Secret Cycles
Contents
1. Yugas and root-races
2. Root-race divisions
3. Precessional cycle
4.
Fifth root-race
5. Age of the earth
6. Twelve rounds and races
7. Planetary embodiments
8.
Relative lengths of rounds and races
9. The unfinished article
controversy
Appendices
1. Dating the kali-yuga
2. Revati and the Hindu zodiac
... much was purposely made obscure ... (ML2 357, MLC 428)
The blinds which conceal the real mysteries of Esoteric philosophy are great and puzzling, and even now the last word cannot be given. The veil, however, may be a little more removed and some explanations, hitherto denied, may now be offered to the earnest student. (SD 2:310)
What the Masters are now imparting are, so to speak, elementary fragments of the Ancient Wisdom religion. Much of the teaching they are now giving us is in the form of problems for ourselves to solve ... (Echoes 2:439)
... solving [paradoxes] quickens our intuition, and that is one of the main aims and purposes of this system of teaching ... (FEP 339)
Refuse to take as the sole truth any isolated statement whatsoever, wherever you may find it. Take it, but not alone; contrast it, compare it, study it, and analyze it if you want the truth. Especially is this necessary when it is a question of cycles ... (FEP 282)
... no item of esoteric teaching is so carefully guarded as that dealing with numbers and time-periods ... (EST 4:80)
1. Yugas and root-races
Hindu philosophy refers to a series of four great cycles or yugas, whose lengths are 4000, 3000, 2000, and 1000 divine years respectively (1 divine year = 360 solar years). Each is introduced by a ‘dawn’ and concluded by a ‘twilight’ (known as ‘sandhi’ or ‘sandhya’ in Sanskrit), each equal in length to one-tenth of the yuga concerned. The four yugas together form a maha-yuga of 4,320,000 years, which is one thousandth of a day of Brahma (the total lifespan of the earth).1 We are currently in the kali-yuga, which began in 3102 BC. It is described as the harshest, most intense, and most challenging of the four yugas, but also ‘the age in which spiritual and intellectual advancement can be made most quickly’; in short, it is ‘the opportunity time’.2
Yugas Dawn Krita-/satya-yuga Twilight Dawn Treta-yuga Twilight Dawn Dvapara-yuga Twilight Dawn Kali-yuga Twilight Total |
Divine years 400 4,000 400 4,800 300 3,000 300 3,600 200 2,000 200 2,400 100 1,000 100 1,200 12,000 |
Solar years |
A sequence of four cycles in the ratio 4:3:2:1 is said to apply on various scales:
... as each of the seven races is divided into four ages – the Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Iron Age – so is every smallest division of such races.3
As the four yugas are a reflection in human history of what takes place in the evolution of the earth itself and of the planetary chain, therefore the same scheme of yugas applies also on a cosmic scale – there exist the four series of satya yuga, treta yuga, dvapara yuga, and kali yuga, in the evolution of the earth, and on a still larger scale in the evolution of a planetary chain. Of course these cosmic yugas are very much longer than the racial yugas, but the same general scheme of 4, 3, 2 applies throughout.4
‘The general rule,’ says G. de Purucker, ‘is ... that the small repeats the great, that little yugas are not only included in the greater yugas, but repeat them on their own little scales’. Our fifth (Aryan/Indo-European) root-race as a whole, including all its minor subraces, is some 5000 years into its kali-yuga.
Now some of the minor cycles or yugas of this fifth root-race will be rising, and some will be falling, yet all interworking with each other and subject to the great kali-yuga of the root-race. Thus, a minor yuga or race may be in its youth and rising to its flowering, yet, because it is included in the over-all kali yuga, will be subject to the general decline of the major kali yuga.
Every minor cycle, great or small, within the root-race is in its turn septenary and therefore has its own little kali yuga, and its numerical relations are about the same. Just as the great kali yuga is 432,000 years long, so a minor one may be only 432 years long, or 4320, or even 43,200. The Hindu or Aryan race, which was one of the very first subraces of our own fifth root-race, is now in its own racial kali yuga in addition to being in the longer kali yuga of the root-race. But it is striving to rise again, and will do so in the future. On a smaller scale, Spain is in its short kali yuga, as also Portugal. Italy has just ended a short kali yuga and is beginning to rise again.
Unfortunately, because our fifth root-race is a very materialistic one, heavily sunken in matter due to our fourth round, these rises are mostly along the lines of materialisms.5
Yugas shorter than those in the above table could include cycles whose length is the same number of ordinary human years as the length given in the table in divine years. H.P. Blavatsky states: ‘one of the secret sub-cycles or “years of the Devas” lasts about 12,000 of our common years ...’6 She also writes:
... three yugas passed away during the time of the Third Root-Race, i.e., the Satya, the Treta, and the Dvapara yuga, answering to the golden age of its early innocence: to the silver – when it reached its maturity: and to the Bronze age, when, separating into sexes, they became the mighty demi-gods of old.7
Since the third (Lemurian) root-race lived throughout the Mesozoic, which lasted from about 44 to 8 million years ago, the length of these yugas must be longer than those in the above table.8 There is also a reference to a satya-yuga prior to the earth’s formation, associated (to speak metaphorically) with the ‘churning of the ocean of milk’, the ‘war in heaven’, and the ‘fall of the angels’.9 This, too, is probably a satya-yuga on a larger scale than the standard yugas.
As a general rule, a root-race (or humanity) lasts for two maha-yugas (8.64 million years). During the first maha-yuga, it reaches its zenith. A new root-race then starts to emerge, and begins its satya-yuga as the old one is finishing its kali-yuga – a transition marked by geological cataclysms. During the second maha-yuga the old root-race slowly dies out while the new one evolves towards maturity.10
Fig.11
HPB writes:
... the Fourth Sub-Race of the Atlanteans was in its Kali-Yug, when destroyed, whereas the Fifth was in its Satya or Krita Yuga. The Aryan Race is now in its Kali Yuga, and will continue to be in it for 427,000 years longer, while various ‘family Races,’ called the Semitic, Hamitic, etc., are in their own special cycles. The forthcoming 6th Sub Race – which may begin very soon – will be in its Satya (golden) age while we reap the fruit of our iniquity in our Kali Yuga.12
GdeP explains what happens to the previously dominant race:
every root-race has its satya yuga, followed by its treta, dvapara, and kali yugas. Then comes a sandhya or rest period, a junction point, after which comes the birth of the new race. The seeds of the succeeding new root-race spring into being; but the old root-race continues along, although no longer having the mastery of the earth. The reason is that with the opening of the satya yuga of the succeeding root-race, all the stronger, more advanced egos of the race then in its kali yuga take imbodiment in the new race; whereas the bodies of the decaying race are given over to less developed egos which enter them. As these bodies of the old race continue living and propagating through several succeeding ages, egos of less and less degree of evolutionary advancement enter them, until finally these bodies through slow degeneration will house only the least developed egos of the human stock. But the dying-out root-race lasts almost as long as it takes the succeeding root-race to reach its kali yuga.13
In general, every root-race begins to sow the seeds of the next root-race at its midpoint, i.e. in its fourth main subrace. However, the next root-race does not develop into a race of a distinct type until the previous root-race is in the subrace of the same number as the root-race that follows it.
For instance, we in our fifth root-race will sow the seeds of the 6th root-race, and we are doing it now because we are in the 4th main sub-race ... Yet the succeeding 6th root-race will not actually be a race sui generis until we, the 5th root-race, have reached our 6th sub-race. ...
Thus during the 4th root-race the seeds of the 5th root-race were sown during the 4th great sub-race. But those seeds did not actually collect together and begin to be the beginnings of a race sui generis until the 4th sub-sub-race of the 5th sub-race of the 4th root-race.14
Although one maha-yuga of four yugas is often said to be followed by another maha-yuga of four yugas, there are indications that there are actually seven yugas rather than four:
Since it is said that a Day of Brahma (representing or covering the totality of the Seven Rounds) – equals 14 manvantaras plus a Satya Yug; or 4,320,000,000; but as the Kali Yug covers only 4 Yugas, whereas there are 7 – and therefore the correct sum ... [this unfinished manuscript breaks off here]15
‘As the Krita, Treta, Dvapara, and Kali (ages) have been each decreasing in excellence (physical as well as moral) so the ascending – Dvapara, Treta and Krita will be increasing in every excellence.’16
The last quotation could mean that, for the dying-out race, the kali-yuga following the first three yugas is followed by the same three yugas in reverse order, giving the overall ratio 4:3:2:1:2:3:4, spanning a total of 8,208,000 years.17
The general rule about a root-race lasting for a total of two maha-yugas applies in particular to the fifth root-race. It is 4 or 5 million years old from its true birth at about the middle period of Atlantis, though its earliest beginnings go back 7 or 8 million years. It began becoming a race sui generis at the beginning of the satya-yuga, 3.89 million years ago, and became definitely a race sui generis about 1 million years ago in Central Asia.18
The fourth (Atlantean) root-race lasted longer than two maha-yugas. Its earliest beginnings could be placed some 18 million years ago in the middle of the third root-race, though GdeP also says that it originated in the later Cretaceous (10 to 12 million years ago). It attained its peak in the Eocene of the Tertiary, and was largely destroyed in the Miocene.19
The middle of the fourth root-race is sometimes said to have occured 8 to 9 million years ago.20 This is because 9 million years is half of the approx. 18 million years that have elapsed since the middle of the third root-race and the earliest origins of the fourth root-race. In theosophical chronology this takes us back to the very end of the Cretaceous. However, the racial cataclysm of the fourth root-race took place in the middle of its fourth subrace some 4.5 million years ago,21 in the Oligocene/Miocene,22 when that root-race and the earth in general reached the lowest, most material point in their evolutionary cycle.
The first three root-races lasted considerably longer than two maha-yugas each; they spanned a total of up to 150 million years.23 One of the reasons the first two and a half races were so long is because they were practically astral and intellectually asleep, and ‘passed ages in a dreaming, intellectually unawakened state, like little children’.24 The sixth and seventh root-races, on the other hand, will last less than two maha-yugas. The sixth root-race will last for about a maha-yuga and a half, or somewhat over 6 million years, and the seventh will be even shorter.25
HPB writes:
The Fifth will overlap the Sixth Race for many hundreds of millenniums, changing with it slower than its new successor, still changing in stature, general physique, and mentality, just as the Fourth overlapped our Aryan race, and the Third had overlapped the Atlanteans.26
It is because of the overlapping of the root-races that theosophical literature sometimes refers to Lemuro-Atlanteans and Aryo-Atlanteans. It is not just the root-races that overlap, but minor and branchlet races as well.27 HPB says:
It would only lead to hopeless confusion if any attempt were made to give accurate dates to a few [racial divisions]; for the Races, Sub-Races, etc., etc., down to their smallest ramifications, overlap and are entangled with each other until it is nearly impossible to separate them.28
Lemurian and Atlantean influences are still discernible today, though in one sense all the present races are part of the fifth root-race since they are living in fifth-race times and conditions.29
Many of the tribes in the Pacific Ocean are Atlanteans with Atlantean-Lemurians still amongst them. But they are all dying out, and now dying out rapidly.
The Chinese originally were the 7th and last sub-sub-race of the 7th sub-race of the 4th root-race. But they have today become so thoroughly amalgamated with our 5th root-race that they really belong to us ...30
HPB says that although the Atlantean root-race began many millions of years ago, ‘we find the last of the Atlanteans, still mixed up with the Aryan element, 11,000 years ago’ – a reference to the sinking of the Atlantean island of Poseidonis 11½ thousand years ago. She continues: ‘This shows the enormous overlapping of one race over the race which succeeds it, though in character and external type the elder loses its characteristics, and assumes the new features of the younger race.’31
Notes to section 1
1. E. Burgess and W.D. Whitney, Surya-Siddhanta (1860), Wizards Bookshelf, n.d., 1:14-17, pp. 152-4; OG 189-90; Isis 1:34.
2. FSO 168, SOP 77.
3. SD 2:198.
4. OG 190. ‘... the four yugas apply to any unitary period in the flow of time: to a planetary round, a globe-round, a root-race, or even to the period of a human life’ (FSO 164).
5. FSO 163, SOP 702; see also SOP 465-6.
6. BCW 12:386fn. GdeP refers to a cycle lasting 10-12,000 years, which began around the time of the sinking of Poseidonis in 9565 BC, and ended in the early 20th century; it was marked by an increase in materiality (FSO 8). The cycle in question could also be half the 21,000-year cycle generated by combining the precession of the equinoxes with apsidal precession (see ‘Poleshifts’, part 1, section 5).
7. SD 2:520fn.
8. See ‘Root-race chronology’, and ‘Geochronology: theosophy and science’, section 3.
9. SD 1:67-8.
10. SOP 42-3; FSO 165-6; OG 189-90.
11. FEP 294. This diagram can equally well represent the birth of subraces, family faces, national races, tribal races, etc. (FEP 296).
12. SD 2:147fn.
13. FSO 165. ‘The only way to stop the dying-out of some of these races is intermarriage, miscegenation with higher races. Other egos of a stronger type then come in and keep the physical vehicles going on for a while’ (Dia 1:89).
14. Dia 1:86.
15. BCW 13:301.
16. BCW 6:117; see also Isis 2:420-1.
17. See SOP 40-3.
18. SOP 18, 21, 638-40.
19. SD 2:717; SOP 164-5; ET 1044, 1046; Dia 2:162.
20. ET 326fn; SOP 20-1, 97, 161, 422, 465-6; MiE 152.
21. SOP 20-1, 638-40; ET 1046; Dia 1:88; SD 1:439fn, 2:147fn.
22. See ‘Geochronology’, section 3.
23. See ‘Root-race chronology’. ‘... the life-waves evolve through the maha-yugas, but are not closely geared into the maha-yugas, for they overlap in both directions very considerably. ... [R]oot-races 1 and 2 were not so to speak inflexibly and mechanically geared to the yugas and root-races 3, 4, and 5 more or less were’ (SOP 166).
24. SOP 162.
25. SOP 165-6.
26. SD 2:445.
27. OG 142-3.
28. SD 2:434.
29. Dia 2:157.
30. Dia 1:88.
31. SD 2:444.
2. Root-race divisions
The subdivisions of a root-race and their approximate lengths are as follows:1
| Root-race Subrace Family race National race Tribal race Tribal generation Individual |
8,640,000 years (2 maha-yugas) 1¼ million years 180,000 years 25,920 years (one precessional cycle) 3600 years 500 years 72 years |
Starting from the ‘ideal’ lifetime of a human individual – 72 years – each successive figure is about 7 times the preceding one.
GdeP gives the following examples of some of these divisions:
• Tribal generation: Italians; Spaniards; French; English; Russians, etc.
• Tribal race: Slavs (Russians, Poles, Czechs, Bulgarians, etc.); Teutons (Germans,
Scandinavians, English, etc.); Celts (Irish, Welsh, Scots, people of Brittany)
• National race: Europeans; peoples of the New World (original
Americans: Redskins, Aztecs, Incas, etc.); Mongolians
• Family race: Caucasians (Europeans, Hindus); Mongolians on a larger scale (incl. Chinese,
Manchus, Japanese, Lolos, Tibetans, Burmese, Thais, Malayans); Black Africans; original
inhabitants of the New World on a larger scale
The word ‘subrace’ in its broadest sense can refer to any of the divisions of a root-race, and it therefore often requires interpretation.2 Although HPB, like GdeP, tends to define ‘family race’ as one of the seven divisions of a subrace (a subrace being one of the seven main divisions of a root-race),3 she often uses the term to refer to what GdeP usually (but not always4) calls a ‘national race’.
GdeP says that we are in the fourth main subrace of the fifth root-race.5 He does not specify which family race we are in, but says that Europeans are the fourth national race of our family race. HPB, too, says that we are in the fourth main subrace,6 and this is also implied when she writes: ‘we are in the mid-point of our sub-race of the Fifth Root Race – the acme of materiality in each’.7 GdeP comments:
The ‘acme of materiality in each’ means only one thing – the middle point of the fourth of any cyclical series: for instance, the fourth primary subrace; the fourth subrace of the fourth primary subrace of the fifth root-race, and so forth.8
HPB often says that we are in the fifth subrace9 – but what type of ‘subrace’ is she referring to? Consider the following passage:
Now our Fifth Root-Race has already been in existence – as a race sui generis and quite free from its parent stem – about 1,000,000 years; therefore it must be inferred that each of the four preceding Sub-Races has lived approximately 210,000 years; thus each Family-Race has an average existence of about 30,000 years. Thus the European ‘Family Race’ has still a good many thousand years to run, although the nations or the innumerable spines upon it, vary with each succeeding ‘season’ of three or four thousand years. It is somewhat curious to mark the comparative approximation of duration between the lives of a ‘Family-Race’ and a ‘Sidereal year.’10
The fact that our fifth root-race has existed as a distinct, separate race for about 1 million years is repeated on many occasions,11 though sometimes lower figures of 900,000 to about 700,000 years are given.12 In the above quotation, HPB then ‘infers’ that the four preceding ‘subraces’ lived about 210,000 years each, implying that we are now in the fifth ‘subrace’. The figure of 210,000 years clearly indicates that she is referring to the seven subdivisions of a main subrace, i.e. a ‘family race’ (to which GdeP assigns a length of 180,000 years). She then says that each ‘family race’ (or what GdeP usually calls a ‘national race’) has an average existence of about 30,000 years (= 1/7 of 210,000), and she notes that a ‘family race’ lasts for about the same amount of time as a ‘sidereal year’, i.e. a precessional cycle.13 HPB usually gives the length of a precessional cycle as 25,868 years, but she also says that 25,920 years is ‘the exact period of revolution of the heavens’14 – and this is the length GdeP assigns to both a precessional cycle and a national race. HPB then says that the ‘nations or innumerable spines’ last 3 or 4 thousand years – corresponding to the 3600 years that GdeP assigns to a ‘tribal race’ (for want of a better term).
Here is another passage from HPB, with comments in square brackets:
... the three Zodiacs belong to three different epochs: namely, to the last three family races of the fourth Sub-race of the Fifth Root-race, each of which must have lived approximately from 25 to 30,000 years [blind! If ‘family races’ refers to the seven divisions of a subrace, then the length is 210,000 years (HPB) or 180,000 years (GdeP)]. The first of these (the ‘Aryan-Asiatics’) [i.e. the ‘family race’ that appeared 1 million years ago] witnessed the doom of the last of the populations of the ‘giant Atlanteans’ who perished some 850,000 years ago (the Ruta and Daitya Island-Continents) toward the close of the Miocene Age [blind! For ‘Miocene’ read: Pliocene15]. The fourth sub-race witnessed the destruction of the last remnant of the Atlanteans – the Aryo-Atlanteans in the last island of Atlantis, namely, some 11,000 years ago [‘4th subrace’ could refer here to the 4th main subrace, but could also refer to the fourth family race (of 210,000 years) if we start counting from about 850,000 years ago instead of 1 million].16
Another quotation:
The archaic records show the Initiates of the Second Sub-race of the Aryan family moving from one land to the other for the purpose of supervising the building of menhirs and dolmens, of colossal Zodiacs in stone, and places of sepulchre to serve as receptacles for the ashes of generations to come.17
Fred Dick argues that ‘the second subrace of the Aryan family’ means the third subrace of our fifth root-race (in the sense explained above), since the first subrace of our root-race was ‘Atlanto-Aryan’ and ended its career when the cataclysm of a million to 870,000 years ended and the Aryan race proper took its rise.18 This would date the land journey to about 400,000 years ago – the time when Egypt was first settled.19
HPB also writes:
Cremation was universal till a comparatively recent period – some 80, or 100,000 years ago. The real giants, moreover, were nearly all drowned with Atlantis. ... [M]an’s size was reduced from 15 to 10 or 12 feet, ever since the third sub-race of the Aryan stock, which sub-race – born and developed in Europe and Asia Minor under new climates and conditions – had become European. Since then, as said, it has steadily been decreasing.20
Here, too, ‘third subrace’ could refer to the third family race (of 210,000 years) counting from 1 million years ago (which began 580,000 years ago), or the subsequent ‘subrace’, if we follow Dick in excluding the first because it was still heavily Atlantean.21
HPB sometimes makes it sound like we have already passed the midpoint of our fifth root-race. She says, for example: we have ‘passed the middle point of the Fifth Race’,22 and ‘we are in the 5th race and have already passed the turning or axial point of our “sub-race cycle” ’.23 Here, ‘race’ needs to be interpreted as the fifth ‘subrace’ (i.e. ‘family race’) in the sense explained above, i.e. the fifth ‘subrace’ of the fifth root-race since it became a race sui generis. And when she says ‘we are two-thirds through the 5th Root-Race’,24 this too needs to be seen as a reference to the fifth ‘subrace’ counting from 1 million years ago – it began 160,000 years ago and will end in 50,000 years, i.e. one third of its lifespan remains.
Thus, in the scheme represented by the above quotations from HPB, the time when the fifth root-race became a distinct racial stock is apparently taken as the beginning of a new main subrace, and on that basis we would be in the fifth family race of it. We will see below that this is certainly not the esoteric way of dividing up the fifth root-race. Bear in mind that we are said to be approaching the midpoint of the fifth root-race, which falls in the middle of the fourth national race of the fourth family race of the fourth subrace. So if we are in the fourth subrace, we cannot be in the fifth family race.
Notes to section 2
1. SOP 35-9; FEP 294-5. GdeP says that ‘stock-race’ or ‘body-race’ would be a better term than ‘root-race’, which ought to refer to the first primary subrace (sometimes called a ‘secondary’ subrace!), from which all the subsequent primary subraces originate (FEP 281, 294-5, 523-4; SOP 38; ET 1045fn).
2. ‘... one of the commonest “blinds” that a teacher is obligated to make when writing of esoteric matters in a public work is using the same word in varying senses’ (FEP 281).
3. ‘... the term Root-Race applies to one of the seven great Races, sub-Race to one of its great Branches, and Family-Race to one of the sub-divisions, which include nations and large tribes’ (SD 2:198fn). ‘Each Root-Race has seven sub-races. Each sub-race has, in its turn, seven ramifications, which may be called Branch or “Family” races’ (SD 2:434).
4. E.g. SOP 35, 702; FSO 163.
5. FEP 280, 282, 293; SOP 41.
6. SD 2:433.
7. SD 1:610. The following also indicates that we are in the fourth subrace: ‘... each Round being composed of the Yugas of the seven periods [root-races] of Humanity; four of which are now passed in our life cycle, the middle point of the 5th being nearly reached’ (SD 1:xliii). The masters say the same thing: ‘We men of the fourth round are already reaching the latter half of the fifth race of our fourth round humanity ...’ (ML2 95 / MLC 185).
8. FEP 281; SOP 485.
9. ‘The little Semitic tribe [is] one of the smallest branchlets from the commingling of the 4th and 5th sub-races (the Mongolo-Turanian and the Indo-European ...) ...’ (SD 1:319). ‘History – or what is called history – does not go further back than the fantastic origins of our fifth sub-race, a “few thousands” of years’ (SD 2:351). ‘... our Race has reached its Fifth Sub-race ...’ (SD 2:471fn). ‘[The Americans are] the germs of the Sixth sub-race, and in some few hundred years more, will become most decidedly the pioneers of that race which must succeed to the present European or fifth sub-race, in all its new characteristics ...’ (SD 2:444-5). ‘... the sense of taste is now fully developed in our fifth Sub-race of the fifth Root-race’ (LBS 258).
10. SD 2:435.
11. Echoes 3:19; FEP 351-2; SOP 21, 639, 671; MiE 113fn; HPBM 166. ‘... most of the later islander Atlanteans perished in the interval between 850,000 and 700,000 years ago, and ... the Aryans were 200,000 years old when the first great “island” or continent was submerged ...’ (SD 2:395). ‘... the fifth race headed by the Aryans began its evolution ... nearer one million than 900,000 years ago’ (BCW 5:223). The fifth root-race evolved in Asia a million years ago (ML2 150, MLC 309), more than one million years ago (ML2 121, MLC 161).
12. The Pliocene portions of the once great Atlantis began gradually sinking 900,000 years ago, at the time of the first appearance of the Aryan race, the main continent having perished in Miocene times (SD 2:395). ‘... our [5th race] Humanity ... appeared toward the very end of the “Treta-Yuga” ’ (BCW 13:356), i.e. about 869,100 years ago. ‘The very commencement of the [fifth root-race] witnesses, during the Dvapara Yuga, the destruction of the accursed sorcerers ... [I]t is just 869,000 [years] since that destruction took place’ (SD 2:147). Nearly two-thirds of a million years/700,000 years have elapsed since the birth of the Aryan races in Central Asia (SD 2:425).
13. Other references: ‘... the weal and woe of nations is intimately connected with the beginning and close of this sidereal cycle’ (SD 2:330). ‘Climates will, and have already begun, to change, each tropical year after the other dropping one sub-race, but only to beget another higher race on the ascending cycle ...’ (SD 2:446).
14. SD 2:330fn; BCW 14:360; see ‘Poleshifts’, part 1, section 3.
15. SD 2:314fn; see ‘Geochronology’, section 3.
16. SD 2:433.
17. SD 2:750.
18. F.J. Dick, ‘Restoration of Stonehenge’, The Theosophical Path, Feb 1921, pp. 134-8.
19. SD 2:750.
20. SD 2:753.
21. F.J. Dick, ‘Studies in symbolism – II’, The Theosophical Path, July 1914, pp. 26-33.
22. SD 2:185.
23. BCW 7:68.
24. BCW 13:68.
3. Precessional cycle
HPB writes:
‘The MIGHTY ONES perform their great works, and leave behind them everlasting monuments to commemorate their visit, every time they penetrate within our mayavic veil (atmosphere),’ says a Commentary. Thus we are taught that the great Pyramids were built under their direct supervision, ‘when Dhruva (the then Pole-star) was at his lowest culmination, and the Krittika (Pleiades) looked over his head (were on the same meridian but above) to watch the work of the giants.’1
She adds that the first pyramids were built at the beginning of a precessional cycle, and that the polestar in question is Alpha Polaris (our present polestar).
Fred Dick interpreted this obscure passage to mean that the first pyramids were built when Polaris, the polestar at the time the Commentary was written, was furthest from the actual pole at the time the Pyramid was built, and was on the same meridian both with the latter and Alcyone (the chief star of the Pleiades), the latter being higher than the pole. He calculated that the last time such an event occurred was 86,960 years prior to 2000,2 during the Age of Cancer (the Crab).3 Dick’s calculation has been verified,4 and it matches HPB’s statement that ‘the Egyptians have on their Zodiacs irrefutable proofs of records having embraced more than three-and-a-half sidereal years [precessional cycles] – or about 87,000 years’.5
86,960 years ago, the vernal equinox was at 6.4° Cancer, and the summer solstice was at 6.4° Libra.6 In this connection, it is interesting to consider the following. At the start of the kali-yuga in 3102 BC, the first point of the Hindu zodiac was 54° west of the equinox, which approximately coincided with Aldebaran, the Eye of Taurus (the Bull).7 This means that the first point of the Hindu zodiac lay in the 6th degree of (the sign) Aquarius.8 In quoting J.-S. Bailly, HPB twice writes ‘Libra’ instead of ‘Aquarius’ – an allusion, perhaps, to the fact that recent (racial) precessional cycles have begun and ended when the summer solstice was at 6.4° Libra.
If a precessional cycle began about 86,960 years ago, then the present precessional cycle (the fourth since then) began about 9200 years ago. This matches GdeP’s statement that the fourth (European) national race began about 9000 years ago (distinct from the preceding national race), and has another 16,000 years to live, before a series of cataclysms cause the submergence of many parts of Europe and usher in the next cycle of civilization.9 HPB says that ‘our civilized races’ have ‘a reprieve of about 16,000 years’ before the next major cataclysm.10 This means that our present Caucasian family race began 86,960 years ago, the date marking the beginning of the precessional cycle in which the great pyramids were built.
GdeP describes the future of the European national race as follows:
[It] has been steadily rising since the downfall of the Roman Empire, and will continue to do so, with various smaller shocks and falls and risings again, for some six or seven or possibly eight thousand years more. And then there will be a rapid descent until its kali yuga is reached, a small kali yuga, when there will be a great European catastrophe of nature. This will be some sixteen to eighteen thousand years from now. This period will see the submersion of the British Isles. Most of France will be under water, also Holland, some of Spain, a good deal of Italy, and other places. Of course, all this won’t take place in a night, for there will be premonitory signs, such as slow sinkings of the coast, great earthquakes, etc.11
Notes to section 3
1. SD 1:434-5.
2. F.J. Dick, ‘Ancient astronomy in Egypt, and its significance’, The
Theosophical Path, March 1916, pp. 287-303.
Dick: ‘The meaning [of the passage] is a little obscure, as giants are also mentioned, and
it may be suspected that we have here a reference to Atlantean times. Nevertheless it is not
improbable, having regard to Egyptian procedure in these matters, that something corresponding
was done there, and at a corresponding time. Now we find the latest prior time at which Alcyone and α Polaris were on the same meridian, the celestial pole being at the same time at nearly its
furthest from α Polaris, was when the summer solstice occurred in the eighth degree of Libra,
86,860 years prior to 1898. The pole would then be near to the spear-head of Boötes, Alcyone
being higher in the south, at Gizeh, than the pole in the north’ (p. 299).
3. The Crab is displayed very prominently in the two zodiacs in the Egyptian Temple of Dendera, in which it appears a total of three times (see ‘Poleshifts’, part 5, appendix 5). HPB says several times that the Great Pyramid and the Egyptian zodiac are about three precessional cycles old (SD 2:374fn, 432, 436, 750; BCW 11:7). The first settlers arrived in Egypt some 400,000 years ago (SD 2:750). GdeP says that the great pyramids were built following a second migration to Egypt some 80 to 100 thousand years ago (SOP 538-44; but see SOP 135). See ‘The Great Pyramid’.
4. Assuming an average rate of precession of 50"/year and an average change in the axial
tilt of 4°/25,920 years, and taking account of transverse and radial proper motion, we find that
86,960 years prior to 2000:
- the polestar was Zeta Coronae Borealis;
- Alpha Ursae Minoris (Polaris) was at right ascension (α) = 292°, declination (δ) =
+36°, i.e. nearly above the Great Pyramid when it crossed the meridian, since the Pyramid is at
latitude 29°58'51" N;
- Alcyone was at α = 295°, δ = -29°, i.e. virtually on the same meridian as Polaris,
and about 31° above the southern horizon.
5. SD 2:332.
6. 6.4° Cancer is the result obtained if we take 1898 as the beginning of the Aquarian Age
(BCW 8:174fn; FEP 76), which in terms of the actual constellations it was
not, and assume that all constellations are 30° wide (which they are not), and that
the average rate of precession is 1° in 72 years (see ‘Poleshifts’, part
1, section 1, and part 5, appendix 1). If Alcyone is taken as 0° Taurus (as Fred Dick suggested),
the equinox would have been at 7.8° Cancer (i.e. in the 8th degree).
Note that when the vernal equinox is aligned with the sun and the first point of the constellation
Aries as viewed from the earth, it is aligned with the earth and the first point of the constellation Libra as
viewed from the sun (assuming an equal division of the zodiac into 12 constellations).
7. See Appendix 2.
8. SD 1:661, 663; see Boris de Zirkoff’s edition (Collected Writings series).
9. GdeP says that the European national race has completed about 9000 years of its 25,920 year cycle and still has another 16,000 years to grow old in (SOP 36, 38); that it will be overtaken by a cataclysm which will reach its maximum in 16,000 or more years (SOP 485-6); and that the European racial cataclysm will occur in 15-18,000 years (SOP 703), in 16-18,000 years (FSO 164), or in 16-20,000 years in the latter part of a precessional cycle (FEP 280, 282; OG 143). He adds that this will be ‘the racial cataclysm ... which will cut our own fifth root-race in two ... because we are nearing the middle point of the fourth subrace of this fifth root-race’ (OG 143). However, he presumably means that it will be the first/next in a long series of cataclysms in the kali-yuga, because we still have about 185,000 years to go before reaching the midpoint of our fifth root-race (see next section).
10. SD 2:331. HPB implies that the axis has to move another 2½° before the end of
the present precessional cycle (‘sidereal year’). Since she says that the axis moves
about 4° in each precessional cycle, this
corresponds to 16,200 years, taking a precessional cycle to be 25,920 years. If this is a reference to our present national race (which lasts for a
precessional cycle), then it must have begun over 9000 years ago.
W.Q. Judge says that the last ‘sidereal year’ of 25,868 years ended about 9868
years ago (= 25,868 - 16,000) (Ocean 136).
11. FSO 163-4, SOP 702-3.
4. Fifth root-race
As explained in the previous two sections, the European nations are the fourth national race of the Caucasian family race of the fourth main subrace of the fifth root-race. The fourth national race originated about 9200 years ago. How can we determine which of the seven family races we are in? Since we have not yet reached the midpoint of the fifth root-race, and since its midpoint must fall within the kali-yuga,1 the options are limited. (The kali-yuga began in 3102 BC, will reach its midpoint in 212,899 AD, and will end in 428,899 AD.)
If we were in the fourth national race of the fourth family race, the midpoint of our root-race would be reached in: 25920/2 - 9200 = 3760 years’ time (from 2000). It does not seem likely that the midpoint of our root-race would occur so early in the kali-yuga. We certainly can’t be in the fifth national race of the fourth family race, since that would mean that the midpoint of our root-race was reached about 22,160 years ago – i.e. before the start of the kali-yuga!
If we are in the fourth national race of the third family race, the midpoint of our root-race will be reached in: (25920 - 9200) + (3 x 25920) + (7/2 x 25920) = 185,200 years’ time, i.e. 27,699 years before the middle of the kali-yuga.
If we were in the fourth national race of the second family race, the midpoint of our root-race would be reached 181,440 years later than the above date (= 7 national races of 25,920 years each), i.e. in 366,640 years’ time. The first family race is ruled out since this would place the midpoint of our root-race outside the kali-yuga.
The Secret Doctrine provides a piece of information which can be used to determine which family race we are in and which also confirms that we are in the fourth national race rather than the fifth, as GdeP says. HPB quotes a Commentary to the effect that Lemuria sank ‘twice eighty-two cyclic years ago’, and adds: ‘Now a cyclic year is what we call a sidereal year, and is founded on the precession of the equinoxes, or 25,868 years each, and this is equal, therefore, in all to 4,242,352 years.’2
To interpret this, we need to remember that the root-races – and continents – overlap in time. The ‘continent’ associated with each root-race refers to the entire land area of the globe during the period in question. Much of Lemuria sank in the Late Cretaceous, over 8 million years ago. Most of Atlantis – which included land areas that had also existed in the Lemurian age – had sunk by the end of the Miocene. The latter cataclysms marked the very end of the third root-race, the midpoint of the fourth root-race, and the true birth of our fifth root-race.
In other words, 164 precessional cycles have elapsed since the start of the fifth root-race. The
rest is a question of simple arithmetic, since one precessional cycle equals one national race, seven
national races equal one family race, and seven family races (49 precessional cycles) equal one
subrace:
164 = 49 + 49 + 49 + 7 + 7 + 3.
In other words, we are in the fourth national race of the third family race of the fourth
subrace of the fifth root-race. This indicates that GdeP and HPB drew their teachings from the
same source, even though their presentations differed in certain respects; as in many other areas,
what GdeP gives out is generally less veiled than what HPB gave out.
Taking 25,920 years as the average length of a precessional cycle/national race yields the following table of dates for the subdivisions of the fifth root-race over the last 164 precessional cycles up to the year 2000 of the present 165th precessional cycle since the start of the 5th root-race / mid-4th root-race / end of the 3rd root-race, 4.26 million years ago. The figures are of course of purely indicative value.
| Subrace (49 prec. cycles) began (years BP) |
Family race (7 prec. cycles) began (years BP) |
National race (1 prec. cycle) began (years BP) |
|||
| 1 | 4,260,080 |
||||
| 2 | 2,990,000 |
||||
| 3 | 1,719,920 |
1 | 1,719,920 |
||
| 2 | 1,538,480 |
||||
| 3 | 1,357,040 |
||||
| 4 | 1,175,600 |
||||
| 5 | 994,160 |
||||
| 6 | 812,720 |
||||
| 7 | 631,280 |
||||
| 4 | 449,840 |
1 | 449,840 |
||
| 2 | 268,400 |
||||
| 3 | 86,960 |
1 | 86,960 |
||
| 2 | 61,040 |
||||
| 3 | 35,120 |
||||
| 4 | 9,200 |
||||
We have seen in section 2 that when HPB says that we are in the fifth ‘subrace’, she is generally referring to the fifth family race since the fifth root-race became a race apart. GdeP’s explanation, however, is that HPB is referring to a sub-sub-subracelet.3 He says that we are nearing the end of the fifth sub-sub-subracelet (tribal race) of the fourth national race, which still has a few hundred years to live.4
Since the discovery of America [1492], we have been on the upward rise of a small minor cycle within the fourth sub-race; and this accounts for the great development in brain-mind intellectuality and for the flowering of material energies ... To speak more accurately, we are at the present time actually passing through a small fifth subordinate race, forming part of a family-race, which in its turn is part of the fourth sub-race, which is the lowest great sub-race of the fifth root-race.5
As regards the emergence of the sixth root-race, HPB writes:
... the Americans have become in only three centuries a ‘primary race,’ pro tem., before becoming a race apart, and strongly separated from all other now existing races. They are, in short, the germs of the Sixth sub-race, and in some few hundred years more, will become most decidedly the pioneers of that race which must succeed to the present European or fifth sub-race, in all its new characteristics. After that, in about 25,000 years, they will launch into preparations for the seventh sub-race; until, in consequence of cataclysms – the first series of those which must one day destroy Europe, and still alter the whole Aryan race (and thus affect both Americas), as also most of the lands directly connected with the confines of our continent and isles – the Sixth Root-Race will have appeared on the stage of our Round. ...
This process of preparation for the Sixth great Race must last throughout the whole sixth and seventh sub-races ...6
GdeP says that when HPB speaks of the ‘germs of the sixth subrace’, she is referring to the sixth national race, which, like the fifth national race, will be born in the USA, or in the Americas in general.7 The sixth national race will not appear for several tens of thousands of years, and GdeP dismisses Annie Besant’s assertion that it will appear in California in just 750 years.8
Clearly, HPB’s remarks should not be misinterpreted to mean that the sixth root-race will appear in 25,000 years. A vast period will elapse between the sixth national race and the definite emergence of the sixth root-race.9 The seeds of the sixth root-race will appear largely in the Americas, and will become fairly numerous only towards the end of our kali-yuga in several hundred thousand years.
... the new sixth root-race is already around us in millions of scattered individuals, beginning feebly to differentiate into the sixth root-race qualities; and in some three hundred thousand years from now, while we Aryans are ending our kali-yuga, the sixth root-race will be said to be definitely born as the sixth root-race, but will remain Aryanesque for millions of years yet, until our own Aryan race is represented only by degenerate remnants; at which time the new sixth root-race will be becoming typically a race sui generis itself.10
GdeP says that the seeds of the sixth root-race are being sown all over the world, but are being most carefully watched and guided in the Americas, especially North America. The first subrace of the sixth root-race will be born all along the Pacific coast of the Americas, and will have its home in North America.11
Notes to section 4
1. SOP 465.
2. SD 1:439fn.
3. This may be a blind. The context of HPB’s statements about us being in the fifth subrace tends to show that she is referring to a racial division on a far larger scale than a sub-sub-sub-subrace (i.e. a tribal race).
4. SOP 39.
5. SOP 485. Taking the length of a tribal race and tribal generation as 1/7th and 1/49th of 25,920 years respectively, and assuming that our national race began 9200 years ago, we would now be in the middle of the fourth tribal generation of the third tribal race, of which about 1790 years would have elapsed; in reality, things are undoubtedly not as linear and simplistic as this, as the subdivisions of a root-race overlap, just as do the root-races (FEP 296).
6. SD 2:444-5; also BCW 13:173.
7. SOP 39. ‘Sixth subrace’ could also refer to the sixth family race since the fifth root-race became a race sui generis.
8. Dia 2:161-2.
9. FEP 282.
10. SOP 639-40; FSO 165.
11. Dia 2:216-7.
5. Age of the earth
In Hindu philosophy, a day of Brahma or planetary manvantara – the lifespan of one embodiment of a planetary chain – lasts 4.32 billion years, and is followed by a night of Brahma of the same length, after which the planet reembodies. A day of Brahma consists of 14 manvantaras of 306,720,000 years each, framed by 15 sandhis (a ‘dawn’ or ‘twilight’) of 1,728,000 years each. Each manvantara of 306,720,000 years consists of 71 maha-yugas (also known as divya-yugas or chatur-yugas) of 4,320,000 years. The length of a manvantara is sometimes given as 308,448,000 years (i.e. 306,720,000 years plus a dawn and twilight, each of 864,000 years). In theosophy, a round consists of two manvantaras in the above sense, and lasts a total of 616,896,000 years.1
According to the Surya-Siddhanta, we are in the 28th maha-yuga of the 7th manvantara.2 Since the kali-yuga began in February 3102 BC, the time that has elapsed since the beginning of the present day of Brahma up to February 2000 is therefore:
6 manvantaras (1,840,320,000) + 7 sandhis (12,096,000) + 27 maha-yugas (116,640,000) + 1 krita-yuga (1,728,000) + 1 treta-yuga (1,296,000) + 1 dvapara-yuga (864,000) + the time from the beginning of kali-yuga (3102 + 2000 - 1)3 = 1,972,949,101 years.4
This is 187 million years less than half the allotted lifespan of the earth (half of 4.32 billion is 2.16 billion). It is possible that this exoteric figure is too low, as our own globe has already begun the ascending arc of etherealization.5 Since there are two manvantaras (in the above sense) to each round, the six completed manvantaras and seven sandhis – a total of 1,852,416,000 years – correspond to the first three rounds. The remainder – 120,533,101 years – is the period that has elapsed during the current fourth round. But according to the geochronology given in the SD, this takes us back only as far as the Devonian, whereas the fourth round began in the late Precambrian, some 320 million years ago.6
A reference to the figure of 320 million years is contained in a quotation from a Commentary, which states that during the present ‘kalpa’ (here interpreted to mean the fourth round), geological convulsions continued uninterruptedly until the earth’s 20th crore of years, after which they took place only at long intervals, with the last one occurring nearly 12 crores of years ago (1 crore = 10 million).7 Adding these figures together gives a total of up to 320 million years. It is interesting that the figure of 120 million years (12 crores) is about the same as the period of nearly 28 full maha-yugas given in the above calculation. As said, this date takes us back to the late Devonian, and it covers most of the first root-race, which is variously said to have appeared in the Silurian/Devonian/Carboniferous.8 Nevertheless, it does not cover the entire period since the beginning of the fourth round.
If we use the figure of 320 million years instead of 120.5 million years for the duration of the fourth round to date, the age of the earth works out at 2,172,416,000 years, or slightly more than half its total lifespan. A further problem with the above calculation is that each round is assumed to be the same length. As shown in section 8, this is not the case.
The figure of 120.5 million years seems to be a blind in so far as it does not cover the entire period since the start of the fourth round. There is a parallel here with the different usages of ‘Vaivasvata manvantara’. A round consists of two manvantaras, each of them associated with a manu or dhyani-chohan.9 Vaivasvata is the root-manu of the first (‘preseptenary’) manvantara of the fourth round, and Savarna is the manu of the second (‘postseptenary’) manvantara. But Vaivasvata manvantara often refers purely to the ‘human period’ of our fourth round. This could mean the period since the beginning of the first root-race, but more commonly it refers to the period since the latter half of the third root-race, after humans had become almost physical, had separated into distinct sexes, and had developed an awakened, selfconscious mind.10 The latter period covers 18,618,841 years (up to 2000).11
After saying that Vaivasvata is the seventh manu because our fourth round is in its preseptenary manvantara, HPB adds:
The close of its middle racial point occurred during the Fourth Root Race, when man and all nature reached their lowest state of gross matter. From that time, i.e., from the end of the three and a half races, humanity and nature entered on the ascending arc of their racial cycle.12
This implies that the preseptenary manvantara has already finished. GdeP confirms this:
... Vaivasvata-manu has ended. But as this is a little point of very private teaching, H.P.B. merely says our progenitor was Vaivasvata, the 7th manu. We are now beginning the next manvantara leading us up to what will be the seeds for the future round, the fifth round, and that seed manu’s name is Savarna ... So we are actually in the beginning of Savarna, the 8th manu’s beginning.13
When asked how the 71 to 72 maha-yugas of a manvantara, as referred to by HPB, could be reconciled with the 27 to 28 maha-yugas that are sometimes said to have elapsed since the start of the fourth round, GdeP replied:
The 27 or 28 maha-yugas refers to the Vaivasvata manu in so far as it concerns globe D only. ... In one manvantara of 306,720,000 years there are 71 maha-yugas. This manvantara of Vaivasvata began on globe A in this round, then finished there and passed to globe B; finished there and passed on to globe C; and reached its end at the middle point of the fourth root-race on our globe D, making therefore 71 maha-yugas.14
However, he is clearly using ‘Vaivasvata manu’ here to refer to the period since the approximate beginning of the human life-wave on globe D, i.e. the first root-race. There is no doubt that mineral activity in the fourth round goes back up to 320 million years, and elemental activity is said to go back even further.15
Nevertheless, 320 million years appears to be just be a general, rounded figure. Indeed, it is sometimes given as the time that has passed since the beginning of the fourth round on globe A, and sometimes as the time that has passed since the beginning of the fourth round on globe D.16 At one point GdeP says that sedimentation on globe D began 300 to 320 million years ago.17 He also says that nearly two maha-yugas, or about 9 million years, have passed since the middle of the fourth root-race, and that if we add this to 306,720,000 years (bringing the total number of yugas since the start of the fourth round to nearly 73), ‘you come very close to the 319,000,000 or 320,000,000 years as estimated by H.P.B.’18
Elsewhere he says that the fourth round began 308+ million years prior to the middle of the fourth root-race.19 Adding 8,640,000 years to 308,448,000 years gives 317,088,000 years. However although 9 million years is half of the approx. 18 million years that have elapsed since the middle of the third root-race, and the fourth root-race’s first beginnings, the midpoint of the fourth subrace of the fourth root-race – and the lowest, most material point of the fourth round – was reached about 4½ million years ago.
If we use the figure of 308,448,000 years for half a round, and assume that the midpoint of the 4th root-race marked the middle of the fourth round, and that 4,260,080 years have elapsed since then (to 2000), the fourth round on our globe has lasted 312,708,080 years. This would put the age of the earth at 2,165,124,080 years, or some 5 million years more than half its total lifespan.
Notes to section 5
1. SD 2:68-70; SOP 160-1; FSO 159-62.
2. E. Burgess and W.D. Whitney, Surya-Siddhanta (1860), Wizards Bookshelf, n.d.,
1:22-23, pp. 155-6; Chaitanya-Charitamrita: see Richard L. Thompson, Vedic
Cosmography and Astronomy, Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1989, p. 19; Isis 1:32; BCW
14:247.
‘The Surya-Siddhanta states in its picturesque and metaphoric way, that it
was dictated by the Sun himself, through a projected solar representative, to the great Sage
Asuramaya, ... just at the end of the satya-age of our present maha-yuga [i.e. over 2,165,100 years
ago] ... Asuramaya, the Atlantean astronomer and scientist, could with almost equal right be
considered as appertaining to the first beginnings of the Aryan race’ (SOP 669-70; FSO 654-5). The
present version is commonly believed to have been edited after about 400 AD.
For evidence of the Surya-Siddhanta’s advanced scientific knowledge, see:
Fred J. Dick, The Theosophical Path, July 1911, pp. 64-8, and March 1916, pp. 287-303;
Richard L. Thompson, Mysteries of the Sacred Universe, Govardhan Hill Publishing,
2000, pp. 285-94; Richard Thompson, ‘Planetary diameters in the Surya-Siddhanta’, Journal of Scientific Exploration, vol. 11, no. 2, 1997, pp. 193-200; Vedic Cosmography and Astronomy, pp. 10-15; Dwight William
Johnson, ‘Exegesis of Hindu cosmological time cycles’,
www.aaronsrod.com/time-cycles.
3. The date of 3102 BC for the start of the kali-yuga is a chronological date rather than an astronomical date; in chronological dating there is no year zero between 1 BC and 1 AD, whereas in astronomical dating there is. See ‘Geochronology’, section 4.
4. Multiplying the length of a manvantara (306,720,000 + 1,728,000 = 308,448,000 years) by 14 leaves us one satya-yuga short of 4.32 billion years. According to the Surya-Siddhanta (1:19), this extra sandhi has to be added at the start of the planetary manvantara or day of Brahma, as is done in the above calculation. This would put the length of 7 manvantaras (3.5 rounds) at 2,160,864,000 years, which is one dvapara-yuga more than half a day of Brahma. It may be that the extra satya-yuga needed to make up a day of Brahma should really be distributed more evenly over the planetary manvantara, and that the calculation given above is not strictly accurate (even assuming that the length of a day of Brahma is correctly given – which HPB assures us it is not!). If we divide 4.32 billion by 7 we get 617,142,857.14 – but this can obviously not be built up neatly out of the yugas!
5. SD 2:68fn, 250, 308fn; FEP 112; ET 325-7, 453-4, 760.
6. SD 2:710, 715fn; ET 323; SOP 288, 422; Dia 3:181-2.
7. SD 2:312. The 20th crore of years means greater than 19 crores and less than or equal to 20 crores. So the total number of years being referred to is between 310 and 320 million.
8. See ‘Root-race chronology’.
9. ‘... a Manu-antaric period means, as the term implies, the time between the appearance of two Manus or Dhyan Chohans’ (SD 2:308-9). ‘... Manu is the synthesis of the Manasa, and he is a single consciousness in the same sense that while all the different cells of which the human body is composed are different and varying consciousnesses, there is still a unit of consciousness which is the man. ... But Manu is not really an individuality, it is the whole of mankind. You may say that Manu is a generic name for the Pitris, the progenitors of mankind’ (BCW 10:364). ‘There is a root-manu at the beginning of every evolutionary period, whether it be of a planet, a planetary chain, or a race of mankind. ... Applied to human beings it means the originators of a human race’ (Dia 2:475).
10. SD 2:72, 148-9 , 250-1, 307-8; ET 324. See also SD 2:146-7.
11. SD 2:69, 1:150fn.
12. SD 2:308fn.
13. SOP 359-60.
14. SOP 422.
15. SD 2:715fn; ET 323. This contradicts Hans Malmstedt’s assertion that the Brahmanical figure of 1,972,949,101 years (which assumes that the fourth round began less than 28 maha-yugas ago) refers to the age of our globe D, whereas the first round on globe A started hundreds of millions of years earlier (‘Our position in time on globe D’, The Theosophical Path, Oct 1933, pp. 226-35). The time that elapsed between the beginning of the fourth round on globes A and D has not been specified but must be far less than hundreds of millions of years.
16. SD 2:710, 715fn; ET 323; SOP 288, 422; FSO 161; see ‘Geochronology’, section 1.
17. Dia 3:181-2. ‘[I]t has taken some 320,000,000 years, in round numbers, ... since the first geological sedimentary deposits were made on our globe Earth since the beginning of this fourth round ...’ (EST 4:76).
18. SOP 422.
19. SOP 161. Referring to HPB’s statement that sedimentation, or evolutionary work, in the fourth round began some 320 million years go, GdeP comments: ‘Now as a round is 308,000,000, how about the difference between 308 and 320? There are some 12 or more million years to go. Just think these things out. They are all keys’ (SOP 360).
6. Twelve rounds and races
The teachings given out by HPB highlight the number 7: e.g. 7 cosmic and human principles, 7 root-races, subraces etc., 7 rounds, 7 globes, 7 sacred planets.1 In elucidating and expanding upon HPB’s teachings, GdeP largely shifted the emphasis to the number 12 (or sometimes 10).
GdeP says that there are three elemental rounds before the seven ‘manifest’ rounds and two rounds after them. The elemental rounds take place on ‘the three archetypal planes above the seven’.
This period is not yet really ethereal manifestation: it is the first descent of the arupa (or bodiless) beings of spiritual nature into subspiritual manifestation; but when the third or lowest of the three archetypal planes has been traversed, by that time the life-wave or life-essence has consolidated sufficiently in ethereal matter to form an airy shape or ethereal globe. This globe thence starts on the manvantaric cycle down into matter, a cycle which proceeds in seven stages, actually seven, and upon and in seven globes ...2
... before the first of what are called by H.P.B. the seven rounds, there are three elementary rounds. ... They are the rounds in which the elemental activities needed for the beginnings of the formation of the globes take place. This makes ten rounds. Then counting after this way, there are two rounds after the ten, making the twelve or closing out rounds before the chain dies; as the Moon had died. Thus there are actually twelve rounds. The main or the most important to us at present are the seven manifest rounds, as we may call them ...3
HPB may be hinting at the two rounds following the seven when she writes:
As the seven months old unborn baby, though quite ready, yet needs two months more in which to acquire strength and consolidate; so man, having perfected his evolution during seven Rounds, remains two periods more in the womb of mother-Nature before he is born, or rather reborn a Dhyani ...4
GdeP says: ‘we shall become dhyan-chohans when this chain reaches the end of the 7th round, or 12th, the concluding round’.5
These quotations seem to imply that the five additional rounds are part of the planetary manvantara, and do not refer to processes taking place during the planetary rest period or pralaya (lit. ‘dissolution’). However, if we define a planetary manvantara as the period covered by the seven rounds, then the five additional rounds would have to encompass at least part of what is normally regarded as the ‘pralaya’. We should bear in mind that it is only the lower element-principles of each globe of a planetary chain that disintegrate and disperse during the pralaya.6
HPB draws an analogy between the after-death processes in the case of a planet and those that apply to each human individual:
The latter lives through his life-cycle, and dies. His ‘higher principles,’ corresponding in the development of a planetary chain to the cycling Monads, pass into Devachan, which corresponds to the ‘Nirvana’ and states of rest intervening between two chains. The Man’s lower ‘principles’ are disintegrated in time and are used by Nature again for the formation of new human principles, and the same process takes place in the disintegration and formation of Worlds.7
When a planetary chain is in its last round, each globe, before dying, sends all its life-energies and ‘principles’ into a laya-centre or ‘sleeping centre’, ‘a neutral centre of latent force’.8 Such a laya-centre – ‘the spiritual-psychomagnetic vital essences of any globe of the planetary chain’ – is located outside our solar system. It lies dormant until the time for a new manifestation arrives, when it reawakens to activity and begins to move and wander as a comet until it is eventually drawn back its former home in space.9
GdeP elaborates on this process:
First of all we have the aetheric awakening into life of a laya-center, which, starting to move in its wanderings through space, gradually accretes to itself aetheric and etheric matter and thus slowly enters upon its second stage, the etheric; and when this stage is ended, the laya-center which is now manifesting as an ethereal comet, has just about become a member of the solar system to which its karmic destiny has inevitably drawn it back to imbodiment as a planetary chain-to-be. Once the comet is settled in its orbit around the sun as a highly ethereal globe in the first, or first and second states, of the matter of the physical cosmic plane, the three kingdoms of the elementals in serial order begin their characteristic activities, and so gradually build a luminous and glowing or ‘cloudy’ body, of very slight physical density ... When this stage has been finished the ‘first round’ starts ...10
GdeP says that all planets, moons, stars, comets, and nebulae consist of 12 globes rather than 7.11 There are two possible ways of numbering them in relation to the sevenfold scheme emphasized by HPB:
| (a) | (b) | ||||||
1 |
12 |
||||||
| 2 | 12 | 1 | 11 | ||||
| 3 | 11 | 2 | 10 | ||||
| 4 (1) | 10 (7) | 3 (1) | 9 (7) | ||||
| 5 (2) | 9 (6) | 4 (2) | 8 (6) | ||||
| 6 (3) | 8 (5) | 5 (3) | 7 (5) | ||||
| 7 (4) | 6 (4) |
If we start counting from the topmost globe (diagram a), there are three globes on the arc of descent before the first of the seven manifest globes, and two on the arc of ascent after the last of the manifest seven, just as there are (in one method of counting) three rounds before the manifest seven, and two after. However, while globe D is the middle (and lowest) globe in the sevenfold scheme, there is no middle globe in the twelvefold scheme, since 12 is an even number. D would only be the middle globe if a round both begins and ends on the topmost globe. According to GdeP:
... no round of the seven begins with globe A of the seven and ends with globe G of the seven, according to the exoteric teaching. That is correct as far as it goes. Every round whatsoever begins with the first or topmost globe, runs through all the globes of the descending arc to our Earth or globe D, then ascends through all the globes of the ascending arc until the first is reached again, which we can call the first or the twelfth.12
GdeP refers to ‘seven or ten root-races’ in the human kingdom.13 By analogy, there are presumably 12 root-races – perhaps with three of them coming before the ‘first’ root-race and two after the ‘seventh’. The five extra root-races may be connected with the development of the shishtas.14 GdeP gives the following explanation of the great length of the first root-race:
It was because root-race 1, in the manner in which H.P.B. speaks of it, was not only astral, but as she describes it, really represented the shishtas from the preceding round, the third. This root-race 1, beginning with shishtas, took ages before actually settling down into a root-race, that is, typically a root-race of the new round, no longer merely shishtas. The cause of the awakening and slow evolutionary processes was that the forerunners of the life-wave began coming in millions and millions of years before the first root-race as a race apart so to speak could be said actually to have begun.15
Notes to section 6
1. HPB calls 10 the ‘sacred number’ or ‘perfect number’ (SD 1:98, 360, 362; BCW 12:58-9, 525, 14:112-3fn ; see FEP 88-91). She describes 12 in the same way (SD 1:649, 2:36).
2. FEP 111.
3. Dia 3:441.
4. SD 2:257.
5. Dia 3:169.
6. GdeP points out that the terms manvantara and pralaya are relative:
‘In the case of
man, the incarnation of the spiritual ego is a relative “death” for that ego; and similarly the ending of
the imbodiment in the worlds of matter is a reawakening of the spiritual ego to a wider range of
self-consciousness in and on its own planes and worlds. In identical fashion, and following always
the master key of analogy, what we call manvantara is a death of the cosmic spirit – is, in a
paradoxical sense, a sort of devachan or even a kama-loka of the cosmic spirit or mind; and it is only
when manvantara ends and pralaya begins that these dreams and visions of the cosmic spirit fade
away, and its vast consciousness awakens once more to the full reality of its own sublime
Selfhood’ (FSO 96).
‘So we see that manvantara is a kind of death to the cosmic monad expressing itself
through its beclouding veils of the anima mundi. It is a kind of deprivation, a sinking into the maya of
cosmic dreams; whereas pralaya is really the spirit of the universe fully awake on its own plane,
because all is ingathered into it, and it is freely active in its own ineffably spiritual realms’ (FSO 180).
7. SD 1:173.
8. SD 1:147, 155-6. GdeP says that when a planetary chain goes into pralaya, its monads and life-atoms remain in space as cosmic dust on the physical plane, and as corresponding life-atoms on the astral, psychic, intellectual, quasi-spiritual, spiritual, and divine planes (FEP 592; FSO 122-3). ‘The cosmic dust resulting from the dissolution of a former world rests in a laya-center; while the highest principles of that world or planetary chain are in their paranirvana ...’ (FEP 60). The chain laya-centre contains within itself the globe laya-centres, and when the thrill of life again runs through the laya-centres they begin to differentiate and condense (FSO 136; FEP 551).
9. FSO 136-7.
10. FSO 197. A planet does not reembody as a comet at the very beginning of a new solar manvantara; instead, the planets condense within the solar nebula (‘comet’) from which the sun itself is born (FEP 59-63; ET 193).
11. ET 172; OG 52, 130. KH hints at the existence of more than 7 globes when he calls a round ‘the passage of a monad from globe “A” to globe “Z” (or “G”)’ (ML2 80, MLC 173; FSO 352, EST 7:96fn).
‘... the seven globes of the twelve are for convenience called the manifest globes or the
globes of the rupa worlds, and the five upper globes are called arupa, not because they have no
form, but to us in our present cognitional development they seem formless much in the same way as
a thought is formless to us, and yet we know that thoughts are beings of form and that each thought
imbodies an elemental’ (Dia 3:440).
Our own globe is the lowest of our
own planetary chain, but GdeP describes the highest and lowest globes of a planetary chain as
polar links, junction globes, or transition globes (FEP 599; FSO 186; Dia 2:385).
12. Dia 3:440. ‘A round begins in the highest of the twelve globes and proceeds regularly
from globe to globe around the chain’ (FSO 197). ‘... when the life-waves have
reached the highest globe of our chain, the first round is ended. After the nirvana at the end of the
first round, the second round begins’ (FSO 248). See also FSO 361, 364, 366.
Although 616,896,000 years is often represented as the average length of a round from globe A
to G (SOP 160-1, FSO 160), it must really cover the passage of all the life-waves from the topmost
globe and back to that globe, including all the interglobe nirvanas and also the inter-round nirvana,
which, for the human monads, coincides with the passage through the five upper globes (FSO
363).
13. Dia 3:203. Another hint that there are more than seven races: ‘So in the last root-race of the present fourth round, the one we popularly call the seventh ...’ (EST 4:84).
14. See ‘Shishtas: seeds of life’.
15. SOP 162.
7. Planetary embodiments
A maha-manvantara or universal manvantara – also called a life or age of Brahma – lasts 100 divine years, a divine year being equal to 360 of Brahma’s days and nights. The maha-manvantara therefore comprises 36,000 planetary embodiments, and lasts 36,000 x 8,640,000,000 = 311,040,000,000,000 years. It is followed by a maha-pralaya. A minor solar manvantara comprises not 7 but 12 planetary embodiments, since 7 is not a factor of 36,000 while 12 is; a maha-manvantara consists of 3000 minor solar manvantaras of 12 embodiments each.1
During each embodiment of a planetary chain, the globes (including all the kingdoms that compose and inhabit them) gradually materialize during the first half of the life cycle (the descending arc), and then slowly etherealize and spiritualize during the second half-cycle (the ascending arc).2 By analogy, the same general pattern is followed in a minor solar manvantara.3 In the sevenfold scheme, the globes of a planetary chain successively embody one subplane lower in the second, third, and fourth embodiments, then one subplane higher in each of the last three embodiments.4 After seven embodiments a planetary chain therefore enters a new cosmic plane and a new sun dawns for the next planetary chain manvantara.5
A globe does not actually ‘move’ from subplane to subplane or plane to plane; rather, all the globes of a chain are evolving, i.e. materializing on a descending arc, or etherealizing on an ascending arc. The globes therefore become different subplanes (loka-talas) according to the changes in the rate of vibration of their energy-substances. All other microcosmic and macrocosmic bodies and entities vibrating within the same range of frequencies, and therefore falling within the same range of perception, can be regarded as belonging to the same plane or subplane.
According to ancient Hindu works such as the Surya-Siddhanta, the moon-chain was the 18,000th embodiment of what we now call the earth planetary chain in the present maha-manvantara; it therefore marked the end of the first half of the life of Brahma. The earth-chain is the 18,001st embodiment,6 and each globe is one subplane higher than the corresponding globe of the moon-chain; the moon we see is therefore not the former physical globe D of the moon-chain but the astral shell or kama-rupa of its globe D.7 The previous planetary manvantara is known as the padma (lotus) kalpa, and the present one is known as the varaha (boar) kalpa.8
GdeP says that the lowest point of the maha-manvantaric cycle was reached when the moon-chain reached the middle of its fourth round. We have been cycling down our hierarchy for 50 divine years (over 155 trillion and 520 billion years) to the lowest point of it on the moon, and since then we have begun the slow climb back to the summit of our hierarchy. Instead of the first 18,000 embodiments taking place successively one subplane lower, there are smaller descending and ascending arcs during each minor solar manvantara, with the overall trend being downward.
If the moon marked the lowest point, that would imply that it was the 4th in a series of seven embodiments, since ‘the fourth in any series of planes or principles is always the grossest of the series’.9 The earth-chain must therefore be the 5th embodiment.10 But if the moon was the 18,000th embodiment, that would make it the last (12th) embodiment of the 1500th minor solar manvantara, and the earth-chain would be the first in the next series of twelve embodiments. But this would place both the moon embodiment and the present earth embodiment outside the seven ‘manifest’ embodiments considered in the simplified sevenfold scheme. Moreover, if in each minor solar manvantara, a globe first moves down a subplane with each embodiment on the descending arc and then up a subplane with each embodiment on the ascending arc, that would imply that the moon embodiment (the 12th) would have taken place on one of the highest subplanes and could not have marked the lowest point.
Before examining this problem further, consider the following diagrams, which show a series of five minor solar manvantaras. The numbers 1 to 12 represent the subplane on which any particular one of the 12 globes (e.g. our own globe D) reembodies during 12 successive embodiments, each embodiment taking place one subplane higher or lower than the last.