O Chekon, thou golden city of Atlantis! Thy towers are overthrown and thine altars are buried beneath the waves of the mighty ocean. Thy sanctuaries became a habitation for jackals and vipers and thy highways became streets of iniquity. Behold the word of Ptah was spoken and the Earth opened wide its mouth and swallowed those evil ones, that not one remained. Alas! ye golden domes and glistening columns, weep for the destruction that has come upon you!
Weep for all eternity, for in thine awful desolation
shalt thou rise up again from thy watery grave.
Behold, thy voice shall be like unto the voice of the
harlot crying aloud and saying, Behold, out of my
whoredom has come destruction. Take heed, ye nations
of earth, lest ye fall into greater tribulation. The fair
city of Chekon, the first city of Atlantis, is overthrown.
The habitation of Ptah is no more.
— The Chronicles of Osiris (El Eros)
When Initiate-Teachers of Atlantis foresaw the inevitable doom of their island continent, they separated from the masses those whose will retained a hold on human integrity and in whom the germ of reason, recently acquired by the Atlantean race, had not been prostituted to the service of evil. Those "chosen" people, the seed of Fifth Epoch races, were under the tutelage of certain leaders who had come hither from the planet Mercury; both they and their Mercurian leaders were led and instructed by the great Archangel Michael, who had charge of the Herculean evolutionary task of creating a new race upon earth.
All initiatory work since Atlantis has proceeded under the guidance and with the aid of these Mercurians. In Kabbalistic literature they are grouped in general with Angels although, according to initiatory tradition, they are little more advanced than ourselves in the school of evolution. They may, without error, be described as a superior humanity. These Elder Brothers from Mercury have charge of all initiatory work in the nine Lesser Mysteries, leading to the Liberator, the Christ. They work with individuals, not with the masses. As epochs succeed one another, humanity will become more and more responsive to its helpers until the two groups will easily commune.
The Atlanteans selected by the Archangel Michael as his chosen ones were the Original Semites. From them contemporary Fifth Epoch, post-Atlantean races developed.
The Chosen People were divided into two divisions: one, with its Initiate-Teachers, went northward into lands now known as England, Ireland, the Scandinavian countries, Persia and India; the other group with its Teachers went southward into the areas now known as Africa, Iraq, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Dr. Rudolph Steiner describes this migration most interestingly in his "Outline of Occult Science." "The human evolution of the post-Atlantean era," he writes, "is divided into the Old Indian, the Old Persian, the Chaldean-Egyptian and the Greco-Latin in which occurred the Christ Event. Our culture epoch will be followed by another and this by the last, after which the earth will again undergo a change somewhat like that of the Atlantean catastrophe. We have, therefore, seven epochs of civilization." Dr. Steiner points out that these epochs, with the exception of the Graeco-Latin, bear a certain resemblance to one another; but the Graeco-Latin stands alone because it marks the coming of Christ Jesus.
The Chaldean-Egyptian civilization, it is interesting to observe, repeats itself or is repeated in certain phenomena, of this Fifth Epoch. The similarity is not a repetition of characteristics belonging to Chaldean-Egyptian life, Dr. Steiner comments, but is a redivivus wherein all things have been illumined by the Christ Light. He adds that many who have never even read occult philosophy possess a dim recollection of old Egyptian experiences, and that this flows out into their daily lives. In the case of the astronomer Kepler, Dr. Steiner writes: "When that individuality who once in the mystery places of Egypt raised the eyes of his soul to the stars and sought to unravel their secrets in celestial space after the manner of those days, under the guidance of the Egyptian sages, lived again in our own Epoch as Kepler, those truths which had existed in another form in his Egyptian soul appeared in a new guise as the great Laws of Kepler which today are such an integral part of astrophysics . . . Within the soul of this man there arose something which caused him to give utterance to the following words: 'Out of the holy places of Egypt I have brought the sacred vessel; I have transported it to the present time so that men may understand something in these days of those influences which are able to affect even the most distant future."'
According to Rudolph Steiner, the next or Sixth Epoch will be a recapitulation of ancient Persian civilization, which was dominated by that noble spirit known as Zarathustra. This old Persian culture was devoted to the cult of beauty almost to the point of angelic refinement, as perhaps at no time since the golden age of China — with which, indeed, it had a close affinity.
It is significant that the Sixth Epoch will be correlated with Venus, the planet governing the spirit of beauty and harmony, so the arts and crafts of ancient Persia will be reanimated but on a higher level, embellished and enriched by the Christ Impulse.
The Seventh, and final, Epoch belonging to this arc of the evolutionary spiral will recapitulate the old East Indian civilization with its diamond-like brilliance of clear spiritual wisdom. It is said that this Epoch will be marked by the discovery of the legendary planet Vulcan, asserted to have its orbit between Mercury and the Sun; and that this planet's mighty forces, now unknown, will enter into a glorified humanity as the old Indian civilization is revived and further illumined by the indwelling planetary Christ.
Earthly civilization will reach its apex on the South American continent when the closing phase of Christianity, the Religion of the Father, supplants that of the Christ. The reason for this is that the north magnetic pole of the earth is the negative while the south magnetic pole is the positive (contrary to popular opinion on this point).
Thus, the Pattern of Life, as discovered by Seers, reveals divine consistency, the continuity of a rational plan and purpose from the submergence of Atlantis to the end of Fifth Epoch Earth. This is but a small segment of the larger universal plan which includes life-waves and schemes of evolution upon other planets and in other solar systems. This universal plan may be called the Christ Idea, and there never has been a time when an illumined mind could not perceive it. As St. Augustine wrote: "That which is now called the Christian religion existed among the ancients and has never failed since the beginning of the human race until Christ came in the flesh, whence the true religion which was already in existence began to be called Christian." Dr. E. Stanley Jones has said: "Any truth, any beauty, any culture is a ray of that Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world."
Christ gathers all truths into Himself. Clement of Alexandria observed: "Christianity has many affluents." Modern Christians are not wanting who, like Dr. Jones, are able to perceive that the Christ is not the destroyer but the preserver of all that is good and beautiful and true. They would say that in Christ the prayer wheel of the Buddhist is the admonition to "Pray without ceasing;" that the so-called pagan idol is translatable as "the express image of his person;" that karma is superseded by the cross; that caste is swallowed up in brotherhood and animal sacrifice is transmuted into human self-sacrifice; that the mummy of the Egyptian, symbolic of his yearning toward immortality, is manifest in the Resurrection of the Christ; that the three Gods of the Hindu pantheon who are called One are none other than the One God called a Trinity (which is neither a distinction nor a difference); that the yearning of the Incarnate of the Gita is fulfilled in the Incarnate of the Gospels; and that the Spotless Incarnation, is indeed the Crystal Christ, upon whose body the yellow robe of world renunciation is transformed into the seamless white robe of world redemption. The eternal theme of every world religion is embodied and illustrated in Him. The Egyptian desire for immortality, "I am the resurrection and the life;" the Greek desire for naturalness was in Him a well springing up from within unto everlasting life. The Roman love for authority was in Him translated into authority over life "penetrating to the inmost thought, the most obscure motive." The Buddhist craving for surcease from sorrow was answered by His turning suffering into song. Islam's submission became the command that every thought be brought into obedience in Christ. Chinese reverence for ancestors and elders evolved into making the world one family, with God as Father and all men as brothers. Japanese passion for loyalty blossomed into loyalty to the Master and the Kingdom of God. Hindu desire for union with the Divine unfolded into unity with God expressed in the words "I in them and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one."
"The Christ is the end of all things and beginning of all things. He saves not merely the individual but every fine trait in the national character, every truth embedded in dead form, every partial concept in Storied Atlantis lies at the bottom of the ocean but her treasures of spirit remain with us even to this day, in great Bibles which are as rays from the Christ Sun that shone over Atlantis. Then for the first time man became man and was able to understand that his place in the divine plan is little lower than that of Angels. Then, also for the first time, the Christ Figure in the Sun revealed to man the Pattern of a Glory that was to be His own when the cycle of Ages had run its course. He saves the past by not stopping at the past. He carries it to completion," declares Dr. Jones.
Dr. Jones is a living illustration of the fact that illumined men down through the ages have always been able to perceive the fundamental unity of truth in East and West, whether it is given out as history or as parable and legend; whether from the rational approach of philosophy and science or from the emotional approach of beauty and love. Truth is one, however diverse may be the methods by which it is disseminated. It is like pure water that may be drunk from vessels of many different shapes and colors. This was demonstrated by the Master when He came to the East with a message destined to conquer the West. The West is centered in doing; the East, in being. The true course of wisdom points to an interchange between the two: the West learning to spiritualize its activity; the East, to activate its spiritual potential that practical use may be made of its transcendental metaphysical techniques.
In The East in the Light of the West, Dr. Steiner writes that these two worlds must unite themselves into love." He adds: "We shall eventually come to recognize that there is a light of the West which shines in order to make that which originates in the East more luminous than it is through its own power." There comes a time, he continues, when the human soul, having reached a place so exalted that it knows both Paths, beccmes fully conscious of their unity.
Nicholas Roerich the inspired painter-poet-philosopher who, because of his universalism of spirit, has been called the Walt Whitman of painting, dedicated all his cultural and artistic gifts to the promotion of unity between East and West. He stated that the Divine Feminine, the Madonna influence, will be the bridge between the two worlds; and that their spiritual fusion will produce a spiritual power and authentic culture more transcendently beautiful than any the world has previously known. "In the epic design of India," he writes, "all can be coordinated. . . . Let the ignorant deniers immerse themselves in the true East to learn and absorb the power of containment. But even in fact, the sunrise comes from the East."
— Corinne Heline
