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C H A P T E R 6T H E P R I M O R D I A L C I V I L I Z A T I O N
«Off the Celts’ country and on the ocean that surrounds it, there to the North is an island that is not smaller than Sicily. Its dwellers are called Hyperboreans, for they live beyond the area where the North winds blow. There, in the island, is a magnificent forest consecrated to the Sun god and a strange temple of circular shape.» (Manifest of Hecateus, as quoted by Diodorus)
When I took to studying the ages and cosmic cycles, I started from the renewed interest of modern astrophysics in the behavior of time, a subject matter that embraces innumerable disciplines (mainly metaphysics but also philosophy, religion, archeology, astronomy, geology, and many more) and a mystery whose solution, even partial, could help us unravel, almost in their entirety, the great enigmas that have intrigued science since it became interested in them again. Concerning this, an enigma which does not belong in the field of astrophysics, but is to me as meaningful as the ones above, is the fact that the ancient civilizations were all familiar with the knowledge that time unfolds in a circular way. This poses the first and most important question in relation to the problem: namely, how could these civilizations also know, for instance, about the space–time relativity or the current expansion of the universe, when it is generally believed, particularly in the “advanced” countries, that ancient people were ignorant and superstitious – while science itself has fully corroborated so many other historical and scientific data contained in old treatises? Already in the introduction I have suggested that the numerous correlations and analogies among the various traditions, as well as the universality of a certain esoteric knowledge, can only be explained if a common origin is admitted for them all; and in the previous chapter I have reviewed the countless coincidences among different traditions in the matter of ages and cycles, all of them elements whose study, along with the study of certain archetypal universal forms, could help us trace back such origin. To this end, I will start the study with the scheme of seven eras or “Worlds”, earths that become manifest in a successive or chronological way but offer a connotation that is at the same time, and primarily, spatial. This can easily be appreciated in the correlations, for example, with the seven dvipas o “continents” (literally “islands”) of the Hindu tradition, regions that manifest themselves consecutively without the remaining six – which wait, so to speak, in a dormant state – disappearing because of it. (An interesting analogy may help clarify this point: within the cycle of cell renovation of the human body, which as a whole develops along seven years, not all cells are born at the beginning of that cycle, nor do they die at the end thereof; but some, mainly due to their diverse life spans, do so while the others await their turn to appear.) I have also mentioned another very important connotation: this one with the Pole Star, as suggested by the Islamic tradition, which refer to seven Qutbs or “Poles” that would have ruled seven successive skies. This tradition is obviously related to the one quoted by historian Berosus – whom I have referred to in the previous chapter – according to which several generations before the Flood – which would be the Mesopotamic one, in about 4000 BC – there emerged from the ocean seven beings of great wisdom, «animals endowed with reason», the first of which was Oannes, the Babylonian Noah, a instructor of the people. The earliest known precedent of this tradition, which actually is 2,000 or 4,000 years older, would be certain Assyrian cylindrical seals that date back from 1000 to 800 BC, very possibly associated to the Ursa Minor constellation; wherewith it appears that we are getting somewhere in our quest, as these very sages are found in Egypt: they are the seven wise men of the goddess Mehurt, or Hetep-sekhus, who came out of the water and, like falcons, ascended to heaven to preside the sciences and literature along with Toth, who counts the stars and measures and numbers the Earth. Now Toth, or Hermes, is the «savior of the knowledge existing prior to the cataclysm»; at times he is identified with Enoch, who in turn is equated to Tenoch, the founder of Tenochtitlan, deified by his people; and on the other hand, both of them, Enoch and Tenoch, are supposed to have been the progenitors o populators of the Earth, like Brahma, Abraham, the different Manus, etc. Furthermore, the seven Egyptian wise men are said to represent the Ursa Major. Finally, the seven stars mentioned at the beginning of Saint John’s Revelation (I, 16 and 20) are considered as well to very likely represent the said constellation. Let me refer now to the “sapta–rksha” of the Hindu tradition, a Sanskrit term that means “seven bears”, although “rksha” also means “star”, “light”, and “sapta–rksha” might therefore be translated as “the dwelling of the seven rishis or “wise men”, the seven “lights” by which the wisdom of the preceding cycles was passed down to the current cycle. Now, the fact that such term was not applied later on to the Ursa Minor but to the Pleiades, also seven, considered as deities by various cultures – e.g. the Incas – denotes, according to Guénon, that at a given moment the tradition was transferred from a polar constellation to a zodiacal one; and here we have another clue toward solving the problem. But anyway, it is clear that what is designated as the seven successive “Poles” or “Earths” are the seven stars of the Ursa Major, to which at a certain epoch the projection of the Earth axis would have successively pointed as the period of the precession of the equinoxes progressed over its circular course, thus especially favoring certain regions of the Earth or dvipas. An example will help us understand this: some 13,000 years ago, the celestial position of the North Pole was occupied by Vega, and exactly the same will occur 13,000 years from now; at present such position is occupied by Polaris, although due to the greater tilt of the Earth axis, the current path is through the stars of the Ursa Minor. Continuing our quest, which will ideally take us back to the primeval origin of the doctrine, we will deal now with the other great scheme: the quaternary cycle, considerably more frequent and of an eminently temporal nature – although it also shows spatial correlations, basically with the four cardinal points. Omnipresent in our study, its main feature is its variable length. In effect, it is a cycle that appears in all orders of existence, from the total universal manifestation to those of any historical peoples or societies, each with their own chronology and their own starting date. One of the better known examples of these particular applications is the famous dream interpreted by the prophet Daniel (2, 1 ff), which he refers to four civilizations that he identifies with the traditional ages of Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron (they are actually five, but the last one is irrelevant). However, it would not be difficult to find many other similar examples in all of which we will be dealing with cycles of a descending nature, where every phase is worse than the previous one; although only the Hindu tradition, the one alone that has received the primeval knowledge in one piece from the original center, has preserved that of the proportion by which the respective lengths decrease, whatever the total length of the corresponding cycle. This latter fact carries an additional and most important conclusion itself: namely, if the length of the last period of the quaternary series is, by definition, a tenth of the total length, then such period can obviously be sub-divided into other four ages which follow the same proportion (and in fact not only the last period, but any of them). For example, if the Kali-yuga really has an effective length of 5,184 common years or a tenth of 51,840 common years, then we can safely assume that it will consist in turn, always following the corresponding proportions, of four periods whose lengths will approximately be 2,074, 1,555, 1,037 and 518 years. In other words, we are talking about cycles within cycles so that one may refer, say, to the kali-yuga of the current Kali-yuga – that is, the darkest phase of the Dark Age. Naturally, this is a hypothesis that must be demonstrated, and in the following chapters I will do my best to do so. Meanwhile, I will face an objection that is usually presented with regard to the doctrine as a whole: namely, whether we are not dealing with mere “numerological” speculation; for, were not the ancient so ignorant that they merely possessed some basic technical knowledge? Without referring yet to the possibility that in remote times entire civilizations may have disappeared without leaving a trace, I will try, in what follows, to refute such objection: quite simply, I will prove that the ancient cultures possessed, among other advanced scientific information, a most precise knowledge of the chronology and calendar computation, probably born of their liking for the great observation of stars in the case of the Egyptian and Babylonian civilizations, and, particularly among the Mayas and Aztecs, for the accurate measurement of huge lapses of time. Even more, we will see that the ancient had such advanced knowledge in mathematics and astronomy that only recently, after long and dark millennia, it have been equaled or improved – yet not always. Such is the case, for instance, of India, whose knowledge in astronomy was so advanced that it became the ultimate goal for wisdom seekers. A very old jyotisha, Brahma–gupta, deals among others issues with such topics as the motion of the planets around the Sun, the ecliptic obliquity, the spherical shape of the Earth, the light reflected from the Moon, the Earth revolution on its axis, the presence of stars in the Milky Way, the law of gravitation – all of which would not see the light in Europe until the time of Copernicus and Newton. In turn, Surya–siddhanta informs us that the Earth, a globe that moves through space, has a diameter length equivalent to 12,617 present-day kilometers, an extent fairly approximate to the one calculated in our days. Now, while there exist most advanced conceptions of the space–time dislocation and the current expansion of the Universe, all data pertaining to the period of precession of the equinoxes seem to have been disguised by means of a most peculiar symbolic language, even though a careful inspection of certain texts – for example, Bhagavata Purana 5, 21:4 – will let us discern its length approximately. Anyway, I have already said that it was probably in India where Hipparcus obtained his knowledge of this phenomenon, in the same way that Aristarchus of Samos received a much less sophisticated one but which scandalized his generation, even though it was shared by other philosophers like Zenon of Elea, Anaxagoras and Democritus: that of the sphericity of the Earth and its orbiting, together with all the other planets, around the Sun. As to Democritus, the origin of his famous atomistic theory will very likely have to be found also in India, in the so-called Vaisheshika philosophic system of the legendary sage Kanada. But long before the Greeks themselves emerged to history, it seems all this, or little less, was known in ancient Egypt. A manuscript by one Abdul Hassan Ma’sudi, preserved in the Oxford Bodleian Library, recounts for example that «Surid, king of Egypt before the great Flood, ordered the building of the pyramids and had his priests deposit the knowledge of sciences in them»; and that «he had the data pertaining to the spheres and their positions put into the biggest one, in order to perpetuate them». In this connection, it is a proven fact that the pyramid of Kheops contained both the knowledge of the value of pi – as given by the sum of its four sides divided by the double of its height – and the golden ratio, 1.618 – obtained by dividing the surface of its base by the lateral surface and the surface of this one by the total surface – plus many other data like the mean distance from the Sun, etcetera. In addition, eclipses were predicted, and an agricultural calendar was developed that was so advanced, that it announced the exact time of the Nile inundations. All this made Egypt, like India, the ultimate goal of all seekers for knowledge. According to Diogenes Laertius, it was here that the Greek philosophers Thales and Democritus learned geometry and astronomy, and for his part Porphyry, in his Life of Pythagoras, insists on an Egyptian origin of Thales’ ideas and, therefore, of those of Pythagoras. As to the latter, it seems his famous theorem was of common use in Egypt as early as 2500 BC. However, it surely was in Babylon, according to recent studies, where the said theorem was known not only in its practical use but also in its theoretical formulation as early as 2000 BC, and there even is a possibility that this knowledge dates back from the old Sumerians, which in fact would place it in prehistoric times. Be it as it may, it is said that the old Babylonians invented the circle divided into 360 degrees, although this “invention” seems to have been made in many places and at different times. What is sure is that like the Egyptians, the Babylonians established an accurate agricultural calendar that not only predicted floods but also eclipses, all of which made Babylon, like Egypt and India, a great culture-radiating center. As to China, a single example will suffice to show the extent of the advance it reached from old in the area of astronomy: An archaic manuscript describes, in the peculiar Chinese poetic stile, a “inharmonic” meeting of the Sun and Moon in Fang, a portion of the ski of China which would correspond to four stars in the Scorpio constellation. Well, calculations made by contemporary astronomers have revealed that this eclipse did occur on the 22nd October of 2137 BC – more than 4000 years ago! Back to this side of the World, one can see the remains of magnificent pyramids whose builders, the old Mayas, developed so accurate a calendar that it established the year of 365.2422 days – a lot more precise than the Julian of 365.2500 and even the Gregorian of 365.2425 days, in use until now. The Mayas also developed a numbering system based on the position of values, whose use would only become general in Europe from the Fifteenth Century onwards, and which implied the conception and use of zero. As to the Toltecs and Aztecs, great builders of pyramids, and the mysterious, much older Teotihuacans and Olmecs, I have already mentioned that they apparently were the first to develop a most advanced astronomy and an accurate calendar, probably so accurate as that of the Incas, which was altogether astronomical and agricultural and so sophisticated, that it included the biological cycles of some plants and animals. Also, I need not say that all these cultures determined with utmost precision the dates of the equinoxes and solstices; this was made, for example, in the South of Peru, by the Pre-Inca compound which features the mysterious “lines of Nazca”, regarded as the world’s largest astronomical calendar, and the Inca monolith known as Intihuatana (“Sun-Hitching Stone”), a clock or astronomical instrument preserved on the highest spot at the citadel of Machu Picchu, near Cusco. Other witnesses of the great advances made all over the world from remote times can be seen, even today, in the ruins of ancient cities whose existence was legendary or unknown, like Mohenho–Daro and Harappa, in India, so advanced that their streets had canalizations and their houses bathrooms, and a meaningful fact: their inhabitants apparently did not wear any offensive weapons. Here too, mysterious engraved inscriptions were found that even now can be seen in Mesopotamia where, by the way, from a deep Sumerian layer pertaining to 3000 BC or before, a statuette of Shiva meditating in Yogic stance – identical to another found in the ruins of the Mohenho–daro citadel, obviously indicating that it was made before that date – was unearthed. These findings not only suggest that already in remote times there were relationships among civilizations, but also – as further claimed by some people – that the Sumerian civilization originated in that city-state, which in fact would be a lot older than is officially accepted. There even are traces of a vast civilization that would have encompassed the whole North of Europe, from Ireland and Britain to the Scandinavian countries, and which would date back from as early as 9000 BC. It is very possible that the builders of the great stone observatories of Stonehenge in England and Carnac in France, as well as the gigantic zodiacal circle of Glastonbury, in England, of 30 miles in circumference, which would date back from 3000 BC, came from it. Modern analysis has shown that such builders, on top of possessing a most advanced astronomical knowledge, were great geometers who, for example, knew that a triangle whose sides are proportional to 3, 4 and 5 will always contain a right angle, a property whose discovery is attributed to Pythagoras (who formulated the famous theorem) but which, in all justice, should be attributed to them; in like manner, it is known that by means of an approach that not for being simple was less advanced, they could draw huge, almost perfect circles. From these and other enigmatic vestiges, some authors have concluded that some of the posterior cultures, like the Sumerian and Egyptian in the Old World, and the Mayan and Aztec in the New, were in their respective prosperous times, and after the disappearance of some technological culture about which nothing is known at present, climbing down, and not up, the world’s civilization ladder. This notion has been reinforced by the discovery of certain documents, including the famous map of Piri–Reis, with characteristics of 12,000 – 13,000 years ago: the Antarctic coast free of ice, rivers and mountains on the Queen Maud Land, and an ocean level lower than it is currently; the map of Zenon, which shows Greenland free of ice such as it was 14,000 years ago; that of Hadji Hamed, with the land bridge of the Ice Age between Alaska y Siberia visible; that of Finaens, showing the Sea of Ross as it was 6,000 years ago, etc – and also by references to remote cataclysms which, upon extinguishing whole cities, even civilizations, would have caused a cultural reversal to various degrees of barbarianism. Such would be the case, for example, of the biblical Flood, which would have to be placed between 8000 and 10000 BC, and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, which is supposed to have occurred around 3000 BC, to mention but two of the better-known examples, capable to create conditions like the ones depicted. After that there would have been a slow, painful material progress of mankind toward present-day civilization, which does not remember a thing about the primordial civilization, and whose decline and imminent disappearance are predicted in turn by many scholars. Once a common origin is admitted for such great, enigmatic cultures like the Sumerian and the Egyptian in the Old World, and the Mayan and Aztec in the New, the question naturally arises: where could such common origin be? Many people will immediately say that it could only be in Atlantis. However, at the risk of disappointing Atlantis’ many thousands of fans, it must be said from the start that it could not be in that emblematic island-continent. For while massive evidence has been presented for its existence, mainly in the several thousands of books that have been written about this matter over the years, a careful consideration of all the existing data, particularly the timeframe involved, will show that Atlantis was at best a secondary center that radiated, like many other worldwide culture–radiating centers at different times, at a moment when the current Manvantara was fairly advanced, i.e. when the primeval tradition, being Polar by nature and therefore centered around the Ursa Mayor, had already changed into zodiacal and was oriented to the Pleiades – a fact that becomes specially relevant if we remember that the Pleiades were Atlas’ daughters, from which they were called “the Atlantides”. On the other hand, there is no doubt at all that the Atlantis civilization existed, and perhaps the best evidence for it are the countless geographical names on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean that obviously derive from the same source, for example Aztlan, a mythical island which the Aztecs claimed to be their original country (and curiously enough, Atl is the word for water both in the old Mexico and the Semitic countries); and there are a lot more. Another evidence would be what has been called the great paradox of the ancient Egypt, which seems to have passed, from as early as the Old Empire times, from a simple union of proto–historic clans to a most refined civilization capable of building huge pyramids – an immense achievement which favors the hypothesis that it originated in some other part of the world, which would not be other than Atlantis. However, it is precisely as a consequence of the catastrophic sinking of the island–continent that the biblical Flood would have occurred, which, by placing both events around the same epoch, would make Atlantis an even more unlikely place as a common cultural origin for the current humanity – all the more when, according to certain traditional data, its lifespan would have not exceeded a “great year”, i.e. a half of a precessional period. So to find the supreme center we must disregard any secondary and relatively recent centers and look farther back to the very start of the present Manvantara, then ruled by the Manu Vaivasvata of the Hindu tradition, the father of the current humanity, whom the avatara Matsya, the fish, a pre-figuration of the Babylonian Oannes, is said to have saved from the great deluge that «covered the three worlds». Such epoch would be previous to the biblical Flood by at least 40,000 years and would date back to the times of the Hyperborean Thule, located on the North Pole, where – in Homer’s words – the «Sun’s revolutions», the home of the Celtic or Hyperborean Apollo are. In effect, this is a place of delight evoked by many traditions, even the Chinese, where the Pole Star, and in general the Ursa Mayor, “the crank”, play a most significant role; but mainly by all that have an Indo-European origin, and which would be the most remote precedent of the Garden of Eden of the Judeo-Christian tradition. That the Garden of Eden had the Hyperborean Thule for its most remote precedent is proven by the fact that from time immemorial to as late as the European Middle Ages, it used to be represented as a paradisiacal place located on the top of an inaccessible mountain surrounded by the sea – a most ancient image that is found everywhere throughout history, and a representation of the Earth that appears even on the Mercator maps, where the ocean is depicted as a torrent which, through four mouths, precipitates into the North Pole’s Gulf to be absorbed by the Earth’s bowels; and on which the Pole itself, as the supreme center, is represented as a black rock that rises to a prodigious height. Along the same lines, the fact that many of these centers have been represented as a cavern, an island, a citadel, a palace, a temple, or a pyramid, only indicates that later on there was a proclivity to evoke, by means of secondary “images”, the primeval center by excellence: Mount Meru of the Hindus, depicted in Surya–siddhanta as a small mountain located in the North Pole, and a prototype that has survived mainly in the sacred mountains of Central Asia – believed by many to be the cradle of humanity – by such names as Sumer, Sumber or Sumur – all of them clearly identical to the Sanskrit Sumeru. I will mention in passing that if the biblical paradise is usually believed to be located in this latter area is because it became, in the course of time, a secondary tradition from the Hyperborean; and also because the references to a paradise in the book of Genesis are essentially symbolic, and certainly subordinated to the area in which the book was compiled. On the other hand, the fact that all these representations gave rise, in different cultures, to beautiful, evocative legends only reveals the intention to keep, over the centuries, a remembrance of such supreme center alive. Such is the case, among the Celts, of mythical Avalon of the legends of King Arthur, an emblematic image of the perfect king whose knights, numbering twelve, had twelve seats – a usual representation of the twelve constellations – set aside around a table whose center, as a symbol of the supreme center, was reserved to accommodate the Holy Grail. This in turn was a symbol of the perfect knowledge or, rather, of the place where this knowledge is safely stored all through the vicissitudes of a full human cycle – as is also the case, for example, with soma among the Hindus or the elixir of gods among the Greeks. For the rest, it is obvious that only in one of the two Poles could exist such ideal conditions as to make it possible an “eternal spring” – the season that rules throughout the Golden Age. And in effect, in Bhagavata Purana, 5, 20:30, the Sun is depicted as revolving over the horizon during the whole year – and not just during a part of it as currently – around Mount Meru, the archetypical image of the original center. This original center is located at the core of Bhu–mandala, a schematic, most ancient representation of the Earth (and probably of the solar system, the galaxy, and the entire universe) consisting of six concentric rings separated by seas which altogether form, by surrounding the center, the seven dvipas – “islands” or continents – of the Hindu tradition. All of this would appear to ultimately take us back to a time when the plane of the ecliptic, the Equator, and the Earth horizon all coincided approximately – probably 50,000 years ago, when the orbit of our planet was more circular and its axis was not as tilted as is today.1 I am certainly aware that this hypothesis rather raises difficulties than solves them, not the least of which is the fact that around the timeframe thus established the Northern polar region was most probably covered by a thick snow layer, a condition that does not match the one that should prevail in a “paradise”; even so, according to René Guénon and others, certain traditional data indicate that the tilt of the Earth’s axis has not always existed – rather, it would be a consequence of what is known as the “fall of man”.2 And while it is most unlikely that such was the case at that time, such circumstance would immediately solve the problem. Yet another possible solution would be to push the Hyperborean times back to over 100,000 years ago, i.e. twice as much as the combined length of two precessional periods (2 x 51,840 years), and this by virtue of the existing analogies with the day and night of Brahma, which appear to occur for cycles of all orders and so would be perfectly applicable to the case. Even so, science deprives us of such possibility, for it appears that the last ice age, that of Wurm (130,000 years ago) had already started by that time, which would force us to look further back on to the previous one, that of Riss – which in turn would have spanned from 230,000 to 180,000 years ago – and the prolonged inter-glacial period of time that followed, of about 50,000 years (from 180,000 to 130,000 BC): here the facts do appear to fit, for this one epoch, in which more favorable conditions would have prevailed (perhaps the tilt of the earth’s axis was null, and its oscillation minimal), approximately corresponds to that of the man of Neanderthal’s appearance and, in another order of things, to the winter solstice and mainly to the North within the analogical correlation with the four seasons of the year, as well as to the Hyperborean Apollo, the white race and, among the elements, water. Of course, in this case the “fall” would not be that of Adam and Eve but that of Lucifer himself, as stated in the famous Biblical passage of Isaiah.3 All this as opposed to the epoch that we may call “Adamic”, which would correspond to the Cro-Magnon’s appearance and, in the respective analogical order, to the Autumn equinox and to the West, as well as to the red race and the element earth – in all of which there are included even linguistic considerations, as the word Adam is related to both meanings, “earth” and “red”. However, approaching such diverse issues would require a detailed study. For one thing, with this particular method we would be exceeding the timeframe of the present Manvantara, which I have established as 51,840 common years, and the sphere of modern man, whom I don’t consider to be a “relative” of the Neanderthal but rather of the Cro-Magnon. Also, we must not lose sight of the fact that some scientists place the appearance of the earliest organized tribes in about 40,000 or 50,000 years ago, and probably in Central Asia, which parallels even the afore-mentioned Biblical exegesis. Well, I must admit that it is extremely difficult to ultimately solve these issues, as is also to be satisfied that my calculation of the total length of the Manvantara is accurate. We may remember that, according to Guénon, such length would not be 51,840 years (or 12,960 x 4) but rather 64,800 years (12,960 x 5), and I absolutely cannot challenge his knowledge of these matters, nor can I pretend to be able to establish with absolute certainty the starting point of the Hyperborean tradition at the date I have mentioned, something that he, to my knowledge, did not even attempt, nor did he ever attempt to trace its path in detail back to any date whatsoever. As to specifically predicting future events, it is something he always avoided, let alone establishing any date for them. In other words, nothing ensures that my calculations are not wholly or partially wrong; and if I have made them – and, for that matter, if I started this work at all – it is because I felt the time was ripe for it, even contravening certain precepts of the esoteric doctrines that do absolutely not support this kind of speculation. Either way, it will be the recapitulation in the following chapters which will establish to what extent the data and figures as considered mainly from Chapter 3 onwards are valid, both in my determination of the length of the whole current Manvantara, and of its starting and closing dates.
NOTES 1 For simplicity, the possibility that the primeval center was in the South Pole has not been considered. However, it is as valid an option as the one of the North Pole and even, for reasons both astronomical and historical-geographical, a more viable one: for one thing, there is no difference between “up” and “down” astronomically; the magnetic pole is known to have inverted several times in the past, and there even is talk of an overturning of the Earth axis coinciding, incidentally, with the “fall” of man. On the other hand, it is known than Antarctic was a paradisiacal place, and its shape, even now that it is almost fully covered by ice, is virtually identical to that of Asgard, the dwelling of the Scandinavian gods. But all this poses new, obvious possibilities that I cannot address here.
2 RENE GUENON: Formas tradicionales y ciclos cósmicos, op. cit., p. 30.
3 Isaiah 14: 12–15: “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! [...]For thou hast said in thine heart [...]: I will sit upon the mount of the congregation, in the side of the North...”
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