Root race

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Root Race (or Epochs to subsequent authors) is a term first used in the late 19th century by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in her book The Secret Doctrine. The word designates the large time periods in her esoteric cosmology and symbolizes stages in human evolution. The large time periods of the root races can be compared to the geological time periods or to the Yugas in Hindu Mythology.

In the early 20th century, Max Heindel in his book The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception furthers a similar line of thought related to Anthropogenesis, but with a new western terminology and viewpoints, and steps into mankind's development toward a future Sixth Epoch (root race).

Since the 1930s, the Ascended Master Teachings and various new age descendants and offshoots of Theosophy, refer to the 21st century as the time of the incarnation of the Seventh Root Race, although students of esoteric traditions equate it as a reference to the seventh sub-race of the current theosophical fifth root race.

[edit] Root Races (Epochs) and related sub-races

According to Blavatsky's writings, there are seven root races assembled for our Earth, each root race is divided into seven subraces. The first root race was according to her "ethereal", the second root race lived in Hyperborea. The third root race lived according to her in Lemuria and the fourth root race in Atlantis.

Blavatsky asserts that our present fifth root race, the so-called Aryans, is approximately one million years old. It overlapped the fourth root race and the very first beginnings of the fifth root race were approximately in the middle of the fourth root race. Generally speaking, all the people who live in the time of the period of the fifth root race are part of the fifth root race. However Blavatsky also claims that Semitic peoples have become "degenerate in spirituality" and asserts that some peoples are "semi-animal creatures". These latter include "the Tasmanians, a portion of the Australians and a mountain tribe in China." There are also "considerable numbers of the mixed Lemuro-Atlantean peoples produced by various crossings with such semi-human stocks -- e.g., the wild men of Borneo, the Veddhas of Ceylon, classed by Prof. Flower among Aryans (!), most of the remaining Australians, Bushmen, Negritos, Andaman Islanders, etc." (The Secret Doctrine vol.II, pp.195-6)

The theosophist David Pratt proposes, based upon Blavatsky and Gottfried de Purucker's Theosophic writings and in modern geological data, the divisions presented below of the earlier fourth Root-Races (or Epochs) along the geologic timeline and related continental structures.^[1] However, it should be noticed that in the Theosophic teachings the current planetary manvantara, or fourth globe, of the earth-chain began approximately 2 billion years ago, and not the 4,5 billion years generally accepted by modern science; chronological discordance is rationalized by claiming that science is "ignoring" the radioactive decay rates during large periods of time, the reheating of minerals after earlier crystallization, an alleged existence of 'cold fusion' phenomena in nature, among other ad hoc factors, which are claimed to affect the readings in current radiometric dating techniques.^[2]

[edit] First Root Race: 'Imperishable Sacred Land' (Polarian Epoch)

The first root-race is claimed to have originated 130 to 150 million years ago in the Silurian or Devonian period, or possibly in the Carboniferous period, of the Paleozoic era, and ended in the Permian period.

Sedimentation on this globe in the fourth round began approximately 320 million years ago and The first root-race would not have begun until after the "awakening from their obscuration of the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms" (except the higher mammals which in the fourth round followed man).

It should be noted, however, that in both the original Blavatsky Theosophical and the Rosicrucian philosophies, the involutionary mankind, while Spirits, was already active since the beginning of the formation of the Earth in fiery conditions, in the Etheric plane. They also describe that, in spite of the subsequent materialization (denser physical state), the Etheric region of the planet is always present through all the involutionary and evolutionary periods. On the other hand, that mankind after completion of the evolution in the Physical plane, will return to the mentioned ethereal realm of the Earth.

[edit] Second Root Race: Hyperborean (Hyperborean Epoch)

The second root-race (Hyperborean) is claimed to have originated in the late Carboniferous or in the Permian, and ended in the late Triassic or early Jurassic of the Mesozoic (Secondary) era (some 25 to 30 million years ago).

The second, Hyperborean continent is presumed to have comprised the regions around the north pole in the arctic circle, including Greenland, Spitsbergen, Scandinavia, and northern Asia. During a proposed cataclysm at the time of the appearance of the second race, northern Asia would have been cut off from its root-continent at the north pole and divided by glacial waters.

[edit] Third Root Race: Lemurian (Lemurian Epoch)

The third (Lemurian) root-race was claimed to have lived during the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous of the Mesozoic (the Age of Reptiles). The middle of the third root-race would have occurred about 18.5 million years ago (near the Jurassic/Cretaceous boundary), when the separation of the sexes and the awakening of mind is alleged to have taken place.

Lemuria, the third continent, is portrayed as embracing large areas in the Indian and Pacific oceans, and also portions of what is now Africa. It projected round South Africa into the North Atlantic, and stretching up to the northern polar regions; it would have included Sweden and Norway, and Asia, which was claimed to be 'a kind of broken prolongation' of it. Australia is asserted to be the largest relic of Lemuria, and other fragments would be the many islands in the Pacific; it also would have included a large portion of California.

Lemuria-Atlantis therefore had both northern and southern divisions: the hyperborean and equatorial lands respectively. The Lemurian continent, that once would have lain mostly to the south of Asia in what is now the Indian Ocean, extending eastward to Upper India and Sunda Island and westward as far as Madagascar and Africa, is purported to be the earliest cradle of the human race.

Lemuria is claimed to have been destroyed by subterranean fires, i.e. by submarine volcanoes and earthquakes, a series of subterranean convulsions, and the breaking asunder of the ocean floors. Its destruction is also supposedly linked to a decrease in the earth's velocity of rotation. The sinking and transformation of Lemuria beginning nearly at the Arctic Circle (Norway), the Third Race ended its career in Lanka, or rather on that which became Lanka with the Atlanteans. The small remnant now known as Ceylon would be the Northern highland of ancient Lanka, while the enormous island of that name, was, in the Lemurian period, the gigantic continent described herein.

The third race is said to have almost completely disappeared by the Tertiary, carried away by the fearful geological cataclysms of the Secondary era, leaving behind only a few "hybrid races". The final major destruction of Lemuro-Atlantis would have taken place about 4.25 million years ago, at the midpoint of the fourth root-race and very end of the third. However, the 'Lemurian' island of Ruta in the Pacific did not sink until between 850,000 and 700,000 years ago.

Some theosophical writers, attempting to reconcile current geological science with theosophical dogma, have tried to equate Lemuria with the modern notion of Gondwanaland -- a supercontinent comprising South America, Africa, India, Australia, and Antarctica, before the supposed onset of continental drift. Early theosophical teachings, however, agree with the original statements of Eduard Suess, the originator of the concept of Gondwanaland, who argued that Gondwanaland consisted of parts of the present continents in their present positions, but joined to one another by other lands that have since been submerged. Suess's theories were elucidated before continental drift had been discovered by legitimate geology and, thus, had to undergo great convolutions to explain away apparent difficulties in the fossil record.

[edit] Fourth Root Race: Atlantean (Atlantean Epoch)

The fourth (Atlantean) root-race is alleged to have originated in the later Cretaceous (10 to 12 million years ago). It would have attained its peak in the Eocene of the Tertiary, and would have been largely destroyed in the Miocene. The midpoint of the fourth round was reached in the middle of the fourth subrace of the fourth root-race, some 4.5 million years ago.

Atlantis (in this particular cosmology, see also Atlantis for other views) was an immense continental system that once more or less covered the face of the globe, its main centre being located in what is now the Atlantic Ocean. As well as covering the North and South Atlantic regions, it included portions of the North and South Pacific, and islands in the Indian Ocean. Sri Lanka (Ceylon) was the northern headland of one of the Pacific-Atlantean land-masses. Sweden and Norway formed part of Atlantis on the European side, and eastern and western Siberia and Kamchatka belonged to it on the Asiatic side. Other surviving remnants of Atlantis are claimed to be the Azores, the Canaries, and the island of Madeira -- all of which are supposedly once mountain peaks of the Atlantean continent.

The similar geological structure of parts of the opposing Atlantic coastlines and the fossil similarities in certain periods is claimed to prove that 'there has been, in distant pre-historic ages, a continent which extended from the coast of Venezuela, across the Atlantic Ocean, to the Canarese Islands and North Africa, and from Newfoundland nearly to the coast of France.' This particular explanation is now considered quite out-of-date by modern geologists, who use continental drift to explain the same phenomena. Necks of land are claimed to have formerly existed, knitting Atlantis to South America somewhere above the mouth of the Amazon, to Africa near Cape Verde, and probably to Spain. Northwest Africa, in this model, would have been an extension of Spain before the elevation of the Sahara and the rupture of the Gibraltar connection, and would have been once connected with Atlantis by a network of islands, few of which remain.

This geological doctrine maintains that there was more land than water during the era of the fourth root-race and gigantic mountain chains. Africa, as a continent, is said to have appeared before Europe, but was never part of either Lemuria or Atlantis. During the early days of Lemuria, the sveta-dvipa, or white continent, of the Puranas, would have 'stood out like a giant-peak from the bottom of the sea; the area between Atlas and Madagascar being occupied by the waters till about the early period of Atlantis (after the disappearance of Lemuria), when Africa emerged from the bottom of the ocean, and Atlas was half-sunk'. Abyssinia was once an island, and the whole region of present-day Egypt and the deserts was once covered by the sea. The Sahara was the basin of a Miocene sea, later a fertile continent, and then, after another temporary submersion, it became a desert.

America is alleged to be older than Europe and was forming while Atlantis was sinking. When the Atlanteans were in their prime, the European continent would not have yet been in existence as we now know it, but there would have been free communication between Atlantis and such portions of Europe as did exist and with Egypt.

The large continent of Atlantis is said to have 'first divided, and then broken later on into seven peninsulas and islands'. When the main part of Atlantis began to sink, Atlantean settlers migrated to the new lands which were rising to the east, west, and south. These new lands became the Americas, Africa, parts of Asia, and the present European countries, stretching from the Ural mountains of Russia, westward to include the British Isles, and even farther westward than that in former times. Some emigrants from the remaining islands in the Atlantic settled on new islands to the east which later consolidated into what is now the district of the Abyssinian highlands and lands somewhat to the north. Atlantis perished through flooding and submergence, and its destruction is explained by claiming successive disturbances in the axial rotation.

The sinking of Atlantis would have begun in the Eocene, and most of it had sunk by the end of the Miocene. The largest claimed remaining island, Ruta, situated in the Pacific Ocean, would have been destroyed about 850,000 years ago, at the time of an alleged shifting of the earth's axis. Daitya, a fairly large island in the Indian Ocean, though smaller than Ruta, would have sunk about 270,000 years ago. The last remaining island of noteworthy magnitude, Poseidonis, about the size of Ireland, which is claimed to have been situated in the Atlantic Ocean beyond the Straits of Gibraltar, would have been submerged in 9565 BC in a great cataclysm involving massive earthquakes and tidal waves.

[edit] Aryan: the Fifth Root Race (Epoch)

The claimed "subraces" of the Aryan Fifth Root Race include the Hindu, the Persian, the Egyptian (though Blavatsky sometimes seems to say that Egyptians are distinct from Aryans), the Greek and the European. Blavatsky described the fifth root race with the following words: "The Aryan races, for instance, now varying from dark brown, almost black, red-brown-yellow, down to the whitest creamy colour, are yet all of one and the same stock -- the Fifth Root-Race -- and spring from one single progenitor, (...) who is said to have lived over 18,000,000 years ago, and also 850,000 years ago -- at the time of the sinking of the last remnants of the great continent of Atlantis." (The Secret Doctrine vol.II, p.249)

According to Blavatsky the sixth sub-race will begin to evolve in the United States.

In his writings Rudolf Steiner often uses the term "Earth Epochs" instead of "Root Races" to describe spans of time similar to those in Blavatsky's model. He uses "Cultural Epochs" to refer to what Blavatsky calls Aryan "sub-races". He did this to avoid any potential misunderstandings caused by the application of the word "race" to beings existing over such large time periods.^[3]

Blavatsky's use of the terms like "Aryan Race" and "Root Race" are defended by modern Theosophists and others who adopt Theosophical ideas as "not connected to demagogic ideas." Their arguments can include statements to the effect that even the current "globalization" society considers the term and related division of humanity into races to be valid and useful in several circumstances (as explained in the article "race"). The explanation is that, Blavatsky, like the subsequent esoteric philosophers who expressed similar lines of thought, believed and intended a Universal Brotherhood of humanity and wrote that "all men have spiritually and physically the same origin" and that "mankind is essentially of one and the same essence." (The Key to Theosophy, Section 3). On the other hand, in The Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky apparently contradicts herself when she states: "Verily mankind is 'of one blood,' but not of the same essence." Blavatsky connects physical race with spiritual attributes constantly throughout her works: "Esoteric history teaches that idols and their worship died out with the Fourth Race, until the survivors of the hybrid races of the latter (The Chinese, Africans, &c.) gradually brought the worship back. The Vedas countenance no idols; all the modern Hindu writings do" (The Secret Doctrine). Blavatsky also calls the physical Aryan race "the 'cream' of the Fourth Race", which "gravitated more and more toward the apex of physical and intellectual evolution", asserting that the Aryan Fifth Root Race corresponds to "the final adjustment of the human organism -- which became perfect and symmetrical only in the Fifth Race" (The Secret Doctrine).

According to The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, the sixth sub-race of the current Aryan Epoch (the fifth epoch) has evolved among the Slavic peoples and the seventh sub-race is now evolving from the sixth sub-race. Heindel refers that the United States is the melting pot to form the last race in human evolution that will exist at the beginning of the Sixth Epoch, the New Galilee.

[edit] Esoteric Christian tradition

The Bible's passage: "For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:" (2 Peter 3:5; KJV) is used to claim support for the existence of previous root races among Esoteric Christian , Essenian and later Rosicrucians. Such theorists claim that the next major step in human evolution will consist in entering and living in the etheric region of the planet, through a major change which is expected to occur in the earth's environment ("reserved unto fire") in a future—unidentified—time; this event is expected to bring the next Sixth Epoch in mankind's evolution: the New Galilee.^[4] This major change, according to Esoteric Christianity, may be found in the Bible's passage: "Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." (2 Peter 3:13).

[edit] Global tectonics theories vs. the Plate Tectonics theory

Major seismotectonic belts/'plate boundaries' (broken lines) compared with an icosahedron.^[5] 'Plate boundaries' (i.e. seismic belts) meet coincide very closely with the vertices of an icosahedron, which, like the tetrahedron, is one of the five regular polyhedra or Platonic solids. This, too, would be a remarkable coincidence if 'plates' had really changed their shape and size to the extent postulated in plate tectonics.

Current-day mainstream scientific knowledge based upon the Plate tectonics ("Continental Drift") theory refutes the existence of the Root Races' continents (e.g. Hyperborea, Lemuria and Atlantis). However, dozens of scientists have already pointed out flaws in the currently accepted plate tectonics^[6][7][8] and in the included continental drift theory^[9] Various scholar authors have published conclusions about the inconsistencies of the accepted standard theory:

These objections, however, are usually refuted by academic scholars as being concerned with specific mechanisms or elements of plate tectonics, not to the basic theory, in and of itself. Use of these controversies is regarded by mainstream scientists as being similar to the use of debate within biological sciences to rationalize creationism.

Current-day esoteric groups accept that fringe hypotheses of Global tectonics (surge tectonics – wrench tectonics – expansion tectonics, ...)^[12] may be able to demonstrate that evolution occurred through epochs in earlier different continental structures, today submerged. They claim that these models would be consistent with the ancient cultural traditions, legends and myths of earlier civilizations, the ancient philosophers, religious teachings and the Blavatsky's model of sunken continents. Mainstream science argues that it has no serious supporting evidence and that such criticisms of Plate Tectonics theory are little more than myths designed to cover the overwhelming evidence for continental drift.

[edit] References

1. ^ Pratt, David, Theosophy and the Seven Continents, June 2000
2. ^ Pratt, David, The Age of Earth, September 1999
3. ^ Hindes, Daniel, Root Races in Theosophy and Antroposophy, 2005
4. ^ Rays from the Rose Cross (A New Heaven and a New Earth), 1964
5. ^ A. Spilhaus, 'Geo-art: plate tectonics and Platonic solids', American Geophysical Union Transactions, vol. 56, 1975, pp. 52-57
6. ^ Pratt, David, Plate Tectonics: A Paradigm Under Threat first published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 307-352, 2000
7. ^ Pratt, David, Problems with Plate Tectonics, first published in New Concepts in Global Tectonics Newsletter, no. 21, p. 10-24, December 2001
8. ^ Pratt, David, Plate Tectonics Subducted, published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 490-495, Fall 2005
9. ^ Pratt, David, Sunken Continents versus Continental Drift, December 2000
10. ^ Pavlenkova, N. I. (1990). Crustal and upper mantle structure and plate tectonics. In Barto-Kyriakidis, 1990, vol. 1, pp. 73-86.
11. ^ Van Andel, T. H. (1998). Plate Tectonics. Encyclopaedia Britannica, CD-ROM, 1994-1998
12. ^ NCGT Group, Organized Opposition to Plate Tectonics: The New Concepts in Global Tectonics Group, Journal of Scientific Exploration, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 97-104, Spring 2006