The Temple of Set II

by Michael A Aquino

  Of the five now-existing continents neither Australia nor America nor Europe can have been this

  primeval home [of man], or the so-called “Paradise” the “cradle of the human race”. Besides southern Asia,

  the only other of the now-existing continents which might be viewed in this light is Africa. But there are a

  number of circumstances, especially chronological facts, which suggest that the primeval home of man was

  a continent now sunk beneath the surface of the Indian Ocean, which extended along the south of Asia, as it

  is at present (and probably in direct connection with it), towards the east, as far as Further India and the

  Sunda Islands; towards the west as far as Madagascar and the southeastern shores of Africa ... By assuming

  this Lemuria to have been man’s primeval home, we greatly facilitate the explanation of the geographical

  distribution of the human species by migration.

  The occultists came running. First on board was Helena Blavatsky of the Theosophical Society. In her 1888 book

  The Secret Doctrine she avowed that the “Book of Dzyan” included an account of Lemuria in addition to Atlantis.

  Her “Third Root Race” consisted of Lemurians (as “gigantic, brainless, apelike creatures”). [The fourth RR was

  Atlantis. Current humanity is the fifth. The Sixth will evolve from us and return to Lemuria, while the Seventh will

  chuck Earth altogether and emigrate to Mercury.]

  Later Theosophists embellished Blavatsky’s Lemurian mythos, most notably Annie Besant and W. Scott-Elliot in

  his The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria (1896). Scott-Elliot’s account went into extraordinary detail, offering

  a sinister picture of semi-reptilian Lemurians [shades of V] who kept pet dinosaurs.

  While Scott-Elliot was conjuring up Lemurian monsters, an 18-year-old Shasta-area human named Frederick

  Spencer Oliver began to write a tale which he said had been inspired by a discarnate personality named “Phylos the

  Tibetan”. Published in 1896 as A Dweller on Two Planets, it became something of a minor Shasta/occult classic.

  Oliver/Phylos said nothing about Lemurians, reptilian or otherwise. His Shastoids went by the name of the

  “Lothinian Brotherhood” and were proper mammals. The Lothinians lived in sumptuous caverns within the

  mountain, whose interior was a maze of polished walls and fur-carpeted floors. O/P was guided to this inner

  sanctum by a Dr. Lao-like Chinese initiate named Quong:

  We halted in from of a huge ledge of basaltic rocks, some hundreds of feet in height. The ledge was

  broken and twisted as if by some rending convulsion. All about the base lay huge fragments broken off the

  face of the wall. Against the cliff rested a giant block many tons in weight. Touching this with his hand, the

  Tchin said: “Here is our Sach, our Temple, so to say; this rock is guard at the entrance to a place

  remarkable, to say the least, if viewed from an occidental standpoint.”

  The Lothinian Brotherhood had anticipated George Lucas by some time, as may be gleaned from one of their

  instructions to O/P:

  “Thou art impatient, my brother; know then, what was at one time known upon the Earth, but is now for

  ages forgotten: that Nature has a dual aspect, is double, is positive and negative; that the great positive side

  is the side known to mundane science, while the other or negative or ‘Night Side’ - or, as it was once known

  on Earth by the men of Atla ‘Navaz’ - is a side all unknown and scarcely guessed in the most exceeding

  flights of speculation, left unbroached, secretly kept by a few, who knew not that they entertain an angel, an

  angelic wisdom that in a century more, yea, less time! shall overturn much of the face of terrene things, shall

  bestow aerial vessels, and all else once known to those men of Atla of whom I spoke. Thou dost not yet

  understand?”

  I said that I did not - that I thought he referred to some domain of the physical forces not yet known; but

  what had this to do with the Sun?

  “This: The suns of systems are centers of forces of the Night Side of Nature whereof I spoke, and are

  force and matter of a higher value than are planets and satellites, just as water above a cataract is truly

  water - but being above and mobile, flows over and down, developing energy. In other words, out of the

  cold, dark, negative side or ‘Night Side’ force emerges, drawn to the positive polarity which constitutes in its

  outgoing flow that termed ‘Nature’, and develops in its fall magnetism, electricity, light, color, heat, sound,

  and lastly solid matter - for this last is a child of energy, not its parent. When the Navaz forces drop to light,

  if the light waves enter a spectroscope, they will emerge as colors. These correspond to the various spectrum

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  bands and will, as the descent progresses, give the noted lines of the Solar spectrum, as the great ‘B’ line of

  oxygen, the conspicuous ‘1474’ line, and the brilliant ‘H’ and ‘K’ violet bands.”

  Meanwhile the Lemurian link continued to be forged [no pun intended]. Next in line was Rudolph Steiner, who

  broke with the Theosophists in 1906 in disgust over Annie Besant’s Krishnamurti scam. He accepted a charter from

  the German Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.) and then went on to form his own Anthrosophical Society. In 1923 he

  wrote Cosmic Memory: Atlantis and Lemuria, which specifically fingered Mount You-Know-What as a remaining

  refuge for You-Know-Who.

  Back at the Mount Lowe observatory next door to Mount Y-K-W was an astronomer/occultist named Edgar

  Larkin, who at about the same time decided that it would be interesting to train his telescope towards “He Who

  Sleeps in the Clouds”. Imagine his surprise and delight to see dazzling lights and colorful pavilions of happy

  Lemurians frolicking on the slopes! Larkin died in 1924 before meeting any Lemurians personally, but the cat was

  now definitely out of the bag where Shasta and Lemuria were concerned.

  Next to add his 2-cents-worth was H. Spencer Lewis, founder of the Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis

  (AMORC) in San Jose.

  I should pause a moment here to make certain you don't get confused. Lewis got going in occultism in 1909,

  when he joined one of the splinter-groups of Eliphas Levi’s Ordre Kabbalistique de la Rose-Croix in France. [The

  group joined by Lewis was headed by one Josephin Peladan, hence the later rumor that France harbored a gang of

  Satanists called “Palladinists”! Cf. Lillie, Satanism in Modern France.]

  In 1915 Lewis split from Peladan and, also on the strength of a charter from O.T.O. chief Theodor Reuss,

  founded his AMORC in New York. He took it down to Florida in 1925, then to San Jose in 1927. A few years down

  the road, after Lewis had survived a scandal and acquired some nice real estate & begun to construct all those fancy

  Egyptian buildings Setians toured during the Set-V Conclave, Aleister Crowley showed up [as new Outer Head of the

  O.T.O.] and demanded title to the property on the strength of the O.T.O. charter. Lewis ignored him.

  But Lewis didn't ignore Mount Shasta. In 1931, under the pen-name of “W.S. Cerve”, he authored Lemuria, the

  Lost Continent of the Pacific. None of HPB’s or Steiner’s fooling around for Lewis - he got down to specifics, to wit:

  150,000 years ago people lived on Lemuria, then called Mu for short. 82,000 years ago magnetic changes caused

  continental shifts and submergences. Europe rose up, and North & South America drifted away from Europe &

  Africa and bumped into the east coast of Lemuria. Then t
he west parts of Lemuria submerged. Its eastern area

  became what is today Washington, Oregon, California, and parts of Arizona, Nevada, and Mexico.

  Lewis’ book resulted in all sorts of occultists flocking to Shasta to scrounge for Lemurians, a snipe-hunt still

  going on today. In 1932 reporter Edgar Lanser wrote an account of Larkin’s telescopic sightings in the Los Angeles

  Times Star, and went on to say that Shasta residents enjoyed occasional visits from & commerce with their

  Lemurian neighbors. Lanser reported mysterious red & green lights on Shasta’s slopes and thus inaugurated one of

  the more durable Shasta legends. Recounts Nigel Pennick in Hitler’s Secret Sciences:

  For over a century occultists have claimed that these special holy mountains are in reality energy centers

  which collect cosmic forces from space and channel them into the “veins of the Earth”, the energy grid

  composed of ley lines.

  Observations of holy mountains reinforce this assertion. At certain times of the year, when the energy is

  at its maximum, strange lights and other phenomena are often seen at such places. Mount Shasta, one of the

  Native Americans’ sacred peaks, is one such site; for there many inexplicable flashes of light have been

  observed. First recorded by prospectors in the old California gold rush of 1849, these flashes were seen in

  daylight, and in clear weather when there was no lightning about.

  Nowadays cars in the vicinity of the mountain develop ignition failure without any obvious cause. This is

  a classic energy manifestation noted in connection with UFOs, Stonehenge, and the enigmatic “transmitter”

  Hitler erected on the Brocken peak in Germany.

  When a vast forest fire engulfed much of the district in 1931, Mount Shasta was suddenly swathed in a

  mysterious fog. The fire could not burn where the fog protected the mountain peak. For many years

  afterwards a perfect curve around the mountain marked the furthest advance of the flames.

  Five years after the forest fire had been repulsed by the Lemurians, an occult enthusiast by the name of Guy

  Ballard made a pilgrimage to Mount Shasta. He lucked out and encountered not just another Lemurian, but a

  genuine Ascended Master, the Count of Saint Germain. Shasta is evidently one of those places where it is

  fashionable for AMs to be seen. Ballard, at any rate, was so moved that he returned to lesser humankind to found

  the “I AM” organization. "I AM" prospered until 1939, when Ballard died and the organization was hauled into court

  on mail fraud charges. “I AM”, however, has proven to be the most durable Shasta fan club, as it is today

  headquartered in the town of Mount Shasta and puts on a Jesus Christ pageant every August.

  In 1946 another Shasta enthusiast named Eugene Thomas wrote The Brotherhood of Mount Shasta, a dreamy,

  Dunsany-like tale of Lemurian mystery & mysticism at the Mount:

  Australia is what remains of a vast continent which existed so far back in the history of the world that

  men now seldom dare speak of it; and if they do speak of it, most of what they say is theory and conjecture.

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  Only those whose souls are able to lift the curtain of the past can really tell you anything about that

  mysterious land. When you have been sufficiently instructed, and have diligently striven to carry out the

  instructions received, go to the western coast of the American continent, to an extinct volcano whose name

  is Shasta. If your preparation be sufficient, your sincerity unquestionable, an ancient Brotherhood will be

  found that will guide you to the place where you may be further instructed.

  Australia again! Come on, Australian Setians - What’s really going on Down Under? We await a report with

  baited breath - and if you turn out to be Lemurian lizards in human disguise, you get two free passes to the set of V.

  The upshot of all this was that a visit to Shasta seemed the thing to do. In August Lilith and I headed north on

  Highway #101 to the Oregon Caves to sample a proper Lemurian atmosphere. Setians who have not yet gone cave-

  delving (“spelunking”) are encouraged to do so if you are near suitable facilities such as the O.C., Carlsbad, Kentucky

  Caves, etc. [But don’t go fooling around in unexplored or unmarked caves if you are not a seasoned spelunker; the

  DEROs might nab you.]

  After a side trip to Crater Lake (another magical spot), we headed back down Highway #97 into California,

  getting much the same first-view of Shasta that so impressed Peter Ogden 157 years ago. Arriving in the town of

  Mount Shasta, we checked in at the “Tree House”, recommended by the Lemurian Tourist Association as the place

  to stay.

  The next morning, Sunday 8/11, happened to be the date of the annual “I AM” Jesus pageant, complete with

  IAMers in bedsheets and angel-wings. It is a harmless enough local tradition, I suppose, but somehow a bit out of

  out-of-place at this Lemurian outpost. We would have preferred something with flying saucers, lizard-people, and

  oh-wow light shows on the mountain at night. [The modern-day Egyptians have their heads together on this, which

  is why you can see a great spooky nighttime sound and light show at Giza and Luxor these days.]

  We couldn’t take very much of the Jesus play, so decided we’d have to go find Lemurians on our own. Actually it

  was an ideal time to head for the mountain, as everyone else was at the I AM Jesus show.

  There is one highway, the Everitt Memorial Highway, which leads out of the town towards the mountain. It

  winds up along the side of the mountain for about 13 miles, terminating at Bunny Flat and nearby Panther Meadow

  at an elevation of 7,000’ (halfway up to the 14,161’ summit). From there mountaineers must hoof it, and be prepared

  - as we found out - for some shortness of breath.

  We had decided to check the Theta-wave patterns of our brains en route, via a pair of Biosone-I portable

  monitors [available from Edmund Scientific Corp.]. The B-I can almost be mistaken for a Walkman, except that you

  have to tolerate one electrode on your scalp and a clip on your earlobe in addition to the earphone. The few humans

  who had gone to Bunny Flat instead of the Jesus show probably thought we were Lemurians!

  Both of our Theta readings were markedly higher than in town the day before, but the high altitude [and some

  great pizza at the Tree House] may have had something to do with the changed reading. Also there were some

  people at Panther Meadow pounding frenziedly on tom-toms, which tended to distract one's attention, hence one’s

  brain-wave pattern.

  It was immediately evident why Shasta has developed its esoteric reputation, as there is undeniably a pleasantly

  exhilarating atmosphere atop the mountain. This is true of most mountains, to be sure, but Shasta has a

  “something” that I haven't felt, say, atop Mount Whitney (California’s highest peak, which I climbed 20 years ago).

  I don't know if Paul Kantner sampled Shasta personally before creating Planet Earth, but the music and the

  mountain are assuredly in synch. It is high time [pun intended this time] for a midnight ceremony atop Shasta,

  complete with PER&RO & Lemurian music, banks of red & green carbon lasers a la Laserium blazing off into the

  sky, and Lemurians, Star Scouts, Setians, and any other extraterrestrials or just extra-special terrestrials who

  happen to drop by for the occasion. I think we can go the “I AM” Jesus show one better.

  ______________________________

  Part IV: Wonders Down Under

  First publish
ed: Scroll of Set #XIV5

  October XXIII/1988

  Australia ... Oz and Beyond

  “Oz”, oddly enough, is the name some Australians attach to their country. It is here that the band flees,

  to a settlement deep in the blisteringly-hot Australian Outback. Over fifteen hundred people have formed a

  settlement that is nearly totally self-sufficient. Weather control, lakes, forests, mountains, underground

  agriculture, and huge machines all serve to support this community.

  U.S. government agents eventually discover the settlement and launch an attack to recover the

  extrasensory technology for Cold War use. The children of the settlement construct a telepathic shield

  around the colony, and they escape into space in the “edge of your seat” climax.

  - Paul Kantner, Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra

  The Temple of Set now has a pretty sizable number of Initiates in Australia, and that has turned my attention all

  the more towards that very interesting continent. All regions of the world have their weird and magical aspects, and

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  Australia is no exception. When you go to the local library to look up Australian mythology, however, conventional

  books assume you want to know about the legends and superstitions of the Aborigines rather than about the

  forbidden, subterranean city of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Out of Time.

  Accordingly I have appealed to some of our Aussie Initiates for information concerning the shadowy aspects of

  their homeland - and particularly the Outback, where Paul Kantner plans to move the Planet Earth Rock & Roll

  Orchestra prior to its lift-off towards Andromeda. [And if you, dear reader, are an Australian whom I haven’t yet hit

  up for Sinister Truths about the continent, you are hereby solicited. Please tell us about Australia - either by letter to

  me or by direct article for the Scroll. Thanks!]

  In the meantime I might point out that I am not the first person to be confused about Australia. For a great

  many centuries the entire world was unsure whether it existed or not. Thereby hangs the tale of Terra Australis

  Incognita, the “Unknown Southern Land”, which gets a chapter to itself in a charming book by Raymond H. Ramsay