to do with the fact that it produced much gold in antiquity. In fact, this region corresponds to the biblical Havilah (Gen. 2:11): “where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good; and there is also bdellium and the onyx stone”.

The region of Southeast Asia – and more exactly Indonesia – in fact has the biggest gold mines of the world even today. The “onyx stone” (shoham) is in fact the far more precious chrysoberyl (“golden beryl”), also produced in the region. And bdellium (bedolach), a substance of unclear nature, as several experts admit (Strong 916), seems to have been the fabled “golden apples” of Paradise, rather than the “pearls” or the “amber” which some propose. But we think the substance was in fact a resinous hallucinogen such as cannabis resin or opium, probably also of a golden color, as we argue in detail elsewhere. ^[10]

The story of the fisherman and the cave that leads to the other world is again an allegory of the Realm of the Dead. More exactly, the myth refers to Atlantis-Eden as the sunken site of Paradise, as the Islands of the Blest where the dead Heroes of the former era spend a blissful, eternal existence free from all toil and all pain. The cave of the fisherman is in fact a mundus, an entrance to the netherworld. Such caves are a feature of many traditions, both of the Old and the New Worlds.

The Desana Indians of the Brazilian Amazon, for instance, have an exactly identical tradition. So do the Hopi Indians of North America, with their kivas and sipapus, the entrance to the netherworld. The Desana Indians of the Amazon jungle claim to have issued from a similar cave beyond the ocean, which they crossed in a giant canoe. The Quechua Indians of Peru and Bolivia claim that the Incas, their rulers, also came out from a cave called Pacari-tambo, which led to the netherworld.

When we confront all such legends and traditions, it becomes clear that this cave is the Cave or Archetypes (Eideas) of Plato and the Cave of Illusion (Maya) of the Hindu traditions. The Jews also had a similar tradition in the Cave of Treasures so often mentioned in the Book of Adam and Eve which we comment elsewhere in detail. Again, this universal cave or mundus is the one from which Pluto emerged out of Hades to kidnap Persephone, the beautiful girl. And its is also the cave where Amaterasu, the Great Mother of the Japanese, hid herself at the dawn of Creation.

All these legends indeed refer to Atlantis. Atlantis is the Great Mother (Mu) being swallowed by the Khasma Mega, the giant chasm that engulfed beautiful Lanka. This legend is told in the Ramayana. This initiatic romance also tells that, upon the destruction and submergence of Lanka, its inhabitants, the rakshasas, went underground into their vast subterranean Golden Realm. True or not, this legend commemorates the subsidence and submergence of Atlantis in the primordial cataclysm of the Flood.

And this subterranean realm, the Cave of Illusions, exactly corresponds to Aigaia, the submarine abode of Poseidon, the god who founded Atlantis and who was, also, the father of Atlas and Gadeiros, the famous rulers of Atlantis. Most, if not all peoples of the world have similar traditions on the submergence of the Golden Realm in the dawn of time, as the result of the flood. The Aztecs spoke of Aztlán and of Tlalocán, the Mayas of Tullán, the Mesopotamians of Ea’s apzu, the Persian of the vara of Yima, the Hindus of the of Atala of Yama, the Tupi-Guaranis of Yvymaraney, the Egyptians of the Duat, the Mesopotamians of Dilmun, the Greeks of Atlantis, and so on.

As is clear, this tradition is common to both the Old and the New Worlds, attesting to its hoary antiquity and its absolute universality. Were these peoples all lying and inventing, or was the Terrestrial Paradise indeed a reality? How did the Hindu tradition of enormous antiquity pass to the New World? When? How? Before or after the catastrophic end of the Ice Age, when the two worlds became effectively separated?

If Atlantis indeed survives in the subterranean realm of Shambhala, as the Far Eastern legends affirm, or if it indeed died except for a few survivors thrown back into the Stone Age is an enigma that only Archeology can solve by in situ research. But it is certainly tempting to believe that the Atlanteans indeed survive in their secret realm of Shambhala, whence they come out on occasion flying their flashy UFOs.

This memory is preserved from deepest antiquity in traditions such as those of the vimanas and vahanas of the Hindus, the Flying Carpets of the Persians, the Rokh bird of the Arabs which Sindbad the Sailor rode in one of his adventures in the South Seas, and the Thunderbird of the North American Indians. Well, dead or not, the undeniable fact is that Atlantis in fact existed and was indeed destroyed by means of a terrible cataclysm that transformed it from a Paradise into the dismal Realm of the Dead.

For, how else can we account for the universal tradition of a sunken Paradise except by postulating a worldwide empire capable of diffusing the myth (real or not, it does not matter) to the four corners of the World? By whom? Inborn archetypes with so many convergent details? When we stop to think on the problem of Atlantis in an unbiased manner, there is only one place in the world that can indeed afford a solution for the riddle.

We know for a fact that it was India that civilized China, that in turn civilized Japan and the other neighboring nations. But both the Dravidas and the Aryans of India claim to have come from a sunken continent to the south of Southeast Asia precisely where such a sunken continent in fact exists, as oceanographic research has recently shown. So, how could the Hindus be lying and idly inventing traditions that exactly correspond to a reality they could never have known except through direct experience?

The other nations, farther away from the focus, such as those of the Near East, Europe, the Americas and Polynesia – all of which have the tradition of these sorrowful events – very probably learned of them through diffusion brought by the Civilizing Heroes that figure in their legends of origin.

Of course, they could have experienced the worldwide consequences of the Atlantean cataclysm: the giant tsunamis, the maritime invasions consequent to the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age, the darkening of the sun by the stratospheric dust cloud, the climatic change into the Holocene, the dramatic worldwide extinctions, and so on.

But the universal legend of Paradise and the gory details of its destruction could only have been diffused by direct contacts of the third kind. And these intimate contacts with Atlantis included the bringing in of agriculture and the seeds of the domestic plants and animals, the arts and techniques, the laws and religion and, above all, the philosophical Wisdom which made possible the painful transition into the New Era.

The Problem of Comparative Mythology

The main problem of Comparative Mythology has been the issue of whether or not myths from different traditions converge in either form or essence or both. As I have found out, they generally do, at least in a great many cases. And these coincidences – particularly in the case of Cosmogonic Myths, the ones of the Flood and the sacred traditions on Paradise – are more than sufficient to prove that the coincidences are far more than purely random.

But these coincidences in form and substance can also be explained by chance contacts, by transmission through perfectly explainable agents and sources. Even if a few of these remain undiscovered, most of them are easily attributable to possible contacts via the usual ways such as the Silk Route, which has been in operation from the remotest antiquity. However, the real issue is entirely another.

Let us ignore, for the moment, the fact that myths work at several levels and according to the many branches of science: the religious, the psychological, the ethical, the literary, the moral, the astronomical, the historical, etc.. Let us concentrate in one of their many aspects, the historical one of the Sacred History of Atlantis as the true site of the Terrestrial Paradise where Civilization and Mankind first originated. Two facts are readily apparent:

1) The myth of this Paradise as the original homeland of most if not all civilizations and (or of their Civilizing Heroes) is absolutely universal.

2) The forms and the details may vary, but the essence of all mythologies is one and the same: the Tradition of Atlantis, generally under the disguise of a more or less spiritual realm inhabited by more or less supernatural beings who form the base and essence of the very same Urreligion, identical everywhere down to the level of detail.

Both these points we have abundantly proved with several hundred if not several thousands of examples from everywhere and everywhen, from the jungles of South America and Malaya to the deserts of Arabia and Africa, and to the whole of the Mediterranean Basin. In every case that we have adduced the myths and traditions converge most serendipitously in form and essence when properly interpreted according to a correct hermeneutic that places Atlantis in the Far East and identifies it to the legendary Paradises of the diverse nations.

But there yet a third crucial issue that must also be mooted out, the one of the reality of all such traditions and their supporting by all kinds of scientific evidence from the most diverse disciplines. When we study the theonyms and toponyms; the mythical topography and geography; the geological features and events; the fauna, flora and agricultural produce; the philological, anthropological, ethnological, etc., they all converge to perfection, one we discount the inevitable exaggerations and distortions required for proper mythification.

The Origin of Bananas

Consider the case of the banana and the sweet potato. Both of these domestic plants are exclusively propagated by cuttings and are in fact seedless, as is often the case with domestic plants. They are highly sophisticated agricultural plants of incredible productivity and usefulness and certainly took many millennia of genetic engineering to reach their present form.

Moreover, both bananas and sweet potatoes are exclusively tropical, and could never have stood the cold conditions of transport across the gelid expanses of Ice Age Siberia and North America via the Bering Strait. Nevertheless, the two useful plants have existed, from the remotest antiquity, both in South and Central Americas and in the Indies. In fact, they also exist throughout Polynesia and Melanesia and Africa from pre-Columbian times. Three questions come to mind:

1) Who developed these two useful domestic plants? When? Where? How?

2) When did they cross from the Old World to the New or vice-versa? How? Along what route?

3) How come the two plants have essentially the same names all over the vast expanses of both the Pacific and the Indian Oceans? ^[11]

Bananas are polyploid plants, certainly the result of advanced genetic engineering techniques utilized during the domestication of the plant, a development which is now known to have occurred in Southeast Asia. From there the domestic plant passed, already in pre-Columbian times, to the whole of Oceania and the tropical Americas. In the two next sections, we discuss the origin of the word “banana” and then quote some legends and traditions having to do with the connections of bananas and perhaps datura with the site of Paradise. Such traditions are of extreme importance in tracing the origin of plants and animals.

In fact, bananas are a staple food in most tropical countries the world over due to its pleasant taste and its high productivity. The etymology of the word “banana” – which ultimately derives from Dravida, as we argue in detail in the next section – affords additional evidence of its Southeast Asian origin, perhaps already in the times of Atlantis itself.

The plant is extremely hardy, and requires essentially no cultivation or maintenance in its groves. It self-propagates naturally from its rhizomes year after year and is extremely resistant to all sorts of plagues. Moreover, it can be eaten raw (as deliciously nutritive fruits) or cooked and salted (plantains). Bananas were found throughout the Pacific islands from the earliest epochs as perhaps the most important source of food for the native populations.

In terms of commercial importance, bananas and plantains are the fourth crop in rank in underdeveloped countries, after rice, wheat and maize. Some of these countries consume as much as 200 kg/capita per annum, practically surviving on it. In many of these countries, and in Africa in particular, the cooked fruit (plantains or cooking bananas), often salted, is preferred to the sweet dessert bananas.

Furthermore, the plant is extremely useful for several other applications. The Hindus used its enormous leaves for writing their sacred texts. Banana leaves are also used in thatching and as wrapping for cooking food. Its fibers, obtained from its leaves or from its stem are used for making ropes and baskets. Its rhizomes are cooked and eaten all over Oceania. The earliest known reference to bananas appears in Buddhist texts dated at about 600 BC, and a Sanskrit text dated 500 BC. The Chinese are known to have cultivated bananas in orchards at least since 200 AD, though its use there is probably far older.

Bananas also entered Africa from the East Indies via Madagascar (an Indian colony there). And they are now known to have come not from India itself, but from Southeast Asia, perhaps carried in pots by the early Tamil merchants. The early routes of banana diffusion are shown in the map available here. As can be seen in this map, the sites of banana origination closely coincide with the location of Atlantis which we have discovered.

The useful domestic plant is now known to have originated from the wild species Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana, which are found in the wild in the region of Indonesia and Southeast Asia. There, their inedible, seed-bearing, diploid ancestors can still be found growing wild in the natural forests. Some wild species of banana-like plants also exist in the wild in South America and may have been crossed to the Far Eastern counterparts in pre-Columbian times.

Some wild subspecies of Musa acuminata have backcrossed with cultivated bananas, resulting in the introduction of several intraspecific hybrids. Some of these hybrids were parthenocarpic, female sterile and triploid in genomic structure. The local people discovered that these hybrids had edible fruits, and could be propagated by suckers.

In this way, they succeeded in developing new, useful types of bananas used locally as a food crop. In fact, the triploid subspecies are often superior to the usual diploid species of bananas. In some places, such as New Guinea, diploid specimens of Musa acuminata are also used, particularly for cooking.

Prehistoric man took these diploid and triploid bananas to drier monsoon regions such as India and the Philippines, where another wild diploid, M. balbisiana existed in the wild. The two species crossbred and produced diploid and triploid crosses of M. acuminata and M. balbisiana. It was in this way that the enormous varieties of bananas and plantains found the throughout the world (over 500) originally developed.

As this site on the origin of bananas affirms, the early story of the domestication of bananas is unclear, despite these discoveries of botanists:

The early history of banana cultivation away from its center of origin remains uncertain. The establishment of these hybrid clones on the periphery of the centers of origin would have occurred in prehistoric times, and the earliest records of cultivation are from India about 2500 years ago. The introduction of M. balbisiana genes from the drier monsoon regions into M. acuminata clones from the humid tropics of southeast Asia conferred a measure of hardiness and drought tolerance into the hybrids. In addition, the M. balbisiana genes induced greater disease resistance, improved nutritional value, increased starchiness and provided hybrids suitable for cooking, as opposed to the pure M. acuminata cultivars which are sweeter and more suited for dessert use.

The distribution of edible bananas and plantains outside Asia is thought to have been via vegetative planting material transported by man. Any further diversification would then have occurred by natural somatic mutations. Bananas may have been taken from Indonesia across the Indian Ocean to Madagascar about AD 500 and thereafter into East Africa, Zaire and West Africa. Plantains arrived much later. Both bananas and plantains were known on the west coast of Africa in the 15^th century when the Portuguese arrived. Somatic mutations obviously occurred, resulting in a large number of clones and a secondary centre of diversity in Africa.

The Portuguese took bananas from West Africa to the Canary Islands, then in the 16th century bananas were taken from the Canary Islands to Haiti. This was the forerunner of further introductions into the Caribbean and tropical America, where currently most dessert bananas for export are produced. Bananas and plantains have achieved greater importance as cash of subsistence crops in regions away from their primary centers of origin. The larger export trade in dessert bananas from Central America and the Caribbean began in the mid-19^th century and developed rapidly with the introduction of refrigerated shipment.

The Etymology of the Word “Banana”

The English word “banana” was borrowed from Portuguese (banana), and so was its identical Spanish name. The word occurs as early as 1599 in J. Davis (J. Haklyut Society, 1599, pg. 138). Portuguese and Brazilian linguists diverge on the origin of the name of the paradisial fruit. Macedo Soares, the eminent linguist, thinks that the word “banana” derives from Galibi (Caraíba Indians of the Caribbean region).

A Coelho believes that the word is African and originally came from Guinea. So do other experts, including Skeat. The Academia Real Española states that the word “banana” is a “voz del Congo” (“Congolese word”). But an African origin of the name is highly unlikely. How would it have passed so early into Portuguese and Spanish, who seldom dealt with Africa in the early epochs of their navigational exploits?

In fact, it seems that the Portuguese took the plant to West Africa, along with its name, which they borrowed, along with the plant itself, from the East Indies. This hypothesis would nicely explain the fact that this name does not exist in East Africa, where the plant was only introduced far later in time. The Count of Ficalho affirms that “the word is definitely not Amerindian or Asiatic”.

Yule pends towards an Asiatic origin. R. Smith points out the correspondence of the word with the Arabic banana, meaning “finger”, a possible etymology. Clédat believes that the French banane derives from an Asiatic language. M. Dalgado thinks the word is a corruption of plátano (“plantain”, a type of banana), itself derived from the Latin and the Greek.

As is clear, the confusion is absolute. We believe that the Latin platanus and the Greek platanos, as well as the English “plantain” are not really connected with “plant”, as some experts think (Skeat, for instance), but indeed derives from the Sanskrit phalatana (from phala (“fruit”) and tana (“spreading”). This is due to the habit of the banana plant to keep spreading, to form large groves, like bamboos and certain fig trees such as the banyan.

This idea was later applied to other large-leafed species such as fig trees and sycamores or plane trees. In fact, the large size of such leaves is related to the myth of Adam and Eve using the large leaves of the fig tree as their vestment after the Fall. The main idea here is the widespread tradition that Adam and Eve were of a gigantic size, which kept on decreasing after the Fall and perhaps chose the giant leaves of bananas – formerly called “figs” – in order to cover their nudity, as we comment in more detail in the next section.

The Latin word planta (“plant”) is distantly connected with the idea of “flat”(the foot’s plant or sole), so there may have been a convergence here. Also, there seems to have occurred some confusion with the flat, large leaves of plantains and other such large-leafed plants like the Platanum occidentalis (the American sycamore or plane tree) and other trees of the genus Platanus. Even the ordinary fig tree (Ficus sycomorus) has been confused with these plants due to its large, flat leaves. Here, the name derives not really from the idea of “fruit” (Skt. phala, etc.), but from the one of “flat” (i. e., “having large, flat leaves”).

The word Platanus is in turn related to the English “flat”, the German platt, the Latin planus, plautus; the Greek platus; the Sanskrit prithu, the Dravida parattu, etc., all expressing the idea of “flat”, “broad” and perhaps “diffusing”. The name of Plato derives from the same base, and is said to be owed to his broad shoulders, as Plato was a wrestler and an athlete in his youth. Bananas and plantains also have enormous flat leaves, which have even been used for writing in India and elsewhere.

It may be that their name of “plantains” may have been confused with the other platanus such as beeches and sycamores. The Sanskrit word phala is in turn distantly related to “apple”, with the introduction of the a- (a-phala). In fact, the Muslims and the Hindus believe that the forbidden “apples” of Paradise were in fact bananas. So much so, that the banana entered the Quran as the Tree of Life.

Such is also the reason for its technical name Musa Paradisiaca, meaning “fruit of Paradise”, with musa being derived from the Arabic mauza meaning “banana”. This word, in turn, seems to have been derived from the Egyptian language according to some experts. We, instead, believe that these “golden apples” were in fact the datura plant, as we argue in detail elsewhere in this book. And the word musa or mauza apparently originated within India itself, from the Skt. moča (“banana”), as we argue next.

We have, after a long search, finally discovered the true etymology of the word “banana”. The word derives from the Tupi-Guarani yvá-naná meaning “fruit with a pleasant smell” in that tongue. By extension, this name also means “fruit with a pleasant taste”, which is really the case of bananas. The initial y- is schwa, and is barely sounded in Tupi-Guarani.

But we believe that the Tupian etymology is an adaptation of the Dravidian name of the fruit, as is so often the case with such tropical species of plants and animals. Dravida was spoken all over the South Seas in pristine times, and in fact seems to have been the primordial tongue spoken in the region of Paradise – that is, the one of Atlantis – where most domestic plants and animals in fact originated. When the Dravidas brought the useful Indonesian plant to the Americas, the Indians adopted their name for it, which they adapted to their own tongue, as is so often the case.

The word “banana” is in fact remotely related with the English “plantain” and the Greek platanos and the Latin platanus, themselves derived from the Sanskrit phalatana (from phala (“fruit”) and tana (“spreading”), as we argued above. There has been a confusion of the idea of “diffusing, spreading” – due to the spreading habit of the plant, which forms large groves which keep spreading around the site where they are planted – with its large leaves.

The real etymology of the word “banana” is, as we already said, Dravida. It derives from panđana or bhanđana, where the đ is cerebral. As such, this letter sounds very much like the IE n here, so that the word easily becomes panana or bhanana, naturally yielding “banana”. This word was transformed into the Sanskri phalatana (“spreading fruit”) by the Aryans, in order to provide it with an etymology in their tongue. And this word then yielded the Greek platanos and the Latin platanus, finally yielding the English “plantain”, as we argued further above.

The Sanskrit phala (“fruit”) also derives from the same Dravidian base, as pointed out by Burrow and Emeneau. This base (#4004 in their dictionary) also has forms in l such as palu, pala-, pandu, which yielded both phala and pandu in that tongue. This base really derives from the idea of “pale, yellow, golden, ripe”, in an allusion to the fruit’s golden color when mature. Cf. also the Skt. phal, phalati (“to ripen”), palita (“pallid, grey, hoary”) and the English “pale”, “fallow”, “pallid” also derived from the same base. Pandu (“pale one”) is of course the famous king of the Mahabharata, the great Indian epic.

The Latin name of the genus, Musa, directly derives from the Arabic mauza. And this in turn apparently derives from the Skt. moča (pronounced “mocha”), indicating that the Arabs (or the Phoenicians, maybe) obtained the useful plant in the East Indies, where they also fetched the other specialties they peddled just about everywhere in the world. No matter what, the word musa is attested in the Indies in pre-contact times, as reported by some European travellers whom we quote further below, in the next section.

The Sanskrit word is said to derive from muč, meaning “to release”, related to moksha (“liberation”). But this may be an invented radix, as is so often the case in that tongue. Or there may be a distant connection with the other “golden apples” which in fact release the user from all human bondages, the datura. We however think that the real source of the word was the Dravida mač-, moč-, muč, muj-, etc., meaning the idea of “to become mature, ripe, yellow, sallow, hoary, grey, golden”.

This base corresponds to the one of “banana”, in Dravida, expressing the same etymology of “golden, yellow”, which is the main feature of the delicious fruit. No matter what, the Arabic word has no viable etymology. The word mauza does not exist in the other Semitic tongues and was apparently borrowed, India is by far the more logical choice.

Some Myths Concerning Bananas and Golden Apples

In the present section, we give some legends and traditions having to do with the connection of bananas and perhaps datura with the site of Paradise. These stories are essentially the same whether they concern the Biblical Adam, the Germanic Iduna, the Greek Hesperides, or the Celtic Avalon, to mention just a few. Some interesting legends concerning Golden Apples and perhaps the lowly bananas as well can be read here. In fact, the human conception of Paradise centers on an abundance of cultivated fruit, their sensual irresistibility and the consequential calamity of their seduction, just as this site affirms.

And this idea of an abundance of delicious fruits is common to both the Old and the New World. As we argue elsewhere in this book, the Amazonian Indians of Marajó created, in pre-Columbian times, a replica of Paradise to serve as the cemetery of their ancestors. This islet – full of banana groves and having a geometry that replicated the one of Atlantis – they named Pacoval, a word meaning “banana plantation”. Bananas were their staple, and the idea was one of providing an abundance of food and an easy life for their beloved dead in the otherworld.

Similarly, the Tupi-Guarani Indians of the southeast of Brazil also had similar traditions concerning Paradise. This they called by the name of Yvymaraney, which means “the Evil-less Land”. They also named the place “White Island”, a name that exactly corresponds to the one of Sveta-dvipa, the paradisial island of Hindu traditions. Sveta-dvipa is also identified with Jambu-dvipa, where an enormous jambu tree provides an abundance of fruit which, on dropping into a nearby river, turns its waters into the Elixir of Youth.

Yvymaraney is likewise provided with an abundance of a delicious fruit called jaboticaba (“fruit of the jaboti”, a sort of turtle from Brazil”). The jaboti turtle is in fact an alias of the chelonian represented by the shape of Pacoval, itself an image of Atlantis as something of an amphibious nature, that is, a land existing both above and underneath the waters. But the important tradition here concerns the abundance of fruits which were all used to make delicious liquors and wines (uyn).

Interestingly enough, these traditions also connect with the ones concerning Paradise in the Judeo-Christian traditions. At the end of Revelation (ch. 22) the same story is reproduced nearly verbatim. The River of Life – that is, the one of the Elixir – flows from underneath the throne of God and the Lamb and has the two Trees of Life on its banks, one on each side. The idea is again that their fruits fall into the river, and render it miraculous. And their leaves serve “for the healing of the nations”. “Come!” say the Spirit and the Bride, “Come forward, you who are thirsty, accept the Water of Life, a free gift to all who desire it!”

These two trees correspond to the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge which grew in the Garden of Eden, according to the Book of Genesis. Better yet, they are the same trees, better explained here in their connection with the Hindu traditions and those of the Amerinds. As is quite clear – at least to those who, like myself have studied these sacred legends in detail – these traditions all originated from a common source of extreme antiquity.

In fact, they must date from before the end of the Ice Age, when the New World became cut off from the Old, to believe the consensual accounts espoused by the academic experts on such matters, since they are all pre-Columbian in nature. And this of course takes us back to the times of Atlantis itself, as this dire event took place at about 11,600 BP [Before Present]. Interestingly enough, this is also precisely the date stipulated by Plato for the end of Atlantis. It is essentially impossible to think – at least with some logic that does not blindly obey what we are taught from infancy – that all these uncanny coincidences are purely random in nature, and all happened by pure chance.

Passing to Muslim traditions. In 900 A.D, a sacred Shiite drama written by a secret society of Moslem purists featured the death of Mohammed when he acquires eternal life by inhaling the scent of an apple an angel had brought him. This apple was of course obtained in Paradise by the angel. Several centuries earlier, Aristotle was likewise said to have kept death away by holding an apple and inhaling its life-sustaining fragrance. Finally – and consciously – the philosopher finally drops the apple thus releasing his soul.

What these esoteric traditions are really referring to perhaps concerns the use of the “golden apples” of Paradise. And these “golden apples” can only be the thorn apples, whose inhaling [i. e. smoking] can really lead to death, if done in an exaggerated manner. Perhaps it was also in this way that Adam and Eve in fact acquired Wisdom concerning Life and death when they “ate” the Golden Apples of Paradise.

In the Catalan Map (1375 AD), an interesting illustration shows a royal figure (God?) holding out two branches loaded with golden apples. This personage is placed in the site of Paradise (Eden), which is located in the eastern corner of Asia, near the site where Alexander is shown imprisoning Gog and Magog near the gates of Paradise. This legend is connected with the Great Wall of China and hence with the ferocious Tartars and Tocharians, against whom these walls were in fact built by the Chinese.

This legend brings to mind the “golden peaches” of the Chinese traditions which we comment on elsewhere in this book, and which were also said to impart immortality. The two sorts of “apples” brings to mind the dualism of the two trees of Paradise, the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge. The Tree of Life may have consisted of bananas, so named because they really save people from starving in times of famine when the crops fail.

And the Tree of Knowledge, as we just said, may well have been datura, whose “golden apples” in fact impart wisdom, so they say, allowing shamans and others to make easy “trips” to Paradise in order to learn the cause of diseases and other evils afflicting the community. No matter what, the fact that the ancient traditions placed Eden in the Far East, in a region surrounded by mountains (the Himalayas?), is extremely interesting. It directly confirms our placement of Atlantis-Eden there, as well as our conclusion that both bananas and the datura plant originated in that region of the world.

The etymology of the word “apple” is obscure. It may derive from the Sanskrit word phala (“fruit”) which in fact derives from the Dravida pana, pala, which also has aspired forms in pha- or bha-. By the addition of a prefix in a-, this word becomes a-phala (“apple”), closely reminiscent of Abbalach (or Avalon), the Celtic name of Paradise. This word is actually directly related to “apple”. It seems that the Golden Apples of Paradise were in fact bananas, rather than truly apples. Apples are in fact red, rather than yellow, like bananas. And the Dravidian base just given really means “golden” or “yellow”, which is actually the color assumed by bananas when ripe. ^[12]

This tradition is of course somewhat exoteric, however. The “golden apples” which imparted immortality and wisdom are, as we just argued, probably datura, whose thorny apples which in fact have hallucinogenic properties. These “apples” are in fact often called “golden apples” in languages such as Sanskrit and Dravida. And the shamans and other adepts often drink or smoke the drug in their initiatic “trips” to Paradise. This widespread tradition apparently embodies a connection of datura with the site of Paradise, one which also seems to be true in the case of bananas as well.

Bananas are thought to have entered Africa from Malaysia during the first millennium AD or, perhaps even earlier. Hence, it is quite likely that the Africans received the fruit along with its name of “banana” from there, perhaps by the intermediation of the Portuguese. When Alexander the Great invaded India in the third century BC, he witnessed the preference given by the Hindu sages to the useful fruit.

It is from this fact that the name of the other species of bananas, Musa sapientum (“fruit of the sages”) derives its name. Alexander, like the other Greeks, was much impressed by the wisdom of the Hindu philosophers (gurus), whom the Greeks name gymnosophistes (gymnosophists = “sages that go naked”) because of the habit of Jaina adepts of going naked (digambaras).

We dedicated so much space to the etymology of the word “banana” because it is of so great importance in locating the primordial gene center from where domestic plants such as the banana, apples, datura, plantains, and others such in fact originated. Words work very much like ordinary fossils. They embody and determine, in their many strata, the many sites where the peoples who used the languages involved in fact acquired both the useful plants and most often, their names.

At times these words are translated or adapted, but generally, they preserve the original, non-translated forms. Such was the case here, as we just saw. The original (Dravidian) form of the word was in fact mighty close to “banana”. It was, as we saw above, adapted into Tupi-Guarani as yvá-naná and into the Sanskrit as phalatana, from which IE forms such as “plantain” ultimately originated.

The Dravidian etymology of the word “banana”, meaning something like “golden apples” or “golden fruits” survived in myths such as the one of the Golden Apples of Paradise, one kind good, and saving people from starving, and the other one evil and poisonous, but imparting wisdom.

The Portuguese again rescued the plant along with its original name in the East Indies (Southeast Asia), when they rediscovered the maritime way to the region at the end of the 15^th. century. And they handed both to Africa and then the Americas and, eventually, to the whole of the Western World. Such is the reason why bananas have a double name, both “plantain” and “banana”. Experts tend to attribute these to the different species of Musa (M. sapientum and M. paradisiaca).

But these two names – and the two species as well – are often confused in practice. As Bibliomania affirms: “it is hard to understand where the line [between plantains and bananas] is supposed to be drawn. Variation is gradual and infinite”. Many plantains are eaten raw, and many bananas are eaten cooked, and the two species are often crossbred.

The Bibliomania site just linked tells the tradition concerning Adam and Eve making aprons out of banana leaves, rather than really of fig leaves. This story, which we already mentioned, is in fact somewhat fescennine. The enormous leaves they used in fact allude to the giant size of their sex organs, our parents being indeed of giant size, according to legend.

The same source also refers that the banana (plantain) was the forbidden “apple” of the Garden of Eden. Here again we have a direct confirmation of our conclusion that bananas in fact originated in Eden, and are somehow connected with the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge that grew in this garden. Bananas were originally called “figs” by the Medieval travelers to the East Indies, who also associated the plant with the paradisial “fig”, and probably brought the tradition from there. The site just linked quotes several such early references to this tradition.

It is first reported by John de Marignolli in 1350 [“Sunt enim in orto illo Adae de Seyllano primo musae, quas incolae ficus vocant… et istud vidimus oculis nostris quod ubicunque inciditur per transversum, in utrâque parte incisurae videtur ymago hominis crucifixi … et de istis foliis ficûs Adam et Eva fecerunt sibi perizomata. …” (Cathay, p. 352)].

In fact, Adam’s Peak in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) is held to have been the site of Paradise by the Muslims and the Christians of the place. The quote is also saying that bananas are called “figs” there, that they show a crucifix pattern when cut transversally, and the Adam and Eve made themselves aprons (perizomata) from its leaves. As we argue elsewhere in great detail, Sri Lanka is not the real Taprobane, which is in fact located in the island of Sumatra, in Indonesia. This fact is affirmed, for instance, in the Catalan Map which we just mentioned, where the island is named Trapobane, an usual metathesis.

But the most interesting fact is that the text already names bananas, musae, showing that the word was already used in India even before the Portuguese discovery of the maritime route to the place. Did the Indians borrow the name from the Arabs, or was it the other way around? Why would the Indians borrow the word musa from Arabic if the plant in fact originated and was domesticated in the East Indies, rather than in Arabia, and hence certainly already had a name in their tongues? Why would the Arabs invent a name for the plant that they borrowed from the Indies when they could far more easily borrow the name along with precious domestic plants?

The myth of Atalanta is particularly infesting. It also interested alchemists, as attested by Atalanta Fugiens (“Atalanta fleeing”), the book we owe to Michael Maier, the great German alchemist. Like all such alchemical lore, the book is extremely hard to interpret. So is in fact the Greek myth, which we now explain. Atalanta was an incurable virgin, fleet as the wind. Her way of evading pretendants to her hand was defying them to a race, which she invariably won due to her celerity.

What is worse, the pretendants had to agree on being killed by her, in case they lost the race. Her strategy was to give the pretendants a margin, and then spear them in the back as she overtook them. But Hippomenes was helped by Aphrodite, who found her virginity loathsome. The charming goddess gave him three golden apples from the Garden of the Hesperides. And the love goddess also instructed the great hero on how to proceed in order to defeat the cruel girl.

When the race began, and Hippomenes saw that he was about to be overtaken, he threw one of the apples on the ground. Atlanta stopped in order to pick the shiny apple, and Hippomenes again distance her. He repeated the procedure two more times, and won the race. They got married, and lived happily thereafter.

But one day, during a hunt, the couple, burning with love, united inside the Temple of Cybele, where they were spending the night. The supreme god, prodded by Cybele, punished this affront by transforming the couple into lions. And they became the two lions which are attached to and draw the chariot of Cybele in the skies.

We now undertake the task of deciphering the strange myth which, as is quite often the case, in fact concerns the secret story of Atlantis. In fact, the name of Atalanta (or Atalante) is a variant of the one of “Atlantis”. The story is apparently telling that the fall of Atlantis was somehow due to the use of hallucinogenic drugs, here represented by the fabled Golden Apples (datura?).

This interpretation is also supported by the name of Hippomenes. In fact, this name plays with Hippomanes, the name of a philter which played an important role in ancient Greece. This name means “which causes madness (mania) in horses”, rendering them mad with passion. The idea seems to be the one that Hippomenes somehow seduced the invincible Atalanta with love philters he somehow obtained, perhaps inspired by his love for the girl (Aphrodite). The name of Hippomenes proper means “who has the vigor of a horse”, that is, a stud or stallion.

When we look at this legend more closely, we see that it in fact corresponds to the myth of Demeter raped by Poseidon or, even more closely, to the Hindu one of Sharanyu and Vivasvat. In these myths, the goddess, tired of the insistence of her husband (the sun), assumed the shape of a mare in order to flee away fast enough. But the god assumed the shape of a stallion, and ended up raping her. As the result, the goddess conceived twins, called (in India), the Ashvins (“horse like”).

Once more we witness a Greek myth which clearly derives from a Hindu one which in fact dates from the Rig Veda, and is hence immensely older than even Greece itself. And once more we have a connection of Atlantis and the East Indies, its true site. Atalanta is Atlantis, as we already said. Here she is represented as the Great Mother of both gods and humans.

As such, she is also the same as Demeter and Cybele, their Greek and Phrygian counterparts, respectively. Hippomenes represents the Aryans (or “Greeks”), whom Plato and others makes the defeaters of Atlantis by means of a ruse no lesser than the one of the three golden apples, the Trojan Horse. The Great Mother is said to be a virgin everywhere. The reason is easy to understand, at least in hindsight. In contrast to all other countries, Atlantis was not “seeded” by any other civilization, but conceived its own by herself.

This idea of “virginity” in fact derives from India, where Durga (Kali) is often called Virgin” (Kanya). But the idea is invariably the same, and relates to Atlantis even in the case of the Virgin Mary, herself a personification of the Lost Continent, the source of Civilization whence we all originally came, in the dawn of time. The Aryans are quite often identified to horses, their heraldic animal. The animal was developed in Atlantis itself, according to Plato. Its development was achieved departing from lesser, wild species such as Przewalski’s horse. And it rendered the Atlanteans for a long time essentially unbeatable in war.

The horse, or its mythical counterpart, the centaur or the unicorn, is, for instance, the heraldic symbol of the Irish. And the lion is likewise, the one of the British. In the English heraldic seal are shown a Lion facing a Unicorn. The Lion represents the Irish, and the Unicorn the Irish. This symbolism is extremely interesting. The Irish probably came – as we argue in detail elsewhere – from Central Asia and, more exactly, from the Tarim Basin region, in west China (Xingiang), where mummies wearing tartans and having typical Irish faces were recently found by the hundreds.

And it is precisely in this region that the use of the horse is widely attested as used in warfare by being ridden (mounted cavalry). The ruddy lion represents the red races of Atlantis (kshatryas), whereas the white unicorn instead represents the fair white races. But this symbolism is often inverted or changed, so that the two animals may turn into twin lions, twin horses or unicorns, twin dragons, and so forth. Myths also work at several levels.

So, Poseidon and Demeter, like Hippomenes and Atalanta and the twins they conceive (the twin lions) all represent the twin races of Atlantis, which keep fighting down to the present times as the Irish and the English are doing even today. It is also interesting to note how, in the myth of Atalanta and Hippomenes, and its counterparts just told, the couple changes from horses into lions, much as is the case of England and Ireland.

This correspondence serves to show how unchanging mythical symbolism really is. And it has maintained its form in essentially all details ever since the times of Atlantis, as we just saw. The problem is that they are told as allegories and metaphors such as the ones just commented, and which are hardly if ever explained to anyone but the trusted initiates. Such is the reason why the puzzling symbolism of myths and religions has preserved its secret ever since the dawn of time, the start of the present era which took place when Atlantis went under an disappeared forever from our sight, at least while the present lasts perhaps with the demise of us all.

Atlantis and the Origin of Domestic Plants and Animals

Ignatius Donnelly, the erudite author of Atlantis, the Antediluvian World (New York, 1882) – a book written over a century ago – makes a forceful case concerning the Atlantean origin of bananas and other such domestic plants, including tobacco, manioc, red pepper, and taro. His forceful arguments are worth quoting in detail, as well as the academic sources on which he bases himself. In the chapter entitled “The Testimony of the Flora and the Fauna” (ch. 6), Ignatius Donnelly writes the following words which later became standard among atlantologists and, in fact, many researchers of plants origins:

Proofs are abundant that there must have been at one time uninterrupted land communication between Europe and America. In the words of a writer on this subject: “When the animals and plants of the Old and New World are compared, one cannot but be struck with their identity; all or nearly all belong to the same genera, while many, even of the [same] species, are common to both continents. This is most important in its bearing on our theory, as indicating that they radiated from a common center after the Glacial Period” [his emphasis].

Cattle were domesticated among the people of Switzerland during the earliest part of the Stone Period (Darwin’s “Animals Under Domestication,” vol. i., p. 103), that is to say, before the Bronze Age and the Age of Iron. Even at that remote period they had already, by the long-continued selection, been developed out of wild forms akin to the American buffalo. M. Gervais (“Hist. Nat. des Mammiféres,” vol. xi, p. 191) concludes that the wild race from which our domestic sheep was derived is now extinct. The remains of domestic sheep are found in the debris of the Swiss lake dwellings during the Stone Age. The domestic horse, ass, lion, and goat also date back to a like great antiquity. We have historical records 7,000 years old, and during that time no similar domestication of a wild animal has been made.

This fact speaks volumes as to the vast period of time during which man must have lived in a civilized state to affect the domestication of so many and such useful animals. And when we turn from the fauna to the flora, we find the same state of things. It is a still more remarkable fact that a comparison of the flora of the Old World and New goes to show that not only was their communication by land, over which the plants of one continent could extend to another, but that man must have existed, and have helped this transmigration, in the case of certain plants that were incapable of making the journey unaided.

Donnelly was writing at a time (the 18^th. century) when it was believed that the transmigrations of the species among the different continents were affected by means of interconnecting landbridges. But this idea has now finally been superseded by the ones of Continental Drift and Plate Tectonics Theory first proposed by Wegener in 1912. But it is evident that the dissemination of domesticated plants and animals actually took place by the agency of prehistoric man, rather than as the result of an accident.

It is now known that the use of most of these domesticated plants and animals started immediately after the end of the Pleistocene, some 11,600 years ago, the very date of Atlantis’ demise, according to Plato. Since the implementation of agriculture and the development of new species of domesticated plants and animals takes a considerable time – in the range of several millennia or more – it is clear that this development could only have been effected before the dire cataclysm, which reset Man back to the Stone Age.

What this means, is that this development could only have happened in Atlantis itself, the only civilization precocious enough to carry on this advanced research and development. With the cataclysm – the Flood mentioned in the sacred traditions of most peoples on earth – Atlantis disappeared under the waters, leaving no traces either of itself or of the wild species based on which they developed the domestic ones.

Hence the riddle posed to researchers of these origins, unable to believe even the possibility that Atlantis-Eden might in fact have existed. The main cause of this myopic inability to admit even the hypothesis of Atlantis is mainly the result of arrogance of modern man: “it is impossible”, they say, “that the Stone Age barbarians could ever have risen above us moderns, the very apex of Creation”. This untamable pride and arrogance is in fact highly reminiscent of the one of Lucifer, the Fallen Angel.

We think it is also worthwhile mooting the fact pointed out by Donnelly that modern man, despite all his know-how and shiny gadgets – they all mainly spin-offs of modern weapon development research – has never been able to develop any new species of domestic plants or animals, despite our many attempts to do so.

This fact proves the great difficulty of the undertaking and the high technology required for it. And it also proves that this remarkable development could never have been achieved by mere Stone Age savages. We again quote Ignatius Donnelly on the origin of domestic plants and animals:

It is a still more remarkable fact that a comparison of the flora of the Old World and New goes to show that not only was their communication by land, over which the plants of one continent could extend to another, but that man must have existed, and have helped this transmigration, in the case of certain plants that were incapable of making the journey unaided. Otto Kuntze, a distinguished German botanist, who has spent many years in the tropics, announces his conclusion that: “In America and in Asia the principal domesticated tropical plants are represented by the same species.” [Donnelly’s emphasis].

He instances the Manihot utilissima, whose roots yield a fine flour; the taro (Colocasia esculenta), the Spanish or red pepper, the tomato, the bamboo, the guava, the mango-fruit, and especially the banana. He denies that the American origin of tobacco, maize, and the cocoa nut is proved. He refers to the Paritium tiliaceum, a malvaceous plant, hardly noticed by Europeans, but very highly prized by the natives of the tropics, and cultivated everywhere in the East and West Indies; it supplies to the natives of these regions so far apart their ropes and cordage. It is always seedless in a cultivated state. It existed in America before the arrival of Columbus.

The fact that the main domesticated plants of both Asia and America consist of the same, single species is of extreme importance. Since plants tend to speciate in intervals as short as ten thousand years or so, what this means is that they were introduced from one region into the other in dates no earlier than the end of the Ice Age. This precludes the more fantasized hypotheses such as the one of Lemuria, allegedly of enormous antiquity.

Moreover, since these plants common to both the Old World and the New exist in both tropical Asia and America but not in temperate regions such as North America and Europe, the evidence is that the diffusion was done directly across the tropics, rather than through Beringia and other such hypothetical passages.

Had Atlantis been located in the Atlantic Ocean or, as some will, in the Mediterranean region (Thera, etc.), we would naturally also have such plants adapted to the climatic conditions there, as it is hard to believe that the Atlanteans would develop these domestic plants for use by other nations, but not for themselves. Again, the Atlantean development of these tropical plants strongly indicates that Atlantis itself was located in the tropics, rather than in the temperate regions of the earth.

And since Atlantis flourished during the Ice Age when temperatures were far colder than presently just about everywhere on earth, we are forced into concluding that Atlantis was located somewhere near the Line of the Equator, the only place warm enough then. When we look at a world map we note that few locations are hence adequate: Africa, Indonesia, and South America, in the region of Amazonia.

Since Africa was essentially desertic during the Ice Age, we may safely exclude the dark continent as the possible site of Atlantis-Eden. Now, the Amazonian region is an attractive place, with many legends and traditions associated with the Atlantean events. But it has not sunken away, as Plato and others affirm of Atlantis.

Hence, we are, once more, led to conclude that Atlantis was in fact located in the vast continent now sunken under the waters of the South China Sea, precisely where we have located Atlantis. No, this is not a mere coincidence. Atlantis must necessarily have existed, for otherwise paradoxes such as the one posed by plant and animal domestication become impossible to explain.

Moreover, the transportation of tropical plants and animals via the icy north (Beringia) is a physical impossibility, as anyone who stops to ponder the matter will readily realize. The only solution to the riddle lies in trans-Pacific contacts, certainly by sailboats (or rafts), rather than on foot, as Thor Heyerdhal and others have demonstrated in practice, beyond any possibility of reasonable doubt.

Such navigation – taking advantage of the Equatorial Countercurrent leading directly from Indonesia to Ecuador – could be done in a leisurely way in a matter of months, rather than of centuries or millennia, as is generally the case with on-foot migrations, at least to believe the experts. Seedless plants such as manioc and banana could safely be transported by means of suckers planted on pots, an enormously ancient technique illustrated, for instance, in certain Egyptian iconographies.

Further evidence for this type of transference is afforded by the fact that many of these plants are found throughout the islands of Melanesia and Polynesia, often with exactly the same names they have both in the East Indies and the Americas, as we argued further above. Many other useful South Asian domestic plants – for instance, Pandanus odoratissimus and the sacred fig-tree (Ficus religiosa) are also found all over Polynesia, attesting this type of maritime contact via the Pacific Ocean.

The Riddle of the Banana’s Origin

Donnelly goes on to discuss the remarkable finds of Professor Kuntze, the illustrious botanist, as follows:

Professor Kuntze pays special attention to the banana, or plantain. The banana is seedless. It is found throughout tropical Asia and Africa. Professor Kuntze asks, “In what way was this plant, which cannot stand a voyage through the temperate zone, carried to America?” And yet it was generally cultivated in America before 1492. Says Professor Kuntze, “It must be remembered that the plantain is a tree-like, herbaceous plant, possessing no easily transportable bulbs, like the potato or the dahlia, nor propagable by cuttings, like the willow or the poplar.

It has only a perennial root, which, once planted, needs hardly any care, and yet produces the most abundant crop of any known tropical plant.” He then proceeds to discuss how it could have passed from Asia to America. He admits that the roots must have been transported from one country to the other by civilized man. He argues that it could not have crossed the Pacific from Asia to America, because the Pacific is nearly thrice or four times as wide as the Atlantic.

The only way he can account for the plantain reaching America is to suppose that it was carried there when the North Pole had a tropical climate! Is there any proof that civilized man existed at the North Pole when it possessed the climate of Africa? Is it not more reasonable to suppose that the plantain, or banana, was cultivated by the people of Atlantis, and carried by their civilized agricultural colonies to the east and the west?

Do we not find a confirmation of this view in the fact alluded to by Professor Kuntze in these words: “A cultivated plant which does not possess seeds must have been under culture for a very long period – we have not in Europe a single exclusively seedless, berry-bearing, cultivated plant – and hence it is perhaps fair to infer that these plants were cultivated as early as the beginning of the middle of the Diluvial Period.” [Donnelly’s emphasis].

Is it possible that a plant of this kind could have been cultivated for this immense period of time in both Asia and America? Where are the two nations, agricultural and highly civilized, on those continents by whom it was so cultivated? What has become of them? Where are the traces of their civilization? All the civilizations of Europe, Asia, and Africa radiated from the Mediterranean; the Hindu-Aryans advanced from the north-west; they were kindred to the Persians, who were next-door neighbors to the Arabians (cousins of the Phœnicians), and who lived alongside the Egyptians, who had, in turn, derived their civilization from the Phœnicians.

Some academic researchers, utterly unable to explain the riddle posed by the presence of bananas in tropical America before the times of Columbus, attempt to deny this well-established fact. But they do this only in order to save their pet theory on the Beringian Bridge and the passage of the Amerindians via the far north. But this theory is sheer buncombe and is fast being countered by all sorts of finds, for instance, the fact that Amerindian presence in South America is actually far older than in North America.

Moreover, some human fossils found in Brazil are now known to be the remains of Australoids, that is, the typical people of Indonesia and Oceania. Many of the Amazonian tribes have a culture and artifacts essentially identical to those of the East Indies, attesting a recent, intensive contact. There are even some notable linguistic affinities that are impossible to deny and are in fact far closer than those of North America.

The Mystery of Pacoval Island

The banana is called pacova in Tupi-Guarani, one of the main tongues of Brazilian Indians of the Amazonian region. In Marajó, the great island at the mouth of the mighty Amazon river, there is a fluvial islet called Pacoval. Pacoval is an archaeological site of certain Marajoan Indians which had a high culture and a religious symbolism quaintly reminiscent of the Jomon culture of Japan.

The Pacoval islet was long used as a cemetery by these Indians, who have of course long disappeared. But the island is even today covered with banana groves which these Indians planted in order to serve as food for the dead in the netherworld. No Indian alive would ever touch the sacred soil or even less, alter the place for any reason whatsoever.

The quaint ceramic vases of the Marajoan culture have been dated by radiocarbon techniques, affording dates that long predate the times of Columbus’ “discovery” of the Americas. Pacoval is in fact an artificial islet shaped like a turtle or some other marine creature associated with the netherworld, just as in Hindu traditions (Kurma). This funeral symbolism has to do with sunken Atlantis, quite often figured by that animal, as we explain in more detail in the chapter entitled: “The Geographical clues in the Rig Veda”.

Hence, the only logical conclusion that explains the paradox of Pacoval is the one of close pre-Columbian contacts during which the banana plant was transferred to these Indians. Even more logically, these Indians brought along the banana and other domestic plants from the East Indies, whence they originally came.

The explanation offered by Prof. Kuntze for the presence of the banana in pre-Columbian tropical America is of course false. It has been superseded by climatic studies non-existent in his time, which have now firmly established the impossibility of Pole Shift as well as the fact that the Poles of the earth have been in their present position and under ice for at least a million years or so.

Plato and the Prehistoric Crossings to America

The vastness of the Pacific Ocean, pointed out by Prof. Kuntze in fact posed no insuperable barrier, as the illustrious researcher thought. As Thor Heyerdhal and other empirical, enterprising researchers demonstrated in practice, this ocean may be easily crossed by the giant sail-endowed rafts and proas of the crafty Polynesians and other peoples of the South Seas region.

They were in no hurry whatsoever, and could hence enjoy the ride provided by the Equatorial Counter-Current which we already mentioned above. Plato, the discloser of Atlantis’ reality, in fact, refers that this crossing was a matter of routine even in Atlantean times. In his Critias (24e), the prince of philosophers affirms:

For the ocean there was at that time navigable; for in front of the mouth which you Greeks call, as you say, “the Pillars of Heracles”, there lay an island which was larger than Libya² and Asia [Minor] together; and it was possible for the travellers of that time to cross from it to the other islands, and from the islands to the whole of the continent over against them which encompasses that veritable ocean.

“There” is the region of Atlantis. The “Pillars of Hercules” mentioned by Plato are not really the ones at Gibraltar Strait, but the ones at Malacca Strait. This famous strait, in Indonesia, was the gateway to Atlantis, as we argue in our Atlantis site. It separates the Indian from the Pacific Ocean, and is the “door” to the world beyond, just as Plato explains. The “environing continent” (peirata ges) is precisely America, in fact surrounding the ocean all around, and very effectively separating the Atlantic from the Pacific, as Columbus and Vespucci finally learned.

But the “many islands in front” cannot be found in the region of Gibraltar, in contrast to what happens in Malacca, where the infinity of Melanesian and the Polynesian islands allow an easy, paradisial crossing to the Americas as long as you are in no hurry to do so. Note that Plato mentions that the “Pillars of Hercules” are so named by the Greeks, adding “as you say”. In Plato, no word is used idly, and the pleonasm here has a veiled intention.

As an Athenian, Plato was almost probably of Pelasgian descent, and hence very likely abhorred the other Greeks, whom he deemed mendacious tricksters. The idea here is really a play on words, and the intention is clearly one of hinting at the fact that the true “Pillars of Hercules” war the ones of Indonesia, rather than the ones of Gibraltar, at the other end of the ancient world. When we take this fact into account, Plato’s description of the geography of Atlantis becomes highly accurate.

This, is in contrast to the one of the region beyond Gibraltar, which does not fit his description at all, despite the many attempts to force-fit the region to Plato’s account. In other words, Plato is telling of the ancient voyages undertaken across the Pacific to the distant Americas by the enterprising Atlanteans and their true successors, the Polynesians.

These voyages were also undertaken by the Americans, as we comment in our chapter on the document of Totonicapán, which tells of one such trip. The ancient Greeks never sailed the Atlantic Ocean, which they deemed gloomy and damned, according to the many legends that survived from antiquity. These were lies spread by the cunning Phoenicians, who thus excluded their competition in commerce with the East Indies.

In contrast, the Greeks and other Mediterranean peoples such as the Phoenicians, the Minoans, and even the Jews currently navigated the Indian Ocean, which they usually accessed by the way of Suez and the Nile, open from the remotest epochs.

Such navigations are widely attested by Herodotus and other historians, and can hence be hardly questioned. Hence, it is far more logical to suppose that Plato was in fact speaking of the Indo-Pacific navigation, rather than of an Atlantic one.

This sort of crossing was far later attempted by Christopher Columbus, with the unfortunate unsuccessful result that is well known to us all. The far wiser Portuguese adopted the eastern route and were hence far more successful than the Spanish, who got stuck in the Americas, which they sacked, instead.

Plato, Apples and Atlantean Drug Plants

Interestingly enough, Plato also mentions two tropical fruits in this passage of his famous dialogue on Atlantis, the Critias (115a): the banana and the coconut. Of course, since these fruits did not exist in Greece, the Greek tongue had no names for them. So, the philosopher was forced to use their description and some metaphors, instead of their foreign names, unknown to his audience.

The usual translations of this highly obscure passage are usually horrendous, and have become a veritable “free-for-all”. In another passage, Plato also mentions the many herbs, essences and fragrances produced in Atlantis. These “fragrances” in fact consisted both of perfumes and incense. But the name also included hallucinogens such as opium, datura and cannabis, which could be “smelled” (smoked). Hallucinogens are referred to by this metaphor, as we argue in another section of the present book.

Moreover, Plato also mentions “the fruit of the orchard-trees, so hard to store, which is grown for the sake of amusement and pleasure” (paidias te hos heneka hêdonês te gegone dusthêsauristos akrodruôn karpos) ². This fruit does not seem to be either the pomegranate (rhoia, in Greek) or the apple, as affirmed by the translator ², but the banana, which in fact grows in groves and easily spoils.

Another translator (E. Chambry) renders this passage as: “and this fruit with scales, of difficult conservation, created for our amusement and our pleasure”. Benjamin Jowett renders it as follows: “and a good store of chestnuts and the like, which furnish pleasure and amusement, and which are fruits which spoil with keeping”. I would render the passage more literally, as: “this fruit (karpos) which has a thorny rind (akrodruôn) and should not be kept (dusthêsauristos), and which causes (gegone) us to become playful like children (paidias) due to the voluptuous sensations it engenders (te hos heneka hêdonês)”.

This rendering is justified in detail further below, The nature of this paradoxical fruit is in quite a fact hard to determine. Bananas spoil easily, but of course, have no scales or a hard shell. But pineapples do, though they do not grow on “tree-tops” (akrodruôn) and do not spoil too easily. Now, this fruit could well be the mango, which the Hindus consider the “queen of dessert fruits”, and even link to the “apple” eaten by Adam and Eve in Paradise. Mangoes grow on big trees. But they have no hard, thorny rind, and can hence be excluded.

However, we think that Plato’s obscurity in this passage is intentional and that it in fact embodies a crucial esoteric message for the initiates. In fact, the circumspect philosopher seems to be alluding to hallucinogenic drugs. And since these were forbidden in Greece, he had to be extremely careful, in order not to be forced to follow the steps of Socrates, his master, condemned to death and executed for precisely this sort of “impiety”.

This seems in fact be the real meaning of dusthêsauristos here used by Plato. The prefix dus- means the negative, and thêsauristos expresses the idea of a “thesaurus”, that is, something very precious and carefully stashed away rather than really something that spoils easily. Thus, dusthêsauristos apparently refers to something that cannot be kept, and whose possession is forbidden, just as is the case with drugs.

Even more exactly, Plato seems to be speaking of the datura plant, the jimson weed or, rather, the datura arborea, whose fruits are identified to the legendary “Golden Apples” said to grow in Paradise. The word akrodruôn implies the idea of a thorny or a hard-shelled fruit like the chestnut and the thorn apple, rather than the one of a fruit that grows on tree tops like apples and pomegranates. Akros means “tip, summit, extremity” and, by extension, the same as a thorn or prong. Hence, akrodruôn karpos may literally be rendered as “the fruit having thorns on the rind”. And this is a fit description of the datura thorn apple.

The datura (or thorn apple) – or rather, its seeds – imparts precisely the carefree type of behavior described by Plato when smoked, particularly in combination with marijuana. In fact, datura owes its name of “jimson weed” to Jamestown, in Virginia, where some British soldiers unwittingly used the herb and became as playful as little children.

In this passage of Plato, we have a vivid illustration of the way myths work, here at three different levels and even more. At the first level – one of the profanes such as scholars and translators – the meaning is taken literally and often results in absurdities and incongruences. These profanes are led to look for fruits that “grow on tree tops (akrodruôn) and that “spoil easily” (dusthêsauristos). Hence, they come out with absurd, paradoxical answers such as apples and pomegranates.

At a further level, translators are driven to Far Eastern fruits such as mangoes, pineapples, jambus and even bananas. Again, the solution does not really work and leaves all and everyone ill-satisfied. When the true solution is finally found, however, all pieces of the puzzle suddenly fall in place.

As is clear, the real solution to the riddle is the one just given, the datura thorn apple, the “thorny fruit which must not be hoarded” (dusthêsauristos akrodruôn karpos) and which “arouses pleasurable sensations which render one childlike” (paidias te hos heneka hêdonês te gegone). The Greek voice karpos means both the idea of “fruit” and of “seed”. Thus, Plato may be in fact alluding to “the seeds of the thorn apple” (akrodruôn karpos), this being the part of the plant that is in fact most active and which is preferred by qualified adepts. As usual, the word used by Plato is purposefully ambiguous, so as to confound the inquisitive profanes.

Bananas, Rice, Coconuts, and Red Beans

Some translators interpret the text of Plato quoted above as referring to fruits such as grapes, wheat, beans, olives, pomegranates and citron. But why would Plato use metaphors for these fruits, all of which have names in Greek, and were moreover highly familiar to his audience? Plato in fact alludes to “the fruit having a hard [or wooden] rind, which affords drinks, ointments and a fleshy pulp” (ton hosos xulinos, pômata kai brômata kai aleimmata pherôn). And the coconut alone responds to this description.

The mention of “vegetables” or “legumes” (ospria) ² not impossibly alludes to peanuts, indeed a leguminacaea so often used for food. Even more likely, though, Plato may be alluding to a hallucinogenic fabacaea such as mezcal beans (Sophora secundiflora). This plant should not be confused with mezcal proper, a cactacaea. The Spanish names of the plant are coralillo or frijolitos, and the English one is “red beans”. These beans grow in trees or shrubs up to 10 meters tall and more which are called Texas Mountain Laurel. ^[13]

The Indians of Texas and New Mexico used these hallucinogenic beans in their rituals such as the “Red Beans Dance”, before the peyote-based religion was introduced from Mexico. The drug was used as a beverage made from the ground seeds of the red bean. Alvar Nuñes Cabeza de Vaca, the famous Spanish explorer, mentioned that the Indians of this region used the red beans as some sort of currency or as beads in the manufacture of necklaces and other decorations. The frijolitos are extremely toxic and dangerous, so that their use should be carefully monitored. Such is the reason why the Indians generally dropped their use in favor of the far safer peyote.

Plato also refers to “the fruit which admits of cultivation and the one of the dry sort”. These two, the experts have identified to the grapevine and to corn (wheat). This “cultivated fruit”¹ (ton hêmeron karpon) may indeed have been the grapevine which, as we already said, originated in India, and can in fact be “tamed”, i. e. trained to adopt the desired shape (cf. Od. 5:69) What this means is that Plato is apparently affirming that both wheat and the vine (grapes) originated in Atlantis.

And the philosopher clearly knew what he was talking about. It is interesting to point out that grapes – the source of a “politically correct” hallucinogen (wine) – are usually associated with Dionysos, the god whom the ancient Greeks affirmed to be originary from India and in fact identical to Shiva.

Moreover, wheat is also connected with the island of Java, in Indonesia. In fact, the name of Java derives from the Sanskrit ‘Yava’ meaning “corn, rice” and, by extension, “wheat” or any other similar cereal. The name of Yava also originated the one of the Yavanas (the Ionians or “Greeks”), perhaps in connection with flour, due to their white countenances. Rice powder was/is in fact widely used in order to whiten their complexions by females. It is quite possible that Plato was here referring to ergot, the red fungus which grows on cereals.

Ergot (Claviceps purpurea) is a potent hallucinogen, one that causes ergotism, the symptom called “Devil’s curse”. In 994 AD, an epidemic in France killed between 25,000 and 50,000 people. In 1926, at least 11,000 deaths due to ergotism occurred in Russia.

The next passage reads: “The after-dinner fruits³ that we serve up as welcome remedies” (hosa te paramuthia plêsmonês metadorpia agapêta kamnonti tithemen). Paramuthia plêsmonês literally means “stimulants of a sated appetite; metadorpia means “during supper”; agapêta means “beloved one”; plêsmonês is “to be full or sated”; kamnonti is “to be tired or sick” and tithemen means “to place, serve”. Hence, word by word, the phrase means: “and those praised stimulants of a sated appetite which we serve ourselves during supper when we are tired of our beloved ones”.

An agape was a love-feast. The name corresponds to the one of symposia, literally meaning “lying together”. Theoretically, these love-feats consisted of “pure love”. In practice, agapes often degenerated into veritable bacchanals. Symposia were banquets where the senior philosopher lay together with their apprentices, as described by Plato in his dialogue named Symposium(or The Banquet), where the philosopher describes the homosexual love of Socrates for Alcibiades, held to be the most beautiful boy ever, after Ganymedes.

Most Gnostics – the Essenians, the Cathars and the Troubadours included – celebrated agapes not unlike the ones of the Greeks and the early Christians. So did the Etruscans, as vividly illustrated in their gorgeous coffins. More than just a communal sex act, symposia and agapes probably symbolized the union of the soul (female) with the spirit (male), or the one of Eros and Psychê which took place after death.

. The fruit in question here which was proposed by the translator is “citron”, which is of course foolish. Others propose the pineapple or the banana, which are a bit better, as we argued above. These were probably the fruits that were in Plato’s head when he used the decoy, intended to trap profanes and to cloud the true meaning of the difficult passage we just translated in a more accurate way.

The identification of the drug in question here is a far more difficult task. Plato’s disguised suggestion is that this medicine is some sort of a love-philter taken during these sex orgies in order to restore the jaded ardor of more elderly philosophers. Paedophilia was current in Greece and, in fact, over most of the ancient world. The term “Platonic love” though allegedly meaning the same as “pure love”, in fact designates this type of love between master and apprentice, the rule in most such initiations everywhere.

As we just said, the identity of the love-philter mentioned by Plato is hard to determine. Many drugs known to the ancients in fact have this property, even though their efficiency is hotly contested by the pharmaceutical industries, more bent on selling the drugs they now manufacture than in telling the truth to the public.

But the fact is that Viagra – and in fact essentially all medicinal and hallucinogenic drugs – originated from plants and animals whose active principles were extracted and later identified and copied and then fragmented and reassembled in order to effect their synthesis. Such is certainly the case with Viagra and other such medicaments, though its developers would rather die than betray the secret of their bosses.

The Amazonian Indians – the greatest masters of the shamanic arts – have several dozens of known aphrodisiacs, some of which quite potent. They also know of several herbal contraceptives for both males and females, some of which are effective for several year with a single dose. The giant pharmaceutical industries well know about this fact. They have set up great collection and research laboratories in the jungle, and send literally hundreds of spies disguised as missionaries, anthropologists, researchers, ecologists, and so on.

These guys collect the samples and the information from the pagés (shamans) and send them over to the central laboratories for identification and test. And then they patent this know-how acquired by means of ruses of all sorts. In other words, the big sack of the lesser countries by the colonialists continues undaunted, and the only major change has been one of the objectives.

At first, it was gold and gemstones. Then petroleum, ores and several other minerals. Next came the drugs extracted from plants and animals, and now the very basis and foundation of shamanic knowledge, acquired over many millennia by the Indians through a painful learning process based on trial and error.

And, of course, the excuse is always the one of serving God’s purpose which seems to be, so they say, to insure that the lesser brothers be miserably exploited by the often unsuspected powers that secretly rule the world since a very remote antiquity which probably dates from the very date of Atlantis’ defeat.

A Brief Recapitulation

It seems that this whole passage in Plato [Critias 115a to 115b] actually refers to hallucinogenic drugs, rather than to desserts and foods, as most people think, experts included. Since the above discussion is somewhat erudite and abounds on obscure wordplays in even more obscure tongues, we proceed to do a short review that we deem accessible to the ordinary lay reader. The whole passage of Plato is as follows:

In addition to all this, it [Atlantis] produced and brought to perfection all those sweet-scented stuffs which the earth produces now, whether made of roots or herbs or trees, or of liquid gums derived from flowers or fruits. The cultivated fruit¹ also, and the dry,² which serves us for nutriment, and all the other kinds that we use for our meals – the various species of which are comprehended under the name “vegetables” – [115b] and all the produce of trees which affords liquid and solid food and unguents,¹ and the fruit of the orchard-trees, so hard to store, which is grown for the sake of amusement and pleasure,² and all the after-dinner fruits³ that we serve up as welcome remedies for the sufferer from repletion, – all these that hallowed island, as it lay then beneath the sun, produced in marvellous beauty and endless abundance. And thus, receiving from the earth all these products, they furnished forth [115c] their temples and royal dwellings, their harbors and their docks…

In the above quotation, we have highlighted the terms which we have analyzed above in some detail, and which we now review in light of our puzzling discovery. One should not be overly shocked to hear Plato speaking with so much experience and wisdom about the hallucinogenic plants and drugs of the distant Americas and the East Indies. As we argue elsewhere in this book, drug traffic formed, from the earliest times, perhaps the most lucrative “spice” of the Indian trade.

Moreover, Platonism was in fact, like Pythagoreanism, some sort of Mystery Religion whose secrets were only disclosed to the initiates. And the Mystery rituals all centered around Drug Cults common to both the Old World and the New. As we now see, not only the rites and the beliefs were the same. The drugs used in these strange rituals were also precisely the same, imported from the site of Paradise itself (Atlantis). The terms we now review in this light are the following:

• “Sweet-scented stuffs”: An usual metaphor for hallucinogenic drugs.

• “Made of roots or herbs or trees, or of liquid gums derived from flowers or fruits”: Just as drugs normally are. In particular, cocaine is the gum of the coca tree, and opium is the gum extracted from the poppy flower pod, its fruit.

• “The cultivated fruit” ¹: Rather than grapes, as supposed by the translator, this term apparently refers to datura, in fact a vine cultivated as a garden flower. Datura is a climbing vine (like the grapevine), except that infinitely more potent than it.

• “The dry, which serves us for nutriment”² : The term apparently refers to peyote, usually consumed by the Indians as dried mezcal buttons, as some sort of Holy Eucharist. In this way, the drug is indefinitely preserved, without losing its potency. The word “nutriment” (trophês) is synonymous with “Communion”, the sharing of the Eucharistic Bread (the Host) by the whole community of adepts. At the exoteric level, this “nutriment” is corn (roasted flour, bread), and mezcal buttons at the higher one. The word trophês is complex, and embodies the meaning of “disciple”, “initiant”, “neophyte”. And Plato actually adds heneka, perhaps implying a wordplay with the idea of “Love”. Love (Eros, Kama, Matsya, Cupid, Amor) is the great god of the Gnostics everywhere. This subject is to complex to discuss here.

• “Our meals (charin tou sitou)”. The word here Charis, is exactly the same as the one in “Eucharist”, and means “Grace, Joy, Desire, Yearn”. Again an esoteric reference to Love (Eros). Sitou means “Wheat, Bread, Food”. Hence, the reference here is literally to the Eucharist as “the Gracious Bread”. This “bread” contrasts with the previous one which really means “cheese”, that is, “dried milk”. “Milk” is the Feminine Essence (the Soul), whereas Love is the Masculine Principle (the Spirit). In Hindu terms, the two principles are embodied in Shiva (the Linga) and Shakti (the Yoni). The symbolism in the Amerindian Cults (Peyote) is precisely the same, as we argue elsewhere in this book.

• “Vegetables”: Really “beans” (ospria) ². In fact, mezcal beans or frijolitos (Sophora secundiflora), as discussed further above.

• “The produce of trees which affords liquid and solid food and unguents” ¹ : The coconut, as argued above. Apparently, this drug corresponds to the areca nut, another palm fruit chewed together with betel leaves all over the South Seas. It can be said that this mixture is the exact counterpart of coca chewing down to the detail of adding lime to it in order to activate its effects. And it is as popular there as coca chewing is generalized in South America, among the Indians.

• “The fruit of the orchard-trees, so hard to store, which is grown for the sake of amusement and pleasure” ² : The datura plant, or thorn apple, as we explained further above. Here, the “tree” seems to be the datura arborea, whose fruits are identified to the legendary “Golden Apples” said to grow in Paradise. The words used by Plato exactly imply the idea of a thorny or a hard-shelled fruit like the chestnut and, more accurately, the thorn apple, rather than the one of a fruit that grows on tree tops like apples and pomegranates. The correct (esoteric) translation is the one we gave above: “this fruit which has a thorny rind and should not be kept [i. e., is illegal], and which causes us to become playful like children (paidias) due to the voluptuous sensations it engenders”. This is, as we argued above, an exact description of datura, down to minute details. The “amusement and pleasure” are precisely the effects sought by drug users and are not coincidental here..

• “The after-dinner fruits³ that we serve up as welcome remedies”: The fruit actually proposed by the erudite translator is “citron”, which is of course foolish. “Diner” (agape). Others propose the pineapple or the banana, as we argued above.

• “all these that hallowed island, as it lay then beneath the sun, produced in marvellous beauty and endless abundance the fruit of the orchard-trees, so hard to store, which is grown for the sake of amusement and pleasure,² and all the after-dinner fruits³ that we serve up as welcome remedies for the sufferer from repletion, – all these that hallowed island, as it lay then beneath the sun, produced in marvellous beauty and endless abundance. And thus, receiving from the earth all these products, they furnished forth [115c] their temples and royal dwellings, their harbors and their docks…

The Greeks were late-comers in this lucrative activity and went into it literally thousands of years later than the Phoenicians, the Egyptians, the Mesopotamians, the Minoans, and so on. And the fact that peoples such as the ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians used drugs brought from the east Indies and even the distant Americas cannot be denied anymore, now that residues of tobacco, coca, marijuana, and opium were found in the respectable beards of great many pharaohs by highly competent German experts.

All this lore on ancient drugs was initiatic knowledge transmitted from generation to generation, from the mouth of the master directly into the ear of the trusted disciple, along with other secret information, for instance, the one concerning Atlantis and its fate, the reality of the Flood, and the identity of Atlantis with the Terrestrial Paradise of the religious traditions of all peoples.

It is quite possible that the interdiction of “beans” by Pythagoras to his disciples really refers to the frijolitos, so highly dangerous to its users as to be discarded even by the experienced American Indians. This interdiction makes no sense otherwise, and our proposal should not be idly discarded. The suggestion that the Pythagorean interdiction was due to the fact that the ancient Greeks voted with beans and should hence avoid politics is fanciful. So is the one that beans cause flatulence. The Greeks actually voted by means of ostraka, where they wrote the name of their candidate, or by raising their hand, at an assembly.

After all, Plato’s discourse is initiatic in character, and was really intended for his disciples, who alone could really understand such obscurities. We have made a significant inroads into the hidden meaning of this remarkable passage of the great philosopher. We now expect that the experts will oblige, and dedicate themselves to the detailed clarification of the murky issue, which apparently holds the key to Atlantis’ location and reality. “The science of words has no end”, as the Hindus teach us. So, it is about time to stop and leave the matter to rest with the accusation, the academic experts on Classical issues. But before we finish with this matter, let us observe.

In fact, these “fragrances” and “herbs” were obtained in the Moluccas ever since the remotest times, which far predate the Portuguese rediscovery of the maritime route to the East Indies. The Phoenicians, the Carthaginians and the Minoan Cretans made regular trips to the region in order to obtain the precious “spices” just mentioned. So did, far before them, the Egyptians and the Mesopotamians, who called the place by names such as Punt and Dilmun, their usual epithets for the site of the Terrestrial Paradise.

King Solomon’s men also made, guided by the Phoenicians, regular trips to the region, which they dubbed Tarshish, Ophir and Parvaim. And there they obtained not only gold and silver but also the precious “spices” as well as slaves and other such condemned commodities. It may be for this reason that King Solomon is often said to have sold his soul to the devil, as the fortune he made there may well have been due to drug trafficking, so prevalent in the region from the remotest epochs. ^[14]

1. As we have argued elsewhere, ta (or tai) means ‘big” and fung means “wind”. Other Chinese dialectal forms of the word are fang and feng, as in the name of the Phoenix. Huang means “yellow” or “golden”, as in the name of the Yellow River (Huang Ho). In China, the loess that gives the Huang Ho and the Yellow Sea its characteristic colour is a bright yellow, and so is the dust that colours its frequent typhoons. As we already said, the Greek word typhon has a sense of “dust cloud”, “hurricane”, typhon”. ↑
2. Cinnabar is red mercuric sulfide (HgS), the chief ore of mercury. The mineral is produced by volcanoes, and is extracted from volcanic rocks and volcanic hot springs. Cinnabar is, due to its red colour, the symbol of vitality and immortality (Yang) in China and in Alchemy. But in India and Egypt it meant the opposite, symbolizing death and bloodshed (war). The word cinnabar is obviously related to “cinnamon”. This suggests an Indian origin for the name and origin of cinnabar, probably from Indonesia (Taprobane), whence the precious produce came. The English word came from the Greek kinnabara via the Latin cinnabaris and the French cinnabre. The Greek in turn came from the Persian zinjafr.The word was brought to the Levant by the Phoenicians and ultimately derives from the Dravida cinna (“golden”, “ruddy”) and para (“powder”). In fact, cinnabar was used as a powder (rouge) for the makeup of both ladies and gentlemen. Red cinnabar seems to be related to “dragon blood”, the precious resin of the dragon tree (Daemonorops genus). Once valued as a medicine because of its adstringent properties, dragon blood is now mainly used as a red varnish for violins and other such refined applications. Daemonorops draco is a rattan palm native to Malaysia and Indonesia, and is the main source of the dragon’s blood of the commerce. Alternative sources of dragon blood resin are the Dracaena draco of the Canary islands off West Africa, and the Dracaena cinnabari of the island of Socotra, off Somalia, in East Africa. ↑
3. For esoteric reasons, Lanka and its Holy Mountain (Mt. Sumeru or Trikuta) were legendarily placed in the South Pole, the axis (or pillar) of the world associated with Atlas in Greek traditions. Atlas derives his myth from the one of Agastya, the Hindu name of the star Canopus. Canopus-Agastya was the Pole Star of Atlantean times, some 12,000 years ago. This important star, second only to Sirius, was mystically identified to Atlantis and to the Morning Star. It was called and Phosphoros by the Greeks and Luciferus (“Bringer of Light”) by the Romans. This star is also associated with the Dravidas, who are called Taramilas = “People of the Pole Star” in Sanskrit. Lanka was, as we have argued, the true archetype of Atlantis in Hindu traditions. ↑
4. Uttarakuru literally means “Upper Kuru”. The word kuru or kurava means “eagle”, “osprey” (kurara), implying the idea of an unpleasant voice or cry (ku-ru, ku-rava). Ku implies an idea of “south”, as well as of “want”, “lack”, “deficiency”, whereas ru or rava means “thunder”, “sound”, “voice”. This base is also associated with the name of Ravana (the king of Lanka), of Rudra (Shiva), of Garuda (the eagle) and of Rutas (the legendary sunken continent of Hindu traditions. The fearful “roar” in question is that of the volcanic explosion that caused the cataclysm which destroyed Atlantis. The base ku also means “earth”, so that kurava can be interpreted as “the Roaring Earth”. In other words, it represents the raging Earth Mother furiously destroying its children with its fire and thunderbolts.It is interesting to remark that the ancients – and the Orientals in particular – associated the idea of “up” with the South, rather than the north, which was “down” to them. So, their maps usually had the south on top and the north at the bottom. This inversion has to do with the fact that Atlantis’ capital (Lanka) lay in the Southern Hemisphere and the South Seas. The Hindus place Uttarakuru (“Upper Kuru”) in the north nowadays, having utterly forgotten the ancient traditions and their esoteric meaning, except for their gurus who, however, never speak, at least to the broad public.Again, the name of Uttarakuru implies an idea of “upper”, that is, of “Celestial”, rather than “Northern”. The Himalayan Paradise is a secondary one, as we explain elsewhere, in our discussion of the myth of Kubera. Kuru also means “Earth-Born” (ku-ruh) in Sanskrit. This is an usual epithet of the Atlantean “giants” (ge-gens = “earth-born” in Latin). As usual, Hindu etymologies are extremely complex and varied, being polysemic. The western mind must adapt to this way of “fuzzy thinking” if it is ever to understand the ancient mythologies.The inversion of north and south has to do with the mythical reversion of earth’s rotation, interchanging east for west, a deep symbolism which Plato explains in his remarkable dialogue, Statesman. This inversion results every time an era ends, as happened when Atlantis got destroyed. So, when the Hindus claim that Uttarakuru was placed in the Far North in mythical times, what they mean is that it was located in the Kumeru, the abode of the Kurus in the uppermost regions of the far south. The great battle of the Mahabharata between the Kurus and the Purus (Lunar and Solar Races) was fought in the Kurukshetra, “the Field of the Kurus”, at the foot of the Uttarakuru.But it is in the Dravida – the pristine tongue of Indonesia and Southeast Asia – that the esoteric etymologies of the word “Kuru” must in fact be searched. In that tongue kuru expresses ideas such as “dog”, “sunken”, “thunder”, “eagle”, “gold”, “silver”, “red”, “bird”, “dwarf”, “grave”, Yama, “bull”, “crane”, “cock”, etc.. These ideas all relate to Atlantis (sunken island) and its eponymous heroes: Agastya and Atlas (as the Pillar of the World), the Aryans (gold, silver, red), the Chamites (“reds”), and so on. Unfortunately, space does not allow a fuller explanation of these complex etymologies. ↑
5. These names means, respectively: “Eastern Spirits”, “Island of the Jambu Tree (the Tree of Life)”, “Western Sacrificial Bull” and “Upper (or Northern) Kurus”. The [Sanskrit] word dvipa means both “island” and “continent”, in the sense of a piece of land entirely surrounded by water. At the cosmic level, the four dvipas represent the four “real” continents Eurasia, Africa and the two Americas surrounding the central one, Atlantis. We note that the Sanskrit word dvipa literally means “two waters”.As we argue in detail elsewhere, what this word means is really the two levels of water prevalent in the Interglacials, when Atlantis is submerged, and the Glacials when it surfaces. This is due to the sea level drop that then takes place as [evaporated] sea water is retained in the immense continental glaciers that then arise. The fifth continent, the central one corresponding to Mt. Meru, is really Atlantis, at the Center of the World.Atlantis is now submerged beneath the waves of the South Seas, in the region of Southeast Asia and Indonesia, where we have located it. This location we show in the map of the region published in our Atlantis site. The death of Atlantis in the great cataclysm is represented by its representation as a stupa. A stupa is the standard Buddhist representation of a tumulus, that is, a tomb. The trident at its top symbolizes Mt. Trikuta, the three-peaked Holy Mountain of Lanka, the capital city of Atlantis’ worldwide empire. The name of Trikuta means “trident” and allegorizes the vajra (“thunderbolt”), that is, the giant volcanism which destroyed Atlantis-Eden. ↑
6. The Hindus usually disguise their Cosmology under somewhat difficult allegories and metaphors, much as do all peoples on earth. the idea is to prevent the secret of Atlantis-Eden from falling into profane hands that might desecrate the place and even sack the Golden Realm, much as they did America. The Hindus call the three realms of space: Bhur, Bhuvas, Svar, literally meaning “Earth, Intermediate Space, Heaven”. But the real meaning is that Bhuvas (or Bhu) is really the biosphere, and Bhur the netherworld, generally submarine. Even more exactly, the three realms correspond to the Western Hemisphere (Earth), the Central Region where Atlantis once lay, and the Eastern Hemisphere (Heaven).The Central Region is the one of aither or akasha, the Central Fire of Pythagorean and other traditions. This is an extremely complex subject which we explain elsewhere in detail. The interested reader is hence directed to this work of ours, as well as others related to it. In the Central Region, the Center of the World, lies the Holy Mountain, whirling under the Pole, and marked by a Cross (Stat Crux dum volvitur orbis), just as it is in Judeo-Christian mythology (Jerusalem). This Holy Mountain is really a volcano (Mt. Atlas or Meru), whose crater leads directly to hell below (the magma chamber) and whose smoke plume links to heaven above. Hence its name of “Pillar of the World” or “Polar Mountain” and so on.In Hindu traditions, this volcano is also equated to the Serpent Shesha, himself an alias of Shiva (Sthanu) and the archetype of all such fiery-mouthed dragons, Nessie included. Shesha’s giant mouth spits the Doomsday Fire, a terrible reality, unfortunately for us humans. This fiery mouth is also called Kalamukha (“Lion’s Mouth”) or Vadavamukha (“Mare’s Mouth”) in Hindu traditions. In virtual reality – no less unreal than certain phony Paradises promised us all – the Vadava is located everywhere one builds a temple or deems a geographical feature sacred. But these are sheer images of the true archetype, the terrible Krakatoa volcano, the one which destroyed the world at the end of the Ice Age and almost did us all in for good.Actually, there are two such supervolcanoes, the Krakatoa and the Toba, corresponding to the Sumeru and the Kumeru. In Greek traditions these two correspond to the two Pillars of Hercules, the well-known markers of the site of Atlantis. These two volcanoes are both located in Sumatra, the main island of Indonesia. This was the former site of Lanka, the legendary city of the Ramayana that was the capital of Ravana’s worldwide empire. Lanka was also the true archetype of Atlantis. Its location was precisely at the equator and the site of meridian zero, where the new day started by convention. These two lines formed a cross, the one which marks the exact site of Paradise in essentially all traditions of the world. ↑
7. The great hornbill is a magnificent bird of the Buceros genus. It is typical of Thailand and Indonesia, where it is deemed to be the king of all birds. Hornbills roughly resemble toucans, the colorful Brazilian bird. But it is even bigger than toucans, and reaches up to 1.5 meter in overall length. The imposing bird is black and white, a fact that may embody the duality of the two races of humans still in an undivided stage. And it has a golden, prominent beak topped by a horny excrescence, which gives them the name of “hornbills”. The name of Mahatala means something like “great earth” in Skt. as we just said. In fact, this name alludes to Atala or Atlantis, as the great, flat land where all things started. The name of Putir also seems to be Sanskrit and to derive from putrî (“daughter, girl”). This name is an epithet of Parvati (Durga), the Great Mother of Hindu traditions. As is clear, this myth apparently derives from Hindu ones in a more or less changed shape. ↑
8. References for the present section:1) W. Stöhr, Die Religionen Indonesiens, Stuttgart, 1965.2) P. L. Tobing, The Structure of the Toba-Batak Belief in the High God, Amsterdam, 1957.3) P. Suzuki, The Religious System and Culture of Nias, Indonesia, Hague, 1959.4) Claude Lévi-Strauss, Anthropologie structurale, Paris, 1958.5) J. van der Kroef, Dualism and symbolic antithesis in Indonesian society, Am. Anthrop. (1954), 56:853-4.

   6) M. Eliade, Le Mythe de l’Éternel Retour, Paris, 1969.

   7) R. A. Stein, Recherches sur l’épopée et le barde au Tibet, Paris, 1959.

   8) C. Hentze, Bronzegerät, Kultbauten, Religion in Ältesten China der Shangzeit, Anvers, 1951.

   9) M. Granet, La pensée chinoise, Paris, 1934. ↑

9. An Heinrich event (H0) is now known to have caused the abrupt end of the lat Pleistocenic Ice Age, some 11,600 years ago, the exact date stipulated by Plato for the demise of Atlantis. Heinrich events consist of the rafting to the ocean of the continental glaciers in a colossal scale sufficient to cause, as H0 in fact did, the very end of the Ice Age. But scientists are really at a loss to discover what truly causes the Heinrich events in practice. A few theories have been proposed only to be rejected by the specialists.We have, after a long study of the problem posed by them, discovered that Heinrich Events are caused by major tsunamis caused by giant eruptions of submarine supervolcanoes such as the Krakatoa. These eruptions send the oceanic waters in giant maritime invasions. When the waters return to the oceanic bed, they carry back the glaciers which they caused to float upon themselves like giant rafts and iceberg flotillas. There these glaciers melt away, and a positive feedback process of warming – due to the reduction of earth’s albedo – fast leads to the end of the Ice Age such as the one in question here. ↑
10. The fact that bdellium is joined with gold and with chrysoberyl in this passage is a cogent indication of its golden color, for reasons of symmetry. This type of joining is often used in the ancient traditions such as the one reported here. In Numb. 11:7, manna is likened to bdellium in color. And manna is probably a golden colored resin, as is generally the case with gums. Skeat invokes the authority of Lassen, who derives it from the Skt. *madalika, which unfortunately does not exist. Pliny (Hist. Nat. 12:9) describes the substance as “the resin of a tree”. And he also adds elsewhere that it is also called maldakon.This word in fact derives from the Dravida #4687 madalikka, meaning “to be intoxicated, hallucinated, furious, love inflamed”. This word also means “musk, ichor”, in the sense of “something that intoxicates”. This base is related to the Skt. mada, madhu, and the English “mad, mead”. Skt. also has the related bases: matta (“an intoxicating drink, datura”), akin to the Latin mattus (“crazy, drunk” = Ital. matto), as well as madanaka and madana also meaning the thorn apple. These bases are in turn related to madhu (“honey, mead, Soma”), and imply the idea of “honey” or ‘honey-colored” (golden).But the main etymology is the one of “madness, hallucination, intoxication”. As such, the word mainly refers to hallucinogens such as datura and, even more probably, opium and cannabis resin as well. No matter what, we see here a most direct connection with the fabled “golden apples” of Paradise. Such references are usually obscure, as is the cease here, since the subject was a closely guarded taboo. ↑
11. As the eminent French anthropologist Paul Rivet demonstrated, the sweet potato is called kumara all over most of the region just mentioned, the eastern half of the world. The word probably derives from the Dravida kun-maţţa (“sweet potato”), where the ţ is cerebral, and sounds quite like the English r. No matter what, the fact that the same word is used to designate the useful plant in both Americas and the whole of Oceania is proof sufficient of intensive pre-Columbian contacts across the Pacific Ocean with the East Indies. Many domestic plants are common to the two regions, among them bananas, sweet potatoes, coconuts, pineapples, cotton, datura, and so on, as we discuss in more detail elsewhere in this document. The name of the banana poses a more difficult problem which we discuss in detail in the next two sections. ↑
12. Avalon is also called Emain Abbalach, a name meaning something like “the Land of the (Golden) Apples”. Skeat affirms that the word is of unknown origin. Some experts connect the word “apple” with Abella, a city in Campania (Italy) mentioned by Virgil in his Aeneid (7:740). But this seems to be a derived name, perhaps because Abella had many apple trees. Skeat rejects this derivation and mentions several related words: the AS aepl, aeppel; OFris. appel; Dut. appel; Swed. äple, äpple; Dan. aeble; OHG aphol, aphul; Germ. apfel; Ir. abhal; Gael. ubhal; Wel. afal; Bret. aval; Russ. jabloko; Lith. obolys, etc..The connection with the “apple of the eyes” is a derived etymology, as the word “apple” came to mean “anything round or globular in shape”. Some people connect the word with the name of Apollo, to whom apples were sacred. Apollo was particularly connected with Paradise (Hyperborea) as “the land of the Golden Apples”. As we already said, these “Golden Apples” seem to have been bananas and, even more exactly, thorn apples (Datura stramonium). And these two plants are, of course, originary from the East Indies. As is clear, everything fits when we consider Southeast Asia and Indonesia to be the real site of Paradise and, hence, Atlantis. ↑
13. We owe to Prof. Brian Stross, an anthropologist at the University of Texas, some minor corrections to this passage. My text mirrors the usual confusions found in the literature on the matter, which we blindly followed. The dear professor called our attention to the fact that: “mezcal proper is actually an alcoholic drink distilled from aguamiel collected from the agave (same plant that makes tequila), and the peyote cactus has been called ‘mezcal button’ or ‘mezcal cactus’ while the mountain laurel has been called the ‘mezcal bean’. The little Sophora secundiflora trees from which the mezcal beans derive are usually up to about 5 meters high at the most, and usually they are more like 3 meters tall. Ten meters stretches the imagination, although it is conceivable that given enough time one could reach nearly that”.As is clear, there are three kinds of “mezcal”, which are often confused in the literature. The first one is an alchoolic beverage obtained from the agave plant (maguey mezcal), which is not really a cactus, but an agavacea. The second type of “mezcal” is a hallucinogen obtained from the mezcal cactus, also called peyote or peyotl. This is the type used in the religious rituals of the North American Indians. The third type of beverage is obtained from the red beans of the Texas laurel. That this tree grows up to and over 10 meters tall (some 33 feet) is often referred in the literature, though this seems to be exceptional, as Prof. Stross kindly pointed out.Cf. 1) Powell, Michael A. 1988: Trees & shrubs of Trans-Pecos Texas including Big Bend and Guadalupe Mountains National Parks. Big Bend National Park, TX: Big Bend Natural History Association; 2) Vines, Robert A. 1960. Trees, shrubs, and woody vines of the Southwest. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. According to this Internet source here, the tree may reach: “up to 50 feet [15 meters] tall in its native habitat”. But this is of course exceptional. The name of mezcal is also of interest in itself, and is somewhat controversial. R. Gordon Wasson, the famous researcher, explains the meaning and origin of the word in his article on the hallucinogens of Mexico. The word seems to be originally derived from The Nahuatl mezcalli, meaning “heart of the maguey”, a reference to the part from which the drink is manufactured (piña). ↑
14. As we argue in detail elsewhere, Ophir and Parvaim were indeed the same as the East Indies and, more exactly, Indonesia and Southeast Asia. The name of Ophir (or Sophir) has been identified to the Indian port of Suppara, near the Ganges mouth. Tarshish is not really the same as Tartessos, its Spanish counterpart. And the name of Parvaim means “oriental regions”, according to Strong’s Concordance (6516).This region, he adds, was “famous for its gold output”. This region could never be located in Spain, which lies to the west of Israel, as its Latin name attests (Hesperia = “westerner”). In fact, Parvaim has been connected with the Sanskrit Pûrva, meaning “eastern”. But this name in fact derives from the Dravida par-vai(n), meaning “ the ancient place of dawn”. “Dawn” is synonymous with “orient”, and the word hence means the same as its Sanskrit counterpart, visibly derived from it.The “Land of Dawn” is actually Indonesia, as attested by its Greek name (Eoos = “Dawn”). And this name is due to the fact that the place was the former site of the International dateline, which Hindu traditions place in Lanka, their alias and archetype of Atlantis. This region is also famous for its abundance of gold, which is locally used to plate their temples and walls, more or less as reported by Plato in connection with Atlantis. In fact, the region was also called “Land of Gold” by both the Greeks and the Romans (Chryse Chersonesos, Chersonesus Aurea). As is clear, our identification of the site of Parvaim can hardly be doubted anymore. ↑

[written in 1998]