When the Sky Fell

                  Hyperborea & the Quest

          for Mystical Enlightenment





By JASON JEFFREY

Far north, somewhere near the icy regions of the North Pole, legend speaks of an ancient and mostly forgotten civilisation. Mythical in character, the Hyperborean civilisation is said to have flourished in the northern most region of planet Earth at a time when the area was suitable for human habitation.

According to certain esoteric systems and spiritual traditions, Hyperborea was the terrestrial and celestial beginning of civilisation. The home of original Man. Some theories postulate Hyperborea was the original Garden of Eden, the point where the earthly and heavenly planes meet. And it is said Man transgressed Divine Law in this Golden Age civilisation, the ultimate price being his banishment to the outside world. Man ventured into other regions of Earth, establishing new civilisations, bringing to an end this great and glorious Golden Age.

The Golden Age is central to manifold ancient traditions and myths. Significantly, the Golden Age appears most frequent in the traditions of cultures stretching from India to Northern Europe — the area directly beneath the Polar regions. Joscelyn Godwin, in Arktos, The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism and Nazi Survival, says:

  The memory or imagination of a Golden Age seems to be a particularity of the cultures that cover the area from India to Northern Europe… But in the ancient Middle East there is an obvious relic of the Golden Age in Genesis, as the Garden of Eden where humanity walked with the gods before the Fall. The Egyptians spoke of past epochs ruled by god-kings. Babylonian mythology… had a scheme of three ages, each lasting while the vernal [Spring] equinox precessed through four signs of the zodiac; the first of these, under the dominion of Anu, as a Golden Age, ended by the Flood. The Iranian Avesta texts tell of the thousand-year Golden Reign of Yima, the first man and the first king, under whose rule cold and heat, old age, death and sickness were unknown.1



The most fully developed theory of this kind, and probably the oldest one, is the Hindu doctrine of the Four Yugas. The four ages in this system are the Krita or Satya Yuga (four units), Treta Yuga (three), Dvapara Yuga (two), and Kali Yuga (one), the whole tenfold period making up one Mayayuga. The Kritayuga corresponds to the Golden Age, the Kali Yuga to the current period of time.

Every description of the Golden Age period relates how the ‘gods’ walked with men in a perfect and harmonious environment balanced between the terrestrial and celestial. Humanity suffered no sickness and no aging in this timeless paradise. After the Fall, man ‘fell’ into Time and suffering, forfeiting the gift of immortality.



Madame Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophical Society, claimed the ‘second root race’ originated in Hyperborea, before the later races of Lemuria and Atlantis. The Russian metaphysician Alexandre Dugin says that it was the home of the “solar people”, connected to what is now northern Russia. “Solar people,” Alexandre Dugin explains, are a “cultural-spiritual type” who are creative, energetic and spiritual. They are the opposite of “lunar people”, a psycho-spiritual type who are materialistic, conservative and wary of change.

The ancient Greeks had a legend of Hyperborea, a land of perpetual sun beyond the “north wind”. Hecataeus (circa 500 BC) says that the holy place of the Hyperboreans, which was built “after the pattern of the spheres”, lay “in the regions beyond the land of the Celts” on “an island in the ocean.” According to popular accounts, the God Apollo’s temple at Delphi was founded by individuals from Hyperborea. The Greek lyric poet Alcaeus (600 BC) sang of the actual or mystical journey of Apollo to the land of the Hyperborea.



O King Apollo, son of great Zeus, whom thy father did furnish forth at thy birth with golden headband and lyre of shell, and giving thee moreover a swan-drawn chariot to drive, would have thee go to Delphi… But nevertheless, once mounted, thou badest thy swans fly to the land of the Hyperboreans.

The wearing of a star-embroidered robe by the King and ‘Ruler of the World’ — the heavenly sphere serving as a symbol of the earthly one — is a custom that can be traced to the Hyperboreans. Embroidered in gold on blue silk were the figures of the sun, moon and stars. Such robes were worn by the kings of Ancient Rome and Julius Ceasar, as well as Augustus and the Roman Emperors.



Earthenware statuettes found in a grave in Yugoslavia show the ‘Hyperborean Apollo’ in a chariot drawn by swans. The god wears, on his neck and breast, yellow figures of the sun and stars; on his head is a rayed crown with a headband that has a zigzag pattern. His robe, which reaches to the ground, is dark blue with yellow designs.

                Collapse of Hyperborea

One of the most popular theories for the collapse of Hyperborea was a physical inclination (catastrophe) of the Earth’s axis. Man’s transgression of Divine Law caused a shift in the metaphysical balance, the effect of which was catastrophic on the Earth plane. Julius Evola, the noted Italian metaphysician, explains that at this point the first cycle of history closed, and that of the second, the Atlantean, began:

The memory of this Arctic seat is the patrimony of the traditions of many people, in the form either of real geographic allusions, or of symbols of its function and original significance, often transferred to a super-historical significance, or else applied to other centres that may be considered as copies of the original one… Above all, one will notice the interplay of the Arctic theme with the Atlantic theme… It is known that the astrophysical phenomenon of the inclination of the earth’s axis causes a change of climate from one epoch to another. Moreover, as tradition tells, this inclination took place at a given moment, and in fact through the alignment of a physical and a metaphysical fact, as if a disorder in nature were reflecting a certain situation of a spiritual order… At any rate, it was only at a certain moment that ice and eternal night descended on the polar region. Then, with the enforced emigration from that seat, the first cycle closed and the second opened, initiating the second great era, the Atlantean Cycle.2



The memory of a Golden Age, although rendered in an archetypal or mythological form, serves a super-historical purpose. This is why the remembrance of the ancient civilisation of Atlantis is sometimes enmeshed with that of Hyperborea. We cannot expect to ‘prove’ the physical existence of these civilisations. All myths are known to have a historical basis. Transmitted primarily by oral tradition, they are wrapped in a catchy and simple tale that ensures their survival and transmittal down through the ages. Myth serves an extremely vital function — a recollection of our beginnings, a knowledge of where we are heading, and what we are supposed to do. It is only now in the Kali Yuga that we have disconnected from tradition, losing the ability to correctly interpret and understand myths with historical kernels of truth.

              Hyperborea Revived

The legend of Hyperborea revived during the 18th and 19th centuries when a flurry of books were published dealing with the idea that civilisation had first appeared not in the Middle East, but somewhere else.

The popular theory of the day postulated that the so-called ‘Aryans’ (Europeans) were superior and more intelligent than Semites (Middle East peoples). Therefore, logically, civilisation could not have originated in the Middle East and Hebrew was probably not the first language.

The Frenchmen of the Enlightenment were in no doubt that “Eden” was situated on higher ground. The Germans similarly, who were looking for their Aufklarung, also sought to be free of a history tied to the Mediterranean and Middle East regions. British and German scholars studied ancient Indian (Vedic) civilisation and leant the Sanskrit language. Many believed Sanskrit the original language of the ‘Aryans’.

With new sources of knowledge from ancient Egypt, Chaldea, China and India, researchers were treading on dangerous ground as far as questioning Man’s origins. Biblical history was still strictly upheld and moving too far from this historical boundary could have you silenced.

Writers such as Jean-Sylvain Bailly (1736-1793), the Rev. Dr. William Warren (1800s), Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856-1929) and H.S. Spencer (1900s), developed out theories, often borrowing from earlier sources, attempting to prove man’s origins in the Polar region.

Tilak’s book Arctic Home (published 1903) begins by stating the well known fact that warm weather remains in the Arctic regions, which shows the climate was far different during the interglacial period. According to Tilak, scientists do concede the existence, in the past, of a warm circumpolar continent, and the circumstances there would not have been nearly unfavourable as imagined.

Tilak was convinced the ancient Indian Vedic texts point unmistakably to a “realm of the gods” where the sun rises and sets once a year, showing that their writers could understand the astronomical conditions at the North Pole.



Tilak, who had a perfect mastery of Vedic language, placed the original Arctic home existing around circa 10,000 BC, just prior to its destruction and the beginning of the last Ice Age.

His book had little impact in the West but was popular in India. When the learned Zoroastrian H.S. Spencer wrote his book The Aryan Ecliptic Cycle (1965), a development of Tilak’s work, he was able to obtain endorsements from Sir S. Radhakrishna, then President of India. As well as from dignitaries of the Theosophical Society in Adyar and the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondichary.

Spencer’s approach commenced not with the Vedic but the Zoroastrian scriptures, going further than Tilak in tracing the progress of the ‘Aryans’ from the North to their new homes, and the schisms that beset them on the way.

Spencer’s ‘Aryans’ made their presence felt after they travelled far and wide. They moulded the religions and cultures of Egypt, Sumeria, Babylon, and of the Semites, hitherto worshippers of feminine lunar deities.

However, the search for a terrestrial ‘Hyperborea’ by many researchers and the movement of an original ‘race’ has been extremely difficult and presumptuous. Proving human habitation possible at the North Pole somewhere between 8000 and 10,000 BC is no mean feat, particularly if you were living in the 18th century. The numerous theories posited offering contradictory or tendentious ‘evidence’ has served only to discredit the whole notion of Hyperborea. The same could be said of theories attempting to prove the existence of the ‘lost continent of Atlantis’. The drive to prove the actuality of a terrestrial Hyperborea has overshadowed its occult and symbolic importance.

                The Spiritual Pole

In the quest to discover the ‘physical’ location of Hyperborea, most writers overlooked the possibility that the mythology served a special symbolic and spiritual purpose. What if the truth behind the legend was esoteric, and not exoteric as some even today still maintain?

Many traditions speak of a supreme spiritual centre or ‘supreme country’. The ‘supreme country’ that does not necessarily lay at a specific earthly point, but exists in a primordial state, unaffected by terrestrial cataclysms.



                 The world's largest megalith in Baalbek, Lebanon

The ‘supreme country’, commonly regarded as ‘polar’ in orientation, symbolically is always represented as being at the ‘Axis of the world’ — and in most cases is referred to as a ‘Sacred Mountain’. Rene Guenon in his book The Lord of the World says:

Almost every tradition has its name for this mountain, such as the Hindu Meru, the Persian Alborj, and the Montsalvat of Western Grail legend. There is also the Arab mountain Qaf and the Greek Olympus, which has in many ways the same significance. This consists of a region that, like the Terrestrial Paradise, has become inaccessible to ordinary humanity, and that is beyond the reach of those cataclysms which upset the human world at the end of certain cyclic periods. This region is the authentic ‘supreme country’ which, according to certain Vedic and Avestan texts, was originally sited towards the North Pole, even in the literal sense of the word. Although it may change its localisation according to the different phases of human history, it still remains polar in a symbolic sense because essentially it represents the fixed axis around which everything revolves.3







The Vedic texts say the ‘supreme country’ is known as Paradesha, also called the ‘Heart of the World’. It is the word from which the Chaldeans formed Pardes, and Westerners Paradise.

There is notably another name for it probably even older than Paradesha. This name is Tula, called by the Greeks Thule. Common to regions from Russia to Central America, Tula represented the primordial state from which spiritual power emanated.

It is known that the Mexican Tula owes its origin to the Toltecs who came, it is said, from Aztlan, the ‘land in the middle of the water’, which is evidently Atlantis. They brought the name Tula from their country of origin and gave it to a centre which consequently must have replaced, to a certain extent, that of the lost continent. On the other hand, the Atlantean Tula must be distinguished from the Hyperborean Tula, which latter represents the first and supreme centre….4

In this case — Tula — representing a centre of spiritual authority — does not remain fixed in a geographical location. Guenon states that the Atlantean cycle, successor to the Hyperborean cycle, is associated with Tula. The Atlantean Tula is an image of the original primordial state situated in a northern or Polar location. As world cycles progress onward, the supreme seat of spiritual power regresses further and further into hiding and obscurity. This, of course, is deliberate and predictable as humanity descends into the end of the age (Kali Yuga), progressively enmeshing itself in the material plane until the reversal of established world order is imposed.



It should be emphasised here that Tula, or the centre of spiritual authority, constitutes the fixed point known symbolically to all traditions as the ‘pole’ or axis around which the world rotates. Metaphysically speaking, the world rotates around this seat of power even if it’s not geographically North or South.

In the Buddhist tradition ‘Chakravarti’ literally means “He who makes the wheel turn”, which is to say the one who, being at the centre of all things, directs all movement without himself participating, or who is, to use Aristotle’s words, the “unmoving mover”.

The turning of the world, the ‘Pole’ and axis, combine to depict a wheel in the Celtic, Chaldean and Hindu traditions. Such is the true significance of the swastika, seen worldwide from the Far East to the Far West, which is intrinsically the ‘sign of the Pole’.

             The Pole and Mystical Enlightenment

It is in medieval Iran that we find extant literature on the Spiritual Pole and the experience of mystical ascent to it. The Iranian Sufis, drawing not only on Islam but on the Mazdean, Manichean, Hermetic, Gnostic and Platonic traditions, blended a sacred knowledge said to be ‘scientific’, mystical and philosophically practical.

Esoterically… the Persian theosophers situated their “Orient” neither to the East, nor to the South, wither they faced in prayer towards the Ka’ba. “The Orient sought by the mystic, the Orient that cannot be located on our maps, is in the direction of the north, beyond the north.” [The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism by Henry Corbin, 1978] About this Pole reigns a perpetual Darkness, says the Recital of Hayy ibn Yaqzan, one of the visionary recitals of Avicenna (Ibn Sina). “Each year the rising sun shines upon it at a fixed time. He who confronts that Darkness and does not hesitate to plunge into to it for fear of difficulties will come to a vast space, boundless and filled with light.” [Ibid] This Darkness, says Corbin, is the ignorance of the natural man. “To pass through it is a terrifying and painful experience, for it ruins and destroys all the patencies and norms on which the natural man lived and depended…” [Ibid] But it must be faced consciously before one can acquire the saving gnosis of the light beyond.

The Darkness around the Pole, annually pierced by the sun’s rays, is at once terrestrial and symbolic. On the one hand, this is the situation at the North Pole, where there are six months of night and six of day. It is characteristic of esoteric tradition that the same image is valid on two or more levels. But as Corbin and Guenon never tired of pointing out, the symbolic level is not a fanciful construct on the basis of hard terrestrial fact: it is quite the other way round. In the present case, the mystical experience of penetrating the Darkness at the Pole is the fundamental reality and the authentic experience of the individual. The fact that the set-up of the material world reflects the celestial geography is what is contingent. In brief, in this teaching as in Platonism, it is the supersensible realm that is real, and the material realm that is a shadow of it.5

The seeker, through deep meditation on spiritual matters, succeeds in entering a world of mystical experience, and makes a pilgrimage to Hyperborea that can not be discovered from maps. Aristeas, the Greek poet, in shamanic rapture, is said to have travelled to Hyperborea while “possessed by Apollo”. Mystical soul-travel to Hyperborea is common in ancient Greek literature.

The journey to this Pole is sometimes illustrated as the ascent of a column of light, extending from the depths of hell to the lucid paradise in the cosmic Nort





As previously mentioned, the Pole is also a Mountain, called Mount Qaf in Islamic tradition, whose ascent, like Dante’s climbing of the Mountain of Purgatory, represents the pilgrims progress through spiritual states.

Guenon, in Lord of the World, explains “the idea evoking the representation under discussion is essentially one of ‘stability’, that is itself a characteristic of the Pole.” The Mountain, referred to as an ‘Island’, “remains immovable amidst the ceaseless agitation of the waves, a disturbance that reflects that of the external world. Accordingly, it is necessary to cross the ‘sea of passions’ in order to reach the ‘Mount of Salvation’, the ‘Sanctuary of Peace’.”

Our search for Hyperborea is our desire to return to Paradesha or Paradise — the primordial spring of Man’s original existence. The importance of knowing the terrestrial location of a lost civilisation at the northern regions is thus overshadowed by its symbolic relevance.

To seek Hyperborea is to quest for spiritual enlightenment. The Mountain, the Island, the immovable Rock, fixed in a Polar orientation, relays a symbolic repres-entation of our search for Ultimate Reality. Its immovability anchors us to this important task.





Footnotes:

1. Arktos, The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism and Nazi Survival by Joscelyn Godwin, p. 16.
2. Quoted in Arktos, The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism and Nazi Survival, p. 58-9, original source Revolt Against the Modern World by Julius Evola, 1951.
3. The Lord of the World by Rene Guenon, p. 50.
4. Ibid, p. 56
5. Arktos, The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism and Nazi Survival by Joscelyn Godwin, p. 167-8.

© Copyright New Dawn Magazine, http://www.newdawnmagazine.com. Permission granted to freely distribute this article for non-commercial purposes if unedited and copied in full, including this notice.

Editorial Reviews

Synopsis
The fascinating truth about Atlantis leads to a chilling conclusion about the environmental catastrophe that destroyed it. Now you can find out how the forces that shattered the first great civilization on Earth can happen again, bringing the end of the world to us all! With an Introduction by Colin Wilson.

The author, Rand Flem-Ath (randflemath@hotmail.com) , July 29, 1999
Rand Flem-Ath gives a brief summary.
The legend of Atlantis was first recorded by the Greek philosopher Plato. He relates how his ancestor Solon, the famous Athenian law-giver, received the legend from one of the most learned of the Egyptian priests. This priest (relying upon ancient sacred records) descibed Atlantis as a high altitude, mountainous island continent in the 'real ocean.' This description makes perfect sense when we view the world's geography from Antarctica. Antarctica is a high altitude, mountainous, island continent in the middle of what oceanographers call the 'World Ocean.' Ancient maps depict the actual shape of parts of Antarctica that are today under ice. One of these maps, Kircher's 1665 map of Atlantis, is an amazingly accurate map of Antarctica without its ice.

The common assumption is that Antarctica has been under ice for millions of years and therefore the idea that people might have once lived on this island continent is absurd. But a little thought on the matter sheds doubt upon this assumption. We know that every place on the earth's surface has a corresponding spot on the opposite side of the globe. The North Pole is on the opposite side of the globe to the South Pole. New Zealand is almost on the opposite side of the globe to England. There is even an island off the south coast of New Zealand called "Antipodes" which is very near to being opposite to London. In each case, the climate is similar - New Zealand is temperate and so is England. We don't find cases where one area is polar and the opposite side of the globe is temperate. Lesser Antarctica (about half the size of the USA) is on the opposite side of the globe to Alaska, Siberia, Canada's Yukon and the former land bridge known as 'Beringa.' Extensive scientific studies by Russian, American and Canadian scholars in various disciplines prove the existence of a wide variety of animals that lived in the far north before 9,600 B.C. These include not only the famous mammoths but also antelope, deer, saber-toothed tigers and lions. To support such a wide range of animals the climate must have been warmer before 9,600 B.C. than it is today. If the Siberia/Alaska/Beringa region could support temperate adapted animals before 9,600 B.C. then it follows then that people and animals could have lived on the opposite side of the planet to this region (Lesser Antarctica).

To explain how the climate changed, how the ice sheets were formed, the sudden rise of agriculture, massive extinctions, the sudden influx of people into America after 9,600 B.C., as well as the ancient maps from the ice age, we use the theory of earth crust displacement as developed by Charles Hapgood. This is the theory that makes the most sense of the violent earthquakes and floods that Plato tells us destroyed Atlantis. We corresponded with Hapgood for the last five years of his life (he died in late 1982) and in his first letter to us (3 August 1977) he responded to a paper we had written for him by saying that it "...was the FIRST truly scientific exploration of my work that has every been done." Having recently read the nearly 200 pages of correspondence between Hapgood and Albert Einstein we understand why Einstein was so enthusiastic about the earth crust displacement theory. On 8 May 1953, after a series of letters had been exchanged, Einstein wrote to Hapgood: "I find your arguments very impressive and have the impression that your hypothesis is correct." Einstein went on to write a foreword to Hapgood's EARTH'S SHIFTING CRUST, re-released this month as PATH OF THE POLE.

We have assembled numerous myths from around the world about an island paradise that was destroyed by a great flood. In the Pacific Northwest, for instance, the native people of Washington state and British Columbia known as the "Okanagan" relate their myth of 'Sumah-tumi-whoo-lah'. This mythical island "in the middle of the ocean" was destroyed by a great flood. The Okanagan people believe that some of their ancestors escaped the sinking island in a boat that eventually landed on a mountain top in present-day Washington state. They arrived from what we call the "Pacific Ocean." In ancient Mexico, "Atzlan" was the mythical island of the Aztecs. Like Sumah-tumi-whoo-lah it was associated with 'whiteness' and was also destroyed in a great flood. Other myths from ancient India, Iraq, Iran and South America tell similar myths. In the Zend-Vesta of ancient Iran, one of the oldest written records in the world, the island paradise of 'Airyana Vaejo' was said to be at the earth's pole and was destroyed by a great blizzard accompanied by a flood. In each of these paradise myths an island paradise is destroyed by a great flood from which a small party of people survive in ships that land on mountain tops.

Even if Plato had never written about Atlantis we would still have the basic story encoded in world mythology and our quest might go under a name other than "Atlantis." The thing that distinguishes Plato's account of Atlantis from the other mythological tales is the matter of fact way in which the story unfolds with natural forces like earthquakes and floods playing the role usually attributed to gods. The 'most learned of the Egyptian priests' gives incredible details about the lost land: its size (larger than 'Libya' and 'Asia' in modern terms this makes Atlantis larger than the United States), its high altitude (Antarctica is the highest continent on our planet) and the fact that it resides in the 'real ocean' a body of water that surrounds the globe.

It is impossible in a short review (under 1000 words) like this to list all the reasons why we believe that Antarctica was Atlantis before the last displacement.

We are perfectly serious in our desire to see our theory tested with an expedition to Antarctica to uncover what yet might remain of a once advanced civilisation that perished WHEN THE SKY FELL.

The author, Rand Flem-Ath , March 2, 1999
Published reviews of When the Sky Fell
"With the help of 31 maps that span the centuries, this scholarly but readable text posits a geographical catastrophe about 9600 B.C. that may explain mysteries from the frozen mastodons of Siberia to the apparent water erosion of the Sphinx." Toronto Sun (26 February 1995)

"...even the most skeptical reader will admit after reading this book it is difficult to deny the existence of a lost continent, Atlantis, buried under the Antarctic ice...condense[s] centuries of Atlantis fact and myth into a landmark work of scholarship." Ottawa Citizen (9 April 1995)

"The Flem-Aths' contribution to Atlantis research is their rediscovery and interpretation to the 1665 Athanasius Kircher map of Atlantis, brought from Egypt by the Romans, which identifies Atlantis as being the present-day continent of Antarctica. The Flem-Aths point out that the map, which corresponds in remarkable detail to the present-day Antarctica, was published almost three centuries before scientists knew the true ice-free shape of the frozen continent. ...The book is a lively and topical Atlantis update, blending science, mythology, and ancient history to shed fresh light on this most enduring of mysteries." Vancouver Sun (22 April 1995)

"... a convincing case for Atlantis... the Flem-Aths examine other mysteries such as mass extinctions in certain areas of the world, perfectly preserved mammoths discovered in the Siberian ice, the true age of the Sphinx and remarkably accurate maps of the Americas and ice-free Antarctica that date from long before European explorers ever reached those shores. ...It is a compelling argument..." Birmingham Post (5 August 1995)

"Written in a scholarly but easy to understand manner, if offers a simple hypothesis. Antarctica is Atlantis... This is more than just science. It is an entire history lesson dating to the dawn of man's ability to remember events." Ocala Star-Banner (10 December 1995)

"How is it, Hapgood asked, that during much of the last ice age a large part of North America was under mile-thick glaciers, but a third of Antarctica was not? Hapgood suggested that perhaps the continents were then in different places relative to the poles - that the earth's crust had shifted over the molten layers beneath it. But if Antarctica was once further north and partly ice-free, was it also inhabitable? The Flem-Aths add up the clues and come to a startling conclusion: Antarctica was Atlantis!" Quest (Winter 1995)

"Canadian librarians Rand and Rose Flem-Ath have assembled a daring and extremely convincing argument that the location of the lost civilisation of Atlantis is the Antarctic continent. ...Combining mythology with a wealth of scientific and historical information, the Flem-Aths' research will shake a few foundations." Nexus (January 1996)