Theos-Talk Archives (January 2007 Message tt00161)

Friends,

HPB wrote these significant lines on Atlantis and on a certain 
cyclic struggle between two kinds of Occultists.

Carlos. 



[  HPB says:  ] 
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"Brilliant and epigrammatic a writer, and profound an Occultist, as 
was the Abbé Constant (better known by his nom-de-plume of Éliphas 
Lévi), the great bulk of his writings would, we fear, do little 
either to interest or instruct our readers. Still there are passages 
in his writings so pregnant with a higher meaning that it seems to 
us that it might be well to reproduce, from time to time, in The 
Theosophist, translations of some of these. (...)" 

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"See Plato's 'Critias', on the History of Atlantis, as given by the 
priests of Sais to his great ancestor Solon, the Athenian lawgiver.
Atlantis, the submerged continent, and the land of the 'Knowledge of 
Good and Evil' (especially the latter) par excellence, and inhabited 
by the fourth race of men (we are the fifth) who are credited in the 
Popol-Vuh (the book of the Guatemalans) with sight unlimited 
and "who knew all things at once." Éliphas Lévi refers to the secret 
tradition, among Occultists, about the great struggle that
took place, in those far away prehistoric days of Atlantis, between 
the 'Sons of God'—the initiated Adepts of Sambhala (once a fair 
island in the inland Sea of the Tibetan plateau, now as fair a land, 
an oasis surrounded by barren deserts and salt lakes)—and the 
Atlanteans, the wicked magicians of Thevetat. (See 'Isis Unveiled', 
Vol. I, pp. 589-94). It is a well-established belief among the 
Eastern, and especially the Mongolian and Tibetan, Occultists that 
toward the end of every race, when mankind reaches its apex of 
knowledge in that cycle, dividing into two distinct classes, it 
branches off—one as the 'Sons of Light' and the other as the 'Sons 
of Darkness,' or initiated Adepts and natural-born magicians or—
mediums. Toward the very close of the race, as their mixed progeny 
furnishes the first pioneers of a new and a higher race, there comes 
the last and supreme struggle during which the 'Sons of Darkness' 
are usually exterminated by some great cataclysm of nature—by either 
fire or water. Atlantis was submerged, hence the inference that that 
portion of the mankind of the fifth race which will be composed 
of 'natural-born magicians' will be exterminated at the future great 
cataclysm by—fire. 


[ From "FOOTNOTES TO 'GLEANINGS FROM ELIPHAS LEVI' " , by H.P.B., 
published in 'The Theosophist', Vol. IV, No. 2, November, 1882, pp. 
36-38. Also published at 'Collected Writings' of H. P. Blavatsky, 
TPH, Vol. IV, pp. 262-263 ] 


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