THE LOST WORLD OF AGHARTI
The Mystery of Vril Power
THE LOST WORLD
OF AGHARTI
The Mystery of Vril Power
ALEC MACLELLAN
SOUVENIR PRESS
Copyright © 1982 Seventh Zenith Ltd
First published 1982 by Souvenir Press Ltd
43 Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3PA
and simultaneously in Canada
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the Copyright owner
ISBN 0 62521 7
Printed in Great Britain by
Ebenezer Baylis & Son Ltd
The Trinity Press
Worcester, and London
‘I can affirm that I have brought it from an utter darkness to a thin mist, and have gone further than any man before me.’
John Aubrey
Miscellanies
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Prologue
1 A weird experience underground
2 The Legend of Agharti
3 Seekers after a lost world
4 The strange quest of Ferdinand Ossendowski
5 The search for Shamballah
6 The enigma of Lord Lytton’s subterranean world
7 Adolf Hitler and the ‘super-race’
8 The secret passages of South America
9 Brazil – and the Atlantis connection
10 The ‘Underworld’ of New York
11 The mystery of Vril Power
12 The discovery of Shangri-la!
13 The realm of ‘The King of the World’
Bibliography
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book would not have been possible without the dedicated work of earlier researchers into the legend of Agharti and its associated topics, and I am therefore most glad to offer my thanks to Dr Raymond Bernard, Robert Ernst Dickhoff, Eric Norman, Charles A. Marcoux, Carl Huni, Professor Henrique Jose de Souza, Robert Charroux and Erich von Däniken. In particular I am indebted to the exhaustive investigations of the late Harold T. Wilkins and would like to thank his publishers, Messrs Rider & Co. Ltd, for permission to quote from his books, as well as Messrs Jarrolds Ltd, for those of Nicholas Roerich and Edward Arnold Ltd for Ferdinand Ossendowski. Other quotations are acknowledged in the text. I should also like to thank the staffs at the British Museum, London, the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris and the New York Public Library for so conscientiously and painstakingly helping me with my enquiries, as well as my many friends and correspondents in Britain, Europe and America who assisted in so many and varied ways in the compiling of this work. I should perhaps just add that all the opinions and conclusions which are drawn in this book, except where otherwise stated, are my own.
A.M.
1981
PROLOGUE
‘Tunnels and labyrinths have played a mysterious part in ancient civilisations in regions of what may wrongly be called the older worlds of Asia and Europe and Africa. Who can say what the ancient priest-emperors of old Peru knew of, or had inherited, from these vanished civilisations which are not even a name, or more than a faint and ghostly shadow? An ancient tradition of Brahmanic Hindustan speaks of a large island of ‘unparalleled beauty’ which, in very ancient times, lay in the middle of a vast sea in Central Asia, north of what is now the Himalayas. A race of nephilim, or men of a golden age, lived in the island, but there was no communication between them and the mainland, except through tunnels, radiating in all directions, and many hundreds of miles long. These tunnels were said to have hidden entrances in old ruined cities in India – such as the ancient remains of Ellora, Elephanta, and the Ajanta caverns in the Chandore range.
‘Among the Mongolian tribes of Inner Mongolia, even today, there are traditions about tunnels and subterranean worlds which sound as fantastic as anything in modern novels. One legend – if it be that! – says that the tunnels lead to a subterranean world of Antediluvian descent somewhere in a recess of Afghanistan, or in the region of the Hindu Kush. It is Shangri-la where science and the arts, never threatened by world wars, develop peacefully, among a race of vast knowledge. It is even given a name: Agharti. The legend adds that a labyrinth of tunnels and underground passages extended in a series of links connecting Agharti with all other such subterranean worlds! Tibetan lamas even assert that in America – it is not stated whether North, South, or Central – there live in vast caves of an underworld, reached by secret tunnels, peoples of an ancient world who thus escaped a tremendous cataclysm of thousands of years ago. Both in Asia and America, these fantastic and ancient races are alleged to be governed by benevolent rulers, or King-archons. The subterranean world, it is said, is lit by a strange green luminescence which favours the growth of crops and conduces to length of days and health.’
– Extract from a statement made in London in 1945 by Harold T. Wilkins (1891-1959), explorer and historian, and one of the world’s leading authorities on underground tunnels and subterranean passages.
A WEIRD EXPERIENCE
UNDERGROUND
The day which was to provide me with one of the strangest, most unnerving, but ultimately fascinating experiences of my life began ordinarily enough.
I was on holiday in the West Riding of Yorkshire, staying with some relatives in the dour but pleasant town of Keighley, hard by the famous Ilkley Moor. It was a summer’s day, and a wide expanse of clear blue sky and strong sunlight threw the ranges and hills to the north in sharp relief. These outcrops scarcely deserve the description mountains, for they are broad and blunt, and the highest, Great Whernside, is only 2,314 feet high.
It was, in fact, in the direction of Great Whernside that I set out that morning. I had risen early and driven to Grassington, from where I planned to walk along the pleasant valley of the River Wharfe. Having something of a love for ancient history, I could hardly have picked a better place to begin my ramble than Grassington, for here, at Lea Green, are the remnants of an Iron Age village occupied from about 200 BC to AD 400. Little circular mounds and grassed-over stoneworks offered mute evidence that this was one of the most thickly populated neighbourhoods in the dales in the Iron Age and also showed why it is considered one of the most interesting prehistoric sites in England. As Lettice Cooper has written in Yorkshire West Riding (1950):
Grassington has always been the metropolis of Wharfedale. There are traces of a prehistoric city there before the Romans discovered the lead mines which gave it occupation and importance. Grassington and Linton in the valley below are particularly rich in wild flowers and fairy tales. There are legends of the dreadful ‘Barguest’, the ghost-dog of the dales, whose appearance foretold disaster, and the Fairy Hole is the name given to a low opening in the limestone rock.
As I began my walk up the valley, all was peace and tranquillity. Yet, strangely, some words I had been reading the previous evening by Daniel Defoe, about his tour of the West Riding in the early years of the eighteenth century, kept coming into my mind. Speaking about the mountains of Upper Wharfedale which lay ahead of me in the warm sunlight, he had written: ‘They are more frightful than any in Monmouthshire or Derbyshire, especially Pingent Hill.’ I looked away to my left and could just make out the flat summit of ‘Pingent Hill’, now known as Penyghent, and wondered why Defoe had been so upset by this scene. I knew his was an age that did not admire wild beauty, but his hostility had almost amounted to fear. Unexpectedly, a shiver ran up my spine. I should have realized the
n that it was an omen …
I walked on across Grassington Moor and saw the first evidence of the mines which had partly drawn me to this area. My preliminary reading prior to coming to Yorkshire had told me that lead mining had gone on along the valley of the River Wharfe for centuries, the mines being worked by shafts and levels rather than the more traditional hushes. This has naturally made them easily accessible to the curious as well as to the miners. Tourists had, in fact, actually been encouraged to visit the mines by the Reverend Baily Harker in his pioneer guide book, Rambles in Upper Wharfedale published in 1869. ‘I would recommend to visitors a journey underground,’ he wrote, ‘though the descent may frighten them a little. The bottoms of some of the shafts are reached by ladders and others by ropes.’
The mines have, of course, been closed down for almost a century now, although the occasional hardy soul can be found picking over the spoil heaps left by the old miners for bits of barytes and lead ore. My walk took me past numbers of these heaps of debris, and I was able to identify from my notes the quaintly named mines of Moss, Sara, Beaver, Turf Pits and Peru. It was possible to sense that once this landscape had been alive with activity as the miners produced lead to the value of thousands of pounds each year. Now all was still and silent in the morning sunlight.
To be fair, however, it was not only the mines which had drawn me to the Wharfe Valley. My interest had also been fired by the stories of caves and ancient tunnels which were said to abound in the area. A few days earlier I had paid a visit to the Pig Yard Club Museum at nearby Settle, which contains a number of relics, all of which make one appreciate why the caves here have been referred to as ‘a vade mecum of life in remote times’. Looking at this remarkable collection, I was reminded of G. Bernard Wood’s comment in his Secret Britain (1968) that it ‘could make any person realise his citizenship of an almost illimitable world still bristling with secrets, some of them as yet barely half told’.
Among the items is the skull of a great cave bear, evidence of a straight-tusked elephant and slender-nosed rhinoceros, a fishing harpoon made of deer horn, as well as a variety of ornaments and ancient coins – all unearthed from local caves. My emotions as I gazed at these exhibits were very much those of Mr Wood, who also wrote in his book: ‘For me modern problems are soon put in perspective on seeing such evidence of bygone perils, humble household tasks, or perhaps domestic felicity.’
I needed no further spur to explore the Wharfe Valley. However, I also knew that though some of the caves and tunnels had been dated from the Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Age periods, there were others far more puzzling, far more mysterious, few of which had been completely investigated. And there was the extraordinary statement of one Dr Buckland, who had explored Kirkdale Cave in 1882, and then set out to prove in his book Reliquiae Diluvianae that the remains he found ‘pertained to men who were swept away by Noah’s flood’.
Walking up the valley on that summer’s day was no hardship, and in what seemed like no time I was in the shadow of Great Whernside. Already I had seen plenty of evidence of the potholes that form a great natural underground system in the limestone here and attract many potholers each year. But it was caves that I was more interested in.
I was at a point about midway between the little villages of Kettlewell and Starbotton, where steepish, unbroken ridges of hill hem in the valley, when I caught just a fleeting glance of a cave entrance up on the hillside. I was not even sure it was a cave from where I stood, but I was, by now, anxious to explore something, and so I turned my footsteps in that direction.
As I got nearer, I found that I had not been mistaken, although the entrance to the cave was very small and narrow. I took out the torch I was carrying and shone its beam through the tiny opening. Only darkness stretched ahead of me, and the gentle, plopping sound of water dripping from the roof of the cave.
As soon as I stepped inside, a draught of cold air struck me. I hesitated for a moment, and wondered if it was really worthwhile exploring something so unpromising. But was that my real reason, I asked myself, or was I just feeling nervous?
So I made up my mind. I had come this far to look at a cave, and look at one I would. I did up the collar of my shirt and buttoned my jacket. Then I moved off, following in the powerful white beam of the torch. The walls of the cave seemed to slope downwards gradually, and then take on the more regular shape of a tunnel. The floor beneath my feet was hard and rocky, and every now and then I stumbled through small puddles of water.
Only the sound of my own breathing and footsteps broke the silence, while ahead of me the light revealed the tunnel continuing to slope gradually downwards with hardly a bend. I turned once to look behind me, but there was only impenetrable darkness.
I must have walked for about ten minutes before I stopped. The tunnel gave no sign of changing either its height or gradual descent, and I asked myself just how much longer I was going to go on? It seemed I’d found one of the strange underground tunnels of the West Riding and explored it. I was no potholer or spelaeologist, so what could I achieve by going on further? Probably only put myself in danger if anything went wrong, I thought ruefully.
Common sense, and perhaps even a feeling of unease, got the better of me. I swung the torch around and was just about to set off back the way I had come, when something stopped me dead in my tracks. As I had swung the beam of my torch back behind me, I had caught sight out of the corner of my eye of a faint glow away down ahead of me in the tunnel. Evidently, the penetrating light of my torch had obliterated it until that moment.
I peered harder to make sure I had not been mistaken. No, there was clearly a dim glow some distance ahead. For another moment I hesitated. Should I investigate or go back?
Even as I stood there, the light down the tunnel seemed to gain in intensity, although it may only have been an illusion. Cautiously I began to move forward again, the beam of my torch now directed at my feet. I walked carefully, almost holding my breath, for perhaps fifty yards. I could now see that the light was green in colour, and it seemed to be pulsating. Whatever its source was, I had not the faintest idea. I came to a standstill once again.
Then something even more extraordinary occurred. At first I thought the sound was my own breathing, then I discerned a gentle humming noise that gradually grew louder. As it did so, I felt the ground beneath my feet begin to vibrate, at first ever so gently, but steadily increasing in intensity. The humming became a rumble, and as it did so, the green light appeared to pulsate still more strongly. I felt my heart begin to pound and a sudden terror came over me there in the darkness. Something almost seemed to be coming towards me.
What on Earth was happening? What was the strange light? And what was causing the rumbling beneath my feet? I believed I was in the tunnel of some long forgotten Yorkshire mine, but my senses seemed to be telling me I had stumbled onto something far more extraordinary.
In the next few moments the pulsating light and shaking of the ground grew stronger still, until I felt the tunnel must surely collapse upon me. That very thought seemed to release me from the feeling of bewilderment which had overcome me, and without a second thought I turned and raced back up the passageway.
I did not stop running until I flung myself, gasping for air, through the entrance of the tunnel and into the sunlight and warmth of that summer day. I sank exhausted onto the ground and tried to recover my breath. Gradually my panic subsided and I wrestled to make some sense of what had happened.
There could be no mistaking the green light I had seen, nor the sensation of the ground trembling beneath my feet. If the mines in this part of the country were still being worked, I might have tried to convince myself I had come a bit too close to some underground blasting. If ever a train had run through an underground tunnel anywhere in this part of Yorkshire, I might have told myself I had somehow got into a ventilation shaft. But no logical explanation I could think of came anywhere near satisfying the facts of the experience I had just undergone.*
At that moment in time, I was not sure why these thoughts came into my mind. And now, a decade later, I am not sure they are the right solution, although as this book will set out to show, they may not be so far from the truth. I have to admit that I have never returned to try and find that tunnel, and doubt now whether I could.
Back in Keighley later that day, I discussed my experiences with my relatives and other friends. What they told me helped convince me that it had not been a dream or an illusion, and that I had in all probability experienced the selfsame sensations which had given rise to a long held tradition in the West Riding of Yorkshire – a tradition which said that somewhere in the dales was the entrance to an underground world. By common consent this subterranean kingdom was the haunt of fairies and goblins and little people, but there had been one or two other folk who maintained that it was actually the dwelling place of people like ourselves who had lived hidden from the sight of man since time immemorial.
Although in my subsequent research to try to solve the mystery of my experience I found plentiful details about a ‘Fairy Underworld’ (vide the Reverend John Hotten, who has written in his A Tour of the Caves, 1781, that the caves of Wharfedale were ‘alternately the habitations of giants and fairies, as the different mythology prevailed in the country’, it was in the work of a man who actually lived in Wharfedale that I found the most striking evidence of all. The man was Charles James Cutcliffe-Hyne (1865-1944) who, though he is a virtually forgotten author today, is still remembered by a few older readers as the creator of the tough and ruthless adventurer, Captain Kettle.
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