“Somehow I knew we’d hit Atlantis,” Malone said sardonically. “What’s weird ancient history without Atlantis?”
“For sure,” Brian agreed. “The Secret Doctrine has the Atlanteans as masters of flight, physics, astronomy, and lots of other sciences.… And there’s another thing you should know about them.”
“What’s that?” Neff asked.
“Blavatsky’s Atlanteans were giants.”
63
Spirits—or shall I say beings—came to this visible world … in order to fight the Demiurge on this plane, which is the real Creator of Satan: Yahweh-Jehovah, who in turn created the Jewish genetic robot in order to contaminate the planet Earth. The first terrestrial embodiment of these spirits took place in a Polar body or Hyperborean race. From there, in comes the dramatic involutionary story of the mixture of the pure race with the original earthly beings.
—Miguel Serrano
“Let me guess,” Ward replied cynically. “The giants of Atlantis built the pyramids.”
“Of course—and lots of other things,” Brian replied. “Certainly humans couldn’t have done that.”
“Back to the History Channel,” Fern laughed.
“They ought to call it the ‘Fantasy Channel,’ ” Malone quipped, shaking his head.
“The sad thing is,” Brian continued, “there are Christian researchers who say the same things today—how the Nephilim built the pyramids and other structures. It’s just baptized Blavatsky. Her Atlantean giants were killed off around 850,000 years ago in a great flood. Sound familiar? Giants perishing in a flood?”
“Just a little,” Malone grumbled.
“To be precise, though,” Melissa interjected, “Blavatsky had the Atlanteans dying off in a series of floods and catastrophes, the last of which was the biblical flood. Since that event overlapped with historical records, Blavatsky claimed that the subsequent root race—the fifth one, which was fully human—witnessed these late events and bore witness to them in various writings recovered from antiquity.”
“The Bible being one of those, I assume,” Nili conjectured.
“Right,” Brian answered.
“Blavatsky’s view also allowed overlap,” Melissa went on. “Remnants of the dying fourth root race survived a bit into the next one. That’s important here, since Blavatsky taught that when Atlantis sank, a fifth continent emerged—Europe. The last vestiges of Atlantis and its giants trickled over into the next phase of the evolutionary journey—the European phase.”
“Oh, brother, here we go,” Malcolm said. “Europe’s going to take us into Nazi mythology.”
“It sure will,” Melissa agreed. “The fifth root race originated in northern Asia—which, in the parlance of the day, could be anything from the Caucasus Mountains, to northern Mesopotamia, to Turkey. Blavatsky viewed her own time as the tail end of that phase. The coming sixth and seventh root races would evolve toward divinity, be androgynous and spiritual in form, and, of course, have amazing psychic powers.”
“Where does Nazi ideology specifically intersect with this?” Neff asked.
“There are three writers who are mainly responsible for how Nazism absorbed and transformed these ideas,” Melissa stated. “The first—the bridge from theosophy to Nordic or German racial mythology—was someone named Guido von List. Von List was a lot of things—a poet, writer, mountaineer, and businessman—but he’s most important as a German mystic, an occultist who specialized in rune interpretation.”
“Von List essentially married theosophy and Wotanism, the religion of the old Norse gods like Odin,” explained Brian. “His brand of occultism combined Blavatsky’s evolutionary cycles and races with the exaltation of the Nordic gods. He taught that since humans were part of the cosmos, and the cosmos was embedded in nature, people were obligated to live in accord with nature, in identity with their own people and race. Naturally, the race of closest descent to the Nordic gods was the Germanic one. Thus, they were superior by divine lineage. All other races were lesser by cosmic design, much like India’s caste system.”
“Madness,” Nili fumed. “All of this nonsense radicalizing the masses to hunger and thirst for Nazi rule.”
“It gets worse—very ugly,” Melissa noted. She looked toward the couch. Summit hadn’t moved. Fern followed her sightline instinctively.
“Von List’s Nordic transformation of theosophy toward Aryan supremacy is known as Ariosophy—a philosophy of Aryanism. The second major personality in that philosophical system was an ex-monk, Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels.”
“Lanz fancied himself as something of a biblical scholar,” Brian broke in. “In the early 1900s he published an article entitled ‘The Biblical Man-Animal’ in a biblical studies journal.”
“How did that ever see the light of day?” Malcolm asked.
“The editor was a follower of Guido von List.”
“I guess that would explain it.”
“Lanz basically argued—supposedly on the basis of ancient Near Eastern comparative literature—that those texts pointed to hominid ape-men in early historical times. He took that nugget of nonsense and used it as a filter to reinterpret the Old Testament, arguing that it contained coded references to these ape-men interbreeding with more evolved humans. It doesn’t take any imagination to conclude who the subhuman ape-people turned out to be in his thinking.”
“Of course,” Nili sniffed with contempt, “we already know.”
“Lanz came up with a philosophy within Ariosophy that he called ‘theozoology’ to articulate his racist views,” Melissa continued. “He claimed that the Aryans originated from extraterrestrial gods, whom he called Theozoa. Supposedly, they normally bred by energy or electricity. Eventually the Aryans succumbed into interbreeding with the lesser subhuman apelike races. The godlike Aryans were thus corrupted. This bull was at the heart of the occult Aryan-Nazi motivation of eugenics—the lesser bloodlines had to be filtered out to restore the Aryan blood to as much purity as possible.”
“It’s easy for us to get offended over this,” Brian interjected, “but do you realize that the ancient alien claptrap you sometimes read about basically parrots this idea without the overt anti-Semitic language? Honestly, if there were no Gnosticism, Theosophy, and Ariosophy, the ancient astronaut idea wouldn’t exist.”
“The last major figure,” Melissa moved on, “is probably a more familiar name: Alfred Rosenberg.”
“The guy who was tried and hung at Nuremberg?” asked Malone.
“That’s him. Rosenberg was an early member of the Nazi Party and held influential positions in the Third Reich. He was the major intellectual force behind political ideas like the Nazi creeds, the holocaust, and Lebensraum—that the Germanic super race needed more ‘living space.’ ”
“I remember Andrew had me read his book,” noted Malcolm, “The Myth of the 20th Century. It spelled out his racial theory.”
“He was the Nazi evangelist for the Aryan rejection of Christianity. It’s no surprise that he favored Nordic and Hindu religion. While Lanz captured the imaginations of Hitler and Himmler, it was Rosenberg who reached the masses with the ideas that Jews were a sub-race and that the Nordic Aryans descended from the gods from an icy northern homeland. That homeland is at times referred to as Thule, which is a Greek geographical term for the distant north. It’s a synonym of sorts for Hyperborea, the term the Colonel used when talking to Brian.”
“Isn’t Rosenberg the one who said Jesus was a white Aryan—a German?” Fern asked.
Melissa nodded. “Rosenberg argued for what he called ‘positive Christianity’—a term he used to describe a Christianity without Jewish elements. He taught that Jesus was a Nordic Indo-European opponent of the Jews. His book was published in 1930, and over a million copies had been sold by 1942.”
“Believe it or not,” Brian interjected, “it’s the northern ice-homeland that brings us back full circle to the Indo-European problem raised by ancient India and Sanskrit. Rosenberg utilized the work of Bal Gangad
har Tilak, a famous voice for Indian independence from British rule and a Vedic scholar.”
“It’s sort of an odd twist of fate,” Melissa said, “but Tilak, even though he was a native Indian, didn’t argue that the Aryans came from an Indian homeland. He actually argued for an original homeland in the north.”
“Was he a Nazi?”
“No. The movement was before his time, and he was only focused on the Vedas. He was convinced that they were extremely ancient and used astronomy to make his case. Tilak had an encyclopedic knowledge of the Vedas and was expert in Sanskrit.” Brian heard an excited grunt from the other end of the table. He smiled. “Astronomy got your attention, Kamran?”
The young man nodded and tapped Madison’s arm. He quickly signed something to her. “He wants to know how …” Madison translated as she watched, “how this Tilak argued his case.”
“Well, the Vedas contain lots of references to positions in the heavens of celestial objects, including descriptions that can be correlated with the precession of the equinoxes—the sun being in certain constellations, for instance. There are other odd descriptions of days lasting long than twenty-four hours—”
“Didn’t Ward mention that Weston was raving about that?” asked Clarise.
“He did,” replied Melissa. “Those sorts of descriptions only make sense if someone is living at the North Pole, or at least very close to the polar region. Based on these sorts of references, Tilak argued that the Vedas must have been written around 4500 BC—1,500 years earlier than the earliest known writing from Sumeria or Egypt. Since the Vedas don’t describe people living on ice, the idea is that in 4500 BC or earlier, the polar region wasn’t covered in ice but was quite habitable.
“He published his results in 1893, and they were used by Nordic Aryan theorists in the Nazi era. More recent scholars have found flaws in his astronomy and some of his translations—mainly, some of the Sanskrit vocabulary is flexible and imprecise.”
“It might sound shocking,” Brian added, watching their expressions, “but Tilak actually credited a Wesleyan minister for some of his ideas—William Warren, who was a president of Boston University and Boston School of Theology.”
“A Christian theologian?” Ward was incredulous.
“It’s true. In 1885 Warren wrote a book called Paradise Found: The Cradle of the Human Race at the North Pole. Warren believed the North Pole was home to Eden and the original homeland of humanity. He also believed Atlantis was at the North Pole, as well as Hyperborea—so he had Eden and two of Blavatsky’s continents in the far north.”
“So let’s think about where this brings us,” Melissa said. “The photocopies Kamran and Madison passed out when we began contain a short summary of what I was hoping to cover. We’ve gone from the mid-nineteenth century to Nazism, tracing a set of ideas—ideas that the Colonel will be able to draw from for demonizing his extraterrestrial contrivance.” Melissa pointed to the summary of points.
•Extraterrestrial life forms existed before humanity.
•Theosophy has humans evolving from some of these original extraterrestrials.
•Ariosophy taught that only one race could trace their lineage to these extraterrestrials, who were viewed as the Nordic gods.
•The Nordic-Aryan master race therefore descended from gods—extraterrestrial gods.
•These sons of God in Blavatsky’s thought were giant Atlanteans; their homeland, Atlantis, was wiped out in a flood. The last of these Atlanteans were the mighty men of renown in the biblical story—the Nephilim. In occult thinking, the sons of God and the giants are the same—and they’re the good guys.
•These divine men or “sons of God” in Ariosophy were the Aryans; the interbreeding with lesser life forms—apelike creatures—resulted in their corruption and the dilution of their divinity.
•Since the Jew of the Old Testament does not descend from the giant clans and the giant clans are their enemies, this means that the Jew is the enemy of the Atlantean, or the Aryan—and so, the extraterrestrial gods.
“It’s a string of non sequiturs that lacks any basis in reality,” Malcolm scoffed, “but when you summarize it all like that, it sounds coherent … in a sick sort of way.”
“Now we can begin to process Melissa’s Minoan genetics article.” Brian looked at her with anticipation. “You’ll all be able to follow what the Colonel could do with it.”
Melissa gazed at her small audience. “Can anyone tell me where most historians who give Plato’s Atlantis account any credence place that legendary civilization?” She could already tell from their expressions that they’d done the math.
“Crete,” Malone sighed. “The cause of the destruction is thought to be the eruption of Santorini, or Thera, a volcano about seventy miles away.”
“Correct,” Melissa confirmed. “I’m impressed,” she added.
“Hey, I’ve read a lot of Atlantis stuff. That one was easy.”
She went on. “There’s academic consensus that the explosion of Thera occurred at the height of Minoan civilization and wiped it out, causing its collapse, forcing a migration to Greece and farther north. Blavatsky and other alternative historians would debate the chronology, naturally, since they believe these civilizations were much older, but all the pieces are there … with a bit of a twist.”
Brian took the cue. “Where would the Bible’s ‘Atlantis’ be?”
“I don’t follow,” said Neff.
“The place where humans originated. It wouldn’t be at the North Pole, since the biblical writers didn’t know of any such place. So where did the races originate? It’s a bit of a trick question.”
“Ararat,” Nili answered quickly, “where the ark landed … which is in Turkey.”
“Right. And the ancient name of Turkey is …?”
“Anatolia,” sighed Malcolm. “If you thought like an occultist, you’d say that the ancient Near Eastern version of the story channeled to Blavatsky was that the giants, who would be the Atlanteans, originated in Anatolia and moved to Crete, establishing what Plato knew as Atlantis. They eventually lost their homeland in the flood catastrophe. Some escaped and moved north into what’s now Europe—or maybe several places—and became the stuff of legend.”
“That’s a nice summary,” Melissa replied. “Remember, all of these presumed events took place in remote antiquity. The distance in time would also allow you to say that the subsequent northern homeland that the Atlantean survivors migrated to was what the Vedas was talking about. And so we get a superior race from the north descended from the gods. At some point, their descendants migrated to other places, including into India—which is the Aryan-invasion theory.”
Nili spoke up, some apprehension in her voice. “But the Bible would oppose all this. Surely there’s no way to have the Bible connect Crete, this mythical Atlantean land of giants, with the biblical story of the Nephilim or giant clans … is there?”
Brian sighed. He had the appearance of someone burdened with bad news. “What’s the Hebrew name for Crete?” he asked her.
“Keretim?”
“No, the biblical Hebrew name, not the modern one.”
She thought for a moment. “I don’t know.”
“Caphtor … one of the points of origin of the Philistines—as in Goliath.”
64
I’d like to see that land beyond the pole. The area beyond the pole is the center of the great unknown.
—Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd
“You weren’t kidding,” Malone said, smiling nervously. “Bizarre doesn’t even begin to describe what I’m hearing.” He glanced at Neff. “But it untangles a lot of ideas we’ve been trying to understand for a long time.”
“I know,” Neff responded thoughtfully, then looked at Brian. “We told you back at the college that we engage a lot of conspiracy material. Some of it ends up drifting into fringe topics like the ones you and Melissa have been discussing. We do that because we see an encroaching fascism and greater militancy in anti-Sem
itism and hostility toward Christians.”
“No surprise there,” Brian said. “For my money, I’d say we’re already living in a post-Christian culture. But the Colonel presented himself and his cronies as above all that, as though they had bigger fish to fry. It seems the world could burn to a cinder so long as he got to fulfill his own fantasies.”
“Where do you think this madman will go with these ideas?” Nili asked. Her face was lined with determination, but Brian could see some anxiety in her eyes. “His position gives him access to real power and others who hold power.”
“I don’t know. Honestly, the Minoan article is new to me, and I have no idea what Ward saw in Weston’s briefcase. I’m going to need some time to track that stuff down and think through it. What seems clear at this point is that the Colonel wanted us to learn just enough so that we could see his pieces on the chess board and where they’re positioned. Then he could let us fret about what he’s going to do. It suits his ego.”
“We’ll have to figure out the rest of Becky’s code to have a better idea,” Melissa said, hopefully. “I have no idea what the rest of the numbers mean. We ought to finish off a few other items so we can go back to the drawing board.”
“There’s more?” Neff asked.
“Just the matter of the Antarctica fragments, which—to be honest—I don’t think will end up helping us, but the Colonel could certainly use them for propaganda.”
“Like he needs another ingredient.”
“The fragments Becky’s boyfriend produced are certainly genuine. There’s little doubt that they detail a planned base on Antarctica. That said, I’ve found nothing to suggest that any such base was actually built. If the Nazis did carry on the dream of reviving the Reich—or at least keeping it dormant until the right time—they may have not needed to go any farther south than Argentina. They also may have gone north.”
“Like you suggested about Kammler,” Malone recalled. “Wow, a dormant Reich. Think of what the neo-fascists would do with that.”
The Portent Page 42