THE LOST CONTINENT
By Aleister Crowley
Ordo Templi Orientis
P.O Box 2303
Berkeley, CA 94702
(C) COPYRIGHT O.T.O.
June 21, 1985 e.v.
Sun in Cancer
Moon in Leo
AN 81 e.n.
The Lost Continent
* *
*
PREFACE
Last year I was chosen to succeed the venerable K-Z--who had it
in his mind to die, that is, to join Them in Venus, as one of the
Seven Heirs of Atlantis, and I have been appointed to declare, so
far as may be found possible, the truth about that mysterious
lost land. Of course, no more than one seventh of the wisdom is
ever confided to one of the Seven, and the Seven meet in council
but once in every thirty-three years. But its preservation is
guaranteed by the interlocked systems of "dreaming true" and of
"preparation of the antinomy". The former almost explains itself;
the latter is almost inconceivable to normal man. Its essence is
to train a man to be anything by training him to be its opposite.
At the end of anything, think they, it turns out to be its
opposite, and that opposite is thus mastered without having been
soiled by the labours of the student, and without the false
impressions of early learning being left upon the mind.
I myself, for example, had unknowingly been trained to record
these observations by the life of a butterfly. All my impressions
came clear on the soft wax of my brain; I had never worried
because the scratch on the wax in no way resembled the sound it
represented. In other words, I observed perfectly because I never
knew that I was observing. So, if you pay sufficient attention to
your heart, you will make it palpitate.
I accordingly proceed to a description of the country.
Aleister Crowley
.PA
I.
OF THE PLAINS BENEATH ATLAS,
AND ITS SERVILE RACE*.
Atlas is the true name of this archipelago--continent is an
altogether false term, for every 'house' or mountain peak was cut
from its fellows by natural, though often very narrow waterways.
The African Atlas is a mere offshoot of the range. It was the
true Atlas that supported the ancient world by its moral and
magical strength, and hence the name of the fabled globe-bearer.
The root is the Lemurian 'Tla' or 'Tlas', black, for reasons
which will appear in due course. 'A' is the feminine prefix,
derived from the shape of the mouth when uttering the sound.
'Black woman' is therefore as near a translation as one can give
in English; the Latin has a closer equivalent.
The mountains are cut off, not only from each other by the
channels of the sea, but from the plains at their feet by cliffs
naturally or artificially smoothed and undercut for at least
thirty feet on every side in order to make access impossible.
These plains had been made flat by generations of labour.
Vines and fruit-trees growing only on the upper slopes, they were
devoted principally to corn, and to grass pastures for the
amphibian herds of Atlas. This corn was of a kind now unknown,
flourishing in sea-water, and the periodical flood-tides served
the same purpose as the Nile in Egypt. Enormous floating stages
of spongy rock--no trees of any kind grew anywhere on the plains
so wood was unknown--supported the villages. These were inhabited
by a type of man similar to the modern Caucasian race. They were
not permitted to use any of the food of their masters, neither
the corn, nor the amphibians, nor the vast supplies of shellfish,
but were fed by what they called "bread from heaven", which
indeed came down from the mountains, being the whole of their
refuse of every kind. The whole population was put to perpetual
hard labour. The young and active tended the amphibians, grew the
corn, collected the shell-fish, gathered the "bread from heaven"
for their elders, and were compelled to reproduce their kind. At
twenty they were considered strong enough for the factory, where
they worked in gangs on a machine combining the features of our
pump and treadmill for sixteen hours of the twentyfour. This
machine supplied Atlas with its 'ZRO'* or 'power', of which I
shall speak presently. Any worker showing even temporary weakness
was transferred to the phosphorus works, where he was sure to die
within a few months. Phosphorus was a prime necessity of Atlas;
however, it was not used in its red or yellow forms, but in a
third allotrope, a blue-black or rather violet-black substance,
only known in powder finer than precipitated gold, harder than
diamond, eleven times heavier than yellow phosphorus, quite
incombustible, and so shockingly poisonous that, in spite of
every precaution, an ounce of it cost the lives (on an average)
of some two hundred and fifty men. Of its properties I shall
speak later.
The people were left in utmost slavery and ignorance by the
wise counsel of the first of the philosophers of Atlas, who had
written: "An empty brain is a threat to Society." He had
consequently instituted a system of mental culture, comprising
two parts:
1. As a basis, a mass of useless disconnected facts.
2. A superstructure of lies.
Part 1 was compulsory; the people then took Part 2 without
protest.*
The language of the plains was simple but profuse. They had
few nouns and fewer verbs. 'To work again' (there was no word for
'to work' simply), 'to eat again', 'to break the law' (no word
for 'to break the law again'), 'to come from without', 'to find
light' (i.e. to go to the phosphorus factory) were almost the
only verbs used by adults. The young men and women had a verb-
language yet simpler, and of degraded coarseness. All had,
however, an extraordinary wealth of adjectives, most of them
meaningless, as attached to no noun ideas, and a great quantity
of abstract nouns such as 'Liberty', 'Progress', without which no
refined inhabitant could consider a sentence complete. He would
introduce them into a discussion on the most material subjects.
"The immoral snub-nose", "the unprogressive teeth", "lascivious
music", "reactionary eyebrows"--such were phrases familiar to
all. "To eat again, to sleep again, to work again, to find the
light--that is Liberty, that is Progress" was a proverb common in
every mouth.
The religion of the people was Protestant Christianity in all
essentials, but with an even closer dependence upon God. They
asserted its formulae, without attaching any meaning to the
words, in a manner both reverent and passionate. Sexual life was
entirely forbidden to the workers, a single breach implying
relegation to the phosphorus works.
In every field was, however, an enormous tablet of rock,
carved on one side with a representation of the three stages of
life: the fields, the labour mill, the factory; and on the other
side with these words: "To enter Atlas, fly." Beneath this an
elaborate series of graphic pictures showed how to acquire the
art of flying. During all the generations of Atlas, not one man
had been known to take advantage of these instructions.
The principal fear of the populace was a variation of any kind
from routine. For any such the people had one word only, though
this word changed its annotation in different centuries.
'Witchcraft', 'Heresy', 'Madness', 'Bad Form', 'Sex-Perversion',
'Black Magic' were its principal shapes in the last four thousand
years of the dominion of Atlas.
Sneezing, idleness, smiling, were regarded as premonitory. Any
cessation from speech, even for a moment to take breath, was
considered highly dangerous. The wish to be alone was worse than
all; the delinquent would be seized by his fellows, and either
killed outright or thrust into the compound of the phosphorus
factory, from which there was no egress.
The habits of the people were incredibly disgusting. Their
principal relaxations were art, music and the drama, in which
they could show achievement hardly inferior to that of Henry
Arthur Jones, Pinero, Lehar, George Dance, Luke Fildes, and
Thomas Sidney Cooper.
Of medicine they were happily ignorant. The outdoor life in
that equable climate bred strong youths and maidens, and the
first symptoms of illness in a worker was held to impair his
efficiency and qualify him for the phosphorous factory. Wages
were permanently high, and as there were no merchants even of
alcohol, whose use was forbidden, every man saved all his
earnings, and died rich. At his death his savings went back to
the community. Taxation was consequently unnecessary. Clothes
were unnecessary and unknown, and the 'bread from heaven' was the
"free gift of God". The dead were thrown to the amphibians. Each
man built his own shelter of the rough stone sponge which
abounded. The word 'house' was used only in Atlas; the servile
race called its huts 'Hloklost' (equivalent to the English word
'home'). Discontent was absolutely unknown. It had not been
considered necessary to prohibit traffic with foreign countries,
as the inhabitants of such were esteemed barbarians. Had a ship
landed men, they would have been murdered to a man, supposing
that Atlas had permitted any approach to its shores. That it
hindered such, and by infallible means, was due to other
considerations, whose nature will form the subject of a
subsequent chapter.
This then is the nature of the plains beneath Atlas, and the
character of the servile race.
.pa
II.
OF THE RACE OF ATLAS
In the city or 'house' which was formed from the crest of
every mountain, dwelt a race not greatly superior in height to
our own, but of vaster frame. The bulk and strength of the bear
is not inappropriate as a simile for the lower classes; the
higher had the enormous chest and shoulders and the lean haunches
of the lion. This strength gave an infallible beauty, made
monstrous by their most inexorable law, that every child who
developed no special feature in the first seven years should be
sacrificed to the Gods. This special feature might be a nose of
prodigious size, hands and wrists of gigantic strength, a gorilla
jaw, an elephant ear--or any of these might entitle its owner to
life:* for in all such variations from the normal they perceived
the possibility of a development of the race. Men and women were
hairy as the ourang-outang and all were closely shaven from head
to foot. It had been found that this practice developed tactile
sensibility. It was also done in reverence to the 'Living Atla',
of which more in its place.
The lower class were few in number. Its function was to
superintend the servile race, to bring the food of the children
to the banqueting-hall, to remove the same, to attend to the
disposition of the 'light-screens', to ensure the continuance of
the race by the begetting, bearing and nourishing of the children.
The priestly class was concerned with the further preparation
of the Zro supplied by the labour-mills, and its impregnation
with phosphorus. This class had much leisure for 'work', a
subject to be explained later.
The High Priests and High Priestesses were restricted in
number to eleven times thirty-three in any one 'house'. To them
were entrusted the final secrets of Atlas, and to them was
confided the conduct of the experiments in which every will was
bound up.*
The colour of the Atlanteans was very various, though the hair
was invariably of a fiery chestnut with bluish reflections. One
might see women whiter than Aphrodite, others tawny as Cleopatra,
others yellow as Tu-Chi, others of a strange, subtle blue like
the tattooed faces of Chin women, others again red as copper.
Green was however a prohibited hue for women, and red was not
liked in men. Violet was rare, but highly prized, and children
born of that colour were specially reared by the High
Priestesses.
However, in one part of the body all the women were perfectly
black with a blackness no negro can equal; from this circumstance
comes the name Atlas. It is absurdly attributed by some authors
to the deposit of excess of phosphorus in the Zro. I need only
point out that the mark existed long before the discovery of
black phosphorus. It is evidently a racial stigma. It was the
birth of a girl child without this mark which raised her mother
to the rank of goddess, and ended the terrestrial adventure of
the Atlanteans, as will presently appear.
Of the ethics of this people little need be said. Their word
for 'right' is 'phph' made by blowing with the jaw drawn sharply
across from left to right, thus meaning 'a spiral life contrary
to the course of the sun'. We may assume it as 'contrary'.
"Whatever is, is wrong" seems to have been their first principle.
Legs were 'wrong' because they only carry you five miles in the
hour: let us refuse to walk; let us ride horseback. So the horse
is 'wrong' compared to the train and the motor-car; and these are
'wrong' to the aeroplane. If speed had been the Atlantean's
object, he would have thought aeroplanes 'wrong' and all else
too, so long as the speed of light was not surpassed by him.
Curious survivals of these laws are found in the Jewish
transcript of the Egyptian code, which they, being a slave race,
interpreted in the reverse manner.
"Thou shalt not make any graven image." Every male child on
attaining manhood, had a graven image given him to worship, a
miracle-working image, whose principle exploits he would tattoo
upon it.
"Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy." The Atlantean
kept one day in seven for all purposes unconnected with his
principle task.
"Thou shalt not commit adultery." Though the Atlanteans
married, intercourse with the wife was the only act forbidden.
"Honour thy father and thy mother." On the contrary, they
worshipped their children, as if to say: "This is the God whom I
have made in my own likeness."
Similarly, there is one exception and one only to the rule of
silence. It is the utterance of the 'Name' which it is death to
pronounce. This word was constantly in their mouths; it is
'Zcrra', a sort of venomous throat-gargling. Hence, possibly the
Gaelic 'Scurr' 'speak', English 'Scaur' or 'Scar' in Yorkshire
and the Pennines. 'Zcrra' is also the name of the 'High House',
and of the graven image referred to above.
Others traces may be found in folklore; some mere
superstitions. Thus the correct number for a banquet was
thirteen, because if there were only one more sign in the Zodiac,
the year would be a month longer, and one would have more time
'for work'. This is probably a debased Egyptian notion.
Atlanteans knew better than anyone that the Zodiac is only an
arbitrary division. Still it may be laid down that the impossible
never daunted Atlas. If one said, "Two and two make Four" his
thought would be "Yes, damn it!"*
I now explain the language of Atlas. The third and greatest of
their philosophers saw that speech had wrought more harm than
good, and he consequently instituted a peculiar rite. Two men
were chosen by lot to preserve the language, which, by the way,
consisted of monosyllables only, two hundred and fourteen in
number, to each of which was attached a diacritical gesture,
usually ideographic.
Thus 'wrong' is given as 'phph' moving the jaw from right to
left. Wiping the brown with 'phph' means 'hot', hollowing the
hands over the mouth 'fire', striking the throat 'to die;' so
that each 'radicle' may have hundreds of gesture-derivatives.
Grammar, by the way, hardly existed, the quick apprehension of
the Atlanteans rendering it unnecessary.
These two men then departed to a cavern on the side of the
mountain just above the cliff, and there for a year they
remained, speaking the language and carving it symbolically upon
the rock. At the end of the year they returned; the elder is
sacrificed and the younger returns with a volunteer, usually one
who wishes to expiate a fault, and teaches him the language.
During his visit he observes whether any new thing needs a name,
and if so he invents it, and adds it to the language. This
process continued to the end. The rest of the people abandoned
altogether the use of speech, only a few years' practice enabling
them to dispense with the radicle. They then sought to do without
gesture, and in eight generations the difficulty was conquered,
and telepathy* established. Research then devoted itself to the
task of doing without thought; this will be discussed in detail
in the proper place. There was also a 'listener', three men who
took turns to sit upon the highest peak, above the 'light-
screens', and whose duty it was to give the alarm if any noise
disturbed Atlas. On their report that High Priest charged with
active governorship would take steps to ascertain and destroy the
cause.
The 'light-screens' spoken of were a contrivance of laminae of
a certain spar such that the light and heat of the sun were
completely cut off, not by opacity, but by what we call
'interference'. In this way other subtle rays of the sun entered
the 'house', these rays being supposed to be necessary to life.
These matters were the subjects of the deepest controversy. Some
held that these rays themselves were injurious and should be
excluded. Others considered that the light-screens should be put
in position during moonlight, instead of being opened at sunset,
as was the custom. This, however, was never attempted, the great
mass of the people being devoted to the moon. Others wished full
sunlight, the aim of Atlas being (they thought) to reach the sun.
But this theory contradicted the prime axiom of attaining things
through their opposites, and was only held by the lower classes,
who were not initiated into this doctrine.
The 'houses' of Atlas were carved from the living rock by the
action of Zro in its seventh precipitation. Enormously solid, the
walls were lofty and smoother than glass, though the pavements
were rough and broken almost everywhere for a reason which I am
not permitted to disclose. The passages were invariably narrow,
so that two persons could never pass each other. When two met, it
was the law to greet by joining in 'work' and then going away
together on their separate errands, or passing one above the
other. This was done purposely, so as to remind every man of his
duty to Atlas on every occasion on which he might meet a fellow-
citizen.
The Banqueting-Hall of the children was usually very large.
The furniture, which had been brought by the first colonists, and
gradually disused by adults, never needed repair. A vast open
doorway facing North opened on the mountainside on to the
vineyards and orchards, the meadows and gardens, in which the
children passed their time. Suckled by the mother for three
months only, the child was then already able to nourish itself on
the bread and wine, and on the flesh of the amphibious herds, of
which there were several kinds; one a piglike animal with flesh
resembling wild duck, another a sort of amatee tasting like
salmon, its fat being somewhat like caviar in everything but
texture, and a sure specific for any of childhood's troubles. A
third, an ancestor of our hippopotamus, was really tamed, and was
employed by the serviles for preparing the ground for the corn,
trampling through the fields while they were covered with sea-
water, and thus leaving deep holes in which the seeds were cast.
Its flesh was not unlike bear, but more delicate. Notable, too,
was the great quantity of turtle; also the giant oysters, the
huge deep sea crabs, a kind of octopus whose flesh made a
nutritious and elegant soup, and innumerable shell-fish, added to
the table. The waterways were haunted by shoals of a small and
poisonous fish,* whose bite was immediate death to man, a fact
which altogether cut off communication between one island and
another except by air, as the hippopotamus-animal, although
immune to its bite, was unable to swim.
Of the sleeping chambers I shall tell more particularly in the
course of my remarks on Zro.
.pa
III.
OF THE AIM OF THE MAGICIANS OF
ATLAS: OF ZRO; AND ITS PROPERTIES
AND USES: OF THAT WHICH
COMBINED WITH IT: AND OF
BLACK PHOSPHORUS.
It was the most ancient tradition of the Atlantean magicians
that they were the survivors of a race inhabiting a country
called Lemuria, of which the South Pacific archipelago may be the
remains. These Lemurians had, they held, built up a civilization
equal, if not superior to their own; but through a
misunderstanding of magical law--some said the 2nd, some the 8th,
some the 23rd--had involved themselves and their land in ruin.
Others thought that the Lemurians had succeeded in their magical
task, and broken their temple. In any case, it was the secret
Lemurian tradition that they themselves represented the survivals
of a yet earlier race who lived on ice, and they of yet another
who lived in fire, and they again of earlier colonists from Mars.
The theory, in fine, was that the aim of man is to attain the
Sun, whence, according to one school of cosmology, he was exiled
in the cosmic catastrophe which resulted in the formation of
Neptune. His task on any given planet was therefore to overturn
the laws of Nature on that planet, thus mastering it sufficiently
to enable him to make the leap to the next planet inward. Exactly
how and in what sense the leap was made remains obscure, even to
the heirs of Atlantis.*
The men of Atlas could fly, it is true, and that by a method
so simple that men will laugh outright when it is rediscovered;
but they needed air to support them; they could not confront the
cold and emptiness of space. Was it in some subtler body that
they conveyed the Palladium? Or, content to die, could they
project some vehicle across so great a distance? The answer to
such questions probably lies in the recovery by mankind of the
knowledge of Zro and its properties.
Beneath the labour mills* run troughs* in which the sweat of
the workers collects and drains off into an open basin without
the mill. In this basin churns with immense rapidity--through
multiple bevel gearing--a sort of paddle with knife edges. The
sweat is thus churned into froth, and gradually disappears, and
is as continually replaced. The workers toil in shifts--eight
hours work, four hours repose, eight hours work, four hours rest
and recreation. The mills never cease day or night.
The basin is of polished silver and agate, and is set at an
angle, facing two enormous spheres of crystal, encased in a sort
of trellis made of a certain greenish metal, its optical focus at
a point midway between the two.
The only sign of activity is that out of this focus a spark
crackles unless the air be dry, a condition difficult to secure
in this part of the world, although fans blow air, dried over
chloride of calcium and sulphuric acid, over the globes and their
focus. These fans are worked by tidal power, human labour being
appropriated solely to the one use.
In the temple of the 'house' are two globes similar to those
upon the plains, and the mysterious force generated below is
transferred to those above, collecting within them. Now the name
of this substance is always Zro, but in its first state the
gesture is a twiddling of the thumbs. In its second, it is a
rapid twittering of the fingers, and in its third state of
distillation it is a screwing of the hands together. Within the
spheres it sublimes suddenly in the air as a snaky powder (4) of
silver, which immediately turns to an iridescent fluid (5) that
is forced up, by its own need of expansion, through a fountain
into the temple, on whose floor it lies (6) in a semi-solid
condition. Expert priests gather this in their hands, and rapidly
shape it into its seventh state, when it is a knife of diamond,
but alive. An instrument like a Mexican machete is used to carve
rocks. The edge shears them, the back smooths them. The rock
behaves exactly like wax, responsive to the lightest touch. What
is not used for weapons is then gathered up swiftly and kneaded
by women of the rank of high priestess. It is not known even to
the high priests with what they knead it, but in its eighth stage
it is a substance solid enough to support great weight, but
eternally heaving of its own force. Of this they make beds, so
that the sleeping Atlantean is (as it were) continually massaged.
To this they attribute the fact that Atlanteans sleep never more
than half an hour, though they do so four times daily. These beds
remain active only for a few days, and they are then thrown into
the ninth stage by being taken into a room where is a cauldron of
great size. They are thrown into this and sprinkled with black
phosphorus.* The Zro then divides into two parts, one liquid, one
solid. Neither of these has any ascertainable properties, for it
is absolutely passive to the will of the user, who may taste
therein his utmost desire, whether for food or drink. Among
adults there is no other food or drink than this. The children
are not allowed to taste it.
The black phosphorus is always added by a high priestess, and
it is not known in what manner she does this. The Zro that may
remain is the subject of eternal experiments by the Magicians. It
is generally thought by the greatest of them that an error was
committed in bringing it to a ninth stage of division into two,
and many openly deplored the discovery of black phosphorus. All
however strive in harmony to produce a tenth stage that shall
surpass the virtues of the ninth. Theoretically it is possible to
reach an eleventh stage wherein the Zro takes human form, and
lives! Opinion is divided as to whether this was not actually
done by a certain magician at the time of the passing of Atlas.
In any case, I beg the reader to remember that I have only
described one seventh of the virtues of Zro, and I have even
omitted this, that in its ninth stage it is not only food and
drink, but universal medicine, if properly understood. For Zro is
also a vision and a voice!
Now the muscles of the people of Atlas are the muscles of
giants, and yet they do one thing only. And this thing is
combined by the wisdom of the magicians, so that it is at the
same time work, exercise, sport, game, pleasure, and all else
that may fulfill life.
This work never ceases. It has these parts:
1. Working at Zro, i.e. bringing it from the first stage to
the ninth.
2. Working with Zro, i.e. for one's own particular purpose.
3. Working for Zro. This is the common and most honourable
task, the Zro eaten and drunken being worked into a quintessence
of higher power, though identical in property with the common
Zro. This new Zro (Atlas Zro) goes through the same stages as the
common Zro of the serviles. But it is the result of free and
joyful labour, and so serves the magicians in their experiments,
and the Governor of all for his sustenance. None by the way is
ever wasted. For example, a tunnel was drilled completely through
the earth and filled with Zro, and it is said that by this tunnel
the Atlanteans escaped.
This working, whether with or for Zro, requires two persons at
least at any one time and place. Great heat is generated in the
working, and the bodies of the workers are therefore sprinkled
heavily with the black phosphorus, which is incombustible. This
black phosphorus, poisonous to the servile race, becomes
innocuous to anyone who has been in any way impregnated with Zro.
This itself, in its first stage, is as dangerous as electricity
of high voltage.
The reverence attached to Zro is unbounded. At one time it was
hymned as the father of the gods, and till the end all children
were thought to be "begotten of Zro", though everyone might know
who was the father.* All such conception was however held
indignity. Its official name was 'the old experiment'. It was
carried on simply because the new methods of continuing the race
were not perfected. Childbirth was therefore in one way accident;
although a duty, everyone shrank from it. For though no pain or
discomfort attached to the process, it was a sort of second-best
achievement from which proud women turned contemptuously. This
was in part the reason why the father's name was never mentioned.
On several occasions in the history of Atlas the Zro 'failed'.
Although not changed in appearance, its properties were lost or
diminished. In such a case young men and maidens in great numbers
were captured on the plains, brought into Atlas, and offered in
sacrifice to the Gods. Their blood was mingled with Zro in its
third stage, and the latter recovered its potency. Their flesh
was eaten by the high priests and priestesses in penance for the
unknown wrong. It was subject to other and terrible scourges,
being the most sensitive as well as the strongest thing on Earth.
On one occasion it had to be treated with a fox-like perfume
prepared by the chief magician; on another it was subjected to
streams of moonlight from parabolic mirrors.
The most serious crisis was some two thousand years before the
destruction of Atlas. One of the serviles, riding his
'hippopotamus' to the ploughing, fell off and was instantly
bitten by the poisonous fish previously described. Through an
accident of boyhood he had, however, for a reason too obscure to
describe here, no such vulnerable spot as suited the Zhee-Zhou.
He survived and went to work, as it chanced, the next day. The
Zro was poisoned; a third of Atlas died within the hour; the
plants on the affected island had to be destroyed, and all its
people. It was only repopulated some three hundred and eighty
years later, and then for particular reasons of magical economy
impossible to dwell upon in this account.
Marriage was compulsory on all those whose passion had been so
exclusive and enduring as to produce two children. Further
intercourse between the pair was barred. The Magicians thought it
was inimical to variation for a woman to have more than one child
(a fortiori two) by the same father; and the custom further
prevented those stupid sporadic outbursts of burnt-out lust which
make so many modern marriages intolerable.
Closely connected with marriage, the close of the reproductive
life, is that of death, the close of the little that remains.
Death hardly threatened the Atlantean; he would decide to "go and
see", as the old phrase ran, and take an overdose of a particular
preparation of black phosphorus mixed with a very little Zro in
the ninth stage, which ensured a painless death. That none ever
returned was taken as proof of the supreme attractiveness of
death.
The ghoulish and necromantic practices with which Atlanteans
have been unjustly reproached never occurred. A little vampirism,
perhaps, in the early days before the perfecting of Zro; but no
Atlantean was ever so stupid or so ignorant as to confuse death
with life.
Beside this voluntary death only one danger existed. As the
use of Zro guaranteed life and health and youth--a centenarian
high priest was no better than a kitten!--so did its abuse spell
instant corruption of those qualities. As mentioned above, now
and then the Zro itself was at fault, and caused epidemics; but
from time to time there were deaths in a particularly loathsome
form caused by what they called 'misunderstanding' the Zro.* Such
mistakes were particularly common in the early days of its
discovery, and before its use had become well nigh a worship. The
first symptom was a crack in the skin of the temple, or sometimes
of the bridge of the nose, more rarely of an eyelid or cheek.
Within a few minutes this crack became one open sore, of horrid
foetor, and within twenty-four hours, the patient was completely
rotted away, bone and marrow. A circumstance of singular atrocity
was that death never occurred until the spinal column collapsed.
No treatment could be found even to prolong the agony by an hour.
This being recognised, sufferers were thrown from the cliffs at
the first sign of the malady. In this way too were all other
corpses disposed. It was the most honourable death possible, for
becoming 'bread from heaven' for the serviles, they were again
worked up into Zro itself, a transmutation which in their view
would be well worth all the "resurrections of the body" and
"immortalities of the soul" of the theoretical, dogmatic, hearsay
religions. So much then concerning Zro, and the matters
immediately connected with it.
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IV.
OF THE SO CALLED
MAGIC OF THE ATLANTEANS.
Magic in Atlas was a 'Science of Sciences'. It was the final
integration of all knowledge. In method its theory was
differentiation, and in theory its method was integration. For
example, the fifth of the great philosophers indicated
"Everything is Zro" to the Keeper of the Speech at the annual
sacrifice. This in spite of the fact that in that very year two
new forms of Zro had been discovered by that same philosopher. It
was the third of the galaxy who announced "The ultimate analysis
of sensation is pain; that of thought, madness; that of super-
consciousness (a state of trance induced by Zro and valued above
all things) annihilation."
His successor had retorted that in this was implicit a
postulate that pain, madness and annihilation were undesirable.
The third admitted that he had so meant his phrase, but
destroying the postulate, still stuck to it. All this was the
foundation of much magical theory, and on these purely
psychological researches was based the whole magical practice.
'There is no God' was a commonplace. It only implied that
the mind was wrong to try to conceive within it what was by
definition without it. To set limits to anything whatever seemed
to them the greatest of crimes, the exact opposite of the true
path to the Sun.
The practical side of magic was for the most part a mere
utilization of known forces, such as are employed by modern
science. But the resources of Atlas were as great, and the
advantages incomparably greater. The whole archipelago was a
laboratory. There was no question of the 'cost of research';
every man was devoted to it. Every man thought only of the main
problem 'How to reach Venus' and its sub-issues. Further, the
main laws of magic had always been found to govern and include
chemical and physical laws.
In the early days of colonization Zro was only known in its
crude state; it was the genius of a single man that obtained the
third state in its purity. From this state to the seventh it
moved almost of itself, very much as radium does. The genius,
having sufficient in this seventh state, made a sword, and
completed in three days the subjugation of the servile races. It
was a stroke of fortune, this quickness, for on the fourth day
the Zro began to disintegrate. The magicians then began to seek a
means of making this state permanent. But in this they failed,*
so that knives had always to be replaced twice weekly; but in the
course of their failures they discovered the infinitely more
valuable eighth and ninth stages of Zro. Tradition has preserved
a hint of their efforts in Alchemy with its problems of the
fixation of the Universal Mercury, the secret of perpetual
motion, and 'potable gold--the Universal Medicine'. It has been
theoretically determined towards the end of the tenth state, that
Zro should be a solid, but whether this was confirmed is beyond
my knowledge.
To return to the main magical theory, the Quintessence, said
they, or Universal Substance (which some strove to identify with
Hyle, others with the Luminiferous Aether) is the two-in-one,
liquid and solid, the former part being also twofold, fluid and
gaseous, and the latter earthy and fiery. The combination of
these four phases of Zro accounted for the universe. This
quintessence is Zro in some state unknown and incalculable. Some
expected to find it in its twelth state, some in a seventeenth,
others in a thirty-seventh: all this was pure guesswork. Some
tradition to this effect appears to have reached Plato; and the
neo-Platonists combined with those Jews who had preserved
fragments of the Egyptian tradition to form a new initiated
hierarchy, the echo of whose teaching is found in Paracelsus. At
one period, too, missionaries (not colonists, as has been
ignorantly asserted; there was no trouble of over-population in
Atlantis) were sent to the four quarters and parties landed in
Mexico, Ireland and Egypt. The adventures of the party who
travelled South form an astounding chapter in the history of
Atlas. It was they who discovered the Magnetic South, and whose
observations rendered possible the theory which resulted in the
piercing of the Earth by Zro.*
There were also preparations of Zro which increased the size
of the user, and others which diminished it. In general use among
the lower classes, until the very end, was that composition which
made the body light. Careful adjustment would equalize its weight
with that of the displaced air, and movements of the limbs would
then permit flying. In this way the overseers visited the plains
and returned. The other and earlier art of flying needed no
apparatus, but I am forbidden to disclose the method, except to
hint that it is connected closely with the art of 'dreaming
true'.
These are but a few of the magic powers so-called of the
compounds of Zro; but they will indicate the power of Atlas by
shewing what it could afford to neglect. Yet all these powers
were implicit in the process of 'working'.
The art of prediction was in the same unsatisfactory state as
it is in England today. Nor was its practice encouraged. A
magician makes the future, and does not seek to divine it. All
true prediction was therefore necessarily catastrophe. The
greatest good fortune seemed worthless to an Atlantean, since it
was accident, and if accidents are to happen, one of them may be
fatal. They believed themselves to be equal to the whole tendency
of things, and proudly gazed on Nature as a man might upon a
virgin captive to his spear. Everything that was being was Zro;
everything that was Energy was 'working for Zro'. Outside this
was but by-product and waste-heap.
The arrangement of the houses was in accordance with the
magical theory. There was first the High House, then four (later
six, last ten) 'Houses of Houses'; and to each of these was
attached a varying number of ordinary houses. The High House was
the central shrine of the whole archipelago, and must be
separately described.
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V.
OF THE HIGH HOUSE OF ATLAS,
OF ITS INHABITANTS, AND OF THEIR
MANNERS AND CUSTOMS,
AND OF THE LIVING ATLA.
The High House was separated from its nearest neighbor by over
twenty miles of sea. Its diameter was about an half-mile and its
height four miles. It had no plains at the base, and its cliffs
went absolutely sheer and smooth into the water. It was in shape
a flattish cylinder, but the top broadened into a pointed knob,
somewhat in the style of St. Basil's at Moscow. There was not a
trace of vegetation, which by the way was despised by the
Atlanteans. A child would pick a flower contemptuously thinking
"You cannot even move about", or pet it as an English degenerate
woman does a dog. The only entrance was by an orifice at the top.
But the base was tunneled so that from every house was a channel
for the Zro which having been brought to the highest perfection
was thus transferred to headquarters. The receptacle at the base
being far below the earth, and the Zro further heated by
friction, it seethed continually into a bluish or purplish smoke.
This was the sole sustenance of the inhabitants of the High
House. In early days the old High House, in an island since
destroyed by order of the Atla, had been called the House of
Blood, the inhabitants subsisting only on blood sucked from the
living. The improvements in Zro had changed all that; but the
idea was the same, to live on the Quintessence of Life. Hence
while the 'houses' ate and drank Zro, the High House drank its
vapour. No children were born in it, and none below the rank of
High Priest dwelt there.
Except for one matter which was never thought of, though
constantly spoken, the inmost mystery of the High House was the
'Living Atla'. This had many names, 'Wordeater', 'Unshaven'
(because the razors of Zro were turned on its hair), 'Fireheart',
'Beginning and End' and so on: but especially a word I can only
translate as 'To Her', a defective pronoun existing only in the
dative. What the Living Atla really was, is a secret of secrets.*
We know it only from its epithets, its veils. Thus it was 'That
Black which makes black white'. It was 'twenty-six feet high and
fifteen feet across--Oh my Lords, it is the essence of the
Incommensurable!' It was 'the wife of Zro', 'the heart of Zro',
'desire of Zro', 'the Atla that eats Atlas', 'the swallower up of
her own house', 'the pelican', 'the fire-nest of the Phoenix',
according to the greatest of the poets. And the burden of his
hymns of worship was that it must be destroyed.
It was impossible to approach the Atla without being instantly
sucked up and devoured by it. This was the greatest death, and
ardently desired by all. The favour was accorded only to those
who discovered improvements in Zro, or otherwise merited signal
and supreme recognition from the state. Hidden men listened to
the cries of the victim, and thus learned the nature of the
death. It appears that the black suddenly broke into a fiery
rose, 'the only* luminous thing in Atlas', and a shooting forward
enclosed him. For some reason which was never even guessed the
Atla refused women. Those who had seen Atla were however useless
to instruct. They came forth from the Presence smiling, and even
under the most fearful tortures that the magicians could devise,
continued to smile. This smile never left them during life, and
the conscious superiority of it was so irritating, and so
contrary to the harmony of life in Atlas that the women were
killed, and their companions for the future forbidden to approach
the Atla.
Whatever theories as to its nature may have been formed by the
magicians were upset by a famous experiment. A most holy high
priest, a man who at puberty had insisted on immediate marriage
with all the women of his house, a magician who had formed four
new compounds of Zro, and discovered how to pass matter through
matter, was honoured by the great death. On reaching the last
corridor, where the concentrated spirals of Zro vapour whirled up
into the Presence of Atla, he bade farewell to the appointed
listeners in the manner suitable to his dignity, and then, taking
a last deep draught of Zro into his lungs, rushed into the
antrum. They heard him cry aloud "O!" with surprise, and then
with inexpressible rapture the words "Behind Atla, Otla!" which
were, and still are, completely unintelligible. Their surprise
was greater, when, seven days later he came striding past them
without greeting. He went to his 'house' and shut himself up, was
never seen or heard again, but was assuredly living at the time
of the 'catastrophe'. This man founded a school of philosophy, or
rather, it founded itself on what it supposed him to have
discovered; and this school disputes with the orthodox the credit
of the final success.
The lesser mysteries of the High House were concerned almost
entirely with the creation of life, and the bridging of the gulf
between Earth and Venus. These were connected intimately; the
theory was that if Atlantean brains could exist in bodies
sufficiently subtle to traverse aether, the task was done. Some
of the experiments were crude enough, and, to our minds,
horrible. They attempted to breed a new race by crossing with
snakes, swans, horses and other animals.* The Greek legends of
such monsters as Chimaera, Medusa, Lamia, Minotaur, the Centaurs,
the Satyrs and the like are mere filtrations of the Atlantean
tradition. The only theory behind such experiments was that they
were contrary to the natural order, and so worth trying. Men of
more scientific mind more plausibly passed Zro vapour through
sea-water; but they only created serpents of vast size, which
they cast into the sea about the High House as guardians. The
sea-serpent, whether legend or fact, is derived from this ex
periment. It is quite possible that some such survive. Another
school, objecting strongly to the sex-process, "which must be
transcended as the Lemurians overcame gemmation" vivisected men
and women, taking various parts of the brain, especially the
cerebellum, the pineal gland, and the pituitary body, and cul
tivated them in solutions of Zro under the invisible rays of
black phosphorus. The best results of this work was a race of
translucent jelly-folk of great intellectual development; but so
far from being able to travel through space, they could hardly
move in their own element. Another school argued that as Zro in
vapour combined the virtues of the liquid and the solid Zro, so a
fiery state might be produced which would so impregnate their
bodies as to make them 'mates of the aether'. This school held
that fiery Zro already existed in Nature, "in the heart of the
Living Atla", and asserted that those who died by absorption into
Atla passed straight to Venus. Many of them therefore tried hard
to obtain messages from that planet. Familiar with Newton's first
law of motion, they further held it possible to prepare Zro in
such a state that a current of it could never be deflected or
dissipated, and so, if it could be made in sufficient quantity, a
bridge to Venus might be built by which they might travel. They
therefore tunneled through the planet, as previously explained,
to have a sort of cannon for the Zro. But as their supply was
pitifully insufficient, they endeavoured also to prepare a Zro
which would have the power of multiplying itself. Alchemical
tradition has some record of this problem.
Yet another group of magicians argued that as Nature had cast
off the planets from the Sun--a disputed point, some thinking
this due to magic, which if so completely destroys the argument--
it would be contrary to Nature to cause the planets to fall back
into it. They busied themselves with attempts to increase the
Earth's gravitational pull, and (alternatively) to check her
course. Their schemes were generally regarded as Utopian--yet
they could boast of the discovery of the Zro that lightened
bodies, and of a kind of aether-screen which generated mechanical
power in inexhaustible quantities by making matter slightly
opaque to aether. This engine only worked on a very small scale.
A screen two inches long would tear itself from fastenings that
would have held an earthquake, while the rocks in its
neighbourhood would melt in a few minutes, and the sea boil
instantly where its rays struck. The most brilliant of this
school asserted "Matter is a strain in the aether." He explained
gravitation in this way. Place two ivory spheres in a rubber
tube; the strain on the tube is least when the balls touch. The
tendency is therefore for them to come together. Friction alone
checks them. Now aether is infinitely elastic and without
friction. From these data he calculated the Law of Inverse
Squares.
A more mystic school saw life everywhere. It knew all that we
know, and more, about ions and electrons; it saw every phenomenon
as a manifestation of will. The crowning glory of this school was
the discovery that Zro in its ninth stage, eaten and drunken with
concentrated intention, produced the desired result, whatever
(within wide limits) that result might be. This went far to
supersede the use of all specialized forms of Zro, and so to
unify the magical practice.
It seems curious with all this magic, Magic itself should be
the thing most deplored. But it was the means, and, as such,
"that which is in particular not the end". The word for Magic,
'Ijynx', was the only dissyllable in the language, for Magic was
the essentially two-fold thing, more two-fold (in a way) than the
number two itself. It is interesting here to sketch briefly the
mathematics of Atlas. The task is not easy, as their minds worked
very differently from ours.
The number 1 was a fairly simple idea; but two was not only
two, but also 'the result of adding 1 to 1' and 'the root of 4'.
The numbers grew in complexity out of all reason. Seven was 6
plus 1, and 5 plus 2, and 4 plus 3, and so on; as well as 'the
root of 49', 'half 14' and the like. They even distinguished 4
plus 3 from 3 plus 4. Each number also represented an idea or
group of ideas on all sorts of planes. It would have been quite
possible to discuss dressmaking in terms of pure number. To give
an example of the way in which their minds thought, consider the
number three. Three, in so far as it gives the first plane
figure, suggests superficies; with regard to the dimensions of
space, solidity. Three itself is therefore 'that ineffably holy
thing in which the superficies is the solid'. Of course hundreds
of other ideas must be added to this; and to grasp and harmonize
them all in one colossal supra-rational idea was the constant
task of every mathematician. The upshot of this was that all
numbers above 33 were regarded as spurious, illusionary; they had
no real existence of their own*; they were temporary compounds,
unreal in very much the same sense as our square root of 1. They
were always expressed by graphic formulae, like our own organic
compounds. To take an example, the number 156 was regarded as a
sort of efflorescence of the number 7; it was never written but
as 77 plus [(7+7)/7] plus 77. Again 11 was usually written 3 plus
5 plus 3. It was always the aim to find symmetry in these
expressions, and also 'to find an easy way to 1'. This last is
difficult to explain.
Eleven was their great 'Key of Magic'. It is a twofold number
in 'the act of becoming 1'. Thirty-seven was the essence of 1
inasmuch as multiplying it by 3 gives 111, three ones, which
divided again by 3 in another manner, yield 1. "One would rather
think of 48 as 37 plus 11 than as 4 times 12" is the statement of
an elementary text-book dating from the earliest days of Atlas.
It was a sort of moral duty to teach the mind to think in this
manner.
The number 7 was the 'perfect number' with them as with us,
but for very different reasons. It was the link between Earth and
Venus, for one thing; I cannot explain why. It was 'the number of
Atla', and the 'house of success' (two being the 'house of
battle'). It was also grace, softness, ease, healing and 'joy of
Zro' as well as 'play of phosphorus'. Many mathematicians,
however, attacked it with rigour; there was at one time an almost
general consent to replace it by 8, and its 'rapture-combination'
31, by 33. Despite the intense preoccupation with such ideas,
mathematics as we know them had reached a perfection which if it
does not surpass that of our own civilization, fails principally
because of its theorems, handed down to Euclid and Pythagoras,
although imperfectly, formed a springboard whence we might leap.
The initiation of children was also a matter reserved for the
High House. Weaned at three months, the children were tended by
the lower classes until the age of puberty, an occurrence which
fitted them at once for initiation. A legate from the High House
was sent for, and in his presence the child was brought,
acquainted with Zro by its father and mother, and full
instruction in 'working' was further conferred by any member of
the 'house' who chose to do so, this in practice meaning by
everybody. The ceremonies were frequently long and exhausting;
children often enough died in the course of them. This was not
regarded as a serious calamity; some schools of magicians even
pretended to rejoice. The representatives of the High House had a
prior right to the parents of the child; at times he conducted
the initiation in person, a high honour, but invariably fatal. On
rare occasions male children were sent over to the Atla to be
devoured. The parents of so fortunate a child were advanced in
rank on the spot, and had special privileges conferred on them,
sometimes even being transferred to a 'House of Houses'. All
those who dwelt in the High House were veiled whenever they
appeared, in order to prevent it being known that they were of
the same appearance in all respects as their inferiors. This
ordinance had been made after the Great Conspiracy, with which I
shall deal in the chapter on History.
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VI.
OF THE UNDERGROUND GARDENS
OF ATLAS, AND OF THE ALLEGED
COMMERCE OF THE ATLANTEANS
WITH INCUBI, SUCCUBI, AND THE
DEMONS OF DARKNESS.
I have referred to the contempt with which the Atlanteans were
prone to regard the vegetable kingdom. Animals, including man,
shared their scorn. The idea may have been that with their
advantages they ought to have done much better for themselves.
Minerals, however, were regarded as helpless; and hence the
extraordinary attention paid to them. Beneath the houses the rock
had been tunneled out into grottos, some in odd fantastic forms,
but most in immense polyhedra or combinations of curves. Each
'house' had some twenty of such gardens. Three reagents were used
in the cultivation; the 'seed of metals', 'the seed of Light',
and the seed of '', an untranslatable idea approximating to our
mystic's interpretation of 'Alpha and Omega'. The two former
produced simple effects, the first formed jewels, self-luminious,
which yet grew like flowers, the second similar effects with
metals; while the third brought any mineral to flower in the most
extravagant combinations of colour and form. All such conditions
as texture, hardness, elasticity, and physical attributes in
general, were considered worthy of the profoundest attention.
As an instance of these, I may describe particular gardens.
One would have a roof of softly-glowing sapphires, foxglove,
bluebell or gentian, and between these champak stars of ruby. The
walls would be covered with tendrils of vine within whose depths
lurked tiny blossoms of amethyst. The floor would be of
malachite, but alive, growing as a coral does, softer than any
earthly moss and more elastic to the tread. On every darker leaf
might glow dew-drops of self-strung diamond formed from the
carbon dioxide of the air by the action of the 'seed of Light'.
Another grotto would be a monochrome of blue, various copper
salts being 'planted' everywhere, and growing in incrustations
and festoons of every shade of blue from the faintest tinge of
coerulean azure and green and grey, in whose abyss would be seen
shapes of anemonies, perhaps of such hues as iron oxide, silver
chromate, and cupramonium cyanurate. All this floor would in all
respects resemble water but for its greater solidity, and
floating on it would be giant lilies, great green leaves of
emerald with cups of pearl not less than twelve feet in diameter,
with corollae of pure gold, so fine that they glimmered green,
with pistils of platinum on whose tops trembled great pigeon-
blooded rubies. Another might be wholly of metal, a mere bower of
jasmine, with its floor of violets. The law of growth of these
creatures of wisdom was not that of plants or animals, or even of
crystals; it was that of the earth. Constantly growing as the
planet approached the sun, they as steadily shrank as she
departed to aphelion. This was not growth and decay, but the rise
and fall of an eternal bosom. It is probable, too, that this is
one of the reasons why Atlas neglected the higher kingdoms; they
had learned to grow, but on wrong lines, and it was too late to
endeavour to correct the error.
These gardens were the principal places of working. It was
hardly possible to pass from one place to another without coming
upon one of them, so cunningly were they distributed; and in
every garden would be found, joyful and noble, parties of workers
intent on their beloved task. The passer-by would gladly join one
of such parties, engage in the work for so long as he wished, and
then proceed upon his private business. In these same gardens
too, were salvers and goblets always filled with Zro, and after
toil, refreshment fitted the workers to return to labour.
Now of these workings in the gardens strange tales are told.
It is said that the inhabitants falling to repose were visited in
sleep by incubi and succubi (whatever the nature of these may be,
and I by no means concur in the opinion of Sinistrari), and that
they welcomed such with eagerness. Nay, darker legends tell of
infamous commerce and intercourse with demons foul and malicious,
and pretend that the power of Atlas was devilish, and that the
catastrophe was the judgement of God. These mediaeval fables of
the debased and perverted phallicism miscalled Christianity are
unworthy even to be refuted, founded as they are on hypotheses
contrary to common sense. Nor would they who knew themselves
masters of the earth have deigned to degrade themselves, and
moreover to vitiate their whole work by commerce with inferiors.
If there be any truth whatever in these stories, it will then be
more easily supposable that the Atlanteans aspiring to journey
sunwards to Venus, might invoke the beings of that planet, should
it be possible for them to travel to us. And that this is impos
sible, who can assert? On the theory of the Magicians, power
increases as the sun is approached, the inhabitants of Earth
being more highly infused with the magical force of Our Star than
those of Mars, and they again more than those of great Jupiter,
gloomy and disastrous Saturn and Uranus, or Neptune lost in star-
dreams. Again, the powers of each particular planet may, nay,
must be wholly diverse. So fundamental a condition of existence
as the value of g being vastly various, must not the inhabitants
differ equally in body and in mind? What lives on the minute and
airless Moon can be no inhabitant of what may hide beneath the
flaming envelope of the sun, with its fountains of hydrogen
flaming an hundred thousand miles into the aether. And surely so
wild an ambition as that of Atlas would not have been held by
beings so wise and powerful for so many centuries had they not
either a sure memory of coming from Mars, or some earnest of
their eventual departure to Venus. Man does not persist in the
chimerical for more than a few generations. Alchemy achieved
results so startling and so beneficial to humanity at large--one
need only mention the discovery of zinc, antimony, hydrogen,
opium, gas itself--that the original ideals were changed for
others more limited and more practical--or at least more
immediately realizable.
Nor is this view unsupported by testimony of a sort. "Great
and glorious, rays of our father the Sun", says one of the poets
of Atlas, "are they within us. Let us call them forth by
utterance that is not uttered, by the gesture that is not made,
by the working that is above all working, for they are great and
glorious, rays of our father the Sun. Then from our bride that
waits for us in the nuptial chamber, green in the green West,
blue in the blue East, exalted above our father in the even and
in the morn, spring forth our heirs and our hosts, to greet us in
the darkness. Dim-glimmering are our gardens in the light of the
seed of light; they are peopled with shadows; they take form;
they are as serpents, they are as trees, they are as the holy
Zcrra, they are as all things straight or curved, they are
winged, they are wonderful. With us do they work, and that which
was but one in seven, and that which was two is become eleven!
With us do they work, and give us of the draught miraculous; us
do they instruct in magic, and feed us the delicate food. Let us
call forth them that are within us, that they that are without
may enter in, as it was made manifest by Him that maketh secret."
This passage, not devoid of a rude eloquence, makes clear what
was held in exoteric circles. For in Atlas the poet was not as in
England a holy and exalted being, one set apart for his high
calling, throned in the hearts of the people, cherished by kings
and nobles, one on whom no wealth and honour are too great to
shower, but one of the people themselves, of no greater con
sequence than any other. Every man was an artist in so far as he
was a man; and every man being equally so in nature, whether so
in achievement or not mattered nothing, as appreciation was of no
moment. Accomplishing Art for the sake of Art, the interest of
the creator in his work died with its creation. It may therefore
be possible that these words are those of poetic exaggeration, or
that there is a concealed meaning in them, or that they are
intended to mask and mislead, or that the poet was not himself
fully instructed. Indeed it is certain that only the High House
had the secrets of Atlas, and that the magicians of the House
held the undeniable if sometimes dangerous doctrine that the
truth and falsehood of any statement alternated as do day and
night according to the status of the hearer of the statement.
However, so strong is the tradition concerning the 'Angel of
Venus' that it must at least be considered carefully. The theory
appears to have been that if the magicians of Venus invited the
Atlanteans, means would assuredly follow, just as if a King
summons a paralysed man to his presence, he will also send
officers to convey him. Now whether the 'Angel of Venus' is
really an angel in anything like the modern sense of the word, or
merely a title of one of the principal magicians of the planet,
it is evident that the High House ardentl desired his presence.
That this might be manifested by the birth of a child 'without
the stain of Atla' was clearly an ultimate desideratum, an
outward and visible sign of redemption, an obvious guarantee of
the reality of the occurrence. It was then a Virgin high
priestess who achieved so notable a renown; whether or not this
is a mere poetic parable of the abiogenesis--if it is indeed fair
so to describe it--of the eleventh stage of Zro is another and an
open question. In any case, such is the tradition, and numerous
parodies of it are still extant in the stories of the births of
Romulus and Remus, Bacchus, Buddha and many other legendary
heroes of modern times; we even catch an echo in the myths of
such barbarian lands as Syria.
So much and no more concerning the Underground Gardens of
Atlas, and of their commerce with the inhabitants of Venus.
VII.
OF MARRIAGE AND OTHER CURIOUS CUSTOMS
OF THE ATLANTEANS:
AND OF SACRIFICES TO THE GODS.
I have already adverted to that most singular conception of
the duty of the married which opposes the customs of Atlas to
those of any other race on Earth. But the considerations which
established it have yet to be discussed. I will not insist on
that gross and cynical point of view which might perceive in
English marriage today a practical vindication of the Atlantean
position. On the contrary, in Atlas marriage formed the loftiest
of ideals. It resembles the 'Hermetic marriage' of certain
alchemists. The bond between the parties was only stronger for
the absence of the lower link. The idea underlying this was in
the main a particular case of the general proposition that
whatever was natural should be transcended. As will be seen in
the final chapter, the very stigma of success in their Great Work
was the transcending of the sexual process. The bond of marriage
was not, however, entirely of this negative character. It had its
positive side, and here closely resembled the so-called Christian
doctrine of Christ and the church. Husband and wife were to be
father and daughter, mother and son, brother and sister, teacher
and pupil, and