The majority of persons say that the Earth is at the center of the Universe… But the Italian philosophers known as Pythagoreans affirm the contrary. At the center, they say, is the Fire. The Earth is one with the other planets, and night and day are produced by its circular motion around this center. Moreover, they also propose another land opposite to ours, which they name Antichthon…

Aristotle, De Caelo, B13:293-18

I have been led on to discuss these peoples rather at length, although I am not in the least fond of myths, because the facts in their case border on the province of theology. And theology as a whole must examine early opinions and myths, since the ancients expressed enigmatically the physical notions which they entertained concerning the facts, and always added the mythical element to their accounts. Now it is not easy to solve with accuracy all the enigmas, but if the multitude of myths be set before us, some agreeing and others contradicting one another, one might be able more readily to conjecture out of them what the truth is.

Strabo, Geography, 10:3:1

Introduction

In the passage quoted above, Aristotle is attempting to explain one of the most mysterious philosophic doctrines of ancient Greece, the one of Antichthon. We warn the dear reader that the present chapter, where we attempt to delve into the esoteric meaning of this curious doctrine is somewhat difficult. We tried to avoid unnecessary displays of erudition or the discussion of Byzantine, non-pertinent questions, which though important do not fit the present work, indeed intended for the average intelligent layperson. Unfortunately, the academics, who have the proper training to handle such obscure issues, won’t touch the sensitive stuff, which frontally collides with the present paradigm of “official” History.

The only way to understand novel ideas on antiquity is to do what René Descartes recommends: to abandon all standard theories on our past and to start from scratch, ab ovo, as the academics say. So, open your minds and your hearts, and judge the present arguments by their intrinsic merits, rather than based on biases and preconceptions based on academic and religious doctrines which are fast becoming obsolete and will soon be relinquished by all and everyone. We are taught by academics that our forefathers were brutes, living in caves and scratching the barest survival in a hostile environment.

But this view frontally collides with the ones of all religious traditions. The world over, in the accounts embedded in our myths and our religions we are told of a glorious past, of a Golden Age where Man became almost divine both in wisdom and in understanding. For some reason, we decayed and were doomed to make a start from the beginning all over again, more or less as Sisyphus in Hell. Science stops at this recent start, stolidly rejecting the possibility of early global cataclysms through the dogma of Evolution theory called the Uniformitarian Principle.

But Man – in more or less the present form (Homo sapiens) has been around for fully 700,000 years, whereas science places the start of Civilization a mere 5,000 years ago or so. Who is right, scientists or theologians and mythographers? We advise the reader to reread the passage of Strabo quoted at the head of the present chapter. Such was my view of myths when I still used to be a conventional scientist, adopting the so-called scientific attitude of denying everything that could not be proved by Science.

And, of course, above all, I, like all, was trained to particularly disregard myths as the grossly vaunted, superstitious explanations of our brutish ancestral which sometimes survive among the more stupid and more ridiculous primitives who dare cling to such absurdities. Hardly did I realize then, as I later learned, that scientists – consciously or unconsciously – automatically reject and denounce everything that does not fit their petty scheme of things. Such was the case with Darwin and Lyell, and with many such academicians who attempt to reconstruct our past from the geological and archaeological record.

So, if the discovery of a novel paradigm such as the one we are now proposing to the world is ever to occur, it will have to come from below, through vehement public demand and a revolt against the false doctrines presently enforced by the media, the academia, and even the more conservative religious leaders. These guys will have to come down from their cathedrals and their crypts, and face the light of the sun of Truth, more or less as Plato proposes in his famous Myth of the Cave. And hopefully, some of these guys will become converts and “heretics” like myself, and lead the opposition, even if at the price of their cozy tenures and the respect of their less noble peers.

A close study of the present document – one that should be helped by the use of further sources available on the Internet and in good libraries and bookstores – will amply reward the reader that takes the trouble. There is nothing intrinsically difficult in it. And it does not presuppose that the reader has previous training in any of the many sciences involved here, such as Philosophy, Linguistics, Archaeology, Geology, Comparative Religion, etc. My advice to the untrained reader is that he/she skips the more obscure passages, particularly the ones glossing foreign terms in obscure languages in which the ancient wisdom is unfortunately wrapped.

Read this work many times over, in ever-deepening excursions. Skip whatever is difficult, returning later, as a new level of understanding is reached. And enjoy the flavor of meeting strange peoples and strange gods which make no sense at all until they are decoded, as all myths and symbols must be before they are understood. The ancient myths, symbols, traditions, and religions – both Pagan and pseudo-historical like Christianity and Judaism – are really meant as enigmas to be deciphered, just as Pausanias affirms in a well-known passage I quote elsewhere.

Only by carefully collating myths and symbols with our own ones, as Strabo recommends in the above passage can we start to understand the hidden meaning and the hidden message contained in myths, just as Christ himself once said. Accept the hypothesis of Atlantis as a working hypothesis and see for yourself that it works far better in clarifying Man’s obscure past than the present theories of academics. Observe how the hypothesis of Atlantis agrees with the doctrines of all religions once they are rid of their most asphyxiating dogmas and preconceptions and their fairy-tale assumptions of never-neverlands in heaven or under the ground.

The only essential thing to keep in mind for the decoding of myths is the fact that things mythical are always metaphorical and always subtle. Moreover, myths are based on “fuzzy logic”, and must be handled accordingly. Heroes are usually the personifications of whole groups of people, whereas females normally impersonate their homelands. Thus, the Great Mother is Atlantis-Eden, whereas the Twins are the two main races of Atlantis, the Aryans and the Dravidas.

When some of the classical myths say, “Egypt”, “Syria” or “Phoenicia” they invariably mean somewhere else. And this “somewhere else” is normally located in the opposite hemisphere, the Far East, which is, in every detail, the mirror image of the Western Hemisphere, its antipodes. But mythical metaphors, like the symbolic ones, are normally difficult and far from obvious, for subtlety is the name of the game. Ancient people had no TV and other such gadgets and hence used their brains in order to amuse themselves in the palaces, after having sated their appetites for sex and food. In fact, they had no fiction proper, all their epics and novels being indeed initiatic in character, and hence begging to be deciphered, in contrast to modern fiction, where the stories on books and TV only serve as anodyne pastimes leading nowhere.

 

Aristotle on the Pythagoreans

In the above translation of Aristotle, we rendered the Greek Gaia as “land”, rather than the more usual “earth” of other translations in order to avoid confusion. Gaia and chthon meant “land” in Greek, as contrasted to “sea” or “sky”. The term also applied to Gaia, the goddess who was the wife of Ouranos and the mother of the Titans. The word also meant “dirt”, as in gaiophagos (“that eats dirt”) or gaiophanes (“having the appearance of dirt”). Only in modern times was the term extended to name the planet Earth. Gaia, the goddess, the wife of Ouranos, in fact personified the Eastern Hemisphere, just as Ouranos personified the other world-half, the Western Hemisphere.

This dualism is of extreme antiquity. It can be seen in the ancient traditions of peoples far, far older than the Greeks. In Egypt, the counterparts of Gaia and Ouranos are named Nut (“Sky”) and Geb (“Earth”), their sexes having been reversed for initiatic reasons. In Polynesia, the divine couple was identified with Rangi and Papa, the parents of both gods and mortals. But all these divine pairs ultimately derived from the Hindu traditions that date from the Rig Veda. In the Vedas, this primordial couple is named Dyaus and Prithivi. Prithivi is “the Wide Earth”, the very archetype of Gaia. Dyaus is his Celestial dual and counterpart. Dyaus is also called Varuna, from which the name of Ouranos derives (Warunas > Warunos > Wuranos > Ouranos).

Varuna is often identified with the Ocean (Oceanus), the eastern world half being mainly watery (the Pacific Ocean). The Rig Veda, just like the other mythologies, including the Greek one (Hesiod’s myth of Gaia and Ouranos insistently tells of the separation of Earth and Sky. In fact what this myth tells is the story of the pristine partition of the Earth into two world halves, one (Eastern) reserved for the Titans and the other (Western) for the Gods with whom the Greeks identified themselves.

We comment on this myth in detail elsewhere, and the reader interested in further details is directed thereto. More than a fable, however, this myth is telling an actual event that took place in the dawn of times shortly after the War of Atlantis. In Greek mythology, this event is mythified as the War of the Gods and the Titans (Titanomachia) which Plato specifically equates with the War of Atlantis.

In the Bible, the event is referred to as “the partition of the earth that took place in the times of Peleg and Jochtan”. Peleg means “division” or “divided”, whereas Jochtan means “Dwarf” in Hebrew. Actually, this myth is a direct translation from Hindu sources such as the myth of Vamana and Bali. Vamana, the Dwarf, is the fifth avatar of Vishnu. Bali is the giant ruler of the Titans (Danavas). Vishnu defeated Bali and confined him and his Titans to the Netherworld. Very clearly, this war of the Gods and the Titans (or Giants) is the counterpart and archetype of the Greek one just mentioned. Bali is often equated with the Serpent Shesha, the King of the Nagas.

As Serpent Shesha, the king of the Nagas. As such he is that Ancestral Serpent, the Serpent of Eden, Rahab, cleft in two halves by Jahveh. In other words, he is the same as Peleg (“Divided”), and this name is again a cryptic reference to the primordial division of Earth and Sky that we just discussed. And, as we just said, the legends – both extremely ancient and universal – all refer to actual facts that took place at the dawn of times, shortly after the terrible War of Atlantis.

The Gods – i. e., the “Greeks” or Whites and the Devas or Titans – that is, the Dravidas and Vedic Aryans – decided to partition the world in two halves, each isolated from the other. Each moiety was to be confined to its own world-half, in order to avoid the unending wars that invariably occurred whenever they came in contact. And this separation worked till relatively recent times when the whites decided to break the ancient compact and sent Columbus and his men in order to “Christianize” the “New World”.

So, in every way, the New World – both in the Far East (the East Indies) and in the Far West (the West Indies) was the Antichthon, the Antipodes, the other World-half, sometimes equated to Heaven (Paradise) sometimes to Hell or Hades. Kronos (Saturn or Hades) ruled there, just as Yama did in Hindu myths. And Kronos, the ruler of the Titans is no other than the Titan Atlas, the King of Atlantis. He is also the same as Poseidon or Ouranos as replicas and counterparts of the Vedic Varuna, their true archetype of a myriad names.

And, we insist, all these myths ultimately tell the story of Atlantis and its demise in the primordial cataclysm that resulted from the Great War, which ended up causing the end of the world (almost) and the return to the Stone Age that happened with the drastic end of the Pleistocene Ice Age. In Appendix I we provide links to Perseus Project’s site, where the main Greek and Latin references to Vesta and Hestia are provided, along with Commentaries and glosses to terms related to the two goddesses who were, in Greece and Rome, the personifications of the Central Fire itself.

As the present text renders clear, we hope, the Central Fire was itself the representation of Atlantis-Eden as the site of Paradise destroyed by Fire and Water. As such, it turned into the Cosmic Egg, itself a replica of the Cosmic Fire at the exact center of the earth of which the Pythagoreans spoke in their doctrines. But these Pythagorean doctrines – which in part passed into Platonism and Neo-Platonism, as well as Orphism and Mithraism – is indeed a version of Mazdeism, in turn a trend of Hinduism emphasizing the worship of the Fire. In the Vedas, the Cosmic Egg and the Cosmic Fire, so obscure in Greco-Roman traditions, becomes the Hiranyagarbha, the Golden Embryo (or Egg) from which all things sprung. In the Vedas, the Hiranya Garbha is also called Vena, whose birth from the Primeval Ocean evokes the one of the Thunderbirds. The Hiranya Garbha is also the Khasma Mega of which Hesiod and others spoke. It is the sacred bosom of the Great Mother, full of fire, like the ones of Hestia and Vesta.

 

The Real Meaning of Antichthon, the “Earth Opposite”

The Greek word chthon usually means the underworld. Chthonia was the name given Demeter (Ceres), the Great Mother of the Greeks and Romans. Demeter personified. Hades as the Realm of the Dead. She was one and the same as Persephone (or Kore) said to be her daughter, but indeed herself reborn anew. As Persephone, she was the wife of Hades, the ruler of the infernal regions. Literally, the subterranean Realm of the Dead lay Underneath the Earth, directly in the antipodes, underneath our feet, precisely as claimed in the ancient traditions on Antichthon.

Chthonia (or Chthon) later came to designate the whole earth. But the term originally meant the Western Hemisphere inhabited by the Greek (the “Gods”) in contrast with Antichthon, the Counter-Earth that was the other world-half which e commented above. Chtonia (or Demeter) was also identified with Pomona, Hecate and Tisiphone, also queens of the infernal regions, in the underground. ^[1]

As we just saw, Antichthon was indeed Atlantis as the Realm of the Dead. As such, it was located at our antipodes, in the opposite hemisphere of the earth. In ancient traditions, Antichthon was supposed to lie either in the lower hemisphere (southern) or the Eastern hemisphere, both of which were more or less antipodal to Greece.

Failure to understand the ancient traditions has led many specialists to believe that the Pythagorean Antichton was indeed a “counter-earth”, a planet directly opposite the earth in its orbit around the sun. but this was an illusion, a mistake that was actually encouraged by the Pythagorean in order to confuse the profanes that attempted to interpret their secret doctrines.

In fact, terms such as Antichthon, Antoeci, Antipodes, Antilia, Antarctica, Terra Australis, Apeira or Epeira, Peirata Ges, and others such were more or less synonymous, designating “the land opposite”, the antipodes the opposite hemisphere to the Oikomene or Perioeci, that was the known region inhabited by known people, in the ancient world.

We treat this subject elsewhere in detail, with the traditional information and the maps that illustrate the concept, which is found in most traditions, including the Judeo-Christian one. Anti means “counter”, “opposite” in both Greek and Latin. It also expresses the idea of “placed before” (ante). “placed opposite”. Chthon, as we just explained means “Land”, “earth” in the sense of country or continent. Oeci is the Latin rendering of the Greek oikos (pl. oikoi) meaning “abode”, “home”, “country”, “homeland”.

Oikoumene (subtended: ge = “earth”) was “the inhabited earth”, that is, the world known to the ancients. Mene expresses the idea of “firm”, “steady”, in contrast to the land of the opposite hemisphere that sunk down (Atlantis). Antipodes means “opposite feet”, describing the people that live on the opposite side of the world, upside down in relation to us. Antilia (or Antillia) means “the island opposite”, or, more exactly, “the continent opposite”, in Latin.

Antarctica derives from the Greek, meaning “opposite to the Bear”, that is, the North Star. Peirata Ges was the fabled land that outlay the Ocean in its perimeter (peira), surrounding (or “containing”) it. Plato refers to its as “the true continent” that lay beyond Atlantis. People believe that this is proof that Atlantis indeed lay between Europe and America.

Nothing could be more false than that. Plato was reporting Far Eastern traditions which indeed refer to the other side of the world. In other words, Plato’s geography was absolutely right. Beyond Gibraltar, one traveled east, to India and Indonesia (Atlantis).

Going further, through many islands (Polynesia and Melanesia) one reached the true continent (America) that indeed encompasses the ocean, dividing it between the Pacific and Atlantic. Epeira is derived from peiro, that is “to surround”, “to encompass”, to “delimit”.

Hence, the Americas were the fabled land that encompassed the ocean, which in turn encompassed the known land, the Oikoumene. Actually, the word Oceanus (Latin Oceanus, Greek Okeanos) means precisely “world encompassing”. It is derived from the Greek aśayana, meaning the same.

So, the pristine conceptions of the kosmos, the world, actually embodied an advanced description of the earth as it actually appeared to sailors circumnavigating its globe. Going either towards the east, as Vasco da Gama did, or west, as Columbus did, one eventually reached the impassable barrier of the Americas, the limit, the end, the “encompassing land” or true continent (as the container of the waters of the ocean).

Now, no ancient people that we know of could ever have accomplished the feat of circumnavigating the earth’s globe, except the one which we only hear in the ancient legends and traditions going back to the dawn of Mankind. Where else but Atlantis could ever have performed that deed that was so utterly beyond the capabilities of all known nations of antiquity?

How could the ancients have known of the existence of an impassable barrier dividing the oceans and serving as its outer limit everywhere except by actually exploring this boundary fully, attempting to find a passage across it somewhere? This barrier is mentioned not only in Plato’s description of Atlantis’ whereabouts but also in Homer and in even older traditions elsewhere. And the ancients also knew of the narrow passage now known as Magellan Strait between the mysterious Terra Australis and the Americas, as disclosed by Pigafetta, the pilot of Magellan’s fleet. ^[2]

Terra Australis literally means “Southern Land” in Latin. The name is synonymous with Terra Antarctica. It figured, almost invariably, in the ancient maps of Classical antiquity and of the Age of Navigation, in the Renaissance. Apeira means “limitless”, “unlimited”. It is a wordplay with Epeira, “the Limiting Land”. The word also expresses the idea of “impassable”, “impenetrable”(a-peira).

Hence, it also alludes to the Americas as the impassable barrier (apeira) encircling (epeira) the ocean on all sides, both via the east and the west. As with all esoteric terminology, the actual meaning of both the Apeira and the Epeira Ges was the subject of many erudite discussions among philosophers of all times. ^[3]

Anyway, Hesiod, in the passage just mentioned, refers that in Hades are located the limits (peirata) of Earth and Sky and Hell, the “three worlds” (tribhuvana) of the ancient Hindus. Hades is the Hole, the Khasma Mega at the center of the earth that corresponds to the sunken Atlantis. “Earth” (Gaia) corresponds to the Western Hemisphere (the Old World), whereas the Americas are Heaven (Ouranos), the Eastern Hemisphere. The Khasma Mega separates the two world halves, as we mentioned further above, separating Earth and Sky.

In Egyptian religion, Shu (“Atmosphere”) is the principle that separates Earth and Sky (Heb and Nut). More exactly, the name of Shu means “emptiness”, “void”. In other words, Shu, the atmospheric god of the ancient Egyptians personifies the Khasma Mega itself. The role of Shu corresponds to the Antariksha, the “Intermediate Space” of Vedic traditions, the separation between Earth and Sky (Dyaus and Prithivi). ^[4]

The Khaos (or Khasma Mega) of Greek traditions has often been compared to the Ginnungagap, the “Magic Void” (or “Great Abyss”) of Nordic Cosmogony. The Ginnungagap separated Nifelheim, “the icy, nebulous region”, from Muspelheim, “the abode of fire”. In the dawn of the world, Odin raised the Earth, perhaps from the Sea (or the Sky (?)) here represented as the Ginnungagap.

Humanity, and indeed all Creation, sprung from the earth then. At the end of times, the earth will again sink into the Ginnungagap. This myth closely corresponds to the Egyptian one of the Primeval Mound (the Earth) being raised by Ra or Ptah from inside the Primordial Abyss, the Num. And it also evokes Nut (Heaven) being raised by Shu from above Geb (Earth).

This myth derives from the one of Varaha, the Boar, the avatar of Vishnu who fetches the Earth from the abyss, effecting Creation. As is clear, all these myths allegorize the rise of Atlantis-Eden, the Primordial Land (“Earth”) from beneath the seas, in the dawn of times and, more exactly, at the end of the Eemian Interglacial some 120 kya.

Sea level again dropped with the return of the Ice Age, and Atlantis-Eden rose from the waters where it would again sink, when the Ice Age ended some 11,6 kya (kiloyears ago). Since these myths are just about universal, they can only date from before the diaspora of humanity from that common center which is no other than Paradise, the site of actual Creation.

Hence, these traditions predate the Flood and the end of Atlantis, which occurred at the above date of 11,6 kya, and which sent Mankind in a diaspora to all the other regions of the earth. And they probably extend back to 120 kya, when Atlantis in fact rose from the waters, as she is fated to do again sometime soon, as all traditions predict. Again, since the ancient myths are accurate descriptions of reality and tell real events in poetic language that is uncannily accurate, the only alternative left to us is to accept the reality of Atlantis-Eden.

How else can we explain the fact that the ancient myths so perfectly correspond to reality? How could anyone guess so perfectly the events that led to Mankind’s origin – which in fact occurred just in the way described in myths such as the above – except either guessing it from the paleoanthropological record or remembering it from the start, from the actual experience?

But who can believe that Man’s memory can stretch to the primordials of Homo sapiens sapiens (Modern human beings) some 120 kya? The ability to correctly guess from the geological record – something we have barely been able to start to do so far, but the ancients knew fully well – implies a highly evolved civilization, perhaps of a level superior to our own. But the only alternative then is Atlantis. What else?

Who does indeed believe in the wild fairy tales such as those concerning Astronaut Gods and such? These are merely Sci-Fi novels, pleasant to read, perhaps, but nothing else than fiction. And what about God or the Gods, and Creation? Of course, this is indeed a possibility, believed by all or most.

Who is to say – let alone prove – that the events told in Genesis and other mythologies did not actually take place by God’s command? And if so, why not in the way all Cosmogonies tell us, which differs in form and poetic images used, by which are all extremely coherent and factual?

The main things wrong with Creationism are the absurdly recent date of 4,004 BC that they allow the Edenic events and the asphyxiating literal interpretation they give to the poetic images, the metaphors and the allegories which fill the Biblical relate. The ancients loved this kind of intellectual divertissement, of games of skill that forced one to muse on the serendipitous events that led to Man’s origin in Eden, long ago, in the dawn of times, rather than at the verge of human civilization, a scant 6,000 years ago.

The best exegetes and the most qualified theologians have long abandoned the foolishness of attempting to interpret the Bible and even the Gospels literally. They have accepted the fact that much if not all of these sacred narratives are in fact metaphorical. Metaphors for what, pray? For nothing but the truth, the beautiful, unbelievable but true events that led to the birth of humanity 120 kya ago, in Eden, precisely as the Bible tells us.

That the Earth and Sky (Gaia and Ouranos) of Greek (and other) traditions are not what we mean by these terms today but, rather, the two hemispheres – East and West or North and South is proved by many facts whose discussion does not fit the theme of the present work.

“Heaven” designated “Paradise” and, more exactly, the Terrestrial Paradise that lay in the opposite hemisphere than ours. It later became Hell after its destruction, the Land of the Dead that, as everybody knows lies under the earth, at our antipodes. When “Heaven”, Paradise was destroyed, it became an ideal only, a metaphor, and was transferred to the Celestial sphere, the third abode. In Homer (Il. 17:425, Od. 3:2, etc.), Heaven is a solid hemisphere made of bronze or steel, precisely like Hades.

Hesiod (Theog. 126-8) tells how: “Earth first bore starry Heaven identical to herself and covering herself all around to be forever the abode of the blest immortals”. This passage of Hesiod clearly refers to a time when the Southern Hemisphere was considered “up” (as it was originally).

So the “Earth”, the nether hemisphere, was in fact covered all around by “Sky”, the other hemisphere that lay on top and was identical to herself. This world-half served as the abode of the Gods, the immortal, semi-divine Atlanteans. Between the two hemispheres, separating them, lay the Khaos, the Khasma Mega, and the Ginnungagap (or “Gaping Abyss”) of the ancients.

 

Hestia or Vesta as the Personification of the Central Fire

The goddess Hestia of the ancient Greeks was the counterpart of Vesta, the fire goddess of the ancient Romans. In more ways than one, the goddess Hestia (or Vesta) can be considered a replica of the Central Fire. In fact, the very name of the goddess means “fireplace”.

But this seems to be a derived etymon since the experts agree that the word itself has no known etymology. According to Junito Brandão, the word has been approached to the Irish feiss meaning “dwelling”, the Goth. wisan meaning “to stay, remain” and the Skt. vasati (“he stays”), as well as the Greek aule (“free space, residence”). These are perhaps to be approached by the Eng. “house” and the Germ. haus.

We prefer, instead, to stick to the idea of “fire” or “fireplace”, attested in Greek. And we think the word is related not only to the Arcadian Fistias (with the digamma) and the Skt. vas meaning “shiny, bright, luminous”. This radix gives rise to words such as Vasanta (Spring, as “the bright season”), Vasu (the gods as “the luminous ones”) and Vastu (Dawn).

This radix is also related to ush, as in the name of Ushas (Aurora) the goddess of dawn. In other words, it seems that Vesta and Hestia are indeed the same as Ushas, that is, Dawn personified as a goddess. More exactly, Dawn is the goddess of the Orient, as “the place where the sun is born”. And these roots are in turn distantly related to Aurora, whose original form was Ausosa, according to experts.

In fact, the name of Hestia and the one of Vesta both apparently derive from the Dravida, as we now argue in the below footnote. So does, apparently the one of Hephaistos, some sort of male counterpart of Hestia, in their connection with fire, the forge being the male counterpart of the domestic hearth.

If this derivation of ours indeed holds, there can be no doubt that the goddesses themselves originated in India, from Hindu doctrines. The Sanskrit radix vas meaning “shiny” is as poorly attested as its Greek counterpart, just as is the case of the other Indo-European languages in general. It seems that even this word is indeed to be derived from Dravida or, perhaps, from some other non-Indo-European family. ^[5]

In Greek religion, as in the Roman one, Hestia and Vesta were identified to the fireplace, a particularly sacred spot placed at the center of the home or the altar. There were, both in Rome and in Greece, public fireplaces that served as sanctuaries for people in distress.

Vesta was said to reside at the center of heaven, more or less like the sun resides at the center of the Solar System. This fact means that the Greeks indeed flirted with the conception of Heliocentrism several millennia before the times of Nicholas Copernicus.

But this does not imply that Vesta was indeed the sun, but merely its replica, placed at the center of the earth. In other words, Vesta was the terrestrial image of the sun, it’s double. In fact, Vesta’s residence was on top of the Mountain of Paradise, variously called Mt. Ida, Mt. Dyndimene, Mt. Olympus, and so on. And all these holy mountains were indeed replicas of Mt. Atlas, the Pillar of Heaven. Mt. Atlas was indeed the Central Pillar around which the earth and the skies whirled, like the planets around the sun.

This type of symbolism is particularly clear in Hindu traditions concerning Mt. Meru. In fact, Mt. Meru was not only the Center, but also the link between heaven and earth on one side, and between earth and hell, on the other one. And Mt. Meru also was the volcano which embodied the Central Fire, the one the Hindus associate with the Vadavamukha, the Fire of Doomsday which destroys the world at the end of the eras, when all things must be renewed and purified by fire.

The goddess Hestia (Vesta) was the very personification of fire and ranged among the twelve Olympians. More exactly, Hestia and Vesta personified the Central Fire. Hence, their central position was in Mt. Olympus, where the goddess stayed put on her throne, whereas all other gods whirled around this center. In Rome, Vesta’s cult was conducted by the Pontifex Maximus himself.

In this, he was assisted by six or ten Vestals (or “Virgins of Vesta”). According to tradition, the cult of Vesta was introduced in Rome by Aeneas himself, who apparently brought it from Troy, whence he originally came, when the famous city was destroyed in the Great War.

Vesta was the firstborn of Kronos-Saturn, the husband of Rhea. This fact, coupled with her virginity symbolizes the fact that the Great Mother was indeed the source and origin of Civilization itself, in contrast to the other nations, which were inseminated so to say, by the other ones.

In antiquity, the fireplace was considered the focus of the home, the place where all gathered in order to warm themselves, talk, pray, etc.. The domestic fireplace was soon extended to the whole city and to the temples, where they were associated with the altars dedicated to the fire gods and goddesses. And the fiery altar was itself a replica of the volcano which symbolized the site of Paradise, which it ended up destroying.

When colonists emigrated to find a new city, they took along a sample of the original fire, which was deemed to be the source of life and protection against harms of all sorts. The fireplace thus became the central place of the home, much as it would later become the central fire of the city itself. In time it also became a sanctuary, and finally the temple of the goddess who herself impersonated the Primordial Land, the one of Paradise. The city had a communal fireplace that acted as a central place of congregation and of prayer for the common good of all. Vesta was invoked both at the start and the end of all sacrifices, perhaps because the goddess indeed was the archetype of the Great Sacrifice itself.

Vesta was usually represented holding a sort of ladle (simpulum) full of water in one hand, and a staff in the other one. Sometimes, the ladle was substituted by a lamp of similar shape and full of oil. The lamp is of course a symbol of the volcano which destroyed the site of Paradise. The spoon served to pour libations and the staff as a support. In fact, her worship invariably involved the pouring of libations in her honor. The simpulum of Vesta was used by the Pontifex Maximus in order to pour libations for the goddess. And this object is the Roman equivalent of the Holy Grail, itself often identified with a ladle, particularly in Hindu traditions on the Elixir. Libations are an ancient version of the ritual of Baptism.

And the sacrament of Baptism is itself a ritual imitation of the Flood, as disclosed by St. Jerome and other doctors of the Church, as we comment elsewhere. The staff in turn represents the Pillar of Heaven, the one in which the sky supports itself. In an alternative symbolism, the staff represents the castrated phallus of Agdistis and others such, as itself a replica of the castrated Pillar of Heaven. In fact, the palladium also represents the phallus, so that the two objects, the palladium and the staff – often represented by two staffs, two palladiums, two serpents, etc., represent the twin phalluses of the twin guardians, whoever they may be. In Rome, the two correspond to Romulus and Remus, the local version of the Twins of all mythologies. In Greece, they are Castor and Pollux or Hercules and Atlas. In India, they are the Ashvin twins. In Egypt, they are Horus and Seth, and so on.

Fig. XXX – Hestia and Demeter
(My files, from Internet’s Theoi and Perseus sites)

Vesta also wears, in the usual renditions, a loose dress (peplos) which both disguises her figure and renders it somewhat similar to a mountain. The mountain is of course Mt. Atlas, and the disguise brings out the connection with the Veiled One, the Sulamite of Judeo-Christian traditions, herself an alias of Atlantis-Eden. Mystic doctrines, widening the symbolism of the goddess made her a replica of the Central Fire said to be burning at the very center of the earth. This Central Fire is often confused with the sun itself, though it is indeed the other sun, the Terrestrial one said to burn somewhere underneath the earth, at its very center.

In the above figure, Hestia is shown enthroned, at the side of Demeter. The goddess holds her usual attributes, the thyrsus, and the tambourine. As we discuss further below, the tambourine represents the flat, round earth of Paradise and its destruction by the earthquake that caused it to shake and rumble with a terrifying noise. The thyrsus is the usual attribute of Dionysos, here ascribed to the goddess who, in a way, is some sort of his feminine alias and counterpart.

The goddess is seated over a leopard’s skin, another usual attribute of Dionysos. In fact, the skin represents the former avatar of the goddess, the old skin she “sloughed off”, so to say. Hestia was one of the twelve Olympians, the supreme deities of the Greeks. But Hestia is said to have renounced her Olympian position in favor of Dionysos, of whom she seems to be the feminine counterpart, as we just said. The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (20-24) affirms that Hestia refusing the pleasures of Aphrodite, was given by Zeus a central place in Olympus, one which reflected her central place in all homes:

She, that fair goddess [Hestia], sware a great oath which has in truth been fulfilled, that she would be a maiden all her days. So Zeus, the Father, gave her [Hestia] a high honor instead of marriage, and she has her place in the midst of the house and has the richest portion. In all the temples of the gods she has a share of honor, and among all mortal men, she is chief of the goddesses.

First introduced in Lavinia, the cult of Vesta was moved to Alba Longa by Ascanius, his son, and thence to Rome itself by Numa Pompilius, who erected a temple to Vesta near the city. The temple had no statue of the goddess. Instead, it had at the center a perpetual fire that represented Vesta herself. The temple was circular in shape and was said to represent a replica of the world itself (Ovid, Fast. 6:295-8). Other authorities affirm that the cult of Vesta was introduced in Rome by Romulus. But this view presents some difficulties, as the circular temple was placed outside the city proper, the urbs were attributed to the son of Mars.

The goddess Vesta or Hestia was said to have been extremely beautiful and to have been courted by Priapus, Apollo and Neptune. But she preferred to remain a virgin, a gift granted her by Zeus himself. The Vestals, her priestesses, were also vowed to perpetual virginity. Their function was to keep the fire of Vesta always burning in her temple. This temple served, according to Fustel de Coulanges, as the place of congregation of the citizens, as some sort of communal residence. Cicero (De Leg. 2:12) refers to it as Vesta quasi focus urbis (‘Vesta’s temple, a sort of focus (or fireplace) of the city”).

In another passage of the same work (2:8), the eminent author affirms that: Virgines Vestales custodiunto ignem foci publici sempiternum (“It is incumbent on the Vestal virgins to keep the flame of the public fireplace burning forever”). Horace calls the Vestals: virgines sanctae (“sacred virgins”). And Cicero repeats the same idea, calling their ministry, sanctissimum sacerdotium (“most sacred priesthood”). According to tradition, the college of the Vestals was created even before the foundation of the city of Rome itself. The mother of Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of the city of Rome was Rhea Silvia, a Vestal virgin. She was impregnated by Mars in what became the standard “virgin conception”.

The association of Hestia-Vesta with volcanoes and with the Central Fire is also supported by a different reason which we now comment on, and which is connected with the fact that the temples of the goddess invariably had a round form reminiscent of the one of Atlantis. In ancient Greece and Rome, the homes of the peasants and other such commoners were round, as they still are today in some places. The reason is that they imitated the volcano which was both their torment and their source of wealth and happiness, just like the ambivalent goddess.

In these homes, the fireplace was also the stove for cooking and the altar for offering burnt sacrifices. The fireplace occupied a central position in the home and hence imitated the Central Fire. As we already pointed out, this type of residence was common in several places, for instance in the teepees and hogans of the North American Indians. The roofs of these cabins had a hole at the center in order to let out the smoke. This rendered them even more like a volcano, not by accident, but by design. The family gathered around the fireplace for its prayers, conversation, entertainment, and so on. So, the fireplace was the literal focus of the household.

And since fire was so difficult to obtain, the fire burning there was indeed a perpetual fire like the one which burnt in the temples of the fire-goddess. The city was a replica, on a larger scale, of the family, and its fireplace corresponded to the one at home, serving as the religious center of the public activities. The fireplace of the Prytaneum was built upon the ancient fireplace of the king’s palace. It served as a sanctuary for suppliants, a place for the reception of foreign emissaries, and as the source of fire for all sorts of activities, both public and domestic.

The temple of Delphian Apollo – which was considered the Center of the World and which housed the omphalos which symbolized this fact, as the “navel of the world” – had within itself an altar to Hestia, the fire-goddess, with an eternal flame burning on it. The fireplace of Hestia, in Delphi, was said to occupy the exact center of the flat, circular plate of the earth’s disk placed under the dome of heaven. This shape corresponds to the one of her temple in Rome, as shown in the golden coin shown in Fig. XXX below. This fire was also associated with the omphalos, a replica of the volcano of Paradise imitated by the shape of Delphi’s omphalos.

The domestic fireplaces of the homes were likewise called mesomphalos (“central navel”). So, the temple of Delphian Apollo, with its circular shape, its omphalos and its perpetual fire replicated the shape of the earth itself. More exactly, this circular form imitated the Flat Earth, the one of Paradise destroyed by its Holy Mountain, the volcano equated with the Pillar of Heaven, the one which supported the sky at the center. And the “navel of the earth” is indeed the Vadavamukha, the mundus which leads down, into the netherworld below. In fact, the word “navel” is a euphemism for “vagina”, the mundus being indeed the earth’s vagina, the Cosmic Yoni which is the dual and counterpart of the Cosmic Phallus.

In antiquity, popular opinion espoused the idea that the earth consisted of a flat circular plate, perhaps of metal underneath, and topped by the celestial dome, itself of a transparent metal or, more exactly, of crystal or diamond. This idea survived down to modern times until the notion was dispelled by the finds of navigators such as Magellan, Columbus, and Vasco da Gama. Of course, the intellectuals well knew its shape to be spherical, a fact stated by Plato and by Ptolemy, among many ancient authorities. The flat plate of the earth was surrounded all around by the ocean, which prevented the waters from spilling over the edges. In the times of Plutarch, these ideas still survived in several traditions. ^[6]

The Table of the Sun where oblations of food were offered to the poor was named hestia in Greek. This table offered, Plutarch says, “a perfect replica of the earth itself”. Interestingly enough, these tables had only three feet instead of four. In other words, they were tripods, which often served the same purpose, including the sacrificial ones. In fact, the tripod represented the earth with its four pillars, of which one collapsed, letting the sky fall down and destroy the earth. More usually, the four feet corresponded to the Four Pillars of the Earth, with the fifth, central one collapsed and hence missing. All these traditions are directly connected with one of the Pillars of Hercules and/or of Atlas, as we explain in detail elsewhere.

The symbolism of the tripod is Oriental in origin and dates from the remotest epochs. Tripods were very common in China and the Far East in general, and often served the purpose of holding the fire. As such, they are directly associated with Atlantis. And the tradition is thus seen to have originated in the east, where it is far older than either Greece or Rome. The shape and central location of Hestia’s altars in ancient Greece demonstrate the fact that these people supposed the existence of a central fire on the disk of the earth.

This fire, origin, and source of all things, was itself represented by Hestia, the very personification of the Central Fire which burnt at the very center of the earth, perpetually, even when unattended. In fact, Hestia represented the earth. More exactly, the goddess represented the Flat Earth of Paradise, as well as the fire that burned at its center, the sacred volcano. In Greece, the Prytaneum, the temples where the fire of Vesta was kept burning, were circular edifices not unlike the round temples of Vesta in Rome. As T. H. Martin affirms:

The fireplace of Delphi was reputed to occupy, on the flat, circular surface of the earth, and under the dome of the sky, a place similar to the one which the domestic fireplace called, for the same reason, mesomphalos, occupied at the center of the roof of the primitive homes in Greece. In the temple of Delphi, next to the sacred fireplace, was placed the omphalos, which supposedly marked the exact center of the earth… It [the temple of Delphi] formed an image of the flat, circular earth, having the fire of Hestia at the center of its surface, with the dome of heaven above itself.

As we show further below, these temples were topped by a circular dome or roof which was supported by a series of pillars. These pillars – often four, but sometimes more – indeed represented the Pillars of Earth. More exactly, they stood of the Pillars of Hercules and the ones of Atlas. In other words, the prytaneums and the round temples of Hestia-Vesta represented Atlantis, and its very peculiar shape, precisely the one given by Plato. The Central Fire stood for the Pillar of Heaven at the center of Paradise, the one which collapsed and became a fiery pit, the giant caldera associated with the fire of the goddess, as well as with Hell itself.

Euripides tells us that “the earth, mother of all things, is called Hestia by the sages, and sits over the aether” (fragm. cited by Macrobius, Sat. 1:23:8). Aristotle affirms essentially the same thing in his De Mundo (2: 27). So, the identification of Hestia and Vesta with the earth is not a late invention of the Greek philosophers, but one that dates from the earliest epochs. The notion derived from Orphic and Pythagorean doctrines of the type we discuss further below.

An Orphic Hymn (84:13) affirms that: “Hestia, royal daughter of the mighty Kronos, inhabits the central abode of eternal fire, the seat of the almighty gods, which is also the solid support of the home of the mortals”. The seat of the gods is Mt. Olympus itself, here seen to be a volcanic peak, in contrast to its many replicas existing in Greece. This confirms our identification of Mt. Olympus with Mt. Meru, the sacred mountain of the Hindus as well with Mt. Ida, the one of the Trojans, both of which were indeed volcanic in nature.

The symbolism of Hestia kept on growing with time in both Orphism and Pythagoreanism. It soon becomes far more that the Flat Earth and its Central Fire. It becomes the source of all life, the very center of the Universe. The golden throne of Hestia is the pivot around which all things whirl, the eternal axis of the universe itself. “Hestia – says Plato in his Phaedrus (247a) – alone rests, while all gods whirl around in their abode”. Hestia is hence the earth, placed at the center of the cosmos, around which the stars and the planets whirl.

The Stoics affirmed that Hestia was a virgin because in her immobility conception became impossible, as all things originate from motion. The Pythagoreans, for instance Philolaos, in contrast held that the Hestia kosmou, the Cosmic fire of Hestia, was not located in the earth, which they considered as whirling around the Central Fire itself, but elsewhere, in the center of the Universe. These different conceptions of the goddess explain how she could eventually become confused with Gaea, Demeter, Cybele, etc..

And they also show that the goddess was neither the earth itself, nor the sun, nor the fire at the center of earth’s globe, but the one of the volcano placed at the center of Paradise itself the source of all things, truly the Great Mother of both the Gods and the Humans. How could the humans possibly have sprung from the sun or from the center of earth’s globe or worse yet, from a focus of fire in the very center of the Universe? Instead, humans and gods are often said, by Plato and others, to have originated in Mt. Ida, the Greek counterpart of Mt. Meru.

By the way, the whirling of the world around Hera’s golden throne – itself a clear allegory of the volcanic peak shedding its golden magma – closely evokes the doctrines concerning Mt. Meru as the every center of the earth and of the universe. This conception is essentially universal, a fact that attests the extreme antiquity of the sacred tradition. The Navajo Indians of North America tell of the Whirling Mountain around which the cosmos revolves, and which is also the seat of Paradise.

The Christians place Mt. Golgotha, in many ways the Holy Mountain of Paradise, at the very center of the earth and the cosmos. They even affirms that stat crux dum volvitur orbis (“the Cross remains stationary, while the earth revolves”). These words closely evoke the ones of Plato concerning Hestia and her golden throne, perhaps a replica of the Cross itself, the Seat Perilous of Arthurian traditions. It is clear that these universal traditions can only date back to the times of Paradise itself, the source of all humans.

Otherwise, how could some humans – the American Indians, for instance – have learnt the common tradition wherever it originally developed? In other words, the traditions on the whirling Holy Mountain and its Central Fire could hardly have reached the Americas in prehistoric times, since its civilizations became utterly separated from the ones of the Old World at the end of the Pleistocene, when the Bering passage became forever closed, preventing any further contact?

So, these traditions necessarily antedate the universal diaspora of the catastrophic end of the Pleistocene which sent humans in all directions, isolating them since that epoch. Now, this date closely corresponds to the one of Atlantis’ demise, some 11,600 years ago, according to Plato. Or does anyone have any alternative explanation for this puzzling fact, beyond the unscientific one of “universal archetypes” given by Eliade and Jung and for that matter, by Plato as well?

Anyone who studies the myth of Hestia and Vesta with due care, will not fail to see its intrinsic identity with the similar traditions of the Navajos, the Hindus, the Christians, the Orphics, the Pythagoreans, and so on. The goddess represents the Central Fire, whose personification is late and unimportant, being purely allegorical in character. More exactly, the goddess personifies the land of Paradise, its Holy Mountain, and the volcanism that destroyed it in the dawn of time.

The myth may well be a fiction, an invention of someone. But the problem remains, and cannot be solved except by the very hypothesis that Paradise indeed existed as the original focus of Mankind and its many civilizations which, according to experts, evolve in utter isolation from one another. The myth could only have been spread by diffusion. And diffusion requires close contact, if it is not to be attributed to divine intervention. So, how in hell could the ancients have diffused the myth of the Central Fire all the way to the Americas and Oceania, and so forth? A superior civilization mastering oceanic navigation? Atlantis? What else?

 

The Antiquity of the Cult of Vesta

The antiquity of the tradition in question here is also attested by the fact that the same cult of the Sacred Fire also existed in Peru, with the Incas. The sacred fire was kept by virgin priestesses who were, as in Rome, condemned to death in case they betrayed their sacred virginity vow. And in both cases the death sentence was carried in the same atrocious way: the culprits were buried alive, with their partners also killed by whipping or some such brutal method.

As in Rome, the Peruvian vestals lived in a convent, wore veils, were picked from the aristocratic families, and were vowed to perpetual virginity and to the care of the sacred fire. They were considered brides of the sun god, and their sacred fire could only be lit by the sun itself, by means of lenses and focusing mirrors. There can be no doubt whatsoever that the two traditions originated in one and the same place, just as was the case of the Whirling Mountain and its Central Fire in the middle of the world.

In Rome, the very stability of the city depended on that priesthood, just as it did in Peru. If the fire failed, Rome would fall. The Vestals lived inside a great monastery (Atrium Vestae) under the authority of the Virgo Vestalis Maxima. They dressed in a white tunic, decorated with purple embroidery, their heads being covered by a veil (suffibulum) that went down to their shoulders. During their feat, the Vestalia, the virgins prepared the mola salsa, a sacred bread or cake which was distributed in Holy Communion.

The Vestals were also charged with the lustrations performed with the cinders and the blood of the October Equus, the “Horse of October”. These rites evoke the Hindu ones of the aśvamedha (or “horse sacrifice”) and some such Tantric rituals. In fact, all similar burnt sacrifices evoke the terrible events associated with the fall of Atlantis in the Great Sacrifice of Fire and Water which took place in the Flood, at the dawn of the present era.

The perpetual fire of the Vestals corresponds to the perpetual one that is made to burn in the Christian churches and in the Jewish synagogues. It represented some sort of palladium, and embodied an unspeakable secret according to Livy (Ab Ur. Cond. 26:27): conditum in penetrali fatale pignus romani imperii (“hidden within Vesta’s sanctuary is the emblem granted by Fate to the Roman empire”). Cicero confirms this idea (Fil. 11:10): quo saluo, saluis sumus futuri (“this saved, we will also be saved for the future”).

The Vestals were six in number, and were picked from among twenty girls picked from the aristocratic families of Rome. Numa was the first to choose the Vestals, a right originally reserved to the king. With the expulsion of the kings from Rome, this duty fell to the Pontifex Maximus. The girls were picked when they had from six to ten years of age. They had to be perfect of health and of beauty, as well as a proper conduct. After their choice, they were liberated from parental authority, had their hair cut and assumed the dress characteristic of their office. They served for thirty years, after which they were discharged and could even marry if they wanted to.

Now, the number six is not coincidental at all. It has to do with the number of days in the week, the number of the Kabeiri of Phoenician traditions, of the Bacabs of Mayan traditions, and so on. In fact, it refers to the number seven, the most sacred of all, with one less. The missing element corresponds to the empty day of the week, Sunday, and to the god that is missing form the pantheons everywhere. Seven is the number of coordinates – formed by the Four Cardinal Points, plus the Center, the Above (Zenith), and the Below (Nadir). There, i each of them, reside the Seven Gods of all traditions: Cabeiri, Bacabs, Rishis, Seven Pleiades, Seven Agnis, Seven Manus, and so on. And the missing element is precisely the main one, the Central Deity, the Sun. But this Central Sun is indeed the Central Fire worshipped in the cult of Hestia-Vesta and other such sevens.

The main duty of the Vestals consisted in keeping lit the sacred fire. Its shine was deemed a good omen, just as its absence presaged the most terrible disasters to Rome. If the eternal fire went out for some reason, the fact was announced to the whole city. All activities stopped, and all gathered, the Senate included. The responsibilities were inquired, and the culprits punished most rigorously. The Vestal in charge of the fire was whipped by the flamin, the temple was expiated, and the fire was lit again, after the completion of the purificatory rituals. According to Plutarch, the Vestal fire could only be enkindled with the sun, collected by means of mirrors and lenses.

The Vestals were also charged with the keeping o the sacred, secret objects kept at the penus, the innermost sanctuary of Vesta’s temple. The word penus is related to the name of Penates or Lares, the household deities of the Romans. These were also called Lemures, a word closely reminiscent of Lemuria. In fact, the Penates are the souls of the dead ancestors, the same as the pitris (“ancestors”) of the Hindus. And these are the many dead of the fiery cataclysm that destroyed the primordial homeland of the Romans, variously called Latium, Troy, Elysium, Isles of the Blest, Mt. Ida, etc.. In fact, this place is no other than Atlantis-Eden itself.

The objects kept at the penus were stored inside a box, whose contents were never revealed. They are thought to had included the palladium, brought over from Troy by Aeneas, after the city was burnt and sacked by the Greeks. Besides the palladium itself, the closed basket may have contained meteorites such as the one of Pessinunte and the “shield of Jupiter” fallen directly from heaven. These sacred objects are the Roman counterpart of the Greek ones worshipped at the Thesmophoria and the Canephoria, which consisted in the carrying of sacred objects inside closed baskets never opened to profane eyes.

It is thought that the palladium was indeed a phallus and, more exactly, the phallus of Agdistis fallen from heaven, which we comment more in detail further below. If so, we have a direct connection with Hindu rituals involving the worship of the linga. Even more importantly, the Canephorias were connected with the Panatheneas, the pan-Greek festival of Minerva which Plato specifically connects with the fall of Atlantis and its destruction by the terrible earthquake. The Canephorias were also related to marriage rituals and probably related to the myth of Agdistis and of Attis and Cybele and, hence, with the Primordial Castration.

The girls carrying the baskets in the Canephoria were quite similar to the Caryatides, feminine Atlas figures who closely evoke the figure of the Titan himself. These feminine counterparts of Atlas probably allude to the terrible punishment of the Titan, which probably also involved his castration, though the myth is never told directly. However, the Primordial Castration of Ouranos, of Kronos and other such Titans are closely related to the Hindu myth of Shiva’s castration. And this myth is indeed an allegory of the blowup and collapse of Mt. Atlas (or Meru), the Pillar of Heaven, which turned from the phallus or pillar into a lowly yoni, the image of the giant caldera within which Paradise was engulfed in the dawn of time.

Vesta had a strange connection with asses. On her feast-day, asses were crowned with wreaths of flowers. The ass was said to have saved the goddess from the advances of Priapus, the phallic god, despite her vow of virginity. Priapus was a Phrygian fertility god who was enormously endowed. His father was said to be Dionysos, and his mother, Aphrodite. His cult was extremely popular in Asia Minor. Hestia and Vesta were both said to have been the daughter of Kronos and Rheia (Saturn and Ops or Cybele, the Great Mother). Rheia was in turn the daughter of Ouranos and Gaia (Heaven and Earth), as well as the sister and wife of Kronos (Saturn).

We believe that the strange connections of Vesta-Hestia with enormously endowed individuals such as Priapus and satyrs or animals such as the donkey, the alias of Priapus, has to do with the motif of the Primordial Castration. It is this kind of “arrogance” and its punishment by castration that is mystically implied by myths such as this one. So, the motif also has to do with the “fall” (capitis minutio of the glans penis) of personages such as Lucifer, Adam, Atlas, Cham, Ouranos, Kronos, Shiva, Indra, Varuna and so on. And the list probably includes personages such as Orion, Atlas, Hephaistos and Prometheus whose punishment is normally obscure.

In a different tradition, Vesta was said to be the wife of Ouranos and the mother of Kronos (Saturn). The poets frequently identify Vesta with the Earth Mother. Her attribute was the drum, the symbol of the earthquake. Vesta’s connection with the earthquake (the drum) and with the Central Fire attest her ultimate identity with the giant volcano that destroyed Atlantis, the site of Paradise. The Earth Mother is also the same as the Great Mother whom the Romans identified with Cybele, the Phrygian Great Mother (Mater Magna Deorum; Mater Deum Magna; Mater Deum Magna Idaea). In fact, most such mother goddesses were identified one with the other.

According to a tradition that we already mentioned, and which is due to Diodorus Siculus, Vesta was imported by Aeneas from Troy itself, being connected with its famous palladium. The hero took along both her cult and her statue, if not her fire to Rome, which he founded as a replica of Troy itself. And Troy was, as we have long been arguing, the alias of Atlantis in Greco-Roman traditions. The Romans greatly prized the goddess, and deemed impious the person who did not sacrifice to Vesta. The Greeks invoked Hestia before all other deities, either male or female. And Hestia had an altar with the eternal fire in several temples dedicated to other Greek gods and goddesses, for instance, in the temple of Apollo in Delphi, in Argos, in Athens, in Miletus, etc..

 

The Fire God of Aztec Traditions

For the Aztecs, the ritual of the New Fire celebrated at the end of their cycle of 52 years was perhaps the most important of all rituals. An excellent description of the Aztec ritual is available on the Internet at the address given in the below footnote. The ritual is somewhat shocking, as it involved human sacrifice. But it should be remembered that human sacrifice was the rule, rather than the exception in antiquity, and was performed by the Greeks, the Romans, the Germans, the Celts and indeed most peoples. ^[7]

Every 52 years, when the cycle resulting from the union of the sacred year of 260 days, and the civil one of 365 days, the ritual of the New Fire was solemnly celebrated by the Aztecs. A prisoner selected for the sacrifice had his heart removed and offered to the Fire God. Inside the cavity opened in his chest for the removal of the prisoner’s heart, the officiating priest lit a fire by means of a firedrill. This fire was used to light a great bonfire, where the body of the sacrificed prisoner was thrown, as an offering to the New Sun, in imitation of the primordial sacrifice of Nanahuátl, who threw himself into the fire so that the sun could be reborn of his cinders. And this fire, lit in the central temple of Tenochtitlán, was later distributed to all the other temples and habitations. In author’s own words:

The new cycle of years starts when the Pleiades constellation crosses the zenith. The moment of this crossinng symbolizes the exact Present from which evolve the cycles of time. The Pleiades were identified, both mythically and symbolically, with the supreme center of heaven. ¹⁶ They were the pristine progenitors of the nocturnal cycle and of all stars, as well as the origin of the agricultural cycle. They were the celestial equivalent of the fireplace located at the center of the home,¹⁷ representing the axis of the world which united the terrestrial plan with the zenithal point of the celestial dome.

The Pleiades constellation is identified with Xiuhtecutli, ¹⁸ the Ancient Fire God, the Lord of the Fireplace, the Lord of Time, and the Lord of the Solar Year, ¹⁹ the god who lives at the center of the world, at the exact center of the Cardinal Axes. He is the Ancestral Father, represented as skeletic, bearded, with deep facial wrinkles and curved by old age. He is the oldest of the gods, ²⁰ as well as the father and the mother of them all, the god to whom the first sacrifice is addressed. ²¹ He is the god of the first fruits and the starts. The act of kindling the fire every day, in the morning, in the domestic fireplace again emphasizes his perennial renovation of Time itself. Xiuhtecutli was the only god whom the four great cataclysms of the past did not destroy. For this reason he is called Lord of the Four Times. ²²

Xiuhtecutli, identified with the Pleiades at the zenith, is the center of space and time. He is divided into four avatars, whose colors are blue, yellow, white and red, and who govern the four directions.²³ The axis of Xiuhtecutli crosses the center of the universe, from the place located at the center of the Land of the Dead, and passes through the fires in the homes of the humans on earth whence it reaches the zenith of heaven. ²⁴ He inhabited the hearth of each and every thing. ²⁵ His fireplace was located in the center of this world, as well as in the center of each of the thirteen heavens above it, and in the nine hells who are under it. ²⁶ As the Lord of the Central Fire, he is the main god among the Nine Lords of the Night, who successively preside the night .²⁷

It is clear that Xiuhtecutli is the same deity represented by Vesta-Hestia by the Greeks and the Romans. Though thought of as female, in contrast to the male aspect of Xiuhtecutli, these deities are all androgynous and are indeed described as male-female, at least in the Aztec world. It is certainly more than a coincidencce that both correspond to the Central Fire which is located at the exact center of the world, at the axis which passes through there, linking earth, heaven and hell. Looked at objectively, Xiuhtecutli is the axis of the world itself. Even more exactly, he is the personification of Mt. Atlas as a volcanic mountain which is indeed the Pillar of Heaven.

Xiuhtecutli (“Lord of Fire” or “Turquoise Lord”) is also called Huehueteotl (“the old, old god”) and Otontecutli. One of his symbols was the quincunx which is indeed a symbol of Atlantis as the center of the world. This symbol is also connected with Mt. Meru and with the path of the sun in the skies (the two equinoxes and two solstices), which forms a cross or X. Xiuhtecutli was often represented as a toothless, seated, hunchbacked old man with wrinkled skin. And he is often portrayed carrying a huge brazier on his back, as shown in Fig. XXX.

On this brazier, incense was burnt, a traditional rite having to do with Punt, the Land of Incense, the Egyptian Paradise in the Spice Islands. As the fire-god, Xiuhtecutli was not only the god of the hearths and fireplaces, but also of sacrificial fires and of volcanoes, an usual attribution of Atlas. In fact, as shown in the figure, the huge brazier on the god’s back was a replica of the world as a giant volcano born by the god. In other words, Xiuhtecutli was in every respect the alias and counterpart of Atlas. And it may well be that his figuration as a female (Hestia-Vesta) is indeed connected with the motif of the Primordial Castration which we comment elsewhere in the present work. The Primordial Castration is the act whereby the god is turned into the goddess. And the mtif really stands for the transformation of the Holy Mountain into the Khasma Mega, the giant chasm that is indeed the volcanic caldera into which it is transformed by the giant eruption.

Fig. XXX – Huehueteotl Bearing an Incense-Burner on His Head
(GV Editores, Nat. Mus. Anthrop. Mexico, pg. 32 or from my files)

The incense-burner is indeed an allegory of a volcano. More exactly, it represents Mt. Atlas as the volcano which is the Pillar of Heaven. Note that Huehueteotl is portrayed here as a person crushed by the enormous weight on his head. It is for this reason that he is also portrayed as a hunchback or a dwarf or anold man curved by the weight of the years. The four vertical bars that decorate the incense-burner represent the four subsidiary Pillars of the World posted at the Four Cardinal Directions, forming a quincunx with the center pillar, the one corresponding to mt. Atlas itself.

It is interesting to note that this symbolism of the quincunx directly derives from the Hindu one of Mt. Meru, as we argue elsewhere. But it was also popular in Mexico, in precisely the same Atlantean context. It is clear that the case here is one of diffusion, rather than of coincidence. So, the present paradigm that the American civilizations developed in isolation from the Old World ones is disproved by facts, and must be revised. The four diamonds with the circles at the center also represent the four pillars of the earth, this time seen from above.

The diamond shape represents the fact that the mountains are indeed pyramids, since they are replicas of pyramidal Mt. Meru. And the circle a their ceters represent thevolcnic calderas, since the subsidiary pilars are also volcanic mountains. In aztecansymbolism, these four peaks are also represented by the Four Bacabs or Chacs, the Four Guardians of the Cardinal Points. The Four Bacabs are, in every respect, the aliases and counterparts of the Four Lokapalas (“Guardians of the Place”) of the Hindus. Even their colors, discussed next, are identical in both India and Mexico. How else but through diffusion?

Xiuhtecutli’s connection with the four colors, blue, yellow, white and red dervie directly form Hindu traditions on Mt. Meru and on the four castes. The color blue (purple or indigo) is in India the mythical equivalent of black, with which it is often confused. Mt. Meru is traditionally describe as of pyramidal form, with the four faces turned towards the Four Cardinal Directions, each having the color in question. These four colors also correspond to the four varnas of Hinduism, that is the four castes (or “colors”) of humans, brahmans, kshatryas, vaishyas and sudras.

In turn, these four colors are associated with the Four Eras of Mankind (yugas), and the four races that developed in each: whites, yellows, reds and blacks. This sort of symbolism is extremely widespread in the Americas, and has been discussed in detail by J. Imbelloni, the famous Argentinian anthropologist. It is clear, from his studies and others which discuss in detail elsehwere, that this doctrine of the colors or castes is originally Hindu. It dates from the Code of Manu, and is hence extremely ancient in India. In fact, the tradition can be dated to Atlantean times, Mt. Meru and its four colored faces being indeed the true archetype of Mt. Atlas as the Pillar of Heaven and as the pictorial figuration of the Four Eras of Mankind. This is the theory of the Ages of Mankind that we find in Greece (Hesiod), in Sumeria, and above all in the Americas (the “suns’ of the Popol Vuh, etc.)

Xiuhtecutli’s connection with the Pleiades is also extremely interesting. The Seven Pleiades are the Atlantides, the seven daughters of the Titan Atlas, himself the personification of Mt. Atlas. And the Seven Pleiades are the same as the Krittikas of Hindu traditions, the markers of the start of the year, just as they are in Mexico and elsewhere. In fact, the Pleiades constellation is the celestial counterpart of the terrestrial Atlantides, the Seven Islands of the Blest. And, as volcanic islands, they also correspond to the “seven fires” at the center of the earth, the ones represented in some traditions not only of the Mayas and the Aztecs themselves, but also in the Old World (Fig. XXX).

It is difficult to discover what exactly the symbolisms shown in the below figure really represents, as we seldom if ever have a reliable description or interpretation of these symbols. But a lot can be inferred from the vast Aztec mythology and its connection with similar symbols and legends elsewhere. In (a) we have a cup overflowing with frothy, fiery pulque. This was the standard born by Aztec warriors in war. In (b) we have the goddess Mayahuel, the goddess of the pulque sitting at the maguey tree from which the inebriating drink is made.

Fig. XXX – Mayahuel and the Seven Fires of the Aztecs
(a) – The Seven Fires at the Center of the Earth
(b) – Mayahuel and the Tree of Life
(W. Krickeberg, Mitos Y Leyiendas, pg. 27, left and right)

Inside the cup, we note the seven flames issuing from the seven mounds forming the froth. This is indeed an allegory of the Seven Islands of the Blest and their seven fires issuing from their volcanoes. The “froth” is here compared to the one of the pulque, that is, the Elixir of Life. This is an usual image in Hindu symbolism,as we show elsewhere. The “froth” is actually pumice-stone, indeed frothy silica glass shed by silicic volcanoes such as the ones of the region of Indonesia. The “cup” itself is remarkable. It of course corresponds to the Holy Grail, the repository of Soma and other such versions of the Elixir. But here it has a tansverse decoration that causes it to have the shape of a Maltese Cross.

The cross is the usual emblem of Paradise, so that the connection is somewhat direct and unavoidable. The circle with the four incisions is the standard representation of Mt. Meru and its four subsidiary peaks. This is turned on the side, in the usual projection technically called “side-elevation”, so as to render the actual shape visible. From the bottom of the cup hang seven feathers terminated by four additional ones. In other words, the illustrtion shows an allegory of Mt. Meru, the alias and counterpart of Mt. Atlas of the better known Greek mythology.

The second figure (b) is likewise remarkable. Mayahuel seems to be drunk, as the gods usually are when about to destroy the world in the universal traditions. For instance, Hindu mythology tells of Indra’s drunkeness when he is about to kill Vritra (the used up world), and so on. The maguey tree next to which the goddess is seated has seven leaves, their symbolism being the same as the one of the seven islands of Paradise just discussed. The goddess is seated over a turtle, another traditional Hindu symbol of Paradise as Kurma or Kashiapa.

The tree is the Tree of Life, itself an alias of Mt. Meru, alias Mt. Atlas. It is flowering, the blooming mast typical of the maguey plant corresponding to the rising of the flowering of the lotus in Hindu traditions and the one of the Golden Flower of Chinese ones. This flowering is, as we explain elsewhere, the representation of the giant volcanic eruption that destroys Paradise. It corresponds to the “pillar of fire and smoke” that rises up to heaven, as well as the Pillar of Heaven itself, created by the volcanic “mushroom” which indeed rises up to heaven like some sort of pillar.

The symbolism of the number seven is also everywhere the same. At one level, it means the Seven Cardinal Directions. This is a traditional Hindu device representing the usual four directions, plus the Center, zenith and nadir. At the Center we have the vertical axis linking hell below (nadir) to heaven above (zenith). And this axis is itself represented by Mt. Meru, the actual pillar whose top supports the sky above, and whose roots sink down, into hell.

This symbolism is well-known in the Old World, for instance in Mesopotamia, where the ziggurats represented precisely this axis linking the three realms. There are many wonderful discussions of this symbolism done by Mircea Eliade and other experts, as we commnent elsewhere in detail. It is strange to find this sophisticate symbolism in the traditions of pre-Columbian America in precisely the same context. How did the symbol get here before Columbus? And it is clear that, in order to have become the central issue in Aztec religion this type of symbolism having to do with the destruction of Paradise can only have originated from precisely this sort of thing: the destruction of Atlantis-Eden itself, invented or not.

What else? But why would all nations play with sacred matters and idly invent things that never were, in the first place? Were all our ancestors incorrigible liars and clumsy exagearators who grossly vaunted the petty every day cataclysms as the experts often affirm? Or were they reporting events whose reality is all the time becoming evident as the human sciences advance and correct past mistakes such as the adoption of Uniformitarianism and the rejection of Catastrophism, a feature of all religions past and present. Will we ever find out? Yes, but only if we abandon the wrong course we entered and start anew. For this is the only way to proceed once we enter the wrong road.

There is yet a further symbolism associated with the number seven, perhaps the most sacred of all such. Most, if not all of the symbolic septenaries are purely conventional: the seven sages, the seven wonders of the ancient world, the seven Pleiades, the seven hells and seven heavens, the seven Cardinal Directions, etc.. But there is one that is far from purely conventional: the Seven Islands of the Blest. These are also called “Seven Atlantic Islands”, the Seven Atlantides, and so on.

As such they are the remains of sunken Atlantis. Even more exactly, they are the seven greater islands of Indonesia, the ones we already commented further above. And it is, of course, that most traditions refer to, both in the Old and in the New World. As these traditions are obviously common in all details, there is a single possible conclusion: their identity results from close contacts in the far past, before the diaspora that sent mankind away from the pristine Center where it first developed its first great civiliation. And that diaspora was indeed caused by the Flood, just as these traditions invariably hold.

 

Vesta, Hestia, Freia, Rhea and Cybele

Hestia and Vesta were both soon equated with Cybele, the Great Mother of the Gods of the Phrygians. Cybele figures in Greco-Roman traditions at least since the times of Pindar. Cybele is often connected with mountains, was worshipped on mountain tops, and was often called “the Mountain Mother”. This fact apparently suggests her connection with volcanoes, the fire of mountain tops. Aristophanes (The Birds, 864) mentions Cybele as the Great Mother of Gods and Humans. In another passage (740), the poet alludes to her cult on mountain tops. Euripides, in his Hippolytus (141) calls Cybele “the Mountain Mother”.

The Greek name of Cybele was Rhea (or Rheia). The meaning of this name is somewhat obscure. Junito Brandão derives it from *Freia, itself related to eurys meaning “ample, wide, extensive”. In other words, the name of Rhea apparently means “the Wide Earth”. This is a recurrent epithet of the Earth Mother in Greek authors. In fact, this name refers to the idea of the Flat Earth which, in turn, refers not to the globe itself, but to the flatlands of Atlantis, indeed the place of origin of both types of humans, the “gods” (Aryans) and the “humans” (Dravidas). It is in this sense that Vesta and Hestia are both represented by a flat disc having a fire at the center.

The derivation of the name of Rhea from *Freia is highly interesting. It suggests a connection with the Germanic goddess Freia (or Freya), whose name means “Lady” in Old Norse. Freia was a goddess of love and fertility, more or less like Cybele and Rhea. She assisted women in childbirth. Freia is often confused with Frigg, also called Frija (in German) or Frea (in Lombardy). Frigg is very lusty, and personifies fertility. Her name forms the word Friday (“Frigg’s day”), which the Latins equated to Veneris dies, “the day of Venus”.

Freia was equated to the Earth Mother by the Germanic peoples, just as were her Greco-Roman and Phrygian counterparts. In fact, it is possible that the Phrygians derive their name from the one of Frigg (Freia), the Great Mother of the Indo-European nations. The Phrygians seem to have been Indo-Europeans who spoke an Indo-European tongue. The Greeks identified them to the Macedonians. And they indeed seem to have been related to the Thracians and the Macedonians, as well as to the Hittites, whom they replaced after the destruction of that empire. If the Phrygians were indeed Indo-Europeans, it is no surprise that they worshipped the Great Mother who is indeed no other than Freia or Frigg.

The main attribute of Freia is a necklace called Brisingamen, from Germ. brisa (“to shine, glitter, sparkle”). This necklace seems to be a solar symbol. More exactly, it seems to be connected with the fiery rim of a volcanic crater, with which the Great Mother is often associated. Freia, the wife of Odin, was said to have cried tears of liquid gold when she lost her husband. All these are allegories of volcanoes, rather than solar symbols proper. More exactly, these features evoke the Subterranean Sun so often associated with Atlantis and her demise. The golden tears evoke the ones shed by Ra in Egypt and, even more closely, the ones shed by Inti, the Incan sun god.

In the Eddas, Freia or Frigga is called the mother of the gods, just as was Cybele and, for that matter, Aditi, her Vedic counterpart. Aditi is the mother of the sun (Martanda),really an allegory of the volcano which destroyed Atlantis-Eden. She is also the mother of the gods, called Adityas (“sons of Aditi”), The seven Adityas are the luminous ones, the personification of the seven astrological planets and, more exactly, their terrestrial counterparts, the Seven Islands of the Blest, precisely the ones of Atlantis. Aditi was often identified to infinite space, itself an allegory of the Wide Earth, the wide expanses of the site of Paradise as commented further above.

Freia’s throne, called Hlidskialf, was golden and its cushions were embroidered with golden threads. She is the main goddess of Nordic mythology, being the mother of Baldur, a sort of Christic figure as the pure one. She shares her golden throne with Odin, her husband. And she knows the future of humanity, which he does not reveal to anybody. Cybele was often called Phrygia, an epithet closely reminiscing the one of Frigga. As such, Cybele was identified to the mother of the Phrygian races. This name also evokes the one of the Frisians, a Germanic people closely connected with the legends of Atlantis. Freia was called Fressa Brisingamens, “the Lady of the Jewel”, a name which evokes her connection with the Frisians.

 

Strabo and the Myth of Cybele

In a passage unfortunately too long and too complex to usefully discuss here, Strabo makes a detailed reference to the cult of Cybele, the Phrygian Great Mother in her connection with the Curettes and with Dionysos. In the below footnote, we give a direct link to this passage of Strabo. And this should also be collated to the one of Euripides quoted at the frontispiece of the present work. A short quote from this passage of the great geographer will have to suffice for now: ^[8]

But as for the Berecyntes, a tribe of Phrygians, and the Phrygians in general, and those of the Trojans who live round Ida, they too hold Rhea in honor and worship her with orgies, calling her Mother of the Gods, and Agdistis and Phrygia, the Great Goddess, and also, from the places where she is worshipped, Idaea and Dindymene and Sipylene and Pessinuntis and Cybele and Cybebe. The Greeks use the same name “Curettes” for the ministers of the goddess, not taking the name, however, from the same mythical story, but regarding them as a different set of “Curettes,” helpers as it were, analogous to the Satyri; and the same they also call Corybantes.

The rites in question are all Mystery rituals, celebrated in secret by the Orphics and the worshippers of the Great Mother. These secrets were never revealed, and are hence unknown. But, as we argue in detail elsewhere, they have to do with Atlantis and its destruction by the giant volcanism which also caused the flood and the end of the Pleistocenic Ice Age some 11,600 years ago, the exact date given by Plato in his Critias.

The birth of Zeus by Rhea is attended by the clash of noisy instruments such as castanets, drums, cymbals or the beating of swords against shields. These noises and the wild dances at their sounding represent the earthquake and the furious “dancing” of all things it causes. In Medieval traditions these dances became the fearful Death Dances which we comment in detail elsewhere. Dionysos is originarily an Indian god. His rites and secrets are all copied from the Tantric rituals attending the cult of Shiva and Vishnu as personifications of the earthquake and tsunami that destroyed the site of Paradise, alias Atlantis-Eden.

The cult of Rhea and that of Cybele were intimately connected with the one of Dionysos, in Phrygia and in Thracia, as Strabo explains. According to some mythographers, Dionysos had been instructed in the Mysteries of Rhea-Cybele by the goddess herself from which Orphism would then derive, according to them. Cybele was often identified with Hippa, the Mare. In fact, this figure suggests a connection with Demeter, who assumed the shape of that animal in order to flee the sexual assault of Poseidon. But the god also changed into a horse, and achieved his intent.

In fact, this myth is a copy of the identical Hindu one of Vivasvat (the sun) and Saranyu, the daughter of Tvashtri. This Hindu myth, which we comment in detail elsewhere, dates from the Rig Veda, whose precedence over Greek myths cannot be refuted. Hippa is indeed the White Mare (Leucippe), so important in Greek mythology. According to Plato, Poseidon, when he was about to found Atlantis, married Cleito, the daughter of Leucippe, that is, the White Mare. In other words, Atlas and, hence, Atlantis is the grandchild of the Mare herself.

It may be that the name of Cybele indeed relates to the one of horses in Latin (caballus). If so, the identity with Hippa and Leucippe (Leuk-hippe) is automatically proved. The other name of Cybele, Kybebe (or Kubebe) closely evokes the one of Humbaba, the monster defeated by Gilgamesh and Enkidu in the Sumerian epic. The evolution would be: Kubaba > Khubaba > Hubaba > Humbaba. Humbaba, with his strange face is perhaps the personification of a volcanic episode, possibly the one which destroyed Paradise. In this connection it is appropriate to recall that Enkidu too fell from heaven in the guise of a giant meteorite, as told in the famous Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest known saga of the twin heroes.

This fall mysterious fall also evokes the one of the palladium and of the phallus of Agdistis, as well as the mysterious stone swallowed by Kronos, in the stead of Zeus, thus deceived by Rhea. Kronos was in the habit of swallowing his children, to the despair of Rhea, his wife. When Zeus was born, she decided to save him from this fate, giving Kronos a stone wrapped in diapers for him to swallow. Methis later caused the god to vomit the children he had earlier swallowed. This stone was a meteorite, as we already said. It also was the same as the betyl or omphalos, as well as the acus of Cybele, the palladium of Minerva, etc.. In reality, this stone fallen from heaven and turned into the Holy Grail is no other than the Holy Mountain itself, as we explain in detail elsewhere.

In Strabo’s passage just quoted the name of the Berecyntes closely evokes, as someone pointed out, the Hebrew word Bereshit, the one which opens the Book of Genesis (Bereshit barah Elohim). Berecynte was also a name of the Phrygian Great Mother. Of course, this coincidence is not random, but the result of purpose. The word Bereshit means “in the beginning”, Berecynte being indeed Virgo, the zodiacal Virgin who was indeed the start of all things. And this Virgin is truly Parvati or Durga, the Hindu goddess who was the true archetype of the Mountain Mother.

It is also no coincidence that the end of the Age of Virgo and the transition to Leo – the Lion that impersons fire itself (the Sun) – actually occurred at about the time of the Atlantean cataclysm. The transition from the era of Virgo, the Virgin, to the one of Leo, the Lion, was often allegorized by her representation riding a chariot drawn by a lion (Fig. XXX). ^[9]

Fig. XXX – Cybele Riding Her Chariot Drawn by Lions
(Robles, Dic. Mit. Univ., pg. 141)

The zodiacal signs were often represented by chariots, as is the case here. This symbolism represented the passage of the eras and the days, for instance in the myth of the sun riding the Solar Chariot, as in the myth of Phaëthon and his fall, which Plato specifically identifies with the one of Atlantis. In fact, the chariot is the vahana (or “vehicle”) of the deity. In India, the same idea is expressed by Kali-Durga riding the lion that is her attribute or vahana. And, as we already said, Durga was the archetype of such leonine goddesses such as Rhea-Cybele and, in Egypt, Sekhmet, the Lioness who performed the carnage of the Flood.

The other attributes of Cybele-Rhea are likewise remarkable. The Great Idaean Mother was often represented sitting on a golden throne. She also wore a peculiar crown shaped like a tower, holding a key on one hand and a tambourine or disc in the other. She is often surrounded by ferocious animals and is said to have been exposed to them in her infancy. Instead of devouring the infant, the savage beasts actually cared for and nourished the baby.

What this means is the fact that Cybele is to be considered the Lordess of the Animals, the female counterpart of the Lord of the Zodiac represented as the cycle of the wild animals (zoo-diakos kyklos = “the circle of the luminous animals”). In India, the two figures are represented by Shiva and by Kali, his wife. And this symbolism dates from the Indus Valley Culture, that is, from about 3,000 BC or even earlier. So, there can be no question of Indian precedence here.

 

The Tower as a Symbol of Atlantis

The Tower is a usual representation of Atlantis. In fact, the fall of Atlantis is often rendered as the Fall of the Tower, for instance in the remarkable Tarot arcane n^o 16, “The Tower Struck by Lightning”. Now, this “lightening” is the vajra itself, just as the tower indeed stands for Atlantis and its lofty mountain, topped by a watchtower. The tambourine is also an allegory of Atlantis. The round shape imitates the circular one of Atlantis’ citadel, as described by Plato. And the noise it makes when shaken represents the earthquake which destroyed the place, caused by the giant volcanism. Such is also the symbolism of the castanets and the cymbals associated with her.

The throne, often golden like the one of Freia, represents her associating with the mountain out of which liquid gold (magma) flows in immense amounts. The key is of course the key to the myth of Atlantis which the goddess herself typifies. Her priests, the galli, castrating themselves during their wild dances also represent the colossal explosion which reduced the phallus of the world, the proud Pillar of Heaven into a lowly volcanic caldera, symbolized by the yoni itself.

Cybele was also associated with the pine tree and the almond tree, as per the Agdistis myth. The pine is the tree typical of the Himalayas and other such lofty mountains of the region of India and Indonesia. The almond tree is often substituted by the pomegranate tree, because of the connection with the myth of Kore, who seems to be no other than Demeter herself, in her junior avatar. The reason may well due to the fact that these trees were originary for the East Indies, like so many others which we study in detail elsewhere.

Cybele was also called the Idaean Mother, because of her connection with Mt. Ida, the Holy Mountain of Troy. Mt. Ida is an alias of Mt. Olympus, the mountain of the gods in Greek traditions. And this mountain – of which there were many replicas in Greece itself, as Strabo explains in the passage in question here – in turn replicated Mt. Meru, the Holy Mountain of Hindu traditions. Now, Mt. Meru is itself an alias of Mt. Atlas as the Pillar of Heaven. And all these mountains share the feature of being active volcanic peaks, as we explain elsewhere. In fact, Mt. Ida is itself often equated to a volcano, often in cryptic terms, just as is the case of Mt. Meru and, indeed, Mt. Atlas.

Mt. Ida’s name is related to the one of Eden. It has forms such as Iden, Idam, Idaean, etc. in Latin which closely resemble the name of Eden. And it is often given as the site of origin of mankind in many accounts from ancient Greece. In fact, Troy is no other than Atlantis itself, having been destroyed by a volcanic conflagration (“fire”) and a flood, just like Atlantis itself. In fact, the story of Troy reported in Homer’s Iliad was taken almost verbatim from the Ramayana, which tells the identical story of the destruction of Lanka by Fire and Water.

Even the story of the kidnapping of the princess (Helen, by Paris) is told in the Ramayana (as the one of Sita by Ravana), the only difference being that Sita was unwilling, whereas Helen actually cooperated with Paris. But, in some accounts, Sita too is said to have consented to the abduction, the reason she was later relinquished by Rama, her husband.

The myth of Rhea-Cybele was connected with the fall of the vajra (thunderbolt), itself an allegory of the volcanic conflagration. In this connection, the Mountain Mother was associated with a meteorite which fell in Pessinunte, and which was held to be an image of the goddess herself. In fact, this confused myth – which we explain in detail elsewhere – has to do with Agdistis and his castration. The myth tells how Agdistis originated from the semen spilled by Zeus, in a wet dream. This semen fell from heaven, engendering Agdistis from the earth.

The other gods took hold of Agdistis, emasculating him. His phallus fell to the ground, and grew into an almond tree. The nymph Nana ate one of its fruit, and became pregnant by it. From this virgin birth was born Attis, a beautiful boy. Agdistis, now a female confused with Cybele herself, fell in love with Attis. But the gods removed the boy to Pessinunte, where he was about to marry the king’s daughter. But Agdistis-Cybele shows up, renders Attis mad, and causes him to emasculate himself. Attis later died, but Cybele rendered his body incorruptible.

In Agdos, Cybele was worshipped under the guise of a black stone, really a meteorite fallen from heaven. And the priests of Cybele had the habit of emasculating themselves during their wild dances, thus imitating the castration of their patroness. All these are, as we already said, allegories of the giant volcanism, the explosion that rendered the volcanic peak of Mt. Atlas into a lowly volcanic caldera sunk under the sea. In fact, this myth originated in India and, more exactly, in Indonesia, the “insular India”.

The Indian myth dates from the Rig Veda, where it figures as the “decapitation” (read castration) of Dadhyanch by Indra. This myth is also connected with Shiva’s castration and the ones of Indra, of Varuna, and so on. As a matter of fact, the myth of Agdistis and Cybele also relates to the one of the castration of Kronos-Saturn or that of Ouranos, himself an alias of Varuna. In fact, the fall from heaven of the phallus here connected with the vajra and the palladium is also commemorated in India by the fall (or castration) of Varuna, the Lord of Heaven who later became the “Lord of the Waters” (Apam Napat). Apam Napat is no other than Neptune himself (Poseidon = Napat Am), the founder of Atlantis.

In other words, all these confused accounts are mere allegories of the fall of Atlantis, itself often connected with the ones of Adam, of Lucifer, of Christ, and others such who fell from heaven “like a thunderbolt out of the blue” (a meteorite). Myths function in the way explained by Strabo in the passage quoted at the head of the present work. They embody an account of actual historical and geographical facts, except that encoded in obscure enigmas that must be deciphered before they can be understood. And one must collate, as Strabo recommends, a whole series of myths before they start to make sense, as is the case here. It is only this that we are able to overcome the often contradictory accounts offered by myths, the ancient manner of writing history and geography.

 

Tabiti, the Scythian Hestia

The Scythians are an Indo-European nation of Central Asia. They founded a vast empire north of the Black Sea region, which lasted for the 8^th. century BC to the 3^rd. century BC. Like most early Indo-Europeans, the Scythians were nomads who excelled in horsemanship and in combat. The Scythians originally came from their homeland in the Altai Mts. farther east, in inner Mongolia, where they are attested by the 9^th. century BC. They later settled in southern Russia, and their empire lased until its destruction by the Samarians.

The Mongolian origin of the Scythians places them next to the Tocharians, another nation of Indo-Europeans probably closely related to the Scythians, and which we comment in detail elsewhere. In fact, it seems that the Tocharians are Scythians who remained behind in their homeland in Mongolia when the other moiety moved northeast, into Russia. Recent soviet research has demonstrated the close cultural relationship in art, religion, and way of life between the Indo-European tribesmen who continued to live in the region of Mongolia and Siberia and the ones who, as the Scythians, moved into Iran and southern Russia.

The Scythians are also called Sakas (or Sacae), a word of Sanskrit (or Persian) origin meaning “whites”. In India, Sakadvipa (“the White Island”) is one of the names of Paradise. The Sakas played an important role in Indian history, and it is quite likely that they were deeply influenced by that great civilization. The main deity of the Scythians was Tabiti, their counterpart of Hestia. Tabiti was deemed their Great Mother. She was the patroness of fire and wild animals and, alone of all Scythian gods, figures in their art.

Tabiti’s cult was tended by a class of magicians and soothsayers called Enaries. The Enaries were emasculated like the galli of Cybele and dressed in feminine attire. The Scythians affirmed that this emasculation was inflicted on them by Tabiti as a punishment for the desecration of her sanctuary at Ashkelon. Herodotus refers to the Scythians in his History (4:59:1) :

The only gods whom they propitiate are these: Hestia in particular, and secondly Zeus and Earth, whom they believe to be the wife of Zeus; after these, Apollo, and the Heavenly Aphrodite, and Heracles, and Ares. All the Scythians worship these as gods; the Scythians called Royal sacrifice to Poseidon also. In the Scythian tongue, Hestia is called Tabiti.

The name of Tabiti may be derived from the Dravida, just as we did above for the ones of Vesta Hestia and Hephaistos, all of obscure derivation in Greek. In Dravida, the radix ta– or tap– expresses the idea of “to strike with violence, kill, destroy”. And -iti as we saw above means “vajra, thunderbolt, thunder”. Hence, the name of Tabiti – which means nothing in Indo-European – actually means “the thunderbolt which strikes with violence, killing everybody”. As we discuss in detail elsewhere, the Tocharians spoke a tongue intermediate between Dravida and Indo-European and so probably did their next of kin, the Scythians, who also came from the same region, in Inner Mongolia. Hence, the derivation of the name of their goddess from the Dravidian family is not as unlikely as it may seem at first sight.

However, it is unlikely that the Scythians would borrow their main goddess or her name from a foreign nation, so that Tabiti, their Great Mother must be a native deity. But this means that the Scythians, like the Tocharians and probably the rest of the Indo-European peoples originally formed a single nation, just as we have been arguing for a long time now. In fact, the Indo-European Aryans and Dravidas formed a single nation in Atlantis, before the great split that led to the war of Atlantis narrated by Plato.

When Atlantis went under, the Indo-Europeans from Atlantis passed into the Asian continent via the Malay Peninsula and entered China (Mongolia), where they settled. A climatic change and the pressure from the Chinese (Mongoloid) pushed them to the Tarim Basin and further, into Persia, as well as north, into the Altai Mts. and further beyond, into Russia, as we just argued. Such was, in short, the real origin of the Indo-European nations, one of the greatest mysteries ever.

And it is so that we must understand the fascination of Plato with Atlantis, even though it was the enemy of the Greeks, as the great philosopher tells in detail. In other words, Plato apparently knew that Greeks and Atlanteans – that is, indo-Europeans and Dravidas – originally formed a single, formidable nation. Plato apparently learnt the story of Atlantis not from Solon, but from the Pythagoreans who probably derive their doctrines from Indian sources of remotest antiquity. We know that Plato acquired the books from the estate of Philolaos, a Pythagorean, and that the Platonic doctrines are imbued with Pythagoreanism.

And we can also now understand the fascination of the Indo-European nations with the Great Mother, their supreme deity and with Fire, either personified as Hephaistos or Hestia or Vulcanus, or in its real aspect, for instance as Agni and the fire-gods of the Iranians. Better yet, we find fire-worship in its highest form among the Pythagoreans and their cult of the Central Fire, as we are discussing here. The Central Fire, the heart of all things ad of the Universe itself is indeed an allegory of Atlantis and its fiery volcano, the fascinating deity that both attracts and repels, that nurtures its children, only to kill them afterwards, as honey does to flies.

The Temple of Hestia Vest as a Replica of the World

The temple of Vesta-Hestia was a replica of the world. As shown in Fig. XXX below, it consisted of a dome supported by four pillars. This is of course a model, not always followed in practice. Some versions had a multiplicity of pillars as well as a conical roof. But the original model is found, even today, in shrines inside temples of all sorts, including Christian churches. The dome represents the world. More exactly, it represents the upper hemisphere of the earth. And the pillars, four or more, represent the Pillars of Hercules and/or of Atlas.

Fig. XXX – The Round Temple of Vesta as a Replica of the World
(From Perseus Project, Coin Collection)

Leon Battista Alberti, in his The Ten Books of Architecture, affirms that:

The Temple of the Goddess Vesta, supposing her to be the Earth, they built as round as a Ball. Those of the other celestial gods they raised somewhat above the ground; those of the infernal Gods they built underground, and those of the terrestrial they set upon the level.

The ancients pictured the earth as composed of two separate hemispheres, east and west. One of these was identified to the earth proper (the western hemisphere) and the other one to heaven, the celestial hemisphere. One was deemed “up” (ours) and the other one “down”. Sometimes, things were inverted, and the antipodes were deemed “down”, and considered infernal. This is the reason why heaven and hell were considered to lie next to each other, side by side.

Vesta-Hestia was often figured with her index finger pointing upwards. This is a traditional gesture calling attention to her celestial nature, that is, to her connection with the upper hemisphere.

 

Hestia and the Resurrection of the Dead

In the science of sacred traditions, or religion and of mythology, things are never what they seem to be. In other words, sacred symbols invariably stand for something else, such being the actual meaning of the word “allegory”, derived from allos (“other”) and agorein (“to speak in public”). So, allegories are stories in which people, places or things are put under a disguise intended for public presentation, to profanes. As such, allegories correspond to fables, parables and enigmas, intended to be deciphered by the initiates, but not by the profane audience.

Such is for instance the meaning of the attributes of Hestia and Vesta, as we just saw. The tambourine stands for the earthquake, the libation for the Flood, the tower for Atlantis, the lamp and the eternal fire for the volcano, the staff for the Primordial Castration, and so on. The more important the symbolism, the more difficult the allegory. Such is the case with the symbolism of Kronos devouring his own children, starting with Hestia. ^[10]

The symbolism of Kronos swallowing his children is ultimately related to the doctrine of the Resurrection of the Dead, a central motif in all eschatological religions, those concerned with the doctrine of final things. As such, the doctrine derives from Hinduism. It figures in Plato, who gives a detailed account of it in his strange dialogue, the Politicus (268e). Such is also the meaning of the remarkable event illustrated in the Tarot arcane n^o 20, The Last Judgement. Likewise connected are the myth of Mithras rising from the ground (a rebirth), as well as the one of the Lion Man (Narasimha) rising from the pillar, in Hindu traditions.

According to Plato, the remarkable event he describesin detail occurred in the reign of Kronos, who is precisely the King of the Golden Age said to devour his children in the relation of Hesiod and others. Plato explains the strange event as a reversal of Time itself. The world starts to spin in reverse, and all things invert. A terrible cataclysm results, and most living beings, humans included perish in it. But those who survive the cataclysm reverse their life cycles, and start to get younger. Since time is running in reverse, the dead rise from their graves and start to live again.

And the men of the former era who survive the cataclysm, being nobler and wiser than those of the following one, naturally become the kings and priests of these new humans, until things stabilize and get back to normal. True or not, this is the story of Atlantis-Eden and its destruction told under a different allegory. And since it is actually the same as the dogma of the Resurrection of the Dead, we are, if true Christians or whatever, obliged to believe its truth.

The story of Kronos devouring his own children is also connected with the myth of Atlantis. It has to do with the story of the strange earth that devours its own children, just as happened in Canaan (Num. 13:32; 16:30). In fact, the land of Canaan, wide and fertile, flowing with honey and milk and peopled with giants, is no other than Paradise itself, that is to say, Atlantis. The Canaan of Palestine is a replica of far later times than those of Atlantis itself. The same applies to Jerusalem, of which the Palestinian counterpart seems to be a replica. The archetypal one is the Celestial Jerusalem of the primordial Canaan which the Israelites compared with Paradise.

The Canaanites seem to have been the same as the Phoenicians, both of these names meaning the purple dye in whose commerce they specialized. Ezekiel (16:1f.) compares this “Jerusalem of Canaan” to a beautiful girl whom Jahveh chooses for himself as some sort of Vestal, but who later turns into a whore.

This story parallels the one of Rhea Silvia and other Vestals who turn up to be whores. The passage is strange, and apparently allegorizes the secret story of Vesta-Hestia and the calamity of Atlantis and its volcano who devoured the entire place with all its people. It is perhaps more than a coincidence that Canaan, often called Cana, has a name similar to the one of Vesta, often called Cana in Latin, a word said to allude to her elder character (Lat. cana = “hoary”).

 

The Separation of Earth and Sky

No matter what, Kronus and Rhea are duals of each other and apparently personify earth’s two hemispheres. One of these corresponds to the Celestial Hemisphere, and the other one to the Terrestrial Hemisphere. The same story also obtains in Egypt, where Geb is identified to the earth, whereas Nut, his sister and consort corresponds to the Celestial Hemisphere. The two are separated by Shu, the atmospheric god, who seems to be an alias of Atlas, the giant who keeps earth and sky asunder in Greek myths. The same story is also found in Polynesia (Rangi and Papa) and, for that matter, also in the Americas, for instance, in Aztecan cosmogonic myths relating to Quetzalcoatl and Huitzilopochtli, his twin and dual.

The Gypsy too have their own account of the separation of earth and sky, a myth which they obviously brought along from India whenever they first come from there. The myth of the separation of earth and sky ultimately derives from the ones of the Rig Veda which frequently alludes to the separation of earth and sky by a god, usually Purusha himself. Purusha is the archetype of the Titan Atlas and others such. And the separation of earth and sky also relates to the myth of the Vadavamukha, the giant gap which swallows all things, as some sort of giant Charybdis.

No matter what, the myth of Kronos swallowing his children is an allegory of the earth that devours its own children. Kronus is some sort of dual and counterpart of Ouranos, his father. In other words, Kronos is the Celestial Hemisphere, the paradisial land of Atlantis that indeed devoured its own children in the Flood cataclysm. In a confused way – confusion and metaphor being the stuff of which myths are ultimately made – Rhea and Hestia-Vesta are also the duals of Kronos-Saturn in their character of king and queen of the Golden Age.

These two personages are the mirror images of each other. Even more exactly, the two are one and the same personage, who actually imperson the land of Paradise. This land is characterized by the presence of the volcano that brings abundance due to the rains and the fertilization of the soil it causes. But the volcanoes also bring on disaster when they erupt with violence.

Such is particularly the case of giant eruptions when the whole magma chamber is suddenly emptied, in a colossal explosion. The land collapses, forming a giant caldera which literally devours everything around. The sea is often sucked into the giant hole, causing an enormous tsunami which destroys everything in its way. And the cinders cover the entire region, sometimes causing a cataclysm of global proportions, as was the case of the giant prehistoric eruptions of the Toba and the Krakatoa volcanoes, whose giant calderas are fully one hundred kilometers across. This concept, so alien to Greek thought, apparently derives directly from Hindu myths. In Hindu mythology, the god – for instance Shiva or Brahma – is both himself and his consort, called his shakti.

The shakti is the strong, often malevolent, form of the god. It is the shape assumed by the god in his stern character, when he is to cause the great cataclysm which is to destroy the world in the way just mentioned. This connection, and many others such, leads us to believe that Greco-Roman mythology indeed originated in India, whence it was brought along by peoples such as the Etruscans and the Pelasgians, whose Dravidian origin we have demonstrated in detail.

Further proof of the Hindu origin of the Greek gods lies in the fact that most of the names of Greek gods cannot be derived from Greek, attesting their foreign origin. Moreover, authors like Herodotus and others attribute the origin of their gods to foreign sources such as Egypt and Libya, particularly in their connection with the ancient Mysteries. It is likely, however, that the Greek gods were mainly inherited from their Pelasgian precursors, much as the ones of the Romans originated from the Etruscan precursors and civilizers of the Indo-European moiety of the Italian peoples.

 

The Betyl, the Palladium, the Holy Grail and the Linga

The stone swallowed by Kronos, in the stead of Zeus became the betyl, as we have already argued. This stone was often ritually anointed and wrapped in swaddling-clothes, just as the stone presented by Rhea to Kronos-Saturn also was. This stone was also identified to the palladium, usually kept inside the temple of Hestia by the Vestals. This ritual was surrounded by the closest secret. But it is also known that the palladium, brought over from Troy by Aeneas, was kept along with the mysterious “shield of Jupiter that fell down from heaven”, now known to have been a meteorite.

This “shield” was the very image of the rounded dome of Vesta’s temple, itself a replica of the land of Atlantis, describe as circular by Plato. In fact, the site of Paradise – for instance, Homer’s Phaeacia – was often explicitly equated with a round shield. Such is also the image used by Homer and other poets in describing the round shields of heroes such as Achilles, Hercules, Jason, and so on. In Homer’s case, the shield of Achilles is specifically compared to the Flat Earth with its surrounding ocean, etc..

The palladium, which was the usual attribute of Vesta-Hestia, was also equated to the meteorite that characterized the great goddess and her aliases such as Diana Multimmamia and Demeter. Such is the case, for instance, of the meteorite of Pessinunte, brought to Rome and kept inside the temple of Vesta there, along with the palladium and the “shield of Jupiter” fallen from heaven. The palladium was, as we commented further above, also connected with the vajra thunderbolt and the divine phallus of Agdistis, which also fell from heaven, originally over Troy. The palladium was also said to be an aniconic image of the goddess Athena (Minerva) and to protect the city against all sorts of ills, including enemy attacks.

The ritual anointing of the betyl identified with Kronos’ stone is highly reminiscent of the similar ceremonies performed in India with the yoni-lingam. There can be no doubt that the two rituals sprung from one and the same source. In fact, this type of ritual seems to be universal in character, as we comment in detail elsewhere. Mircea Eliade also treats it in detail in his famous Treatise on the History of Religions, one of the best ever on the subject of Comparative Religion and Mythology.

The meaning of this anointing is connected with the destruction of Atlantis by the giant volcanism which destroyed the Land of Milk and Honey and all its fat cattle and people. In fact, this land is called Gomeda-dvipa, that is “The Land of the Fat Cattle”. But this name also plays with the word Gomedha, which means “bull sacrifice”. And the sacrifice of the Bull of Chaos – for instance in Mithraism, etc. – is indeed an allegory of the Primordial Sacrifice, the one of Atlantis-Eden. This sacrifice is often connected with the fall of the vajra, the one which destroyed the Tower, as in the one of the Tarot’s allegory mentioned further above.

But the meteoritic fall – so often associated with the destruction of the world – is itself an allegory of the giant volcanism and the fall of the giant stones (volcanic bombs) which indeed destroyed the site of Paradise. All the more distant people saw were the stones and he cinders falling from heaven and killing all life around. And so they naturally equated the unusual phenomenon with the more usual one of meteoritic falls. Perhaps, this event is also the one which the Hindus commemorate by throwing balls of ghee (clarified butter = “fat”) on the fire in their sacrifices to Agni, the Vedic fire-god.

It is also possible that the fall of the vajra is really associated with an actual meteoritic fall which happened in the region of the Far East some 750,000 years ago, when early man (Homo erectus) was already present in the region. This giant cataclysm covered with tektites, some of giant size, the whole of the Indian Ocean, and wide extensions of Southeast Asia and Oceania. We describe these terrible events and their important consequences elsewhere, and will not return to the subject here, except to say that this fall is also associated with the ones of Lucifer, of Adam, of Dadhyanch, of the palladium, and a myriad of others such told in the ancient traditions of all peoples.

Interestingly enough, the Hindus also associate the vajra with the linga, that is, the divine phallus fallen from heaven in the dawn of times. In their Tantric rituals, they often anoint a model linga made of stone, which is ritually used for the deflowering of virgins during their initiation ceremonies. The idea is apparently the one of the earth opening up its ‘mouth” in order to swallow the archetypal linga fallen from heaven. The Hindus also equate the fall of the vajra with Cintamani, a luminous gemstone which was indeed the archetype of the emerald that fell from Lucifer’s crown during the Fall, and which was later carved, becoming the Holy Graal.

The Muslim worship of the black stone kept inside the Kaaba is also a variant of this universal tradition. The cubic shape of the Kaaba – the word means “cube” in Arabic – is itself a commemoration of Atlantis as the altar where the Primordial sacrifice was performed at the dawn of the present era. The square shape stands for the male principle, whereas the round one represents the feminine principle. And the Cubic Stone is precisely the one commemorated in the secret rituals of Free-Masonry, which also stem from the very same tradition of Atlantis-Eden and its destruction in the terrible cataclysm.

The swallowing of the black stone by Kronos represents, as we just said, the fall of the vajra over the site of Paradise and the engulfing of all its many people. The swallowing of the twelve Olympians by Kronos also represents, at another level, the successive cataclysms, more or less as in the Hindu doctrine of the yugas and of Cyclical Time. Here, the number twelve specifically corresponds to the twelve zodiacal signs, with which the twelve Olympians were sometimes explicitly equated, for instance, in certain iconographies which we comment elsewhere.

 

The Beginning and the End

Of course, major cataclysms fortunately do not happen at such short intervals (of about 2,160 years each). But major changes do happen at such era transitions, for instance, major changes in Religion. We now enter the Era of Aquarius, and the worship of the Golden Boy, predicted by Virgil and others, will shortly replace the one of the gods of the present era. The position of Hestia-Vesta in this series of swallowings is unique, being the dual of the one of Zeus. As the first to be swallowed, the virgin goddess represents the eldest of all Olympians, the supreme deities of the Greco-Roman pantheon. But as such, she was the last one to be vomited, and hence became transmutated into the youngest of them all.

Zeus, instead, as the last one, was the first to be vomited, so that he became the eldest of the Olympians and hence their natural leader. The myth is not unconnected with the dual birth of Dionysos, first from his mother Semele, and then from the thigh of Zeus, as pointed out by Allen and Sikes, in their Commentary linked to above. The figure of Dionysos Zagreus and his double birth was intimately connected with the mythologem of Hestia-Vesta, the two deities often being commemorated by means of wild bacchanals. ^[11]

In this context, Hestia was called Prota (“first-born”) or Presbeira (“the eldest or most ancient”). This epithet accords to the name of Cana (“hoary”) given Vesta by the Romans. Greek ritual repeatedly emphasized the fact that Hestia was the eldest of the gods. And this fact, coupled to her “virginity”, expressed the idea that the civilization represented by the goddess was not only the first, but was not itself “inseminated” by the others, as is so often the case. These wild rituals with their dances and their hidden meaning are both taken directly from India. They closely resemble the wild tandava of Shiva and the likewise savage rasalila of Vishnu.

Even the myth of Dionysos Zagreus and his second birth from the thigh was copied from India, where an identical myth exists concerning the birth of Aurva. Now, Aurva is the personification of the Vadavamukha, the terrible Submarine Mare. The Vadavamukha is, we believe, the giant submarine caldera of the Krakatoa volcano. The Vadava is also identified to the Fire of Doomsday, the one which is said to destroy the world at the era endings. No matter what, it is a geological fact that the Krakatoa volcano – and, for that matter, the Toba volcano as well – did indeed cause cataclysms of worldwide extent in the remote past. And it is also a fact that these cataclysms almost caused the extinction of Mankind on a global scale, as the specialists are now learning.

So, we see that the myth of Dionysos Zagreus, as well as the related ones of Vesta-Hestia and of Agdistis’ castration are indeed allegories of the destructions of the world which take place along Cyclical Time. And this doctrine, so unlike the rational, luminous religion of ancient Greece, can only have originated from more somber perspective of the Etruscans and the Pelasgians, who, in turn, brought them over from the East Indies whence they originally came, after being victimized by the great cataclysm they learnt to revere in their secret rituals.

It is also in this way that we must interpret myths such as the ones of Demeter-Kore, of Hercules and Geryon, and of Hestia-Vesta herself. Cataclysms suh as the eone of the Flood are dire realities separating the eras of mankind. As such, they are both the beginning of and the end of creation, just as the ancient myths tell. And this idea actually originated in India, as usual. In the Bhagavad gita Krishna say of himself: “I am the Beginning, the Middle and the End”, anticipating Christ by a few millennia.

Demeter seems to be the old avatar of the ineffable goddess, Kore, the Girl. Kore is no other than Proserpine, the Queen of Hades and consort of Pluto, the god of the infernal regions. Pluto was called Vejovis by the Romans. And this name actuallymeans “like Jove himself”, the prefix ve- being indeed a corruption of dve– or dvi– meaning “two”, “second”. In other words, Vejovis is Jupiter himself, in his somber aspect, as the fallen god. Even more exactly, the Greek trinity formed by Zeus, Poseidon and Hades (Pluto) represents the same thing as the Hindu Trimurti formed by Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Brahma fell, and became Yama, the ruler of Hell.

Vishnu is the ruler of this world, whereas Shiva is An, “the lofty one”, the celestial ruler. In fact, all three are aspects of God. This doctrine somehow passed into Judeo-Christianism, where the three gods are represented by the three persons of the Trinity: the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. The Father rules in heaven, the Son on earth, and the Holy Spirit in hell, being the alias of Lucifer, the Fallen Angel. These are mystic doctrines seldom if ever mentioned, except to a select few. But the evidence is too large to be denied except by the more stolid Christians, unfamiliar with the secrets of their Mystery Religion. In Pherecydes of Syros, whom we discuss next, the Trinity was formed by Zeus, Kronos and Rhea, again representing the trinity the Hindus call tribhuvana, the three realms formed by Heaven, Earth and Hell.

 

Pherecydes, Syria, and Earth’s Seven Recesses

Pherecydes of Syros (fl. sixth century BC?) was one of the earliest Greek philosophers. Pherecydes is sometimes said to have been a friend of Thales and is sometimes ranged among the Seven Sages of Greece. Pherecydes is also credited with having introduced the doctrine of metempsychosis and of the immortality of the soul in Greece, and even with having performed some miracles. He is the author of several treatises on mythology and was said by Aristotle to be “a theologian who mingled philosophy to mythology”. Pherecydes is also said to have been the instructor of Pythagoras, who allegedly cared for him in his sickness and buried his body after he died.

The invention of the heliotropion – a marker of the “turning point” of the sun in the solstices – is usually attributed to Pherecydes. This has led some experts to link the philosopher with the passage in the Odyssey (15:404), where Eumaios, the servant of Odysseus, describes a legendary Syria “where the sun turns around”. Accordingly, these experts place the birth of Pherecydes before Homer’s, in about 1,000 BC or so. Moreover, Pherecydes’ birthplace may have been this legendary Syria, rather than the island of Syros, in the Cyclades, in Greece. In other words, it seems that Pherecydes may have been as legendary as his disciple, Pythagoras, the famous master of the Pythagorean philosophers.

Above all, since the mythical Syria of Homer indeed refers to Indonesia as the “turning point of the day”, that is, the Land of Dawn, as we argue elsewhere, the message may be that Pherecydes was indeed an Indian philosopher of the type the Greeks so admired. That “turning point of the day” was indeed Lanka, the true archetype of Atlantis. Which is to say that Pherecydes brought all his wisdom from Atlantis itself. In fact, the very name of Homer’s Syria (or Suria) apparently relates with the one of Surya, the name of the Hindu sun god, himself an alias of Apollo and the Fallen Sun that, as Phaëthon, allegorizes the fall of Atlantis as Plato himself explained.

But what interests us here is his most famous work, the Heptamykhos. This strange name means “The Seven Recesses”. I. Preller and other experts have proposed to correct this name to Pentemychos (“Five Recesses”), a fact that shows their ignorance of esoteric matters such as the ones treated by Pherecydes of Syros in this book. Only a few fragments of this work indeed remain, which is a pity, as we are left in the dark as concerns the details of what Pherecydes actually meant by the Seven Recesses. However, the fragments which remain suffice to make an idea of the importance of Pherecydes work. They tell the story of the world’s origin, the battles of the gods against the Titans, and so forth.

These themes are, as Plato explains, connected with the them of Atlantis and its demise. Despite the mythical way in which the stories are told, they seem to embody the philosophical doctrines and speculations typical of Ionian philosophy of the 6^th. century BC. For instance, it tells how Chronos (“Time”) created three elements, Fire, Air and Water, which Eros unites to form the Cosmos, the world. Allegories play an important role in the work of Pherecydes, showing its mystical nature. An important fragment which we comment in detail elsewhere, tells of the marriage of Zeus and Hera, called Zas and Chthonia by Pherecydes, and describes the nuptial dress (peplos) that the god embroidered for her as an image of the Cosmos, with the earth and the ocean around it.

 

Pherecydes and the Rise of Orphism

The philosophic tendencies of Pherecydes and the style of the work show its mystic nature, which is far more realistic and philosophical than the contemporary cosmogonies of poets such as Hesiod and the pseudo-Orpheus. Some critics see the origins of Orphism and Pythagoreanism in the work of Pherecydes, which indeed seems to be the actual case. But the seminal philosopher presents an already mature account which he of course borrowed from earlier sources, probably Indian, rather than indeed Phoenician, as we already said. Other experts see the influence of Anaximander in Pherecydes, though the actual borrowing, if real, may well have been the other way around.

The main creator in the accounts of Pherecydes is Kronos, whom he equates with Chronos (Time) and describes as “a winged serpent of many heads”. Now, this serpent is the Ouroboros, itself copied from Hindu doctrines having to do with the Serpent Shesha. And Shesha is in turn the same as Shiva, in his aspect as Karana and Kala. Kala (kâla) means “Time” and, more exactly, “Cyclical Time”, in the sense of the doctrine of the Eternal Return which we comment further below. Karana means “Creator, “Artificer, Architect”, and has to do with the Great Architect of Gnostic traditions. It is form this word that the otherwise meaningless name of Kronos (Karana > Krana > Kronos) ultimately derives.

Pherecydes was well aware of that mystic connection, which he embodied in the above wordplay between Kronos (Saturn) and Chronos (Time). And it should be emphasized that Kronos is the father of the Gods, despite the fact that he was a Titan himself. The Ouroboros is also connected with the twin opposed serpents of the caduceus, again a Hindu symbol (nagakal). In many Gnostic pictures, clearly of Oriental origin, the Ouroboros is depicted as twin dragons or serpents fighting each other (Fig. XXX). This motif is taken from Flamel’s book, one of the central treatises on the alchemical sciences.

Fig. XXX – The Ouroboros as Twin Serpents Dueling
(A. Roob, Alchemy and Mysticism, pg. 402)

As we explain below and elsewhere, the twin serpents which devour each other symbolize the twin races of Atlantis (Dravidas and Aryans), endlessly fighting each other since the times of Atlantis. This eternal duel is variously represented in Indian art, as well as in the ones of the Chinese and other Orientals. In India they also assume other forms, for instance, and elephant and an alligator dueling (both are called nagas = “serpents” in Skt.), two serpents opposing each other, two birds, an eagle (Garuda) fighting a snake, the fight of the devas and the asuras, and so on.

This symbolism is extreme widespread, and is also encountered in the Americas, for instance, in the national seal of Mexico, owed to the Aztecs. Its presence in pre-Columbian America, isolated from contacts with the Old World since the Ice Age, according to experts, demonstrates that the symbolism – which obviously means the same eternal duel – can only derive from Atlantis itself, unless anyone finds an alternative explanation that does not border on the miraculous. Pherecydes’ identification between Kronos and Chronos was accepted by the Orphics, who also believed in metempsychosis (transmigration of the soul), in the soul’s immortality, and in Cyclical Time.

Some experts believe that the Orphic doctrines arose from their acceptance of the doctrines of Pherecydes and Pythagoras. But the symbolism is far older than either of the two philosophers, in the Orient, showing its provenance from there. Moreover, Orphic doctrines, center on the worship of Dionysos, the Indian god, again confirming the Indian origin of these ideas, rather than within Greece itself. Dionysos is no other than Shiva himself, as we and others have argued in detail. Several recognized authorities, both ancient and modern, have also traced the Indian origin of Dionysos and his identity with Shiva, so that this fact can hardly be doubted at all anymore.

Up to now, the only opposition to this discovery is the unanimous silence of academicians, as no one dared oppose this view up to now. In other words, Dionysos, the “god of Nysa” (dio-nysus) is also the “god of the pillars” (dio-nyssai). As such, Dionysos is close of kin to Atlas, whereas Hercules, his mystic twin, seems to correspond to Bala, the twin of Dionysos. Mt. Nysa is actually the same as the Mt. Meru (or Atlas) of Hindu traditions, and the “pillars” in question here are the ones of Hercules and Dionysos (alias Atlas), posted in the Far East, as told by Callymachos and other such historians of Alexander. ^[12]

 

Pherecydes and “the Place Where the Sun Turns Around”

Pherecydes’ book, the Heptamykhos (or “On the Seven Recesses”) was also called Theogamy or Theogony (Theokrasia ê Theogonia), according to Sudas (s. v. “Pherecydes”). According to Kirk and Otmer, “we do not know for sure whether this title, enigmatic and uncommon, actually refers to”. And the book of Pherecydes is often said to have been the first one in prose to appear in ancient Greece. Sudas also tells how Pherecydes “was the instructor of Pythagoras; but he himself had no master, and instructed himself after obtaining the secret books of the Phoenicians”. And this fact is quite likely, if Pherecydes truly existed, being more than a purely mythical figure as so many early Greek philosophers were.

Sanchuniathon (fl. 13^th. century BC), the well-known Phoenician author, had already compiled his Phoenician cosmogony long before the times of Pherecydes and the Orphics. And the cosmogony disclosed by Sanchuniiathon is amazingly like the one of the Syrian. The cosmogony of Phoenician priest – who seems to be one of the many Chaldee sages wandering all over the ancient world – has often been deemed fanciful by some experts. But it has been confirmed by recent finds in Ugarit, which dramatically confirmed the traditions reported by Sanchuniathon.

So, it seems certain that Pherecydes was in fact acquainted with the strange Phoenician cosmogony, just as Sudas affirms. But, as we show elsewhere, the Phoenicians in fact obtained their cosmogony from the Indians and, more exactly from Atlantis itself. Indian cosmogony, like the one of Pherecydes and the Orphics, is often based on concepts such as “froth”, which is indeed a reference to volcanic pumice stone, as we argue in detail further below and elsewhere.

The cosmogony in question here has to do with marine volcanism, something that does not exist in the Phoenicia we know of, and which was certainly imported from Indonesia, where this type of thing is current and is part of the local cosmogonic myths. This “seafroth” has to do with the birth of Aphrodite (“born of froth”), with the Primordial Castration (Kronos’ and Ouranos’), and with floating islands such as Delos, the birthplace of Apollo, as we comment in detail elsewhere.

For instance, take Homer’s passage on Syria just mentioned. As we said in our introduction to the present work, we must necessarily search elsewhere than in the place actually mentioned in order to decode the myth in question if we indeed want to find the mythical Suriê in question here. A hint is given by Homer and the glossarists of this passage of his, which we now quote and explain in some detail:

“Of the Syrian, subsist the book [Heptamykhos]… The marker of solstices (heliotropion) also survives in the island of Syros” (Diogenes Laertius, I:119).

“There is an island called Syria (Suriê) – maybe you have heard of it – beyond Ortygia, where the sun turns around (oti tropai hêelioio)” (Homer, Odyssey, 15:403).

“Where the sun turns around – It is said that that there exists the Cave of the Sun there, by means of which they observe the turnings of the sun (tou heliou tropas)” (QV).

“As if it were in the direction of the turning around of the sun (tas tropas heliou), as if it were in the direction where the stars sink, above (or beyond) Delos (ho estin epi ta dutika merê huperanôthen tes Dêlou).” (BHQ). “So in Aristarchos and Herodian” (H). ^[13]

As LSJ affirm in the link given in the above footnote, the word tropai may mean any of the Four Cardinal Directions, depending on the context. The above gloss that Suriê lies “where the stars set, beyond Delos” is extremely important. Kirk and Otmer call our attention to the fact that Homer’s expression “can never sensibly mean, in any kind of Greek, a device (or cave or pit or something else) for marking or observing the solstices”. They also note that there were other Delos-Ortygias both in Greece as well as elsewhere. H. L. Lorimer (Homer and the Monuments, pg. 80) argues that Homer’s Suriê is Syria tropai indeed refers to the Orient, and we agree with him.

Kirk and Otmer argue that Suriê (= Syria, with short u) could hardly ever be confused with Syros (Sûros, with a long u).Syria is hardly an island, and hardly far away from Greece, and we again agree. But the possibility remains that the interpretation of tropai as the Orient remains acceptable. Homer also affirms (Od. 5:123) that Orion, when he was kidnapped by Dawn, was taken to Ortygia, where he was killed by Artemis. Now, Dawn is Aurora, that is, the personification of the Orient itself.

So, it can hardly be doubted that Delos-Ortygia lay towards the Orient. In fact, as we show in detail elsewhere, Dawn (Ushas) is the personification of Taprobane (Indonesia) and Delos, the island of Apollo and Artemis, is itself the divide between day and night, that is, the International Dateline where the day (and the sun) indeed “turns around”. And this place is, even today, located in the Far Orient, just as it was in the days of Atlantis-Eden when the myths in question here were first composed.

Hesiod too refers in detail to this place “where the sun changes over” in his Theogony. It is also unlikely that the home of the sun – where Apollo spent the winter in order to keep warm – might be located in the Occident, rather than in the Orient, where the sun is born everyday. The island of Ortygia is so named after the Atlantides, the seven daughters of Atlas who personify the remains of the sunken continent, the Seven Islands of the Blest. The Atlantides (or Pleiades) turned into doves (peleias) or quails (ortyx) in order to escape the persecution of Orion, whence the name. The “place where the stars sink” indeed means the west. But, it should also be recalled that since the earth is round, beyond the furthest eat lies the furthest west, and vice-versa, as Columbus first proved in practice.

And since Delos-Ortygia was precisely the boundary between Orient and Occident (Dateline), beyond it lay the west, just as the glossarist affirms. Moreover, the Cave of the Sun was not used for the determination of solstices (a stupid, precarious method at best). This name of “Cave of the Sun” is often used, since remotest antiquity, to designate the place where the sun is said to rise from the ground every morning, exiting from the infernal regions. This place is precisely the Vadava-mukha, the Submarine Mare (or Pit of Hell or mundus), connecting the subterranean realm with this world.

And this cave exists both in the Orient, where the sun exits into this world, and in the occident, where it sinks underground, at the end of the day. The amount of evidence we have gathered on this issue and which we present elsewhere is simply enormous. This is a crucial issue that deserves to be meditated in order to be clearly understood, as it is only clear on hindsight. But it is a solution that resolves all the paradoxes such as the present one on the placement of Ortygia-Delos and Suriê. Suriê is the Island of the Sun or Land of many traditions. This “island” the very one that Tommaso Campanella identified to Atlantis itself, and which Sir Francis Bacon identified with the East Indies in his amazing New Atlantis.

The Egyptians called it “Island of Fire”, a name which is mystically the same as “Island of the Sun”. And Ezekiel refers to Eden, the site of paradise, as the place where Cherubs walk over live coals. And, finally, this island is also the sun-scorched one where the “sun” fell, either in his name of Apollo or Hephaistos or Phaëthon or Surya, or Lucifer, or Hesperus, etc.. All these are allegories of the rising of the Subterranean Sun, the terrible volcano whose magma rose to the surface, in Atlantis, turned it into a hell, and wiped the Lost Continent out of the map for good. And what is most important is that the event is actually true and tangible, rather than sheer myth.

Pherecydes’ Seven Recesses and Aztec Traditions

We saw above that Pherecydes’ most important work was the Heptamykhos, a theogony where the mythographer-philosopher told of the birth of the world, of the one of the gods, of their marriages, and so on. Mystically speaking, the Cosmogonic Hierogamy is the union of opposites such as Fire and Water, Light and Darkness or the Square and the Circle. In fact it means the dissolution of the world by the dispensation of Fire and Water that takes place at era ends. In one of the few fragments remaining from Pherecydes’ seminal work, the philosopher tells the cosmogonic hierogamy of Zeus and Chthonia, which is the name he gave both the earth-mother and the earth proper (gaia).

Zeus impersons Celestial Fire, represented as aither or akasha. The first word derives from the IE radix aith– (“to burn”), whereas the second word is its Sanskrit name and means more or less the same, that is, “something which is shiny or visible” (â-kâśa). This etymology is identical to the one of Phanes, which is the name the Orphics gave their supreme god.

But this name also plays with the idea of “muck”. In fact, the word akasha derives from kasha, meaning precisely “catarrh, scum, rheum, drool, froth, residue, cinders” rather than purely from the idea of “shiny, visible”, as we explained further above. We discuss the real meaning of the substance akasha or aither further below, showing that it indeed means the ilus or pelos (“mud, muck”) which, according to Plato not only choked Atlantis dead, but also covered its seas, rendering them innavigable. ^[14]

So, the Serpent Shesha seems to have been indeed the archetype of the Orphic and Gnostic deities such as Phanes and Eros, as well as of Zeus (or Zas), as conceived by Pherecydes. Gaia instead represented the earth or land of Paradise, ravished by the fiery cataclysm which first flew up like a bird (Vena, the Phoenix, the Benu Bird) or a winged horse (Pegasus) to later fall back like the Sun, scorching the earth and choking it dead. Such is also the idea of the sky falling down when its support (Mt. Atlas or Meru) collapses and shatters into a myriad fragments (cinders, tektites, ejecta).

It is thus that the earth (Chthonia, Gaia, Hera) becomes covered by a veil made her by Zeus himself, one of the basic myths told by Pherecydes. And that veil is the veil of Isis, of Vesta, Hestia and other such veiled ones. It conforms to earth’s profile in every detail, and even has the image of Oceanus around its rim. What this veil means is the covering with cinders of the entire region of Paradise, its seas included on the occasion of the giant volcanism that destroyed the place.

What the (purposefully) confused and obscure cosmogony given by Pherecydes and, indeed, all sources, actually means is this giant volcanism. It is this terrible event that is likened to the cleansing of the world in preparation for the next era that follows. This volcanism is the baptism of Fire and Water, the Dispensation or Flood commemorated in all religions of the world since remotest antiquity. Interestingly enough, the Aztecs and the Mayas of Mexico both speak of precisely Seven Recesses (Chicomostoc) as the site of their primordial homeland, locate beyond the ocean, the place whence they originally came. We discuss this interesting subject in detail elsewhere, in our essay entitled The Mayan Atlantis.

Fig. XXX – Chicomostoc, the Primordial Homeland of the Aztecs
(From the Internet, in my files)

Chicomostoc – a name meaning precisely the same as Pherecydes’ “Seven Recesses”– is described in detail in the Aztecan traditions. In fact, it is also portrayed in the few magnificent Mayan and Aztecan codices which survived the destructive fury of the Jesuit and Domenican priests who entered the Americas in the wake of the conquistadors. An instance is shown in Fig. XXX above, reproduced from one of these codices. In Mayan traditions the place is called by a similar name, Vucub Zuiva, meaning the same thing, though often improperly translated as “Seven Tombs” though the name is said to mean Siete Cuevas (“Seven Caves”) in Spanish. In fact, Chicomostc is the same place as Aztlan or Aztatlan, another name of the Aztecan Paradise turned into Hell itself.

Now, the name of Aztlan or, rather, Aztatlan does not only resemble the name of Atlantis, as others have noted before. We also found out that it also corresponds to the very shape of Atlantis as reproduced in existing replicas such as Santiago de Aztatlan which is a perfect reproduction of the capital city of Atlantis in its geometrical shape. Santiago de Aztatlan, whose aerial photo we show in our work just mentioned, is an artificial island which is perfectly round in shape. It has two crossing canals which form the so-called “Cross of Atlantis”, the shape described by Plato as the one of Atlantis’ citadel.

No one of having a minimum of common-sense will ever believe that this name and this shape, so similar to the ones of Atlantis arose by sheer coincidence. And when one considers the amount of circumstantial evidence we also provide there, the possibility of a random coincidence becomes essentially null. And since the Aztecs declare that they came from a Paradise “beyond the ocean”, why should we foolishly attempt to place that homeland within the Americas or, worse yet, beyond the impassable barrier of the northern ice, in Beringia or whatever?

 

Chicomostoc and the Fire at the Center of the Earth

The portrait of Chicomostoc shown in the above figure is remarkable. Not only does it closely evoke the Heptamychos of Pherecydes. The figure clearly shows it to be a volcano, as shown by the coiled “cap” at the top of the figure. This is called a colhuacan, and is the conventional representation of the plume of smoke of a volcanic mountain in Aztecan iconography. Moreover, the “seven recesses” within the mountain are a conventional representation of the site of the sunken Paradise turned into Hell itself. They portray the seven dependences of Hell, as discussed further below in the present work.

The footprints shown in the picture symbolize the Aztecs’ leaving their cave or recess, in order to emigrate to the Americas, their Promised Land. Other illustrations of both the Mayas and the Aztecs show them leaving a volcanic island that is fast sinking in the ocean. Still others, such as the one of the Boturini Codex show their trajectory across the ocean, with landfalls in several islands on the way. And other traditions such as the ones on Quetzalcoatl and Kukulkan clearly show that their place of provenance lay beyond the Pacific Ocean, rather than the Atlantic. Besides, why would the Indians take the far longer, far more difficult route, rather than the far more logical one across the Pacific Ocean, given that they came from the Far East, from the region of Oceania?

The seven recesses of the Aztecan homeland, just as the “seven tombs” of Mayan traditions (Xibalba) leave no doubt that they claim to have come from the site of Paradise detroyed, that is, from Hell itself. And this is logical now that we know that destroyed Atlantis was indeed turned into Hell from the Paradise it formerly was. Most Amerinds in fact claim to have come from a cave, a subterranean above, a heaven, a hell, and so on. And the obvious identity of this place of origin with the Hell of the Old World leaves no room for doubting that the tradition – real or not, it does not matter – indeed had a common origin. And where else but in Paradise itself, that is, in Atlantis?

Moreover, we see that these “Seven Recesses” correspond to the Seven Islands of the Blest of Greek traditions, to the Seven Hells of the Sumero-Babylonians, and the several such we find just about everywhere in the world. And these seven recesses or divisions actually correspond, as we show in detail elsewhere, to the seven larger islands of Indonesia and whereabouts: Java, Sumatra, Borneo, Celebes, Philippines, New Guinea and the Malay Peninsula, the near-island which counts as the seventh element of the group. These seven islands are all volcanic They are the ones which form the Indonesian island arc known to volcanologists as the “belt of fire” because of its many still active volcanoes. And these islands are indeed the remains of sunken Atlantis, as we argue in great detail elsewhere.

It is no coincidence that the universal traditions generally equate Hell with a volcanic place, full of fire and gloomy, choking smoke. Such is the meaning of the Island of Fire of Egyptian traditions, of the blazing Eden of Ezekiel, of flaming Mt. Sinai-Zion, of Dhumâdi of Hindu traditions, of Tartarus of the Greeks, and so on. In Greek traditions the gods, led by Zeus, imprison the defeated Titans, together with Kronos, their leader, in Hades or Tartarus, directly under a volcanic mountain (Mt. Aetna, etc.). so in Hindu ones, where Ravana is imprisoned by Shiva under a volcanic mountain.

The Aztecs also spoke of the Central Fire, the fire (or volcano) at the exact center of the earth. And they had a fire god-goddess, Xiuhtecutli, who was their counterpart of Vesta-Hestia. Though the Aztec god is portrayed as a male, or rather an androgyne, his identity with the Greco-Roman fire-godesses is too exact to be countered, as we argued further above in the present work. In a way, this god-goddess is also confused with Black Tezcatlipoca. Walter Krickeberg, the famous German anthropologist who collected the legends of the Aztecs and other Amerinds in the beginning of the 20^th. century, affirms that:

The fact that the Black Tezcatlipoca “was born in the middle of all things and all beings” connects him with the ancient Aztecan fire-god who lives at the navel of the earth, according to Mexican traditions… Tezcatlipoca was much feared among the ancient Mexicans [Aztecs] because he was the god who judges and who punishes, he who gives and takes away fortune in a capricious, arbitrary fashion… “Night and Wind”, a surname that is often applied both to Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca, is also applied to the old fire god to characterize the invisible and the incorporeal that is the appanage of their nature… “Fire” is always created first. It already exists before the sun iluminates the earth. Such is the reason why the fire god is, according to Mexican traditions, the eldest of the gods. ^[15]

It is no coincidence that the Greco-Roman fire goddesses, Vesta and Hestia are also deemed the eldest of the gods in these pantheons. It is clear that the mythology of the fire-deity residing in the exact center of the world from the beginning of all things derives from a common tradition dating back to the times both the Amerinds and the Greeks and theRomans lived in a common location. And this place can only have been Paradise itself, the primordial abode of which allof them speak in their traditions. It is worth pointing out that sex is an unimportant attribute insofar as gods are concerned, as they are often bisexual, or change sex at will, etc..

 

The Island of the Seven Cities

The Seven Recesses of Pherecydes or the Siete Cuevas (Seven Caves or Recesses or Bays) of the Mayas and Aztecs also closely evoke the Ilha das Septe Cidades, the “Island of the Seven Cities” of Portuguese traditions an the Islan of San Brendan of Irish ones. This in turn derives from the Seven Isles of the Blest of the Greeks, which in turn derive from the Sapta-dvipa (“Seven Islands”) of Hindu traditions. The Sapta-dvipa of Hindu traditions are the seven sub-divisons of the Hindu Paradise. They consist of seven concentric circles, isolated by seven seas, in a shape quite close to the one of Atlantis according to Plato.

No one familiar with Hindu traditions will fail to realize their relationship with Atlantis, now that the identity has been pointed out. And those unfamiliar with these traditions are urged to read our works commenting them and making a detailed comparison with Atlantis. In fact, Greek traditions on the Seven Islands of the Blest directly derive from these Hindu traditions, as we argue in detail in our works just mentioned. From Greece, these traditions passed on to Rome and elsewhere, and thence to the Portuguese an the Spaniards. Somehow, these traditions also reached Ireland, where it became the legend of Saint Brendan, so often confused with the one of Septe Cidades.

The island of Septe Cidades figured in essentially all maps of the Age of Navigation. It was part of the seven “Atlantic Islands”, which were indeed the remainders of sunken Atlantis commented above. According to this tradition, Saint Brendan or, in the Portuguese account, the Bishop of Lisbon, heading six other bishops, left Europe to escape religious persecution and went questing for the Promised Land in the ocean. They eventually found the Atlantic Islands where they founded the mythical seven cities. Later explorers vainly sought for these seven islands, which kept receding at the measure new discoveries were made. Some explorers claimed to have found them in Brazil, others in Florida, and so on.^[16]

In contemporary maps, the island of Septe Cidades often figures with its seven bays which closely evoke the “seven recesses” quite like the ones of Pherecydes and the Aztecs. It is clear, on hindsight, that all these traditions derive from the one of Atlantis via the Hindu traditions just mentioned. Otherwise, how is one to explain the fact that this ancient tradition reached the Americas before the times of Columbus? How is one to dismiss as sheer coincidence such perfect concordances in both shape and symbolism, for instance the connection with the traditions on Paradise and with Atlantis itself? Or can anyone suggest a viable alternative that is more economical than the present one?

Some authorities specifically identify Aztlan with Atlantis, and Chicomostoc with the actual place whence they Aztecs came forth from, itself confused with Aztlan. The traditions on the Seven Cities were widespread in the three Americas. The Indians of Guatemala also had similar traditions. So did the Peruvian Incas, where the legend was connected with the one of Eldorado, as it also was in North America. In fact, the Spanish explorers of North America sought the Seven Cities of Cibola – which they identified with Eldorado – all over Florida, California and New Mexico, much as the Portuguese sought to find the site of septe Cidades in South America.

Even today, many authors affirm to have found evidence of the actual Seven Cities of Cibola in in North America and of Septe Cidades in either Brazil or elsewhere in South America. Much of this information is available in the Internet. In fact, the tradition of the Seven Cities even entered Judeo-Christian traditions, for instance in the Seven Cities to which the letters of St. John are addressed in the Book of Revelation or in the Seven Heavens of Dante’s Divine Commedy. We study this matter in detail elsewhere, and will not delve into it here.^[17]

 

Anaximander of Miletus

Anaximander was born in Miletus (Asia Minor) in 610 BC. He is thought to have been a disciple of Thales of Miletus, to whose philosophical school Anaximander belonged. The Italian philosopher wrote several treatises (unfortunately now lost) on geography, astronomy, cosmology and the natural sciences which survived for many centuries, until the advent of Christianity and its obscurantism. Anaximander is said to have made the first known map of the world, and to have invented a marker of solstices (Fig. 1A).

Anaximander derived the world from a subtle substance or element which he called apeiron, which means “unlimited” or “infinite” in Greek. This primordial substance embodied the primary properties such as “hot” or “cold”, “wet” and “dry”, and so on, in a state of equilibrium. In his cosmogony – explained by Plutarch – hot and cold originally began to separate. A sphere of fire formed at the center which later hardened to form the earth. Meanwhile, the outer, fiery envelope congealed, forming the crystalline spheres that correspond to the sun, the moon and the planets. As is clear, Anaximander’s cosmology closely foreruns the one of Laplace, except that the Central Fire became the earth, rather than the Sun.

Fig. 1A – Anaximander and His Sundial
(Enc. Brit. 81 Index, s. v., pg. 345)

Being at the center, the earth presented no tendency to fall towards any direction whatsoever, as is logical. Hence, it remained at rest there, at the exact center of the universe. In Anaximander’s view all elements continually strive to separate from each other, and are in a constant state of evolution. But, eventually, this trend is reversed and all things revert to the primordial state, the apeiron from which all things came and to which they will return, “in accordance with the ordinance of Time”. This world-view parallels the one of the Pythagoreans, who envisioned the world as a sort of “breathing” organism which rhythmically expands and contracts. Plato also offers a detailed version of this doctrine in his remarkable dialogue entitled Statesman.

These doctrines – so poorly understood by all or most commentators both Classical and Modern – are clearly of Hindu provenance. They derive from the classic darshanas (“philosophic doctrines”) such as Sankhya and Vedanta, and have to do with the Cosmic rhythm dictated by Purusha’s “breathing”. They have to do with the yugas and the Wheel of Time (Kalachakra), as well as with the Eternal Return and Cyclical Evolution. These philosophical doctrines are so advanced that they are seldom if ever understood in the West. But they are immensely old in India (Sankhya, Vedanta) and in the Far East in general (Taoism, Yin-Yang, etc.). In the West they survive in obscure doctrines such as the Christian dogma of the Resurrection of the Dead, a central motif in Christianity and other such eschatological religions.^[18]

The Hindu doctrines date from the Rig Veda or earlier and, hence, from Atlantean times. In fact, they tell of the destruction of Atlantis-Eden and its rebirth not once, but several times in the past, in former Yugas (eras). More than just a poetical fantasy or even a philosophical or religions doctrine, the cyclical destruction and rebirth of the world in an ever more perfected shape is a geological fact that is amply and convincingly attested in the fossil record. Atlantis is just the last of an unending sequence of Creations and Destructions of varying durations and magnitude.

 

The Consequences of Anaximander’s Doctrines

We commented the cosmogonic doctrines of Anaximander in some detail because they were the foundation of the others that arose later concerning the Four Elements, which dominated European though until modern times. It is no coincidence that these esoteric doctrines entered Greece from the east, from Ionia, in Asia Minor and from Italy, with the Pythagoreans. As we said above, these doctrines originated in India, and entered Europe from there, probably via the Etruscans and the Pelasgians, the Dravidian predecessors of the Greeks and the Romans in the region. In fact, these doctrines originally came from Atlantis which is seen once more to lie in the east, rather than in the west.

Empedocles systematized the doctrines of the Cosmogonic Elements, which he reduced to four: Fire, Water, Air, Earth, plus a fifth virtual principle, the Aither. As we already said, these Four Principles are originally Hindu. In fact, they are the ones that destroy the world, preparing it for the next reconstruction by means of Floods, Conflagrations, Hurricanes, Earthquakes and Ether, the searing, blazing “breath” of major volcanic eruptions, not unlike the death blow of nuclear weapons.

The Pythagoreans adopted similar cosmogonic views, though insisting in the mystical aspects, rather than the material ones emphasized by Democritus and the Epicureans. Socrates and Plato furthered the Pythagorean doctrines, with a heavy emphasis on the esoteric aspects expressed in the Timaeus and other works. These doctrines, as usual, centered on the secret of the Mysteries and the mystic doctrines concerning Atlantis, which Plato was the only philosopher ever to disclose to the public. Cicero was right in stating that Socrates and Plato “brought down their philosophy from Heaven down to the Earth”. What he meant by this equivocal aphorism is that these philosophers derived their teachings from Paradise itself, that is, from Atlantis, bringing them to the West, to Athens and the world.

 

Anaximander’s Apeiron Corresponds to Hesiod’s Khaos

Anaximander’s apeiron – the essence of all things – is one of the most difficult concepts in Greek philosophy. It obscurely corresponds to principles such as arche, hyle and other such monads that we also encounter there. We have shown elsewhere in detail that this principle, out of which the Cosmos was created corresponds to the Khoros that, according to Hesiod, issued from the Khasma Mega and later separated out in opposites, to form all things.

The seeds of this cosmogony are already encountered in far older creation myths such as those of the Phoenicians transmitted by Sunchuniaton and those of the Orphics and other mystics of Greece and elsewhere. The main failure of the Greek philosophers – one that was perpetuated by later exegetes – was believing that the cosmogonic processes they copied from the Far East actually applied to the universe and to the Solar System rather than to the Earth itself and, more exactly, to Paradise.

This fact, this misunderstanding proves more than anything, that the ancient Greeks indeed borrowed their cosmogonies and the religious and philosophic doctrines that came with then from earlier source which they were as unable to understand, as are the modern philosophers themselves. The main source of the mistake stems from a misunderstanding of the word kosmos, the Cosmos. Kosmos means “beautified”, as in the word “cosmetic”, which derives from it. ^[19]

As used in the Far East, the concept indeed implied the idea the Greek applied to the Oukoumene, that is, “the ordered world”, “the civilized world” in contrast to the uncouth, uncivilized world, populated with savages, and destitute of law and order.

More exactly, in the East, the concept the Greeks translated as kosmos specifically applied to Paradise, to the seat of Civilization in a still savage world, dominated by all sorts of wild beasts and monstrous cannibals. ^[20]

And Paradise, we repeat, was very real, being no other than Atlantis itself. What all these doctrines were obscurely parroting and attempting to translate into Greek terminology was the far older Puranic doctrines concerning the Yugas, their conflagrative and diluvial endings and the subsequent rebirth of nature and of civilization that eventually followed, according to the Law, “according to the decree of Circular Time” which the Hindus equated to Kâla (Shiva) and the Greeks and Romans to Kronos and Saturn (as Chronos).

In other words, these esoteric doctrines told of the destruction of Atlantis by Fire and Water, and of its rebirth not once o twice, but an infinity of times according to the Law, Dharma. Anaximander’s apeiron was the Greek equivalent of the Cosmic Egg, the Unity (or Monad) Out of which all things sprung, by separation. As Aristotle correctly noted, the apeiron was not indeed a monad, as it already contained, within itself the seeds of Duality, which later separated out of it.

Anaximander’s intention was monistic, however. It sought Unity behind Duplicity and Multiplicity. The objection that, at least potentially, the opposites must always have been present in the apeiron is false or, at least, belongs to a further stage of reality. For instance, a neutron may split into a proton and an electron, or a photon into an electron and a positron, though it is not necessarily true that the two final particles were at all times potentially present.

These are difficult questions that cannot be answered with a simple “yes” or “no”. the best answered would probably be “it depends”. Depends on what? On what your mean by “potentially present”. If this “potential presence” implies that they can already be discerned in any procedural way, this must be operationally defined before one decides if this is valid or not. This type of problem is studied in Quantum Mechanics, and the answers given both by Nature and by the researchers is very often perplexing and often seem to be irrational.

However, when we reexamine the problem of Anaximander’s dualistic-monadic apeiron in the light of what was just said, it is easy to realize that this doctrine is very aptly summarized in a remarkably simple symbol, the Yin-Yang (Fig. 2A).

Fig. 2A – The Yin-Yang (or Tai-chi) Diagram
(E. Lehner, Symbols, Signs, Signets, fig. 468)

The Yin-yang far from being originally Chinese is a symbol derived from the one of the Cosmic Egg, one of the oldest and most universal of all such. In fact, the Cosmic Egg (or Egg of the World) derives from the Shiva-linga, often represented as an egg. The linga of Shiva also embodies a duality and is often represented as a yoni-lingam or as a linga having a yoni in its shaft.

As can be seen in Fig. 2A, the Yin-Yang (the central circle) is formed of two halves, one black, the other white. These are the “seeds” of duality. But these in turn embody, within themselves the seeds of their duals, which in turn embody those of their own duals, and so on forever. Hence, the figure shows in practice, as a sort of fractal, how multiplicity originates from duality, itself arising from unity. ^[21]

As we already said, the Ying-Yang forms the base and essence of the doctrine of Tao that, far more than religion is a philosophic darshana. Tai-chi means “the Great Monad” (Tai-Yi) that issued from the Greatest and Highest (Tai-Chi)”. It eventually became “the myriad things” by successive subdivisions. These are formed from the five Elements: Fire, Water Earth, Metal, Wood. ^[22]

The eight trigrams correspond to different combinations of yin and yang, one represented by the broken line, the other by the continuous one. More simply, they correspond to the eight spokes of the Wheel of Surya, that is, the Wheel-of-the-Law. And the 21 circles around the diagram plus the central one (the yin-yang) correspond to the 22 avatars of Vishnu and the corresponding eras. They also represent the petals of the lotus which in turn symbolize the tongues of the fire that destroyed Paradise. In other words, the Cosmic Egg is a rendering of Atlantis-Eden as the “seed” or “egg” whence all things originated in a series of fiery-watery cataclysms that occurred throughout the ages.

As concerns the Tao, the Way which is also the One the Great Monad (Tai Yi) we cannot resist quoting Lao Tzu’s poem on it:

There, is one thing confusedly formed,

Born before Heaven and Earth.

Silent and void, it stands alone,

It does not change and does not weary,

As it goes round and round, endlessly.

As it is perhaps the Mother of the Worlds

Since I know not its true name,

Which is why I style it: “the Way”

What Lao Tzu is disclosing is that the One, the Tao, the Egg, the Monad is indeed Paradise as the Mother of the World. The “confusedly” corresponds to the khaos or hyle out of which all things were formed, the apeiron of Anaximander and the logos of Heraclitus, as well as Monad of the Pythagoreans and the Fire, Water or Air or Ether of other cosmogonies.

Whirling is indeed implied by the helicoidal form of the Ying-Yang. This is a reference that Atlantis was equated with the Polar Mountain, Mt. Atlas (or Meru) at the Center of the World, serving as its virtual “Pole” and focus of all attentions.

“Born before Heaven and Earth” implies the idea that Paradise preceded the actual division that we just discussed and the actual ones that we discussed in the main text. “Silent and void” refer to the fact that Atlantis became the Land of the Dead after its destruction and even its remainders, the islands were deserted by its peoples, who moved out en masse after the cataclysm.

The Above poem of Lao-Tzu closely evokes Hesiod’s Theogony (116f):

First of all, Khaos arose and then Gaia (Earth) of ample breast, forever the firm foundation… And Gaia (Earth) bore Ouranos (Sky) first, identical to herself, to cover her all around and to be the abode the eternally safe residence of the blest immortals…

The two cosmogonies are very obviously identical. And they are equally obscure and incomprehensible: the earth and the sky originating from inside a hole (?), a chasm probably filled with fiery molten magma, the mysterious substance (Khaos) whose nature and composition the Greeks tried to discover and which they successively identified as air, fire, water, aether, wood (hyle), fused metal, wind (logos), and so on. We show in detail elsewhere how this mysterious substance was none of the above, but indeed “froth”. Not ordinary lather, though or foam, but really pumice stone. Pumice is a glassy froth generated by explosive volcanism (granitic) of the type that is common in Indonesia. It floats in the sea and, on the occasion of great explosions covers both land and sea, sterilizing everything and rendering life impossible.

Pumice is the ilus (or pelos) which Plato affirmed to cover the seas of destroyed Atlantis, impeding the navigation of its seas, and which is often improperly translated as “mud”. Mud does not float in water. The utter loss of the Greek philosophers and bards (Homer, Hesiod) to understand the true nature of Khaos proves conclusively that they imported both their cosmogonic myths and their philosophy from the Far East, at least insofar as these crucial concepts are concerned. In no way could the coincidence between Hesiod and Lao-Tzu be purely chancy in their highly unlikely propositions. Who cribbed who is also obvious, for a copyist can write down something he fails to understand but never create something he doesn’t and which others subsequently copy and are able to understand.

As we pointed out above, the Khaos or Hesiod corresponds to the Ginnungagap, the fearful chasm of Nordic traditions. And this, in turn, corresponds to the Abvan (or Vardhamana Khaya) of Vedic traditions. The strange concept is absolutely universal, as it is also encountered, nearly verbatim, among the Brazilian Amerinds. The Tupi-Guarani Indians’ cosmogonic myth tells of the same gap separating the world-halves and call it Yvyporey, “the Chasm of the Earth. ^[23]

 

The Extreme Antiquity of Hesiod’s Cosmogony

We remark here two facts that show the extreme antiquity of this strange type of cosmogony whose universality, by the way, also attests the same thing. After all, since at least the Amerinds have been isolated from the Old World ever since the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age (11,6 kya), they must have brought along this mythology from wherever they came from originally. And, by the way, that place was the Orient (Asia), as everybody agrees. So, in other words, the cosmogonic myth is both prior to the Flood (the end of the Pleistocene) and oriental in origin. So, it can only have come from the pristine abode of humanity in the Ice Age. And, where else but Atlantis-Eden could that have been? ^[24]

The first fact that suggests the antiquity of Hesiod’s account of Creation is the passage which we already commented, and which tells of the Celestial Hemisphere (“Sky”) being above the Earth, the opposite hemisphere. Now, the hemisphere traditionally equated with Paradise is the Southern Hemisphere, conventionally placed under the Northern one ever since it was definitely destroyed and abandoned, becoming the Land of the Dead (Hades). Second, in the Germanic myth just commented, the Ginnungagap – which also preceded the creation of Sky and Earth – separates the fiery southern hemisphere (Muspellheim) from icy, northern one (Nifelheim). ^[25]

Now this strange situation suggest a terrible cataclysm. And this can only have occurred in the Ice Age, when indeed the Northern Hemisphere was almost entirely covered by ice. What the myths are telling is the opening of the Khaos or Khasma Mega and the shedding of fiery magma (“froth = pumice) which covered the lands of the southern hemisphere then inhabited, transforming it into a veritable hell. In other words, the cosmogonic myth of the Norse is telling of the destruction of Atlantis-Eden, the true site of Paradise in all traditions. And it is placing the event in the Ice Age and in the Southern Hemisphere. It suffices to look in a map of the world to conclude that this place could never have been the Mediterranean region or, even less, the Caribe or the Mid-Atlantic, all of which are located in the Northern Hemisphere.

 

What Did Anaximander Mean By To Apeiron?

Only a single fragment of Anaximander, embodying a couple of phrases has reached our times. But this doctrines have been discussed by many ancient philosophers, particularly Aristotle and Simplicius, where this fragment is preserved (Phys. 24:17). It is worth quoting in full:

Anaximander of Miletus, successor and pupil of Thales. He said that the principle and element of all things which exist in the apeiron [indefinite, infinite], and was the first to use this name for the material principle [arche]. He affirms that it is not Water or any other of the so-called elements, but another physical nature (or element) called apeiron, from which originated all the skies and the worlds therein contained.

The source of the generation of all things which exist is also that of their destruction “according to Necessity” for they pay penalty and reparation [diken kai tisin] to one another for their injustices (akikias), in accordance with the decree of Time, “as he says himself in these somewhat poetic terms.

A full analysis of the seminal ideas of Anaximander would take a full book. So, we limit ourselves to showing the essential points where they derive directly from the Hindu doctrines on the yugas (eras), on Cyclical Time and in what they have to do directly with Atlantis and its destruction. We start by noting that, according to Plutarch (Strom. 2), Anaximander believed that the worlds are infinite (apeirous) and so are the skies. He also adds that Anaximander “declared that their genesis and destruction occur since far earlier, infinite ages, all occurring according to definite cycles of time”.

Hippolytus (Ref. 1:6:1-2) affirms that Anaximander “speaks of Time as if generation and duration were fixed and limited”. “But, he adds, “that the material principle [arche] of the things which exist was in nature apeiron and originate the heavens and the worlds therein contained”. “Furthermore”, he also adds, its motion [the apeiron’s?] is eternal, causing the skies to originate”. In the last passage, the word apeiron has the meaning not only of “unlimited”, but of “eternal”, that is, of something that remains and is conserved from one era to the next, as the worlds are created and destroyed in succession. And it also adds that it is the transformation [“notion”] of the apeiron that leads to the successive destructions and creations of the world.

In other words, the cosmogonic doctrines of Anaximander can be summarized as follows. There is an immaterial substance, eternal and imperishable that is conserved when the worlds are created and destroyed in a succession. It is capable of undergoing change from one form to another, but its total remains constant forever. This essence, the apeiron closely resembles what constantly changes and evolves, inclusive into matter or heat, but remains constant in amount throughout these processes. Was Anaximander foreshadowing Einstein’s mass and energy conservation by 25 centuries? Indeed he was. Or rather, his predecessors – whom he cribbed – were. There can be little doubt that what the Greek philosophers were groping for with their hyle, apeiron, logos, arche, aither and other such fundamental properties of matter was precisely the equivalents of what we nowadays call matter, energy, linear momentum, entropy, and so on.

Of course the primitive Greeks could never have reached this high degree of insight in the physical sciences all by themselves. In fact, they were striving to understand the advanced doctrines and theories which they learnt from the Hindus. And these in turn had obtained them from Vedic sources which, as they themselves claim, came to them directly from Paradises [read Atlantis], from ante-Diluvian times.

This fact is easy to prove to the alert-minded. First of all, the doctrines of Anaximander are exactly the transcription into Greek terminology of the Hindu doctrines concerning the yugas, their eternal succession and the immanent reminiscence of the akasha, the true archetype of the apeiron, the hyle and the aither. Secondly, the doctrines of the Puranas (“Old Traditions”) are derived from the Rig Veda which predates the existence of Greece itself by many millennia. But they are also encountered – in a mythical form that is perfectly recognizable, however – in the cosmogonies of Egypt, of Babylon, of Phoenicia, and even of the Americas.

Third, with the passage of time, all this superior knowledge, this groping for ultimate truth and understanding, became increasingly garbled. It eventually degenerated into Scholasticism and other such academic and religious doctrines, instead of advancing and progressing, as anyone would prognosticate from such a formidable start. And the same is true of all nations of the world, India itself included. Small wonder then that the Hindus have a negative view of Evolution, and speak of increasing evil and obscurity in the Kali Yuga, the age of Mankind in which we presently live.

The “infinity” of worlds” and respective skies in Anaximander is another Hindu doctrine that deserves explanation. In no way it alludes to parallel universes of worlds (planets), but to their eternal succession, as a close reading of the above quotations renders clear. We now abridge the Puranic doctrines of the yugas, which can better be studied in the many majestic Hindu be studied in the many majestic Hindu treatises on the subject or in their many commentators and students. ^[26]

The Puranic doctrine is actually so close to the one of Anaximander that we do not even have to show the parallels, as they are identities. The reader can see that for himself by checking the actual quotations on it we gave further above. According to the Puranic doctrine – which is one of the Pillars of Hinduism – the world undergoes periodic destructions and recreations. These are of varying periods and intensities, according to an elaborate scheme of ever increasing magnitudes and extensions. But these periodic destructions of the world are not thorough. The “seeks” of the former era survive and are used to reconstruct the new world. Preserved is also an indestructible, eternal principle a monad which is the close correspond of the apeirous of Anaximander and the Tao of the Buddhists. ^[27]

In the esoteric version, the successive earths are formed by the fall of the sky. When a new earth is formed thus, the previous one is smashed and sinks, becoming a subterranean hell. There are 14 Manvantaras in each Kalpa (or cycle). We presently live in the seventh Manvantara (or era) of the present Cycle (Kalpa). Hence there are seven Hells below in, and seven Heavens above us. ^[28]

Of course, this is just coarse analogy. What the myth of the “Fall of the Skies” really allegorizes is the real nature of the cataclysm. It corresponds to the giant volcanic explosion that covers the world with pumice stone, that is, volcanic glass (as froth), that is, fused quartz crystal. This glassy dust is first suspended in the atmosphere, becoming a sort of “canopy”, a “solid sky”, a “firmament” (or rakia).

This later falls down, choking all life both on land and sea. This is, in a few words, the origin of the myth in question. It has directly resulted from the tragedy that destroyed Atlantis and with others that have occurred earlier in the region of Indonesia. This substance, this “froth” that destroys the world corresponds to the ilus or pelos of Plato, the strange “mud” that covered the seas of Atlantis long after its destruction, rendering them unfit for navigation.

The Hindus have an extensive mythology on this strange substance that both destroys the world and later serves to build the subsequent one, of which it becomes the soil (literally). They equate this stuff ejected by (giant) volcanic explosions to the fire and froth spewed out by the Serpent Shesha who is also the Serpent of Eden and the Dragon of the Hesperides. In fact, the word akasha derives from kasha, meaning precisely “catarrh, scum, rheum, drool, froth, residue, cinders” rather than purely from the idea of “shiny, visible”, as we explained further above.

In many ways, particularly in Hindu traditions, this “froth” is indeed a strange material. Technically speaking, it is made of fused silica, that is, glass (tektites, silica ash, pumice stone). When first formed it is composed of earth (silica), fire (heat), air (bubbles) and water (adsorbed). In other words,it is formed from the Four Elements in a combined, shapeless, non-descript form. Truly, this “froth” is the hyle or apeiron, the primordial matter that both destroys and reshapes the world, serving as the building blocks for the next era it inaugurates. Above all, it fertilizes the soil, bringing abundance to the next era it inaugurates. Small wonder then that this singular substance liberated at the great conflagration of the Flood lies at the root of most cosmogonies and theogonies the world over.

 

Anaximander’s Central Fire

The pseudo-Plutarch (Strom. 2) tells how Anaximander conceived the formation of the Cosmos:

He says that what produces, from the eternal [the apeiron], cold and heat, separated out when the world was generated and from it a fiery sphere formed around the air that surrounds the earth, like the bark around a tree. When this [sphere] cracked apart and became confined to certain circles, then were formed the sun, the moon, the stars…

This cosmogony seems absurd when applied to either the Solar System of the Universe. But it makes sense if interpreted as applying to the Cosmos proper, that is, to Paradise, as we shall see next. What it apparently tells is the destruction of Atlantis. Let us rephrase it accordingly:

When the volcano exploded, releasing the apeiron, the volcanic cinders (pumice), at the start of the present era, when our world began, a fiery sphere formed in the air surrounding the entire earth, above the atmosphere, in the stratosphere. When this sphere cracked apart in certain regions, then the sun, moon, stars, reappeared and could be seen once again.

Many cosmologies, both in Greece and elsewhere, repeat more or less the same story, confirming our interpretation. Consider, for instance, the Orphic cosmogony, as told by Athenagoras (18:20):

According to him [Orpheus], water was the origin of all things. In it, shine [ilus] formed and from the two was born a living creature, a serpent with a lion’s head and, at the center, the face of a god, named Hercules and Chronos. This Hercules engendered an enormous egg which, being filled with the force [bias] of its progenitor, broke in two halves due to the friction. The upper part became Ouranos (Sky) and the lower half Gaia…

This story makes no sense at all, except when interpreted in the way we did for Anaximander. How could anyone hold that the Universe or the Solar System started inside the water? The myth clearly alludes to a place on earth. And that place is Paradise, the site of Creation. Thus understood, the myth tells the same story as Gen. 1, with “the spirit of God hovering over the waters, in the dark. What we have is the Flood covering the whole Cosmos, the whole land of Atlantis, that is, rather than the whole world. The “slime” or “mud” that covered the waters is the ilus, the “froth”, the apeiron of Anaximander. From here, on the story is clearly Hindu, and is telling one of their most interesting cosmogonies. The Serpent is Shesha, the Serpent of Paradise. His name means “residue”, “scum”, “slime”, “froth”. It is the exact equivalent of the Skt. kasha, as well as of Plato’s ilus, the “mud” that covered the seas of Atlantis.

Shesha indeed has a lion’s face like the serpent here. And the lion is the very emblem of Lanka, the land of the Dravidas, who have this animal for their totem. The lion also symbolizes Atlantis itself, often called Lyonesse (“Lion’s Island”). Hercules and Kronos (Saturn) are the twin rulers of Paradise. In fact, Hercules is the same as Gadeiros, the twin brother of Atlas, according to Plato. And Kronos or rather, Chronos (Time), is the godly counterpart of Atlas, the Titan. The myth is obscurely identifying the two gods with the two-headed Serpent Shesha itself and with Shiva, called Kala (Time) in Hindu traditions.

The Egg is the Cosmic Egg, the “seed” of all things, as we commented above. It is also the Linga and the yin-yang of Eastern traditions. As usual, it broke into two halves which became Heaven and Earth (Ouranos and Gaia). In other words, the Egg represents the earth and its two halves. But here it represents Paradise, the Cosmos or “Beautified Land” that was the image of the world itself. As we shall see further below, Atlantis (the Cosmos or Paradise) indeed had the circular shape of the earth parted in two halves or four quadrants. This partition of Atlantis-Eden mirrored the one of the world itself into two hemispheres or four corners (continents) reserved for the two or four races of Mankind.

These were the Whites, Yellows, Reds and Blacks originally grouped into two larger groups: Reds-Blacks in the Southern Hemisphere and White-Yellows in the northern one. This partitioning of the world happened soon after the demise of Atlantis, and persisted down to the times the whites unilaterally broke the compact and spread into America, Asia, Africa and Oceania. The result could be not other: wars of conquest and brutal genocides disguised under the excuse of “Christianization” and “Civilization”. The Hercules or Chronos of Orphic cosmogony is usually called Phanes (“Showy”). Phanes is usually represented as a winged serpent or as a man with a serpent coiled around itself.

The Serpent’s Cosmogonic Egg

As we already said, Phanes or Chronos (Time) symbolizes Cyclical Time (the coils) and the recurrent destructions and reconstructions of the world by “froth” (ilus), the very substance of the apeiron that results from the Great Dissolution of all things and their return to the primeval Chaos from which all things will again emerge in the following era. Phanes is, as Chronos, the verbatim equivalent of the Naja, the Serpent Shesha and its showy hood. ^[29]

Damascius (De Princ., 123) explains Orphic Cosmogony, as told in their rhapsodies, by placing Chronos (Phanes) at the origin of all things. Kirk and Otmer summarize his cosmogonic events thus:

 

Chronos ⎨→ Khaos → ⎬ Egg → Phanes

 

The Egg (Ôon) he explains as a “shiny tunic” (arges chiton) or as a “cloud” (nephele). More exactly, the Greek word chiton designated the expanded hood of a naja serpent. ^[30]

This strange notion is clearly alien to Greece, where such serpents never existed, in contrast to India, where they are widely worshiped. Hence, what Damascius is describing are precisely the events of Hindu cosmogonies: Chronos (Kala), the serpent Shesha opens its huge mouth, spitting fire (aither) and froth (Khaos). These condense and form the Cosmic Egg, the shiny mantle that covers the whole earth like a shiny bride’s veil, preparing it for the new era.

From this “Egg”, the new Earth is reborn as Phanes or Eros. And the golden winged, beautiful god is indeed the very same Serpent Shesha in a new avatar. This type of Cosmogony is extremely ancient. It reached the New World in remotest times (ante-Diluvian?), where it is amply attested, we comment next. An unequivocal instance is afforded by the so-called “Serpent Mound” in Ohio, whose picture is shown in Fig. 3A (a) below. Others are amply attested in Australia and, indeed, all over Oceania and nearby regions discovered far after the myth becomes attested in Greece and elsewhere.

Fig. 3A(a) – The Serpent Mound in Ohio.
(I. Donnelly, Atlantis, pg. 205)
(b) – The Triply-Coiled Serpent of the Roman Mysteries
(J. Godwin, Mysteries¸ pg. 67 (bottom half)

The Serpent Mound – located in Adams County, Southern Ohio – is huge. It is over 400 meters long and about 1 meter high. Interestingly enough, similar serpent-mounds are found in Scotland. this one, located in Glen Feechan (Argyleshire), has a triple coil on the serpent’s body, just like the American one and a coil in its tail. But the most interesting feature of the serpent in question is the enormous egg it holds in its mouth. This clearly portrays – in a concise but very eloquent way – the ophiolatric cosmogony of the Orphics and other Gnostics. The Serpent God is not indeed swallowing the Egg, but spewing it, in order to form the new world. In other words, the Serpent is performing Creation.

And this Egg later split in two halves which become Heaven and Earth, the two opposite hemispheres of our planet. The triple coil of the serpent is also traditional, it figures in iconographies of Rome and Greece related to the Mysteries, as well as in those of other peoples (Fig. 3A(b). they represented Trikuta, the Triple Mountain of Paradise in Hindu mythology. And Trikuta is no other than Mt. Meru itself. In Fig. 4A below we show an image of Phanes Cosmocrator, the King of the World. Phanes was also called Aion, a word that means “era, age”, and which is more or less synonymous with Chronos, the other identity of the titan Kronos.

Aion, Phanes, Mithras and Christ

In later times, Aion and Phanes became identified with Mithras, whose cult became so popular that it almost supplanted Christianism. Mithras was the Sol Invictus, the Invincible Sun, whereas Christ was the incarnation of the other hero, the archangel who defeats the Sun, causing his fall. The effigies of Phanes closely resemble the ones of Aion, except that this usually has a lion’s face instead of a human one. Here, the lion face is shown at Phanes’ breast. Two halves of the Egg are shown one above his head, the other below its feet. Both are wrapped in flames, just as in the usual cosmogonies.

Fig. 4A – Phanes Cosmocrator Born From the Egg
(J. Godwin, Mystery Religions, pg. 171)

Around Phanes’ figure is the Zodiac, here shown in an egg-shaped form. The Zodiac is the vivid image of Circular Time (Chronos or Zurvan Akarana) personified by Phanes himself. The Coiled Serpent around his body also represents Circular Time of which the Serpent Ouroboros and the Serpent Shesha are the true archetypes. The beautiful boyish figure of Phanes with its wings closely evokes the one of Eros cupid. This connection brings to mind the Cosmogonic Eros of Hesiod (Theog. 120), “the most beautiful among the immortal gods”. But Phanes is also the terrible lion-faced man (Aion) who is the image of all-devouring Time in Orphic Mysteries.

In Hesiod’s Theogony, luminous Eros is born from the Khaos the giant fissure of the Egg (Khasma Mega) which represents the world, together with the Earth and Tartarus. In a close comparison it becomes visible that Phanes plays the role of the Antariksha, the Aither, the Intermediate Space separating Sky from Earth. The world then comprises the two halves of the Cosmic Egg: Sky an Earth, separated by the Khaos, the Intermediate Space separating the two world-halves.

The staff or pole held by Phanes represents the Fiery Pillar of Hindu traditions. In this aspect, Phanes evokes the Pillar of Fire and Smoke that guided the Israelites out of Eden, in their exodus from the Sinai region, near Mt. Atlas (or Sinai, the Mountain of Destruction (Sina)). As usual, this image is taken from Hindu cosmogonies, where the Fiery Pillar is Shiva himself, that is, Kala, the archetype of Phanes and Chronos (Fig. 5A).

Fig. 5A – Shiva, the Linga, as the Fiery Pillar
(P. Rawson, Tantra, pg. 199)

The idea of the Biblical narrative is that the Fiery Pillar served as a visible token (Phanes) of the terrible destruction that drove the Israelites away from the site of Paradise Destroyed. And the Fiery Pillar is, as we comment in detail elsewhere, nothing else than the “atomic mushroom” that marked the spot of the giant volcanic explosion that destroyed Paradise. We treat this subject in detail elsewhere, and will not pursue it further here. A fragment of the Orphic Rhapsodies (fragm. 60, Kern) affirms:

Chronos, who never ages, and whose designs are eternal, engendered Ether and a terribly huge abyss [mega khasma pelorion] separating this side from the other side [entha kai entha].

The expression entha kai entha means “from side to side”. But it may also mean “from one time (or era) to the next one”. The confusion was perhaps intentional, as the Khasma Mega separated both. The Khasma Mega is obviously the one of Hesiod (Theog. 740), placed at the divide of Earth, Sky and Hades, which we already commented. And this divide was the Ultima Thule, the very site of Atlantis-Eden, in Indonesia, the true boundary of this and the other world in the ancient traditions.

 

Aristophanes’ Cosmogony Compared to the Orphic One

Another passage of the Orphic Rhapsodies (fragm. 70, Kern) declares:

 

Next, the mighty Chronos moulded [eteuxe] a silvery egg, inside divine Ether.

This obscure passage is explained in Hieronymus, Damascius, Athenagoras and others, as well as in the passage quoted further above. The term here, eteuxe means to mould, as potter. Perhaps the obscure passage meant: mounded a silvery egg, with divine Ether inside. Ether is the same as Phanes or Eros, born from the Egg. In any case, the passage evokes Khnum the divine potter mounding the egg-shaped vase that symbolizes the World (Cosmos = Paradise). Aristophanes (Birds 693) discloses interesting aspects of an alternative Orphic Cosmogony that are worth quoting in part:

Come, listen with care you all,

We will tell you of things transcendental:

Of Springs and Rivers and of the mighty Upheaval…

In the beginning, there were Khaos and Night,

And dark Erebus and Tartarus’ vast abysm.

Neither Gaia, nor Air nor Ouranos existed yet.

At length inside the unlimited bosom of abyssal Erebus,

Black winged Night laid an egg full of wind.

Out of that egg, as the seasons passed, Eros sprung,

Entrancing, bright, bold, flashy, with wings of gold,

Resembling a whirlwind and its shiny sparks.

It was him who, uniting to somber, fluttering Khaos,

In vast Tartarus, engendered our race and brought us up to light.

At first, there were no gods of immortal race

Before Eros united all things together. But then,

They commingled in love. And so were born Ouranos,

And fair Gaia, and Oceanus and the whole race

Of immortal gods, the Blest, who never decay

Golden-winged Eros is a clear archetype of the Orphic Phanes. But Aristophanes’ cosmogony also closely parallels the one of Hesiod’s Theogony. The Egg, “full of wind” – or “light as the wind”, “inconsistent”, “frothy” = hupenemios – is again the Cosmic Egg laid by the Serpent Shesha, itself made of “froth”, of pumice stone and fiery cinders and fly-ash. The union of Eros (bisexual) and chaos is the one of the two Titans which also occurs in the other mythologies (Hittite, Phoenician, etc.). Titans such as the Hercules and Chronos of Orphic cosmogony are indeed serpents or dragons or, more exactly, Nagas. ^[31]

The union of the two Titans is attested, for instance, in Damascius, as we quoted above. There, as here, they are identified as Eros and Khaos. In Athenagoras, whom we also quoted further above, they are named Herakles and Chronos. In Hittite cosmogony the union of the two Titans is told in far coarser terms. Kumarbi – the alias of Kronos as the father of the gods – deposes Anu, the sky-god. When Anu attempts to return to heaven, the two fight. During the fight, Kumarbi bites off and swallows the phallus of Anu. However, as the divine couplings are unerring, Kumarbi becomes pregnant.

Vainly does he attempt to vomit the member he had swallowed. But it is already too late. Kumarbi bears a child, and finally gives birth to Ullikumi, the tempest god. Eventually, Ullikumi allies himself to Anu, and the two depose Kumarbi, with Anu becoming the new supreme god. The parallels with Greek mythology – the story of Kronos eating the “stone” that corresponds to the omphalos and being deposed by Zeus aided by the Giants – is evident, as Kirk and Raven point out. In fact, the omphalos or betyl figured by the stone is perhaps the divine phallus of Apollo of Agdistis, as we argue elsewhere in the present work. And it also seems to be the same as Zeus in his lapidary form (Jupiter Lapis).

The myth in question here also parallels the Egyptian one where Horus and Seth duel, with Horus castrating (biting off?) the penis of Seth and later becoming the supreme god. Damascius, in the fragment just quoted, describes Chronos – whom he identifies with Herakles – as a winged serpent of many heads. This of course recalls the seven-headed Serpent Shesha of Indian mythology. So does Athenagoras, whom we also quoted above. In another fragment (fragm.124, Diels) Damascius tells of the union (duel?) of the two Titans:

Epimenes supposed two primordial principles, Air and Night… from which Tartarus was born… From there were born two Titans… And from the union of these two, an egg which later engendered further offspring.

Pherecydes and the Battle of the Two Titans

Pherecydes of Syros – who is one of the earliest Greek philosophers (fl. 6th. century BC) – tells of the combat of the two Titans in a fragment preserved by Celsus (fragm.DK 7B4). The two were named Chronos and Ophioneus and eventually fought, leading two armies. Ophioneus was defeated, and fell into the ocean so that Chronos became the ruler of the Titans. Ophioneus is clearly a serpent (or Naga), his name deriving from ophis (“serpent”). The combat of Chronos and Ophioneus closely resembles the one of Zeus and Typhon (Seth), who is also described as a dragon or serpent. Their fight also evokes the one of Kronos and Zeus, one helped by the Titans, the other one by the Giants.

The duel of the two Titans also closely evokes the one of Michael and Lucifer, described as a Red Dragon in Revelation (12:3f). the Red Dragon also had seven heads, like the Serpent Shesha. And he too is thrown down from heaven into the ocean, becoming a sea-monster. Apparently, the Book of Revelation is telling the eternal story of the genesis of the world as a further repetition of the primordial happening. Just as in the ancient traditions told above, “the earth opened up its mouth and swallowed the Flood that the dragon had spewed from his mouth”.

Now, this sort of myth closely follows Hindu ones such as the duel of Skanda-Karttikeya and Ganesha, the two leaders of the Celestial hosts of gods and devils (devas and asuras) told by Kalidasa in his Kumarasumbhava, in terms that are very close to those of Revelation. But the myth is far older in India. In fact it dates from the Rig Veda, where the combat is waged between Varuna, the Supreme God, and his twin Mitra. Varuna was defeated and was ousted from heaven. Like Lucifer, he falls from the sky and become the Lord of the Ocean (Apam Napat). In fact, Varuna is the alias of Vritra, just as Mitra is the counterpart of India.

The duel of Vritra, the Primeval Dragon and Indra, his dual, takes up a substantial portion of the Rig Veda, being told in several of its hymns. Now, the Rig Veda is immensely old. It is not likely that it was copied from other mythologies, the Hindus being so self-centered. In fact, it seems that the opposite is true, and that the other mythologies – the Judeo-Christian one included – originated from the vast Sanskrit mythological literature. No other religious tradition even approaches the vastness and the sophistication – not to mention the antiquity – of Indian literature. Anyone familiar with its will certainly support this conclusion which is not indeed mine, but derives from many experts on the subject.

As we have argued in detail elsewhere, the duel of Indra and Vritra closely parallels the ones of Hercules and Geryon, Hercules and Caecus, and others such that abound in Greek mythology. All the time the adversary of Hercules is himself in his elder avatar (Geryon = “the elder”). In this aspect, the myth corresponds to the avatars of Vishnu, who incarnates, every time, in order to free the world from the evil devil who threatens to destroy it with his injustices and oppression. But this devil is always Vishnu himself, in his older avatar.

There can be no doubt that all such stories originated from a single source, both extremely ancient and highly sophisticate in its erudition and wisdom. And it is hard to believe that this primeval source could have been any other than Atlantis-Eden. What Else? Moreover, this is precisely what the ancient traditions consistently tell: the holy books, the myths, the ancient traditions, the wisdom came directly from Paradise itself. Not only the Judeo-Christians affirm this, but also the Hindus, the Egyptians, the Mesopotamian, the Amerinds and, indeed, most nations throughout the world. And why would they all lie in this matter so sacred to them all?

But, far more than just an invention the motif, the basic reason that underlies all these myths is indeed a clever allegory of the cosmogonic Hierogamy that engendered the world. In fact, the allegory works at three levels, one indeed cosmogonic and applying to the Universe proper, the other to the earth, and the third microcosmic, having to do with human genesis. So, the cosmogony myths tell first of the genesis of the Universe, of the creation of Paradise and Civilization (Cosmos) and, finally, of the creation of Mankind proper and its many races and many wars. ^[32]

 

Do the Ancient Cosmogony Foreshadow Modern Ones?

The creation of the Universe a told in the ancient myths quaintly foreshadows the scientific tenets of Modern Cosmology, at least in style. In both cases the Universe started with a Big Bang, probably of a recurrent quasi-periodical nature. The giant explosion which le to Creation in the ancient myths closely evokes the one of the Black Hole where all the mass of the Universe was originally concentrated. In other words, the story told in the ancient cosmogonies is uncannily similar to the cosmogonic accounts of Modern Physics and Relativistic Cosmology. Hesiod’s Khasma Mega (or “Giant Hole”), fiery but gloomy (Tartarus) precisely corresponds to the Black Hole where it all started according to modern accounts.

The giant explosion which caused all-engulfing Tartarus to open up its gaping mouth and spew out fire and cinders (“matter”) could aptly be named “Big Bang” if we are allowed to play with such holy matters. The condensations and rarefactions, the change of shape and nature of the elements, etc., etc.. is precisely what occurred in the Big Bang, where the different types of particles and fields form in a neat sequence: photons, quarks, neutrinos, baryons, leptons, etc.. This process is very probably cyclical, as the evidence seems to be mounting that our Universe is indeed of the Einstein-de Sitter type, where such is precisely the case in practice.

Finally, we note that the ancient myths insistently tell of three natures or “forces” which the Hindus equate to Satva, Rajas and Tamas. These “colors” (White, Red, Black) closely recall the ones of quarks, attributed by Gell-Mann. We pursue this interesting subject in depth elsewhere, and the interested reader is directed thereto. Of course, it is posed here just as a possible line of inquiry. But it is certainly no coincidence that many physicists, for instance of the Princeton School are actually proposing that the Universe is Tantric, and that Tantrism somehow foreshadowed this kind of modern discovery. If so, how could this advanced ancient knowledge have possibly originated except within Atlantis itself?

At the level of the Cosmos proper, of Paradise, the equivalence is even more literal. In fact, this seems to have been the model, the archetype that was later applied – sometimes with certain mythopoietic liberty – to Man (Microcosmos) and to the Universe (Macrocosmos). Again, we treat this subject elsewhere in detail. But, further below, we return to it in order to show evidence that Atlantis-Eden was indeed the very Center of the Khasma Mega and that the explosions that destroyed it were indeed more or less cyclical and recurrent.

The Microcosmic (or human) level does not concern us here and will be skipped. Again it was treated by us in a full book on human origins from a more or less strictly scientific perspective. There seems to be no room for reasonable doubt that the events attending human origins indeed took place mainly in the region of Atlantis-Eden, the now sunken vast continent covered by the waters of the South China Sea, in the region of Indonesia. To believe that all these perfect coincidences are purely random, borders the miraculous. And the miraculous is not allowed in Science, as it can neither be proved or disproved, never tested empirical and never validly argued in a rational way. Indeed, the miraculous is irrational and unbelievable by its own nature.

The reality of Atlantis-Eden and of the ancient, universal traditions concerning it are in fact quite rational. They afford the simplest and the most compelling explanation available to account for the mystery of human origins. But people prefer mysteries to science, riddles to solutions, the voice of authority to the one of wisdom that comes to us from antiquity. We are told, trained, catechized, brainwashed into believing that Paradise is Celestial rather than Terrestrial.

We all, as animals we are, react according to our training, salivating, and ever frothing at the mouth whenever someone attempts to reestablish truth and plain commonsense, even when reality is so much more enchanting than the Cargo Cult we are told to follow by our instructors. And, in this we are not doing what our wise ancestors did.

We are following the unwise ones who mistook allegories for the real thing because they were not allowed to watch the epoptea, where the secret of the Mysteries were discloses to the worthy, the initiates. Apparently, these secrets, these revelations are now lost or reserved to the very few, in contrast to antiquity, where they were available to all that were willing to follow the narrow path rather than the broad one preferred by the masses.

 

Tartarus as the Talatala of Hindu Traditions

Hindu traditions speak of sunken Paradises turned into hells. Some of these hells are actually quite pleasant, a fact that may well correspond to the pleasantness of places such as Elysium, Latium, the Isles of the Blest and so on. It is said, in India, that the rishi Narada actually visited one or more of these hells, and found them to be paradisial.

Other sections of Hell, however, seem to have been intended for the punishment of evil persons. In fact, these different compartments evoke the ones of Dante’s Inferno and the City of Dis (Cittá di Dite) which we comment in detail elsewhere due to its uncanny geographical similarity with Atlantis, this section of Hell consisting of three concentric circular sectors, quite like Plato’s description of the capital city of the Lost Continent of Atlantis.

In fact, the Hell of the Hindus is divided into seven sections just like the seven hells of Sumerian and other traditions. Even Judeo-Christian traditions divide Hell into seven sections. This ancient conception seemingly originated in India, where this type of geography of Hell derives from further, highly sophisticated theories having to do with the yugas or eras of Mankind. ^[33]

Hindu Hell proper is called Naraka, a place of torment, in contrast to pleasant Patala. A particularly unpleasant section of Naraka is called Naraka-kunda (or “Pit of Hell”), destined to the worst of criminals. The name of Patala (pâtâla) derives from paţala, meaning “veiled one”. This etymology is the same as the one of words such as “hell”, “Hades”, “Latium” and others that we comment elsewhere in the present work. The word Patala also means the Vadava-mukha (or “Submanrine Mare”), which is indeed the somber caldera of Hesiod’s Khasma Mega, the Tartarus. ^[34]

Tartarus is often confused with Erebus and even with Hades. Others subdivide Hades, the netherworld, into three sections: Tartarus, Erebus and Elysium. Roughly speaking, in Judeo-Christian terms, one might say that Tartarus is Hell proper; that Erebus is Limbo, and that Elysium is Paradise. It is worth mentioning that, in ancient thought, all such places were real rather than surreal or purely spiritual, as we know deem them. It is somewhat amusing that people are ready to believe in transcendental Paradise, Limbo and Hell, but unwilling to believe that a Terrestrial Paradise might ever have existed. Such is the power of suggestion and religious propaganda.

The etymology of the word Tartarus is highly obscure. In contras, Erebus may be derived from the IE root *regwos, related to Skt. rajas, and meaning “dark”. It may be that the word Erebus translates the original meaning of Tartarus as “the realm of darkness”. Experts such as Junito Brandão affirm that the word is not Greek and “does not possess an etymology in the Greek language, and may well be a loanword from the Orient”. In fact, we believe the word to be Pelasgian and, more exactly, Dravidian. The word Tartarus is ancient in Greek, and figures in the poems of both Homer and Hesiod.

In the Iliad (8:5), Zeus gathers the gods, and threatens to throw “in dark Tartarus, the voracious deep, with bronzy pylons and steel doors, as far beneath Hades as heaven is above the earth:” any of the immortals who dares to disobey him, helping either the Trojans or the Greeks. The expression “voracious deep”(berethron) is interesting. This description evokes the description of Charybdis. Now, Charybdis is indeed the Vadavamukha, as we already argued. So, Tartarus too seems to be the same deep chasm, really the giant volcanic caldera of the Krakatoa volcano.

The name of Tartarus, which is not Greek, as we just said, seems to derive from the Skt. Talâtala by rhotacism, a frequent happening when passing into the Greek language. If so, the transition is rather direct and compelling. And the name of Talâtala apparently means “land of Atala”, that is, of Shiva. But this name indeed corresponds to the one of Atlantis, as “the sunken land” (a-tala). In other words, Tartarus (or Erebus or Hades) seems to be the same as Atlantis itself. ^[35]

 

The Pythagoreans and Central Fire

Aristotle never referred to Pythagoras himself, but only to the Pythagoreans, his disciples. The reason seems to be that Pythagoras never existed at all. Pythagoras’ name apparently derives from the Sanskrit pita guru, that is “the ancestral guru”, “the ancestral master”. Very little is actually known of the master himself. And his doctrines, mystic and obscure seem to be indeed basically Indian in origin. Pythagoreanism started in Italy, in Croton, where the master is said to have settled at about 525 BC, having come from Samos, an island in Ionia (Asia Minor). ^[36]

Pythagoreanism centered on Dualism and on metempsychosis, both of which are Hindu doctrines. And Pythagoras is said to have had a semi-divine status, and to be able to remember his earlier incarnations. Moreover, he was also said to have had a close and personal relationship with Apollo and with Zalmoxis, an alias of the sun god. Pythagoreanism was far more a religious way of life than a philosophy. Its mysticism closely evokes the one of the Essenians and other such religious sects of Gnostic affiliation. They wore white clothes (like some Hindu sects), vowed to secrecy, avoided speaking of the sacred, observed community of property sexual purity, didn’t eat beans, and so on. Above all, they strived “to be like the Master”, whom they deemed a sort of Messiah.

And they drew parallels between the Macrocosm (the World) and the Microcosm (Man), teaching that the Universe was a living organism, like the Cosmic Purusha of Indian doctrines (Vedanta). They also taught the Harmony of the Spheres (Cosmic Harmony), which is no other than the concept of dharma (the Law) directing the evolution of the Cosmos at all levels.

As is clear, Pythagoreanism foreshadowed Platonism, and it is said that Plato copied his doctrines from the Pythagoreans, basing himself on the books and teachings of Philolaos, whose estate and writings he secretly bought. If so, it may well be the case that Plato learned the mystic doctrines of Atlantis – whose reality was one of the best-kept secrets ever – in the books of Philalaos and in other mystic teachings of the Pythagoreans and the Stoics.

It is quite possible that Anaximander derived his doctrine on the apeiron from Pythagorean sources. He and Pythagoras were contemporaries (fl. C. 550 BC). The Pythagoreans use the concept of apeiron in their Dualism, dividing numbers and things into “limited” and “unlimited” (peras kai apeiron). However, the apeiron of Anaximander is apparently a physical entity (primeval matter), whereas the one of the Pythagoreans is a pure Principle.

 

The Transmigration of the Soul

Pythagoras taught the doctrine for the transmigration of the souls, also known, as metempsychosis or reincarnation. Metempsychosis might have been a novelty in ancient Greece, but was long taught in both Egypt and India, where it dates from the earliest times. Diogenes Laertius (VIII:36) tells the following anecdote. Once, Pythagoras was passing and saw someone beating a dog. Pythagoras, pitied the animal and said: “Stop! Don’t beat this dog! It is the soul of a friend, whose vice I recognized in its howling”.

This anecdote is possibly false, as Pythagoras never existed. But it show the Pythagorean belief that human souls could reincarnate not only in people, but in animals and, possibly, even in inanimate objects. As we just said, this belief is typically Hindu, and indeed forms the basis of this religion. Herodotus (Hist II:123) confirms the foreign origin of Metempsychosis in Greece:

The Egyptians were the first to teach that Man’s soul is immortal and that, when the body perishes it enters another living being that is being born at that instant… Some Greeks who adopted this doctrines [the Pythagoras], some in antiquity, some later, feign to have invented the doctrine. I known their names, but will not write them here.

Of course, Herodotus does not mention India, which lay outside the horizon of the Greeks of his time. He mentions Egypt a the source, though the Egyptians themselves recognized that their religion originated in Punt, the Land of the Gods. But Punt was no other than Indonesia and, more exactly Atlantis. ^[37]

The Pythagoreans also professed the doctrine of Cyclical Time. Porphyrios tells, in his Vita Pythagorae (19) that the Pythagoreans taught not only the transmigration of the soul, but also the doctrine of cycles. He adds that, according to them, nothing is ever new, and that all things repeat. He adds the interesting observation.

Pythagoras seems to have been the first to have brought these beliefs to Greece.

Brought from where? From India, of course, rather than Egypt, for it was there that his affinities lay. Eudemos (fragm. DK 58 B4) also affirms the same thing about the Pythagorean belief in Cyclical Time. He tells that events repeat themselves verbatim:

If we are to believe the Pythagoreans when they claim that the individual events will repeat themselves, I will again talk to you, and you will all be seated just as now. I will hold that pointer in my hand and everything else will be just as they now are. It is also reasonable to suppose that time then (chronos) will again be the same as now.

So, not only things repeat themselves, but even Time itself. In other words, Pythagorean time was cyclical, jut as in Hindu doctrines. Many authorities, both Classical and later, affirm that Pythagoras was initiated and learnt his doctrines from the Chaldees, the Hindu Brahmanes, the Egyptians, the Jews and even the Druids and the Celts. Indeed, all these peoples held the same belief in metempsychosis, itself a consequence of Cyclical Time. Actually, the Egyptian origin of Pythagorean metempsychosis affirmed by Herodotus in false. Egyptian religion only taught that the divine pharaoh underwent metempsychosis, being an eternal, immortal avatar of God himself.

Only later did the Egyptian belief in the reincarnation of pharaoh was extended, first to the nobility and then to those who could afford the expensive ritual. But this decadence of the primordial religion only occurred relatively late in Egypt, possibly as the result of foreign influence.

There were two types of Pythagoreans, the Acusmatics and the Mathematicians. The first concentrated on the akousmata or symbola, that is, the sacred symbols whose secret meaning could only be told from mouth to ear, to the initiates. The Mathematics concentrated on the properties of numbers and figures, rather than in the mystical aspects of the doctrine. They were mainly philosophers whereas the former were, above all, religious. ^[38]

Many experts have concluded, perhaps rightly, that Pythagoreanism was some sort of Mystery religion. No matter what, there can be no doubt that, for the Pythagoreans, Science and Religion walked hand-in-hand. Many Pythagoreans became reputed in Greece as philosophers and scientists. And they affirmed that Science and Religion are as Body as Soul, and hence inseparable. The great master is held to have said:

Life is a festival, a carnival. Some come to the festival to trade, some to buy, some to work, or to perform. But the best come as mere spectators. So in life. Some viler humans hunt for fame and profit. But the philosophers only seek Truth.

What the Pythagoreans actually understood by their concept of apeiron is hard to tell. Not only were their doctrines secret (“acusmatic”) and, hence, never explained to the profanes. Moreover, their insistence that Number was the essence of all things and its own nature is either unlimited (apeiron) or limited makes it possible for the concept to be applied to substances such as Anaximander’s apeiron.

 

Pythagorean Astronomy

We have now reached the issue that really interests us here: the Pythagorean doctrines concerning Antichthon and Central Fire. The main source on this is Aristotle (De Caelo, B13:293):

Most people hold that the earth is at the center of the World. The Italian Philosophers known by the name of Pythagoreans affirm the opposite. In the center, they say, lies the Central Fire. The earth is one of the planets, and produces night and day by spinning around the center.

Besides, they also postulate another earth opposite to ours which they name Antichthon (“counter-earth”)… The Pythagoreans hold that the most important position of the world, the center, has to be guarded with most care. So they call this place or, rather, the fire that holds this position, “Zeus’ Guardhouse” [De Dios phylaken], as if the word “center” were completely unequivocal. ^[39]

In an interesting passage, Aecius (II:7:7) tells us that:

Philolaos [a Pythagorean] places the Fire near the center of the universe and calls it “the Fireplace of the World”, “the Mother of the Gods”, the House of Zeus. [hestia tou pantos kai Dios oikon kai metera theon].

According to Aecius, Philolaos also called the Central Fire, “altar, link and measure of Nature” and added that around the Central Fire:

Whirl ten Celestial bodies. First [from the outside] the sphere of fixed stars, then the five [visible] planets, next the Sun, then the Moon, their Antichthon and then the fire of the “Fireplace” [to pur hestias], that is situated near the Center.

Simplicius (De Caelo 511:26) adds the information that the Central Fire is placed nearest the center of the world, then Antichthon and they the earth and the other planets, including the moon and the sun. But Antichthon is invisible to us because “in moving around the center, it does so in rhythm with the earth, so that earth’s body is always interposed”. And he concludes:

So, Aristotle exposed the Pythagorean doctrines. But the true members of that school consider the Central Fire to be the creative force that vivifies the whole earth departing from the center, warming its cold regions. So they call it the “Tower of Zeus”, “the Guardhouse of Zeus”, “the Throne of Zeus”.

This passage of Simplicius is fundamental for the understanding of the doctrine of Central Fire. So is the one of Aecius. We quoted these sources in detail so that the reader can check for himself that the conclusion we reached on this mysterious subject is the only one that is plausible. It is unlikely that Plato – who follows the doctrines of Pythagoras rather closely – and Pythagoras, Philolaos and so many illustrious philosophers of that school were teaching bunk or idly inventing notions that they all deemed so sacred and so serious. In fact, the Central Fire and Antichthon were basic to Pythagorean religious doctrines.

The Pythagorean concept of Antichthon as the tenth “planet” has been ridiculed by many as an idle invention of the Master in order to bring the total number of the Celestial bodies up to ten, their most sacred number. But it is far easier to laugh than to understand. Only fools dare to make fun of the sacred, no matter how foolish or how unlikely it might appear at first sight. Religious symbols are often apparently infantile because they are intended to force the worshipper into thinking and to attempt to discover their hence meaning. Hence the “ridiculous” traditions of having a cow and an ass worshipping Christ at his birth, or of his presence in a piece of bread, etc.. And who would be so foolish as to laugh at these symbols of the Christians? So, why laugh at those of the Pythagoreans who, though pious, were far from naïve and ignorant?

It is clear, from the above quotations, that Antichthon was a dual of the earth, precisely as its name implies (antichthon = “counter-earth”). Moreover, the Central Fire was neither the Sun nor the Moon, nor the Earth, named explicitly among the ten “planets” revolving around the Central Fire. Hence the Pythagorean cosmos was not indeed a primitive Heliocentrism, as many think, but an entirely different thing. What? This is what we argue next.

Antichthon’s name implies the idea of “antipodal” or “land antipodal”, as many ancient authorities confirm. The Pythagoreans taught that the earth was spherical, a remarkably advanced concept for their times. The other philosophers, instead taught that the earth was a flat disc. The reason is that they considered one of its hemispheres, whereas the Pythagoreans considered both.

This is the key to the solution of the riddle of Antichthon as well as of the mysterious Central Fire of the Pythagoreans. Consider, for a moment, as a working hypothesis, that such is precisely the case, and see how all such riddles and apparently foolish notions suddenly start to make sense. Since the “earth”– the Western Hemisphere, that is – was considered a planet, so must its dual, the antipodal hemisphere must also be considered one. Hence, Antichthon is nothing else than the opposite hemisphere to that of the Greeks, which they named “earth”. Since the two hemispheres were held to be physically separated, the two bodies would form a pair of twin planets synchronously revolving around the fiery central partition, the Central Fire itself. So, after all, the Pythagorean system was geocentric, rather than heliocentric. And, of course, both are equally valid representations of the Solar System, as the great Henri Poincaré pointed out. ^[40]

Now, all the pieces of the puzzle fall magically in place. Antichthon has indeed to rotate around the Central Fire in perfect synchronism with Chthon, the Earth. And, it is indeed invisible to us, being beneath the earth, at the antipodes, and hence blocked by earth’s body, just as the Pythagoreans affirmed.

Just as Chthon and Antichthon in fact whirled around the Central Fire, so did also the other planets and the fixed stars, the Sun and the Moon, for the Pythagorean Cosmos was indeed geocentric. And this view of the Solar System is indeed as “real” as Heliocentrism, a doctrine established more for religious reasons than indeed by scientific ones. ^[41]

In fact, it is the Geocentric System that astronomers actually use for aiming their telescopes at the distant stars and even at the other planets or even the moon. No one is foolish enough to use Solar centered coordinates, except for very specific purposes. And they also have systems centered on other planets as well, for instance, Mars. But, now that we have discovered the true nature of Antichthon and of the Central Fire, all that remains is to find its actual location on the planet. ^[42]

For that we will have to investigate some ancient doctrines and some ancient maps, and attempt to exegetize them, as we did for Pythagorean doctrines. We will attempt to show that the opposite continent, Antichthon is indeed the same as Antilia, the land opposite, in the far side of the Ocean that surrounds the earth. And Antilia, is of course the same as Atlantis, as everybody well new before Columbus creating the great confusion, wrongly identifying the Caribe with the Antilles.

One of the main reasons for the irrational fear that the ancients down to the time of Columbus had for crossing the Ocean Sea was the fabled existence, in the far side of Paradise. After its destruction, Paradise had become the Land of the Dead, the Land of New Return. And who would want to visit that land from which only a very few Heroes of a semi-divine quality have been able to return. As is clear, all these legends and traditions ultimately sprung from the one of Atlantis, the true site of Paradise, of Eden itself. These traditions are vividly discussed and documented by Cosmas Indicopleustes, the Alexandrian Monk-explorer of the 6^th century AD. ^[43]

Cosmas held that the world was divided in two parts, more or less as the Pythagoreans held. One part was our own hemisphere or quadrant, which he depicted as a square. (Fig. 6A). Though highly stylized the main features of the Old World are perfectly recognizable in Fig. 6A: the Mediterranean Sea, Gibraltar, The Nile, the Arabian Sea, Arabia, etc.. And, as usual, around everything, the all-encircling Ocean. At the far right, beyond the Ocean and separated by it, lay the opposite quadrant, the one of Paradise.

Fig. 6A – The World According To Cosmas Indicopleustes
(L. A. Brown, Story of Maps, pg. 103, top.)

The only connection with our world are the Four Rivers of Paradise (Geon, Phison, etc.) which supply our sweet water. As is clear, the world of the early Christians closely resembled the one of the Pythagoreans, with its two hemispheres (or quadrants) separated from each other and mutually invisible. The barrier of fire is missing because it has been quenched and buried by the Flood, which engendered the Ocean.

Cosmas however – like most good Christians of his time – doubted the possibility that antipodes actually existed in the opposite continent. And his reasons for that were not indeed derived from physical impossibilities, but from the traditions that held that Paradise was inhabited, all its people having been killed by the Flood and its site becoming the Land of the Dead. Actually, he affirmed, the region could not be habited, due to the scorching heat there. This is, once more, a dim recollection of the Pythagorean doctrine of Central Fire, as well as of the ones of the fiery destruction of Atlantis. Another map of Cosmas (Fig. 7A) shows the world as Tabernacle.

Fig. 7A – Cosmas’ World as the Tabernacle
(A. Imbelloni, Atlantis)

Again this is a distant recollection of the Pythagorean doctrines having to do with Central Fire. Indeed, God’s Tabernacle – his secret abode – is precisely the same as the phylake of the Pythagoreans, the residence of Zeus himself. The Jews, of course, obtained these sacred traditions in the Indies, their original homeland. So did also the Greeks and, particularly, the Pythagorean, who also obtained their holy traditions there as we have argued above. ^[44]

St. Isidore of Seville – a contemporary of Cosmas Indicopleustes – was, like the Alexandrian Monk, a great authority on Paradise and other such matters Occult. He pictured it as a great continent in the Far East surrounded by a wall of fire. This wall was indeed the same as Cosmas’ Tabernacle. And the concept evokes the Biblical words:

And the Lord God planted a Garden in the Orient in Eden… And He posted Cherubims and whirling sword of fire to keep the way to the Tree of Life.

The Garden of Eden is the same as the one of the Hesperides or Atlantides that is, Atlantis itself. In the Orient, of course just as the passage claims. The Mysterious “Whirling sword of fire” is an allegory of the Holy Mountain and its fiery explosion. It is also God’s Tabernacle and Zeus’ Phylake. The reference to “Whirling” again connects with the Central Fire around which the world whirls, according to the Pythagorean doctrines under discussion.

And all such ultimately derive from Mt. Meru, described in India and elsewhere as the Polar Mountain around which the world gyrates. Mt. Meru is also described as a pyramid, being the archetype of all such. So is the Tabernacle, often identified to the Four Corners of the Earth, the bases of the giant tent whose Central pillar was Mt. Atlas (or Meru or Sinai), destroyed in the explosion and letting the Skies – here identified with the tent’s clothes – down to inflame and choke the world. ^[45]

The mysterious names of Zeus philake (or guardhouse) given it by the Pythagoreans deserve an explanation. There is a direct connection with Atlantis which I do not think was ever given before. And this connection, if real, proves that Atlantis was no moral tale or idle fable invented by Plato, but something real, that dates from pre-Socratic times and probably far earlier. The word “guardhouse” is indeed a somewhat improper rendering of the Greek original phylake. This term – which we explained further above in a footnote – is derived from phylax, “guardian”, “protector”, “sentinel”, “guardian angel”. A guardhouse implies both the idea of “prison” and of a house or cell for a sentinel, when not walking a post, both of which are also found in Greek.

But the original etymology apparently implied the idea of a watchtower, with a sentinel posted as a guardian against intruders. Hence, this etymology suggests a connection with the Biblical passage just quoted on the Cherubims posted in Eden as guards. The Cherubims are Guardian Angels, that is, phylakes. Two Cherubs of gold were placed above the Ark of Covenant, their wings protecting it. Now, the Ark was built upon the model of the Tabernacle, which it replicated. In fact, it seems that the Jewish Ark was a verbatim copy of the Egyptian ones, which usually have the winged figures of Isis and Nephtys placed at the sides as guardians.

But, as we just said, the Ark replicated the Holy Mountain of Paradise with its many dead buried under itself. So did the Tabernacle, which also symbolized the same thing. And the Tabernacle in turn replicated the Cosmos represented as a quadrilateral tent with a central pole of the type used in antiquity. Its shape is the one of Mt. Meru and, for that matter, that of the Great Pyramid of Giza, which also represented the same idea. The Ark of Covenant was conceived as the Throne of Jahveh, an idea also embodied in the name “Throne of Zeus” given the Central Fire by the Pythagoreans, according to Simplicius, as quoted above. The idea of “watchtower” is implied in names such as “Tower of Zeus” also given it.

This again evokes the Ark of Covenant as the tower or throne of Jahveh, guarded by golden cherubs. This image is carried further in the Bible (Psa. 18, 2 Sam.22, Eze. 1:4, 9:3, Psa. 19, Psa. 68:5, etc.) where Jahveh is called “my high tower, my rock, my fortress, my guardian, my citadel”. The passages just referenced are a poetic description of the destruction of Paradise (Atlantis-Eden) allegorized as his fiery theophany in his Tabernacle. This is often called “pavilion”, which means the same. Psalm 18 is worth quoting to some extent:

 

The Lord is my rock, my fortress, my savior…

My shield, my horn-of-salvation, my high-tower…

Then earth trembled and heaved

And even the hills shook about

A smoke went out of his nostrils

And a devouring fire out of his mouth

He bowed the heavens and descend

And darkness was under his feet.

And he rode upon a cherub and did fly.

Yes, he did fly upon the wings of the wind.

He made darkness his hideout,

His pavilion were the dark smoke

And the thick watery clouds in the skies.

The brightness of his passage cleared the smoke

And his hail were burning coals…

The bottom of the sea was exposed

And the foundations of the world appeared.

At the blast or the breath of thy nostrils…

But he delivered me from the big waters [of the Flood]…

 

The “foundations of the world” are the foundered world of Atlantis. And the description is visibly that of a giant tsunami (the Flood) caused by a volcanic conflagration of memorable proportions. In a real tsunami the waters recoil at first, before they return with destructive force. Psa. 19 is again an allegory of the Tabernacle and the Cosmogonic Marriage of Fire and Water that took place inside it, in Eden, on the occasion of its destruction. This Tabernacle is the true one, that in heaven, where Christ himself officiates, (Heb. 8:2; 9:11, rev. 15:5), “whose model was shown Moses in Mt. Sinai”, that is, in the volcanic mountain whose explosion destroyed Atlantis-Eden and which is indeed the same as Mt. Atlas or Meru, the tent-shaped “Pillar of Heaven”.

Returning to the etymology of phylake. The strange name of “guardhouse” or “watch-house” given the Central Fire by the Pythagoreans indeed meant a “watchtower” in the sense of a lofty post for a sentinel, usually o a mountaintop. The further etymons of “pyre” or “fireplace” also suggest a connection with a volcano and, hence, with Mt. Atlas, the volcanic mountain whose explosion destroyed Atlantis.

The word phylake, “watchtower” apparently translates the Sanskrit attala, meaning both a watchtower and a pyre or altar for a fiery sacrifice. This word derives from the radix atta meaning the idea of “lofty”. The word attala suggests the name of Atlantis. It also plays with atala (“bottomless” or “sunk to the bottom”). Atala is the name of the sunken Paradise of the Hindus that was destroyed by fire and later sunk to the bottom of the sea. If we are correct in these connections, we find, once again, a direct connection between the Central Fire of the Pythagoreans and the traditions of Atlantis.

And we see the reason why Atlantis is never mentioned in Greek traditions at all, except in Plato’s disclosure. The Pythagoreans were vowed to secrecy on such matters, which they deemed holy. Hence, the allusions to Atlantis were made only under allegoric metaphors such as “Zeus’ Guardhouse”, “Central Fire”, “Mother of the Gods”, “Tower of Zeus”, “Zeus’ Throne”, “Fireplace of the World”, “Central Fire”, “Antichthon” or altar, link and measure (or standard) of Nature”.

Once it is realized that all such and many other similar epithets were indeed disguised forms of alluding to Atlantis, its central role in shaping Greek religious and philosophic thought is an obvious consequence. Moreover, since the same is also true of other mythologies and other religions – including Judeo-Christianism – one is led to conclude that Atlantis was indeed the central event in human history and prehistory.

The connection with the Tent or Tabernacle is again derived from Hindu traditions on Atlantis. The Jewish Tabernacle is the image of the Celestial archetype” shown Moses in Mt. Sinai.” And “Celestial” here has a double sense. It alludes both to Paradise (“heaven”) on earth (Eden) and to its Celestial image in the constellation Vela, as we discuss elsewhere. In Hindu traditions, Atlantis (Atala) was often called Koti (or Yama’s Koti). Koti means, literally, the same as “tabernacle” or “tent” or, yet, “cabin”.

The name closely evokes the ones of Jahveh’s Tabernacle” or “Zeus’ Guardhouse”, since Yama was the supreme god in Vedic traditions. In fact, Yama was the archetype of the Saviour God who dies and resurrects as Yamantaka, “the Defeater of Death”. The Yama Koti was also the archetype of similar sunken Paradises identical to Golden Atlantis. ^[46]

Actually, calling Atlantis a “tent” or “cabin” (koti, sukkhot, phylake, etc.) is a figure of speech, a metaphor, an irony. Poseidon’s golden palace, his temple in sunken Atlantis, the aiga was the wonder of wonders, the most beautiful ever. Heroes are amazed when they visit it, as did Ulysses in the Odyssey. ^[47]

The Jewish Feast of Tabernacles is called Sukhot in Hebrew. Now, this word closely evokes Yamas’s koti (or “tabernacle”), which was also called su-kot, that is, “the supreme abode” that is, the attala (or watchtower) of the supreme god. Once more we observe the wordplay with the name of Atlantis. That these occur in the sacred tongues of India is proof of the true origin of the myth of Atlantis there. After all, India is the homeland of myths, its sacred literature being beyond compare with any other.

The twin Cherubs that guarded Eden after its demise also figure in essentially all ancient traditions. Their name derives from the Karibu, meaning something like “guardian” or “guardian spirit”, that is, the same thing as “guardian angel”. We saw above how Zeus and Poseidon are one of the many variants of the Twins who founded the world, and who figure in all traditions as such. In fact, the two are personifications of the formerly lofty volcanic peaks of Atlantis who have now become the Khasma Mega or Great Abyss of the ancient traditions. In real terms, the two giant destroyers are the Toba volcano and the Krakatoa volcano.

Mt. Toba destroyed the region and, indeed the whole world (nearly) some 70 kya [kiloyears ago], in one of the greatest cataclysms ever. Its giant caldera – over 100 km long – became Lake Toba in northern Sumatra. Mt. Krakatoa also became the submarine caldera the Hindus equate with the Vadava-mukha, the “Fiery Submarine Mare”. The explosion of Mt. Krakatoa, was the one that destroyed Atlantis and, indeed, the whole world (almost), causing the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age, Mt. Krakatoa is linked with Atlantis and, hence, with Poseidon, both its founder and its destroyer (Od. XIII: 153f).

Despite the magnitude of this terrible event, Toba’s explosion of 70 kya was by far more important in magnitude. Due to its larger seniority and size, Mt. Toba is equated with Zeus, and Mt. Krakatoa with Poseidon, his lesser brother. Hence, we have identified the actual philakes (or Cherubs) of Eden, the ones equated with Zeus and Poseidon in Greek myths with the two fiery volcanoes that destroyed Atlantis-Eden not once, but twice.

The “whirling sword of fire” is an almost reference to the giant volcanism itself, to the Central Fire. And we will see further below that Atlantis-Eden – which we have located in Indonesia, precisely the site of the two giant volcanoes – is indeed the Center of the World where the Pythagoreans claimed that the Central Fire is located. So, the legend of Atlantis has thereby pushed back to pre-Socratic times in Greece and, even earlier, to those of Homer, who is far older than them all. In fact, Homer was just recording legends which belonged to the prehistoric past, and which were indeed far older than Greece itself.

But when we realize that the legend of the two Cherubs (Karibu) that guarded Paradise already figure in the Epic of Gilgamesh (as the mysterious Scorpion Men”), the traditions of the twin Phylakes (or “Guardians”) is pushed back to 3,000 BC or so, if not earlier still. All or most of the ancient geographers also believed that the opposite continent – the one of Atlantis, destroyed by fire – was indeed a calmed land, scorched not indeed by the sun, but by its terrestrial counterpart, the giant volcanic explosion of Mt. Atlas-Meru.

Lambert of St. Omer – a Medieval geographer – described the Southern Hemisphere, the Antipodes, as “invisible to the human eye” and impossible to reach, as it lay beyond the impassable ocean, “with no way to or fro it”. This region, he said, was not inhabited by humans but by monstrous creatures called Antipodes, who had been affected and distorted by the ghastly climate. He asserts that:

While we are scorched with heat, they are chilled with cold.

Lambert also spoke of true further unknown continents, isolated from each other and from ours, one in the northern continent and another in the southern, “beyond the ocean, somewhere”. This is a direct reference to the Four Continents, precisely the four that Comprise the Four Corners of the World of the ancient traditions. We already saw how Cosmas’ map of the “World” consisted of the two quadrants that correspond to the Western Hemisphere. Highly stylized maps of earth’s four quadrants gave rise to the tradition of the so-called “T-O maps” of Medieval Europe. One such is shown in Fig. 8A below.

Fig. 8A – A Medieval Map of the World
(L. A. Brown. Story Maps, pg. 118

This map shows the lost continent of Eden at the top, I the East. Mt. Sinai is shown as the Holy Mountain of Paradise, its true location. Here it is shown split in two by the colossal explosion that destroyed the region. Europe is sown in the lower left quarter, with Africa at its right. The isolated quadrant at the far right. The isolated quadrant at the far right is the southern portion of Africa, the other quadrant of the Western hemisphere. The vertical “bar “of the T is the Mediterranean Sea.

The map of Pomponius Mela, shown in Fig. 9A below shows the two quadrants of the western Hemisphere. Above we have the Ancient World, comprised of Europe, Libya (North Africa) and the known part of Asia, up to the Indies in the far east. Below we have Antichthon, here is its true identity as a separated southern continent. The quadrant is clearly labeled with the name of the Antichthones. The caption tell the legend of Antichthon as a scorched land (perusta) unknown to us and isolated by the ocean, adding that it was later “sunk by an invasion of the Red Sea”. (Rubrum Mare). In other words, the seas story of Atlantis which the mapist unduly transferred to South Africa.

Another caption tells of the Nile arising there, and passing under the sea to water the other quadrant. Evidently the same legend mentioned b Cosmas in connection with Paradise (Fig. 6). The “Nile” was wrongly identified with the Ganges, the River of Paradise, according to a tradition told by Josephus and other antiquarians.

1. We believe that the name of Chthonia (Chthon) translates the one of Shita, the heroine of the Ramayana. Shita (or Sita). Her name means “furrow”, “grave”, “phoughshare track”. Demeter-Chthonia was often equated to “thrice-plowed field”, in perfect analogy with Shita. Shita was said to have sprung from the underground, to which she returned at the end of her life. She was also equated to Uma or Lakshmi, the Great Mother of the Hindus. The name of chthon is connected to the Sanskrit kshan implying an idea of “death”, “ruin”, “tomb” and khasma (“earth”, “soil”).The word chthon also implies the idea of “soil”, “land”, “earth”, “region”, “ground”, “land” in Greek. Cf. also the Greek word khasma = “earth”. These words ultimately derive from the Dravida cit, sit, cita, citt, etc. implying the idea of “opening a grave”, plowing a furrow”, “burying”, “destroying”, “razing”. In other words, Shita and Chthonia personify the land of Atlantis rayed and destroyed and buried underground in the great cataclysm described by Plato. ↑
2. Magellan actually found a narrow, perilous passage at the far end of South America (Magellan’s Strait). But, as we argue elsewhere in detail, Magellan actually had a secret map to guide him on the way there, as disclosed by Antonio Pigafetta, his pilot. Drake’s Passage, to the south of it, was very probably closed at the time the map just mentioned was charted, so that Magellan could not have known of its existence. This means that Magellan’s chart of the region was actually mapped during the Ice Age, when such was indeed the case. Hence, we are speaking of an Ice Age civilization or, in other words, Atlantis. Columbus also had secret maps telling him of the route to the Americas, as stated by Piri Reis and other authorities we comment in detail in that work of ours. ↑
3. G. Vastlos, the great specialist in pre-Socratic philosophy, opines that Anaximander, the introducer of the term, took the concept of to apeiron from Hesiod (Theog. 736f.) in his description of Hades (Tartarus) as the limits (peirata) of the world. Here the peirata are connected with the Khaos or Khasma Mega, “the giant abyss” which indeed corresponds to Sunken Atlantis, as we discuss elsewhere. We believe Vastlos is correct, at least approximately, as the Khasma Mega is Atlantis, which collapsed into the abyss, whereas the unpierceable Apeira is its outer rim, the Americas.Interestingly enough, Hesiod’s discussion refers to the Titanomachia and to the separation of Earth and Sky creating the Khaos. Cf. for instance, the book by Kirk and Raven referenced above, which has a detailed discussion of the Apeira from the philosophical point-of-view and its connection with Hades. Very obviously, the Khasma Mega resulted from the separation of Earth and Sky which followed the war of the Gods and the Titans. As usual, the concept is Hindu, and dates from the Rig Veda, where it is named Abvan. In the Vedas, the separation of earth and sky is often mentioned, with Purusha, Vishnu, Brahma or other gods keeping the two world-halves separated. ↑
4. The Vedas speak of the tribhuvana, the “three Worlds” as Bhur, Bhuvas and Svar. Bhur is the Earth, Bhuvas, the Atmosphere (Antarisha) and Svar the Sky or Paradise. More exactly, Svar (or Svarga) means “Paradise”. Esoterically, the three “worlds” are the two hemispheres and their separation. The above etymon of Shu (Shaos in Egyptian) is given in M. Lurker, Lexikon der Gotter under Dämonen, Stuttgart, 1984, s. v..Shu is often equated with a “spurt” either of air (a sneeze) or of semen by Ra. Shu was the father of Geb and Nut, whose coition he separates by lifting Nut with his hands. Shu was often portrayed in connection with the Sun rising between the two peaks of the Mountain of Sunrise, another allegory of the phenomenal explosion that indeed caused the foundering of Atlantis, leading to the separation of the two world-halves. ↑
5. Dravida is the most logical origin, now that we know for sure that the pre-Indo-European tongue of Europe itself was indeed Dravida. In Dravida we have the radix #5517 ve, ves-, vecc-, vest– (“fire, fiery, shiny, hot, to burn , scorch, sear, fry, incend”). This radix is essentially exact, and should suffice for most applications. But we may perhaps press out more from the Dravidian etymology. We believe the suffix –ta indeed means something like “the flat land” or “the wide earth”, an epithet often applied to the land of Paradise which we believe the fire goddess indeed represents.The radix ta– or to– indeed means “earth” in many tongues, for instance in the Egyptian language. But the suffix –ta of the name of Vesta is also apparently derived from the Dravida #3020 ta-, tata (“flat, wide, broad, large, plate”). The base expresses the idea of something beaten flat, like a plate, a platter, a shallow vase or patera, a crater, etc., ideas often associated with Paradise and, of course, Vesta and Hestia themselves.In the present connection the base expresses the idea of a land beaten flat by a cataclysm (say the vajra) or a wide expanse, for instance a marshy lowland. Hence, the name of Ves-ta means something like “the burnt flatland”. Both ideas are often associated with the site of Paradise, for instance the Elysian Fields of the Greeks or the Marsh of the reeds of Egyptian traditions.The idea of “fire” or “burnt” is also present in names such as the “Island of Fire” of the Egyptians, the name of Khemet (Egypt) and of Ethiopia, both meaning “scorched land” and both identified to Paradise, and so on. The name of Hephaistos is also apparently derived from Dravida, similarly to the one of Vesta. The god was named Vulcanus in Latin, a name that directly attests his connection with volcanoes.The name of Hephaistos has been connected with the radix phai– (“shiny”) and said to be the superlative he-phaistos (“the shiniest”). But this has been athetized (rejected) as popular by experts such as Junito Brandão, who affirm that the etymology of the word is “particularly obscure”. We believe that the name of the fire god is connected with the one of Hestia, often called Histia (“fireplace, hearth”) in Greek. The prefix he– may be derived from the Dravidian root ve- > phe- > he-, as is so often the case in passing into IE.The radix pha– is from pa– (“to strike”) and –istos as in histia (“hearth”) or, more likely, from –iti, *isti (“thunderbolt, vajra”). Hence, Hephaistos is ve-pa-isti, “the shiny strike of the vajra thunderbolt”. The suffix -iti (or –isti) also figures in the name of Tabiti, the Scythian counterpart of Hestia whom we discuss further below. What is important to retain is the connection with the vajra and, more exactly, with violent volcanic eruptions, as the connection with Vulcanus suggests. ↑
6. Plutarch, Quaest. Conviv. 8:4. As an initiate, Plutarch well knew that the earth was indeed spherical. What he meant is that the shape of the Table of the sun imitated the shape ascribed to the earth by these esoteric doctrines. And this shape was indeed the one of the Flat Earth of Paradise, rather than that of the planet itself, which is indeed spherical. Cf. also T. H. Martin, Mem. Acad. Inscr. (1882) 28:8, pg. 338. ↑
7. Adrian Snodgrass, Doctrinas Meso-Americanas Del Tiempo, in: America Indigena, available at: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atrium/9449/snodgr.htm. The article is in Spanish, and the above translation is our own. The links given to the notes are active, and connect to the footnotes in the original text (in Spanish). ↑
8. Strabo, Geography: book 10, chapter 3, section 12. The link is to Perseus Project, available at: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Strab.+10.3.1 ↑
9. In fact, the destruction of Atlantis in the Flood cataclysm occurred at the culmination of Leo, the Lion, which took place at about 9,600 BC, the very date of the event according to Plato. The passage of the Era of Virgo to the one of Leo is connected with the myth of Astrea (Virgo) and the end of the Golden Age and the start of the Silver Age, the one of the Heroes, often equated to lions. Diodorus Siculus specifically connects this event with the end of Atlantis in one of the most revealing ancient accounts of the myth of the Lost Continent. Lewis Spence, in his justly famous History of Atlantis, comments this connection in detail. So do we in one of our works on the subject. Actually, the transition from the Era of Virgo into the one of the Leo occurred about a millennium earlier than the actual destruction. ↑
10. Cf.: Apollodorus 1.1.5 ; Hesiod: Theogony 453 ; Homeric Hymn 5.1 ; Homeric Hymn 24.1 ; Homeric Hymn 29.1 ; T. W. Allen, E. E. Sikes, Commentary on the Homeric Hymns, Hymn 29, line 5: prôtêi pumatêi te (“the first and the last libations”). The authors note that in Greece the first libation was poured to Hestia, whereas in Rome the last one was poured to Vesta. Cf. also their interesting commentary on Homeric Hymn 5,Line 23 [Hymn To Aphrodite], where they note that Hestia, the eldest daughter of Kronos and Rhea, having been swallowed first, was disgorged last. In this way, Hestia could both be called first and last of the Olympian deities. ↑
11. In the usual account, Zeus was not swallowed at all. But in some mystic way Zeus was the stone itself. It is in this connection that he is often called Jupiter Lapis in Latin, where the epithet means “stone”. So, Zeus is also the Lapis exilis, the stone fallen from heaven (a pun with ex coelis = “from heaven”). This stone is, in some accounts of the Grail legend, the one which was carved into the Holy Grail itself. This obscure tradition also links with the one of the “shield of Jupiter” fallen from heaven, which we mentioned further above. In a way it is also the semen of the great god which he spilled and which engendered Agdistis. In other connections, this stone fallen from heaven is also to be equated to the phallus of Agdistis-Cybele, to the one of Kronos, to that of Shiva, and so on. ↑
12. Cf. for instance the wonderful book by Marcel Detienne, Dionysos à Ciel Ouvert, Paris, 1980 as well as our own works on Orphism and the myth of Dionysos Zagreus and the conquests of Alexander the Great. ↑
13. Cf. also the excellent discussion of this theme in Kirk and Otmer (op. cit.), as well as Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon: entry troph-. We refer, in the present text to these authors as LSJ. ↑
14. In Sanskrit the long a (â) as a prefix indicates the affirmative (negation of negation). We normally omit the indication of longs and briefs (macrons), which only beclouds the issue for non-specialists. The specialists will have no problem in supplying these macrons for themselves. Likewise, we often transcribe the ś as sh for typological reasons. Only when the macrons are necessary for some reason do we really spell them out. For instance, we write akasha for ether (âkâśa), and purusha for pûruśa. But we keep these exceptions to the barest minimum, for once you start marking macrons, you are forced to do it with all words, with a lot of problems for both the readers and the writers and printers, given that even computers hate the stuff.The word akasha is more or less synonymous with the name of the Serpent Shesha (“filth, residue, scum”), with which it plays. At the end of an era, Shesha forms the canopy of the ocean, on top which Vishnu sleeps. The idea is that Shesha is formed from the canopy of volcanic cinders that fall back from the skies, after being ejected by the giant volcanism. These cinders – composed of fused silica glass (tektites and microtektites) and pumice stone – are called kâca (pronounced “kaacha” in Sanskrit).Thence the idea of the crystalline canopy of heaven. Since these cinders are often flaming (nuées ardentes), they indeed illuminate the sky like some sort of fiery aether. Hence the etymology of kâśa or âkâśa (“shiny, luminous”) given the substance. But kâśa also means “muck, drool, snot, frothy saliva, catarrh, froth”. Hence the other etymology of akasha (âkâśa). ↑
15. W. Krickeberg, Mitos y Leyendas de los Aztecas, Incas, Mayas y Muiscas, Mexico, 1971. My translation. The German original dates from 1928, and the material was compiled by Krickeberg from original sources in Spansih, which were restored in the Mexican edtion by the Fondo de Cultura Económica. ↑
16. Cf., for instance, the entry in the Catholic Encyclopedia, s. v.: “St. Brendan” at: http://www.newadvent.org/
    cathen/02758c.htm. The saint may be real, and even some of his navigations. But it is clear he never found the elusive “Atlantic Islands”, as the article itself concedes. In fact, the story of the saint beaching his ship on the back of a whale is taken from Oriental legends reported, for instance, by Piri Reis, the Turkish admiral of the famous map. In it, a version of the Island of Septe Cidades is illustrated. Though named Cipango (Japan), it has its traditional seven bays or recesses, just as it was in most maps of the time. In fact, Cipango is not indeed Japan, but “the Island of Dawn”, precisely the meaning of this name, as we show elsewhere. And it was located in the Orient, as is clear. ↑
17. Cf. for instance: El Antiguo Chicomostoc, by Jesus Cabral, available at: http://www.geocities.com/
    Athens/Atrium/9449/s17jcbr.htm. ↑
18. In Chinese and Japanese thought – which originated with the Hindus, their civilizers – the Cosmos is a state of permanent flux, of rhythmic evolution. This oscillatory pattern is expressed by the Yin-Yang, which portrays the two opposed principles in equilibrium. This is the central doctrine of Taoism and related modes of thought. In other variants, the Two Principles are extended to include the Five Elements: Fire, Water, Air, Earth, and Akasha or Ether, the Quintessence. The correspondence with the pre-Socratic doctrines of Greece is too clear to require commenting here. Thales equated the basic Cosmic Principle to water. Heraclitus made it Fire. Anaximander spoke of a combination of these he called apeiron or arche (“origin”). Anaximenes, his successor, taught that Air was the essence of all thing which originated from it by condensation or rarefaction. Of course, these Elements were not the vulgar ones, but their Alchemical counterparts, the ones which dissolve the world at era endings. ↑
19. Kosmeo is related to “cosmetics” and means “to adorn”, “beauty”, “arrange”, “prepare” and, by extension, “to order”, “rule”, “govern”, “direct”. Only later did the word kosmos evolve to embody the idea of “world” or “universe”. According to Kirk and Raven (op. cit) the word kosmos was only extended to imply cosmic Order in the second half of the fifth century BC. Pythagoras is said (by Aecius) to have used the term to describe Cosmic Harmony. But if so, whenever intended the idea of “Universe” or “World”, but only the inherent order which he equated to the “Music of the Spheres”. ↑
20. As we just said, the word kosmos was probably introduced by Pythagoras himself in the sense of Cosmic Harmony”. It is known that Pythagoras obtained his doctrines in India. In Sanskrit, two words denote the concept implied by kosmos in this sense: dharma and rita. Both mean something like “law”, “righteousness”, “justice”, “retribution”, “proper”. The word is often rendered as “the Law” or “the Wheel of the law (Dharmachakra). It corresponds to Anaximander’s dike, that is Justice personified, retribution, karma. The concept exactly corresponds to dharma, inclusive in the personification. It was also used similarly by Heraclitus. Hence, there can be little doubt that the pre-Socratic philosophers were translating, verbatim, Hindu doctrines that were far beyond Greek comprehension. ↑
21. Yin corresponds to the moist principle, its glyph representing clouds over a hill. Yang in turn is graphed by the sun rising above the horizon, hence, the warm principle once more, these are the dual principles of Anaximander’s cosmogony. But the symbol also represents other dualities, inclusive the masculine-feminine one. Its two halves are also said to represent the separation of Earth and Sky that we already equated to the one of earth’s two hemisphere. It also represents the world and its rhythm, the alternance of the eras, once Black, the other white, the “breathing” of Purusha, the Cosmic Man. ↑
22. Cf. f. i., W. Eberhard, A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols, N. York, 1986. We note that Metal here substitutes for Air. It more exactly means Mercury, as the volatile principle. Wood, in turn, literally correspond to hyle, the primordial stuff in Greek Cosmogony out of which all others derived. Hence, the correspondence could not be more perfect. It is interesting to not that Plato too represented the Androgyne, the Perfect Man who is the alias and counterpart of Purusha as round, as a sort of egg. ↑
23. Their cosmogony – amazingly sophisticate and extremely touching and beautiful tells of the creation and the destruction of the world by a conflagration followed by a Flood. In the end, the Chasm of the Earth (Yviporey) opens to devour all things with its fire. But the earth is recreated by the Twins, who embody precisely the same duality as Anaximander’s. there can be little doubt that the Greek, the Hindu, the Phoenician and the Chinese Cosmogonic myths just discussed came from the same source as the one of our Amerinds. The Babylonians and other nations also have similar Cosmogonies proving their universality. Cf. f. i., C. Nimuendaju Unkel, As Lendas da Criação e Destruição do Mundo, S. Paulo, 1987. German original: Die Sagen von der Erschaffung and Vernichtung der Welt, Berlin, 1914. ↑
24. Kirk and Raven (op. cit.) also conclude that Hesiod’s cosmogony (Theogony) was copied from older sources, which they think to be Phoenician. They also note that Hesiod apparently copied two parallel but different sources, given that many passages in the Theogony are parallel, though different. We believe this is the result of an ancient technique that is often used in ancient myths, to tell two different by corresponding events. An example is the Bible with its two accounts of Creation and of the Flood in Genesis. ↑
25. Actually, Earth and Sky were formed from the body of a giant named Ymir. But, in Snorri’s account of the Eddas the Ginnungagap is delimited the icy realm on the north side and the fiery one at the south. This giant (Yimir) corresponds to Purusha and, even more exactly, to Yama, the archetype of Pluto (Hades) whose name his closely parallels. A close analysis of this and other parallel Germanic myths discloses the essential identity of Muspellheim and Nifelheim with, respectively, the Southern Hemisphere and the Northern Hemisphere. ↑
26. In particular, we recommend the many excellent books of Mircea Eliade and of René Guénon on the subject. The reader can also consult Heinrich Zimmer another great Indologist. He can find the specific titles (many) in a good library or bookstore. ↑
27. The Hindu doctrines on the monads is extremely complex and subtle, varying from one philosophical school to the other. Some of these are vital principles akin to “soul” or perhaps, élan vital. Others correspond to matter itself, other to energy, and so on. For instance, in Jainism, the Universe is composed of the six following elements: 1) Jiva, the vital monad; 2) Ajiva: all that is not part of the vital monad (a-jiva). It is indestructible and forms by condensation, space and the Four Elements; 3) Dharma (the Law), a sort of energy that is the cause of motion and change; 4) Adharma = repose; 5) Kala (Time); 6) Pudgala (Matter).Jiva somewhat corresponds to “soul” or “spirit” as the vital principle that animates the body. It is eternal and undying, a sort of “atom” of the Cosmic Man (Purusha) or, in other schools (Vedanta), of God Himself (Brahma). Ajiva corresponds to Akasha in other schools. In the Sankhya school this basic dichotomy is name purusha and prakriti. Prakriti is “physical matter”, whereas purusha is “soul”. Roughly speaking, purusha corresponds to the physical fields that cause matter to react in its different forms.Rather than religion, the philosophical doctrines of the Hindus (darshanas) are intended to be Science, and are often atheistic. They also form the basis of Yoga and Tantrism. Akasha is more or less the same as aether as the seat of matter and space. Roughly speaking, it corresponds to atman and purusha in other Indian schools, and to the logos, apeiron or aither in Greek ones. As is clear, the Hindu doctrines are incomparably deeper than Greek ones. No one who studies the Hindu darshanas in detail will fail to see in them the source and origin of the pre-Socratic doctrines of philosophers such as the Stoics and the Pythagoreans, or of later ones such as Platonism, Orphism and Neo-Platonism.The only difference between Hindu philosophy and early Greek philosophy lies in the fact that the Greek forms are far less complete and far more obscure that the Hindu ones. The main reason seems to be the fact that the early Greek philosophers borrowed their philosophical doctrines from the Hindus and did not or could not explain their esoteric contents, at least to the profanes. A close reading of these doctrines such as the masterful one done by Kirk and Otmer shows that, far from primitive, the pre-Socratic doctrines of the Greeks were highly sophisticate attempts to explain the origin of the Cosmos along the lines of Hindu doctrines such as that of the yugas. ↑
28. It is from this doctrine that the traditions concerning the Seven Hells and the Seven Celestial Spheres ultimately sprung. Since this tradition is universal, we see, once more that it can only date from Atlantis. The skies consist of crystalline spheres and are transparent, like glass or quartz. The myth of the fall of the Sky is connected with the one of Atlas and his failure in bearing the excessive weight of the skies. Alternatively, the cataclysm is also said to result from the shattering of Mt. Atlas (or Meru), the Pillar of the World, for the same reason. The Seven Hells of the Sumerians and the Hindus are also the same as the Seven Recesses (Heptamychoi) of Pherecydes of Syros, as well as the Chicomostoc of the Aztecs, as we argue futher above in the present work. ↑
29. In fact the radix phan implies the idea of “expansion” as expressed both in the expanded, showy hood of a naja or in pumice (“froth” in Latin = pumex), a sort of “expanded rock”. When the volcanoes of Indonesia erupt, they do so explosively more or less in the manner of popcorn. The reason is that their [granitic] magma is saturated with water that vaporizes and expands explosively when pressure is released, during their eruption.In Skt., the radix phan-, from which the Greek one derives, means “scum”, “froth”, “catarrh”, “cream”, “the expanded hood of a naja serpent”, “seafroth”, “foam”. Hence, Phanes is an exact synonym of Shesha, and of akasha, whose etymologies we discussed further above. Their names also correspond to ilus and apeiron. Hence, there can be little doubt of the Hindu origin of the Orphic Cosmogonies as well as of the closely similar ones of the Pythagoreans and other Greek mystics. ↑
30. The word chiton also designated, in ancient Greek, the bark of a tree and, indeed, any sort of outer garment or covering. We are reminded of the description of Anaximander’s fiery sphere that formed above earth’s atmosphere and “which surrounded the Earth like the bark around the tree”, as commented further above. F. M. Cornford (Mystery Religions and Pre-Socratic Philosophy, Cambridge, 1939) concluded, by entirely different reasoning that Anaximander’s Cosmogony directly corresponds to the Orphic one. ↑
31. The Nagas are the Titans of Hindu mythology, who served as models for the Greco-Roman one. Naga literally means “serpent”, “dragon” and, more exactly, “naja”, the hooded serpent. As we discussed above, the expansive hood of the Naga is an allegory of “froth” and pumice, both air-expanded materials (foams). In fact, the Nagas of the Far-East correspond to the Yavanas that is, the White races who were the archetypes of the Greeks and the Semites, as well as of other Caucasoid races. The myth in question allegorizes the union of the two races that took place in Eden by the union of Fire and Water that is commemorated as the Cosmogonic Hierogamy. ↑
32. Traditional sources speak of three realms according to which myths should be interpreted: the Macrocosmos in usually the Universe proper. The Cosmos is the Earth and, more exactly, Paradise as “the Beautified, Organized World”. The Microcosmos is Man, as a replica of the Cosmos. Of course, the three terms are often confusedly used,. After all, the objective of mythographers is to confuse the profanes and the arrogant inquirer. It is difficult to navigate, the murky waters of mythology, a task few ever attempt. ↑
33. According to the Puranic doctrine of the eras, there are 14 Manvantaras (or “Eras of Manu”) within each Kalpa (or Age of the World). Each Kalpa starts with 14 heavens, which fall in a succession, as each Manvantara is completed. When a sky falls, it becomes the new earth, with the previous one becoming hell. Seven Manvantaras have already elapsed in the present Kalpa, so that we now have seven hells and seven skies. ↑
34. As usual, the etymology of the word Patala is a complex one in Sanskrit. It apparently also derives form pâta, itself derived from the radix pat, meaning “to fall down”, “to fall into hell”. This base also means the fall of the vajra and closely evokes the idea of heroes such as Atlas and Prometheus being thrown down into Hell by the fall of Zeus’ thunderbolt, the vajra itself. It is clear that the Greek traditions derive from the Hindu ones, as we are arguing. At the very least, the two traditions are seen to be interdependent, for they are identical. The idea of the fall is related to the fall of heaven (volcanic cinders) and to the one of the ground of paradise, turned into the Khasma Mega, the giant volcanic caldera of the Vadavamukha.Hell has a multitude of names in Hindu traditions: Naraka, Myalba, Devachan, Naga-dvipa, Talaloka, Patala, Atala, Talatala, Sutala, etc.. The divisions of the Cosmos are called Lokas (“places”) in Sanskrit. There are fourteen lokas, seven of which are celestial, and seven infernal. The seven celestial (or paradisial) abodes are: 1) Bhurloka, 2) Bhuvarloka, 3) Svargaloka, 4) Maharloka, 5) Janarloka, 6) Taparloka, 7) Satyaloka. The seven hells are: 1) Patala, 2) Mahatala, 3) Rasatala, 4) Talatala, 5) Sutala, 6) Vitala, 7) Atala. Tala means “land” (generally infernal) and loka means “place” or “mansion” (generally celestial) in Sanskrit.An alternative list (Vedanta) divides the seven hells into Atala, Vitala, Sutala, Talatala, Rasatala, Mahatala, Patala. Some classifications list the earth as an eight element, some include the earth as the first hell. Others still list the earth separately, as the third realm, consisting of seven subdivisions itself. Atala means “no-land” (a-tala).it is from this word that the name of Atlas (a-tla) and of Atlantis ultimately derives. Likewise, the Greek utopia (u-topos = “nowhere”) is a translation of the Hindu concept of a land to be found nowhere (Atlantis). According to the Vedanta, Atala is just the last such land to be sunken, among a series of such. Alternatively, the seven places may correspond to the Seven Islands of the Blest, the remains of sunken Atlantis in the Far East (Indonesia’s seven greater islands). ↑
35. As usual, Sanskrit etymologies are quite complex, and demand some explaining. The language is polysemic, so that the words have several different meanings. Moreover, by changing form short to long vowels, further etymologies are included, and are often deemed valid, at least in an esoterical context. Tala means “base, bottom, bosom, lower part, foundation, expanse, ground”. It also means “the flat expanse of the hand or foot, palm, sole”. Again, it means “the palmyra palm-tree”, which is flat and resembles a hand. And it is also a name of Shiva as “the Hand”, “the Handy One”, meaning the All-Creator, the Artificer.Shiva is also called Atala (“Bottomless One”), the a- being the privative or negative suffix. Atala is also the name of a hell. The name also implies the idea of “sunken land” or “sunken continent” and indeed refers to Atlantis. In Sanskrit, when two aa join, as in tala-atala, they turn into a long talâtala, as in the name of the Hell in question here. So, the name of Talâtala = Tala Atala = “Land of Atala”, that is, of Shiva Atala. And Shiva Atala is also “the Pillar of Heaven (Sthanu)”, the very archetype of the Titan Atlas and his sunken land, Atlantis.Another usual interpretation of the name of Talâtala is “the land which can be touched with the hand”, synonymous with Karatala. This means that Talâtala is “tangible”, as Atlantis indeed is. Shiva Atala is also called Tala or Tâla, expressing the idea of “palm-tree”. The palm-tree is, in India, the alias of the Tree-of-Life and of the Pillar-of-Heaven. And this again leads to Paradise and its lofty Mt. Atlas, the Pillar-of-Heaven. Again, Shiva is called Târa (or Tara) which implies the idea of a ship and, more exactly, the Ark, Shiva being both the Barger and the Barge (Ark) itself, the one who damns and who saves the soul of the condemned.In the sense of “palm-tree”, Atala can also mean a-tala, “the land destitute of palm trees”, an allusion to the collapse of the Pillar of Heaven, the Celestial Palm-Tree, the Tree-of-Life which collapsed at the great cataclysm. As such, Talâtala is, or rather, used to be the primordial Phoenicia, “the Land of the Palm-Trees”, another name of Paradise. Târa also means “star” (or Pole Star”), as well as the goddess of compassion, leading to further sacred etymologies. But despite all these etymons, the word indeed derives from Dravida, where the word talatala means “to shine, glitter, be bright” or “to dawn”. The word also has forms such as taratara, and derives from the radix tar-, which designates “something glowing or shining, live coals, embers, heat, burning”.Hence the idea of “burning” invariably associated with Hell. A series of other etymologies is also possible in Dravida, for instance with tala (“head, top”), târ or târttu (“to fall down, be degraded, sink, subside”), târ (palm-tree), etc.. As is clear, the word first originated in Dravida, and then passed into Sanskrit (as Talâtala) and then into Greek (Tartaros) and later to the other IE tongues. And its main meaning is a burning place which subsided and sunk under the sea, more or less as Atlantis, the sunken Paradise which it is indeed to be equated. Its several etymologies in the sacred tongues of India indeed add up in order to compose the myth of Tartarus and, indeed, the one of Atlantis as Talâtala, the “Land of Fire” of all traditions. ↑
36. The Ionians are frequently indeed with the aboriginal element of Greece, the Pelasgos. The Pelasgos (pelas ges = “people of the seas”) were Dravidians and, hence, Indians. In fact, the Ionians (Iawones in Homer) are the Yawanas (or Javanas) of Sanskrit traditions. They worshipped Hyperborean Apollo, the fallen sun god of Paradise. Hyperborea is, of course, Paradise, located beyond the seas, in Indonesia. Hyperborean Apollo is Phaëthon, whose fall Plato himself links to the destruction of Atlantis, allegorized as the fall of the sun (or the sky). ↑
37. Punt was the site of Paradise in Egyptian traditions. But it was an actual geographical location, beyond the Ocean (Indian), in the Far East. As we argue elsewhere in detail, Punt was indeed the sunken Land of the Dead, the very site of Eden or rather, of Atlantis proper. ↑
38. Cf. for instance, Porphyrius (V. P. 37), who affirms that this division was instituted by Pythagoras himself. The word akousmata has to do with the idea of “acoustic”, because the teaching was oral, and could not be committed to writing, for fear that it might fall on profane hands. ↑
39. The word phylake means “guardian”, “sentinel”, “guard”, “guardhouse”, “prison”, “amulet”. In our opinion, the idea here is the same as that of the sacrarium, where holy things were kept in ancient Rome. In Catholic churches, the sacrarium is used to keep the Host. We believe that the word here hints a the Holy Mountain and holy relics kept inside it. If so, there is a direct connection with Atlantis, as we shall see. ↑
40. Poincaré was a precursor of Einstein in the Theory of Relativity, which he developed in a very general way. He showed that both Heliocentrism and Geocentrism are equally valid descriptions of the Solar System. Heliocentrism has the advantage of yielding somewhat simpler formulas, whereas Geocentrism has the far greater one of according to what we actually observe: the sun and the other planets revolving around us in circles. In fact, Poincaré pointed out that, according to the Principle of Relativity (is, not Einstein’s) the “center” of the Solar Systems can be placed anywhere at all the actual observer wants. This principle was later used by Einstein n order to develop his special Relativity Theory, based on this principle. ↑
41. Galileo, Copernicus, Bruno, Newton, Kepler and all such who were influential in implanting Heliocentrism as a substitute for Geocentrism were in fact Gnostics who dabbled in the Occult Sciences and heretic doctrines. The Church – conservative and retrograde, but very wise – saw the danger that such heretic doctrines posed for the faith, and attempted to cut them off at their budding. Like all repressions, her attempt failed with the results we all know. Science now rules supreme, and Religion has fallen to the background. ↑
42. We hope that the dear reader has been convinced by our argument, and has adopted, at least for the present purposes, the working hypothesis as a valid one. Mental blocks being what they are, most people will automatically return to the doctrines in which they have been trained, as soon as they their guard is lowered. Well, doctrines such as those concerning Atlantis are doomed from the start, and never have a chance, do they? ↑
43. Indicopleustes is Greek for “Navigator of the Indian Ocean”. Cosmas was a monk who was sent by the Pope to search the actual site of Paradise. That Cosmas quested it in the Indies – as Alexander and other heroes had done before himself – is telltale of the fact that the wise ones seek its site there. Cosmas tells about his exploits in the Far East in his Topographia Christiana (“Christian Topography”). ↑
44. The Judeo-Christian Tabernacle (Tent) has a very deep connection with the Holy Mountain (Mt. Atlas or Meru), which is indeed the volcano giant explosion destroyed Atlantis and the world, and later led to the Flood. We discuss this matter in detail elsewhere, and the interested reader is directed thereto, as this fascinating subject unfortunately does not fit here. ↑
45. All these are transparent allegories of the giant volcanic explosion and of the fly ash and cinders (pumice = “froth”) produced by it, which engulfed the world in a veil of fiery dust. ↑
46. Among these we may quote here the bara (or canopy) of Shamash (the Babylonian Sun god); the apsu of Ea, his “house in the water” (eznap); the vara of Yam Djernschid in Persian traditions and, above all, the aigaia of Poseidon in Homer’s Iliad. (XIII: 10f). The aigaia of Poseidon was “his glittering golden palace, imperishable, in the bottom of the sea”. Poseidon was the founder and first lord of Atlantis, and his submarine temple-palace lies in the sunken realm of the Lost Continent. Aigaia means “a tent built with goat skins”.This passage of Homer also mention’s Poseidon’s watchtower nearby, from where he observed the war of Troy, “on the topmost crests of wooded Samothrace, whence he could see all Ida. Now Ida is Eden, being the site of origin of humans civilization in Greek traditions. Hence, we see that the traditions of Atlantis in Greece date from Homeric times, even though confined to the realm of fable and myths (hieros, logos). ↑
47. It is interesting to note that the aigaia of Poseidon corresponds to the phylake of Zeus. The two gods are duals and adversary to each other. In fact, the two are the aliases of Mitra and Varuna, the Vedic supreme gods. They are the omnipresent twins who also figure as Atlas and Gadeiros, the twin founders of Atlantis, according to Plato. Actually, Ulysses visited Phaeacia (Od. VII). But Phaeacia is a poorly disguised allegory of Atlantis with its golden gates and its sumptuous temples and palaces. And Phaeacia too was buried under a mountain becoming the Land of the Dead (Od. XIII: 153f). The Phaeacians were great sailors like the Atlanteans and their city too was full of internal ports. Moreover, they were the people of Poseidon who, disgusted with their disobedience of his commands, ended up by destroying their ship, which he turned to stone. ↑

[2001 – Prof. Arysio Santos]