The Lost Continent

By Aleister Crowley

 

Preface

 

Last year I was chosen to succeed the venerable K-Z - who had it in his mind to die, that is, to join Them in Venus, as one of the Seven Heirs of Atlantis, and I have been appointed to declare, so far as may be found possible, the truth about that mysterious lost land. Of course, no more than one seventh of the wisdom is ever confided to one of the Seven, and the Seven meet in council but  once in every thirty-three years.  But its preservation is guaranteed by the interlocked systems of "dreaming true" and of "preparation of the antinomy". The former almost explains itself; the latter is almost inconceivable to normal man.  Its essence is to train a man to be anything by training him to be its opposite.

At  the  end  of anything,  think they,  it turns out to  be  its opposite,  and that opposite is thus mastered without having been soiled  by  the labours of the student,  and  without  the  false impressions of early learning being left upon the mind.

I myself, for example, had unknowingly been trained to record these observations by the life of a butterfly. All my impressions came  clear  on  the soft wax of my brain;  I had  never  worried because  the scratch on the wax in no way resembled the sound  it represented. In other words, I observed perfectly because I never knew that I was observing. So, if you pay sufficient attention to your heart, you will make it palpitate. I accordingly proceed to a description of the country.

 

Of The Plains Beneath Atlas, And Its Servile Race

 

Atlas  is the true name of this archipelago -  continent  is  an altogether false term, for every 'house' or mountain peak was cut from its fellows by natural,  though often very narrow waterways. The  African  Atlas is a mere offshoot of the range.  It was the true  Atlas  that supported the ancient world by  its  moral  and magical strength,  and hence the name of the fabled globe-bearer. The root  is the Lemurian 'Tla' or 'Tlas',  black,  for  reasons which  will  appear in due course.  'A' is the  feminine  prefix, derived  from  the shape of the mouth when  uttering  the  sound. 'Black  woman' is therefore as near a translation as one can give in English; the Latin has a closer equivalent.

The  mountains are cut off,  not only from each other  by  the channels of the sea,  but from the plains at their feet by cliffs naturally  or  artificially smoothed and undercut  for  at  least thirty feet on every side in order to make access impossible.

These  plains  had been made flat by  generations  of  labour. Vines and fruit-trees growing only on the upper slopes, they were devoted  principally  to  corn,  and to grass  pastures  for  the amphibian  herds of Atlas.  This corn was of a kind now  unknown, flourishing  in sea-water,  and the periodical flood-tides served the same purpose as the Nile in Egypt.  Enormous floating stages of spongy rock--no trees of any kind grew anywhere on the plains so wood was unknown - supported the villages. These were inhabited by a type of man similar to the modern Caucasian race.  They were not  permitted to use any of the food of their  masters,  neither the corn, nor the amphibians, nor the vast supplies of shellfish, but  were  fed by what they called  "bread  from  heaven",  which indeed  came  down from the mountains,  being the whole of  their refuse of every kind.  The whole population was put to perpetual hard labour. The young and active tended the amphibians, grew the corn,  collected the shell-fish, gathered the "bread from heaven" for their elders,  and were compelled to reproduce their kind. At twenty they were considered strong enough for the factory,  where they  worked in gangs on a machine combining the features of  our pump  and  treadmill for sixteen hours of  the  twenty-four. This machine  supplied  Atlas with its 'ZRO'* or 'power',  of which  I shall speak presently. Any worker showing even temporary weakness was transferred to the phosphorus works, where he was sure to die within a few months.  Phosphorus was a prime necessity of  Atlas; however,  it  was not used in its red or yellow forms,  but in  a third  allotrope,  a blue-black or rather violet-black substance, only  known in powder finer than precipitated gold,  harder  than diamond,  eleven  times  heavier than  yellow  phosphorus,  quite incombustible,  and  so shockingly poisonous that,  in  spite  of every  precaution,  an ounce of it cost the lives (on an average) of  some  two hundred and fifty men.  Of its properties I  shall speak  later.

The  people  were left in utmost slavery and ignorance by  the wise counsel of the first of the philosophers of Atlas,  who  had written:  "An  empty  brain  is  a threat  to  Society."  He had consequently  instituted a system of mental  culture,  comprising two parts:

 

1.      As a basis, a mass of useless disconnected facts.

2.      A superstructure of lies.

 

Part 1 was compulsory; the people then took Part 2 without protest.

The language of the plains was simple but profuse. They had few nouns and fewer verbs. 'To work again' (there was no word for 'to work' simply),  'to eat again',  'to break the law' (no word for 'to break the law again'),  'to come from without',  'to find light'  (i.e. to go to the phosphorus factory) were almost the only verbs used by adults.  The young men and women had a verb-language yet simpler, and of degraded coarseness.  All had, however, an extraordinary wealth of adjectives, most of them meaningless,  as attached to no noun ideas,  and a great quantity of abstract nouns such as 'Liberty', 'Progress', without which no refined  inhabitant could consider a sentence complete.  He would introduce them into a discussion on the most material subjects. "The immoral snub-nose",  "the unprogressive teeth",  "lascivious music",  "reactionary eyebrows" - such were phrases familiar to all.  "To eat again, to sleep again, to work again, to find the light--that is Liberty, that is Progress" was a proverb common in every mouth.

The religion of the people was Protestant Christianity in all essentials, but with an even closer dependence upon God.  They asserted its formulae, without attaching any meaning to the words,  in a manner both reverent and passionate. Sexual life was entirely forbidden to the workers, a single breach  implying relegation to the phosphorus works.

In every field was, however, an enormous tablet of rock, carved on one side with a representation of the three stages of life: the fields, the labour mill, the factory; and on the other side with these words:  "To enter Atlas, fly." Beneath this an elaborate series of graphic pictures showed how to acquire the art of flying.  During all the generations of Atlas, not one man had been known to take advantage of these instructions.

The principal fear of the populace was a variation of any kind from routine. For any such the people had one word only, though this word changed its annotation in different centuries. 'Witchcraft',  'Heresy', 'Madness', 'Bad Form', 'Sex-Perversion', 'Black Magic' were its principal shapes in the last four thousand years of the dominion of Atlas.

Sneezing, idleness, smiling, were regarded as premonitory. Any cessation from speech, even for a moment to take breath, was considered highly dangerous. The wish to be alone was worse than all; the  delinquent would be seized by his fellows, and either killed outright or thrust into the compound of  the  phosphorus factory, from which there was no egress.

The habits of the people were incredibly disgusting.  Their principal relaxations were art, music and the drama, in which they could show achievement hardly inferior to that of Henry Arthur Jones, Pinero,  Lehar, George Dance, Luke Fildes, and Thomas Sidney Cooper.

Of medicine they were happily ignorant. The outdoor life in that equable climate bred strong youths and maidens, and the first symptoms of illness in a worker was held to impair his efficiency and qualify him for the phosphorous factory. Wages were permanently high, and as there were no merchants even  of alcohol, whose use was forbidden, every man saved all his earnings, and died rich. At his death his savings went back to the community.  Taxation was consequently unnecessary.  Clothes were unnecessary and unknown, and the 'bread from heaven' was the "free gift of God".  The dead were thrown to the amphibians. Each man built his own shelter of the rough stone sponge which abounded.  The word 'house' was used only in Atlas; the servile race called its huts 'Hloklost' (equivalent to the English word 'home'). Discontent was absolutely unknown.  It had not been considered necessary to prohibit traffic with foreign countries, as the inhabitants of such were esteemed barbarians.  Had a ship landed men, they would have been murdered to a man, supposing that Atlas had permitted any approach to its shores. That it hindered such, and by infallible means, was due to other considerations, whose nature will form the subject of a subsequent chapter.

This then is the nature of the plains beneath Atlas, and the character of the servile race.

 

Of The Race Of Atlas

 

In the city or 'house' which was formed from the crest of every mountain, dwelt a race not greatly superior in height to our own, but of vaster frame.  The bulk and strength of the bear is not inappropriate as a simile for the lower classes; the higher had the enormous chest and shoulders and the lean haunches of the lion.  This strength gave an infallible beauty, made monstrous by their most inexorable law, that every child who developed no special feature in the first seven years should be sacrificed to the Gods.  This special feature might be a nose of prodigious size, hands and wrists of gigantic strength, a gorilla jaw, an elephant ear--or any of these might entitle its owner to life:  for in all such variations from the normal they perceived the possibility of a development of the race.  Men and women were hairy as the ourang-outang and all were closely shaven from head to foot.  It had been found that this practice developed tactile sensibility.  It was also done in reverence to the 'Living Atla', of which more in its place.

The lower class were few in number. Its function was to superintend the servile race, to bring the food of the children to the banqueting-hall, to remove the same, to attend to the disposition of the 'light-screens', to ensure the continuance of the race by the begetting, bearing and nourishing of the children.

The priestly class was concerned with the further preparation of the Zro supplied by the labour-mills, and  its  impregnation with  phosphorus. This class had much leisure for 'work', a subject to be explained later.

The High Priests and High Priestesses were restricted in number to eleven times thirty-three in any one 'house'.  To them were entrusted the final secrets of Atlas, and to them was confided the conduct of the experiments in which every will was bound up.

The colour of the Atlanteans was very various, though the hair was invariably of a fiery chestnut with bluish reflections. One might see women whiter than Aphrodite, others tawny as Cleopatra, others yellow as Tu-Chi, others of a strange,  subtle blue like the  tattooed faces of Chin women,  others again red  as copper. Green was however a prohibited hue for women, and red was not liked in men. Violet was rare, but highly prized, and children born of that colour were specially reared by the High Priestesses.

However, in one part of the body all the women were perfectly black with a blackness no negro can equal; from this circumstance comes the name Atlas. It is absurdly attributed by some authors to the deposit of excess of phosphorus in the Zro. I need only point out that the mark existed long before the  discovery of black  phosphorus. It is evidently a racial stigma.  It was the birth of a girl child without this mark which raised her mother to the rank of goddess, and ended the terrestrial adventure of the Atlanteans, as will presently appear.

Of the ethics of this people little need be said. Their word for  'right' is 'phph' made by blowing with the jaw drawn sharply across from left to right, thus meaning 'a spiral life contrary to the course of the sun'.  We may assume it as 'contrary'.

"Whatever is, is wrong" seems to have been their first principle. Legs were 'wrong' because they only carry you five miles in the hour: let us refuse to walk; let us ride horseback. So the horse is 'wrong' compared to the train and the motor-car; and these are 'wrong' to the aeroplane. If speed had been the  Atlantean's object,  he  would have thought aeroplanes 'wrong' and  all  else too, so long as the speed of light was not surpassed by him.

Curious survivals of these laws are found in the Jewish transcript of the Egyptian code, which they, being a slave race, interpreted in the reverse manner.

"Thou shalt not make any graven image." Every male child on attaining manhood, had a graven image given him to worship, a miracle-working image, whose principle exploits he would tattoo upon it.

"Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy." The Atlantean kept one day in seven for all purposes unconnected  with  his principle task.

"Thou shalt not commit adultery."  Though the Atlanteans married, intercourse with the wife was the only act forbidden.

"Honour thy father and thy mother." On the contrary, they worshipped their children, as if to say: "This is the God whom I have made in my own likeness."

Similarly, there is one exception and one only to the rule of silence. It is the utterance of the 'Name' which it is death to pronounce. This word was constantly in their mouths; it is 'Zcrra', a sort of venomous throat-gargling.  Hence, possibly the Gaelic  'Scurr' 'speak', English 'Scaur' or 'Scar' in  Yorkshire and the Pennines.  'Zcrra' is also the name of the 'High House', and of the graven image referred to above.

Others traces may be found in folklore; some mere superstitions. Thus the correct number for a banquet  was thirteen, because if there were only one more sign in the Zodiac, the  year would be a month longer,  and one would have more  time 'for work'.  This is probably a debased Egyptian notion.

Atlanteans knew better than anyone that the Zodiac is only an arbitrary division. Still it may be laid down that the impossible never daunted Atlas.  If one said,  "Two and two make Four" his thought would be "Yes, damn it!"

I now explain the language of Atlas. The third and greatest of their  philosophers  saw that speech had wrought more  harm  than good,  and  he consequently instituted a peculiar rite.  Two men were chosen by lot to preserve the language, which, by the way, consisted of monosyllables only, two hundred and  fourteen in number, to each of which was attached a  diacritical  gesture, usually ideographic.

Thus  'wrong' is given as 'phph' moving the jaw from right to left. Wiping the brown with 'phph' means 'hot', hollowing the hands over the mouth 'fire', striking the throat 'to die;' so that each 'radicle' may have hundreds  of gesture-derivatives. Grammar, by the way, hardly existed, the quick apprehension of the Atlanteans rendering it unnecessary.

These two men then departed to a cavern on the side of the mountain just above the cliff, and there for a year they remained, speaking the language and carving it symbolically upon the rock. At the end of the year they returned; the elder is sacrificed and the younger returns with a volunteer, usually one who wishes to expiate a fault, and teaches him the language.

During his visit he observes whether any new thing needs a name, and if so he invents it, and adds it to  the  language. This process continued to the end.  The rest of the people abandoned altogether the use of speech, only a few years' practice enabling them to dispense with the radicle. They then sought to do without gesture, and in eight generations the difficulty was conquered, and telepathy established.  Research then devoted itself to the task of doing without thought; this will be discussed in detail in the proper place.  There was also a 'listener', three men who took turns to sit upon the highest peak, above the  'light-screens', and whose duty it was to give the alarm if any noise disturbed Atlas. On their report that High Priest charged with active governorship would take steps to ascertain and destroy the cause.

The 'light-screens' spoken of were a contrivance of laminae of a certain spar such that the light and heat of the sun were completely cut off, not by opacity, but by what we call 'interference'.  In this way other subtle rays of the sun entered the  'house', these rays being supposed to be necessary to life. These matters were the subjects of the deepest controversy. Some held that these rays themselves were injurious and should be excluded. Others considered that the light-screens should be put in position during moonlight, instead of being opened at sunset, as was the custom. This, however, was never attempted, the great mass of the people being devoted to the moon. Others wished full sunlight, the aim of Atlas being (they thought) to reach the sun. But this theory contradicted the prime axiom of attaining things through their opposites, and was only held by the lower classes, who were not initiated into this doctrine.

The 'houses' of Atlas were carved from the living rock by the action of Zro in its seventh precipitation. Enormously solid, the walls were lofty and smoother than glass, though the pavements were rough and broken almost everywhere for a reason which I am not permitted to disclose. The passages were invariably narrow, so that two persons could never pass each other. When two met, it was the law to greet by joining in 'work' and then going away together on their separate errands, or passing one above  the other. This was done purposely, so as to remind every man of his duty to Atlas on every occasion on which he might meet a fellow-citizen.

The Banqueting-Hall of the children was usually very large. The furniture, which had been brought by the first colonists, and gradually disused by adults, never needed repair. A vast open doorway facing North opened on the mountainside on to the vineyards and orchards, the meadows and gardens, in which  the children  passed their time. Suckled by the mother for three months only, the child was then already able to nourish itself on the bread and wine, and on the flesh of the amphibious herds, of which there were several kinds; one a piglike animal with flesh resembling wild duck, another a sort of amatee tasting like salmon, its fat being somewhat like caviar in everything but texture, and a sure specific for any of childhood's troubles.  A third, an ancestor of our hippopotamus, was really tamed, and was employed by the serviles for preparing the ground for the corn, trampling  through the fields while they were covered  with  sea-water,  and thus leaving deep holes in which the seeds were cast.

Its flesh was not unlike bear, but more delicate.  Notable, too, was the great quantity of turtle; also the giant  oysters,  the huge  deep  sea  crabs,  a  kind of octopus whose  flesh  made  a nutritious and elegant soup, and innumerable shell-fish, added to the  table.  The waterways were haunted by shoals of a small and poisonous fish, whose bite was immediate death to man,  a  fact which  altogether  cut off communication between one  island  and another  except  by air,  as  the  hippopotamus-animal,  although immune to its bite, was unable to swim. Of the sleeping chambers I shall tell more particularly in the course of my remarks on Zro.

 

Of The Aim Of The Magicians Of Atlas: Of Zro And Its Properties And Uses: Of That Which Combined With It: And Of Black Phosphorus

 

It  was the most ancient tradition of the Atlantean  magicians that  they  were  the survivors of a race  inhabiting  a  country called Lemuria, of which the South Pacific archipelago may be the remains.  These Lemurians had, they held, built up a civilization equal, if not superior to their own; but through a misunderstanding of magical law - some said the 2nd, some the 8th, some  the 23rd--had involved themselves and their land in ruin. Others thought that the Lemurians had succeeded in their magical task, and broken their temple. In any case, it was the secret Lemurian tradition that they themselves represented the survivals of a yet earlier race who lived on ice, and they of yet another who lived in fire, and they again of earlier colonists from Mars.

The theory, in fine, was that the aim of man is to attain the Sun, whence, according to one school of cosmology, he was exiled in the cosmic catastrophe which resulted in the formation  of Neptune.  His task on any given planet was therefore to overturn the laws of Nature on that planet, thus mastering it sufficiently to enable him to make the leap to the next planet inward. Exactly how and in what sense the leap was made remains obscure, even to the heirs of Atlantis.

The men of Atlas could fly, it is true, and that by a method so  simple that men will laugh outright when it is  rediscovered; but they needed air to support them; they could not confront the cold  and emptiness of space.  Was it in some subtler body that they conveyed the Palladium?  Or, content to die,  could  they project  some vehicle across so great a distance?  The answer to such questions probably lies in the recovery by mankind of the knowledge of Zro and its properties.

Beneath the labour mills run troughs in which the sweat of the workers collects and drains off into an open basin without the  mill.  In this basin churns with immense rapidity--through multiple bevel gearing--a sort of paddle with knife edges.  The sweat is thus churned into froth, and gradually disappears,  and is  as  continually replaced.  The workers toil in  shifts--eight hours work,  four hours repose, eight hours work, four hours rest and recreation. The mills never cease day or night. The  basin is of polished silver and agate,  and is set at  an angle,  facing two enormous spheres of crystal, encased in a sort of trellis made of a certain greenish metal, its optical focus at a point midway between the two.

The  only sign of activity is that out of this focus  a  spark crackles  unless the air be dry,  a condition difficult to secure in  this part of the world,  although fans blow air,  dried  over chloride of calcium and sulphuric acid, over the globes and their focus.  These fans are worked by tidal power,  human labour being appropriated solely to the one use.

In  the temple of the 'house' are two globes similar to  those upon  the  plains,  and the mysterious force generated  below  is transferred to those above,  collecting within them. Now the name of  this  substance is always Zro,  but in its  first  state  the gesture  is  a twiddling of the thumbs.  In its second,  it is  a rapid  twittering  of  the fingers,  and in its  third  state  of distillation it is a screwing of the hands together.  Within  the spheres  it sublimes suddenly in the air as a snaky powder (4) of silver,  which immediately turns to an iridescent fluid (5)  that is  forced up,  by its own need of expansion,  through a fountain into  the  temple,  on whose floor it lies (6)  in  a  semi-solid condition. Expert priests gather this in their hands, and rapidly shape  it into its seventh state,  when it is a knife of diamond, but alive.  An instrument like a Mexican machete is used to carve rocks. The edge shears them,  the back smooths them.  The  rock behaves exactly like wax,  responsive to the lightest touch. What is  not used for weapons is then gathered up swiftly and  kneaded by women of the rank of high priestess.  It is not known even  to the high priests with what they knead it, but in its eighth stage  it  is  a  substance solid enough to support  great  weight,  but eternally heaving of its own force.  Of this they make beds,  so that the sleeping Atlantean is (as it were) continually massaged.

To this they attribute the fact that Atlanteans sleep never more than half an hour, though they do so four times daily. These beds remain active only for a few days,  and they are then thrown into the ninth stage by being taken into a room where is a cauldron of great  size.  They are thrown into this and sprinkled with black phosphorus. The Zro then divides into two parts, one liquid, one solid.  Neither of these has any ascertainable properties, for it is  absolutely  passive to the will of the user,  who  may  taste therein  his  utmost desire,  whether for food  or  drink.  Among adults  there is no other food or drink than this.  The children are not allowed to taste it. The black phosphorus is always added by a high priestess,  and it  is not known in what manner she does this.  The Zro that may remain is the subject of eternal experiments by the Magicians. It is  generally thought by the greatest of them that an  error  was committed  in bringing it to a ninth stage of division into  two, and  many openly deplored the discovery of black phosphorus.  All however  strive  in harmony to produce a tenth stage  that  shall  surpass the virtues of the ninth. Theoretically it is possible to reach  an  eleventh stage wherein the Zro takes human  form,  and lives!  Opinion  is divided as to whether this was  not  actually done  by a certain magician at the time of the passing of  Atlas. In  any  case,  I  beg the reader to remember that  I  have  only described  one  seventh of the virtues of Zro,  and I  have  even omitted  this,  that  in its ninth stage it is not only food  and drink, but universal medicine, if properly understood. For Zro is also a vision and a voice!

Now  the  muscles of the people of Atlas are  the  muscles  of giants,  and  yet  they  do one thing only.  And  this  thing  is combined  by  the wisdom of the magicians,  so that it is at  the same time work,  exercise,  sport,  game,  pleasure, and all else that may fulfill life.

This work never ceases. It has these parts:

1.      Working at Zro, i.e. bringing it from the first stage to the ninth.

2.      Working with Zro, i.e. for one's own particular purpose.

3.      Working for Zro.  This is the common and most honourable task, the Zro eaten and drunken being worked into a quintessence of  higher  power,  though identical in property with the  common Zro.

 

This new Zro (Atlas Zro) goes through the same stages as the common  Zro  of the serviles.  But it is the result of  free  and joyful labour,  and so serves the magicians in their experiments, and  the Governor of all for his sustenance.  None by the way  is ever wasted. For example, a tunnel was drilled completely through the earth and filled with Zro, and it is said that by this tunnel the Atlanteans escaped.

This working, whether with or for Zro, requires two persons at least at any one time and place. Great heat is generated in the working, and the bodies of the workers are therefore sprinkled heavily with the black phosphorus, which is incombustible. This black phosphorus, poisonous to the servile race,   becomes innocuous to anyone who has been in any way impregnated with Zro.

This itself, in its first stage, is as dangerous as electricity of high voltage.

The reverence attached to Zro is unbounded. At one time it was hymned as the father of the gods, and till the end all  children were thought to be "begotten of Zro", though everyone might know who was  the  father.  All such conception was however held indignity. Its official name was 'the old experiment'.  It was carried on simply because the new methods of continuing the race were not perfected. Childbirth was therefore in one way accident; although a duty, everyone shrank from it. For though no pain or discomfort attached to the process, it was a sort of second-best achievement from which proud women turned contemptuously. This was in part the reason why the father's name was never mentioned.

On several occasions in the history of Atlas the Zro 'failed'. Although not changed in appearance, its properties were lost or diminished. In such a case young men and maidens in great numbers were captured on the plains, brought into Atlas, and offered in sacrifice to the Gods. Their blood was mingled with Zro in its third stage, and the latter recovered its potency.  Their flesh was eaten by the high priests and priestesses in penance for the unknown wrong. It was subject to other and terrible  scourges, being the most sensitive as well as the strongest thing on Earth.

On one occasion it had to be treated with a fox-like perfume prepared  by the chief magician;  on another it was subjected  to streams of moonlight from parabolic mirrors.The most serious crisis was some two thousand years before the destruction   of  Atlas. One of the serviles, riding his ‘hippopotamus' to  the ploughing, fell off  and  was  instantly bitten  by  the poisonous fish previously described.  Through an accident of boyhood he had, however, for a reason too obscure to describe here,  no such vulnerable spot as suited the  Zhee-Zhou. He survived and went to work, as it chanced, the next day.  The Zro  was poisoned;  a third of Atlas died within  the  hour;  the plants  on the affected island had to be destroyed, and all its people. It was only repopulated some three hundred and eighty years later, and then for particular reasons of magical economy impossible to dwell upon in this account. Marriage was compulsory on all those whose passion had been so exclusive and enduring as to produce  two  children.  Further intercourse between the pair was barred. The Magicians thought it was inimical to variation for a woman to have more than one child (a fortiori two) by the same father; and  the custom  further prevented those stupid sporadic outbursts of burnt-out lust which make so many modern marriages intolerable. Closely connected with marriage, the close of the reproductive

life, is  that of death,  the close of the little that  remains. Death hardly threatened the Atlantean; he would decide to "go and see", as the old phrase ran, and take an overdose of a particular preparation of black phosphorus mixed with a very little Zro  in the ninth stage,  which ensured a painless death.  That none ever returned was taken  as proof of the supreme  attractiveness  of death.

The ghoulish and necromantic practices with which Atlanteans have been unjustly reproached never occurred. A little vampirism, perhaps, in the early days before the perfecting of Zro; but no Atlantean  was ever so stupid or so ignorant as to confuse  death with life.

Beside this voluntary death only one danger existed. As the use of Zro guaranteed life and health and  youth--a  centenarian high priest was no better than a kitten!--so did its abuse spell  instant corruption of those qualities.  As mentioned above, now and then the Zro itself was at fault, and caused epidemics;  but from  time to time there were deaths in a particularly  loathsome form caused by what they called 'misunderstanding' the Zro. Such mistakes were particularly common in the early  days  of  its discovery, and before its use had become well nigh a worship. The first symptom was a crack in the skin of the temple, or sometimes of the bridge of the nose, more rarely of an eyelid or  cheek. Within a few minutes this crack became one open sore, of horrid fetor,  and within twenty-four hours, the patient was completely rotted away, bone and marrow. A circumstance of singular atrocity was  that death never occurred until the spinal column collapsed. No treatment could be found even to prolong the agony by an hour. This being recognised, sufferers were thrown from the cliffs at the first  sign of the malady.  In this way too were all other corpses disposed.  It was the most honourable death possible, for becoming  'bread from heaven' for the serviles, they were again worked  up into Zro itself,  a transmutation which in their  view would  be  well  worth all the "resurrections of  the  body"  and "immortalities of the soul" of the theoretical, dogmatic, hearsay religions. So much then concerning  Zro, and the matters immediately connected with it.

 

Of The So Called Magic Of The Atlanteans

 

Magic in Atlas was a 'Science of Sciences'.  It was the final integration of all knowledge. In method its theory was differentiation, and in theory its method was integration. For example, the fifth of the great   philosophers indicated "Everything  is  Zro" to the Keeper of the Speech at the annual sacrifice. This in spite of the fact that in that very year two new forms of Zro had been discovered by that same philosopher. It was the third of the galaxy who announced "The ultimate analysis of sensation is pain;  that of thought,  madness;  that of super-consciousness  (a state of trance induced by Zro and valued above all things) annihilation."

His successor had retorted that in this was implicit a postulate that pain, madness and annihilation were undesirable. The third admitted that he had so meant his phrase, but destroying the postulate, still stuck to it. All this was the foundation of much magical theory, and on these purely psychological researches was based the whole magical practice. 'There is no God' was a commonplace. It only implied that the mind was wrong to try to conceive within it what was by definition without it.  To set limits to anything whatever seemed to them the greatest of crimes, the exact opposite of the true path to the Sun.

The practical side of magic was for the most part a mere utilisation of known forces, such as are employed by modern science. But the resources of Atlas were as great, and the advantages incomparably greater.  The whole archipelago was a laboratory. There was no question of the 'cost  of  research'; every man was devoted to it.  Every man thought only of the main problem  'How to reach Venus' and its sub-issues. Further, the main  laws of magic had always been found to govern and  include chemical and physical laws.

In  the early days of colonization Zro was only known  in  its crude state; it was the genius of a single man that obtained the third state in its purity. From this state to the seventh it moved almost of itself,  very much as radium does.  The genius, aving  sufficient in this seventh state, made a sword, and completed in three days the subjugation of the servile races.  It was a stroke of fortune, this quickness,  for on the fourth day the Zro began to disintegrate. The magicians then began to seek a means of making this state permanent.  But in this they failed, so that knives had always to be replaced twice weekly; but in the course of their failures they discovered the infinitely more valuable eighth and ninth stages of Zro. Tradition has preserved a hint of their efforts in Alchemy with its problems of the fixation of the Universal Mercury, the secret of perpetual motion, and 'potable gold-the Universal Medicine'.  It has been theoretically determined towards the end of the tenth state, that Zro should be a solid, but whether this was confirmed is  beyond my knowledge.

To return to the main magical theory, the Quintessence, said they, or Universal Substance (which some strove to identify with Hyle, others with the Luminiferous Aether) is the two-in-one, liquid and solid,  the former part being also twofold, fluid and gaseous, and the latter earthy and fiery. The combination of these four phases of Zro accounted for the universe. This quintessence is Zro in some state unknown and incalculable. Some expected to find it in its twelth state, some in a seventeenth, others in a thirty-seventh: all this was pure guesswork. Some tradition to this effect appears to have reached Plato; and the neo-Platonists combined with those Jews who had preserved fragments of the Egyptian tradition to form a new initiated hierarchy, the echo of whose teaching is found in Paracelsus. At one period, too, missionaries (not colonists, as has been ignorantly asserted; there was no trouble of over-population in Atlantis) were sent to the four quarters and parties landed in Mexico, Ireland and Egypt. The adventures of the party who travelled South form an astounding chapter in the history of Atlas. It was they who discovered the Magnetic South, and whose observations rendered possible the theory which resulted in the piercing of the Earth by Zro.

There were also preparations of Zro which increased the size of the user, and others which diminished it. In general use among the lower classes, until the very end, was that composition which made the body light. Careful adjustment would equalise its weight with that of the displaced air, and movements of the limbs would then permit flying. In this way the overseers visited the plains and returned. The  other and earlier art of flying needed no apparatus,  but I am forbidden to disclose the method,  except to hint that it is connected closely with the art of  'dreaming true'.  These are but a few of the magic powers so-called of the compounds of Zro; but they will indicate the power of Atlas by showing what it could afford to neglect. Yet all these powers were implicit in the process of 'working'.

The art of prediction was in the same unsatisfactory state as it is in England today. Nor was its practice encouraged. A magician makes the future, and does not seek to divine it.  All true prediction was  therefore necessarily catastrophe. The greatest good fortune seemed worthless to an Atlantean, since it  was accident,  and if accidents are to happen, one of them may be fatal. They believed themselves to be equal to the whole tendency of things, and proudly gazed on Nature as a man might upon a virgin captive to his spear.  Everything that was being was Zro; everything that was Energy was 'working for Zro'. Outside this was but by-product and waste-heap.

The arrangement of the houses was in accordance with the magical theory. There was first the High House, then four (later six, last ten)  'Houses of Houses'; and to each of these was attached a varying number of ordinary houses. The High House was the central shrine of the whole archipelago, and must  be separately described.

 

Of The High House Of Atlas, Of Its Inhabitants, And Of Their Manners And Customs, And Of The Living Atla

 

The High House was separated from its nearest neighbour by over twenty miles of sea.  Its diameter was about a half-mile and its height four miles. It had no plains at the base, and its cliffs went absolutely sheer and smooth into the water. It was in shape a flattish cylinder, but the top broadened into a pointed knob, somewhat in the style of St. Basil's at Moscow. There was not a trace of vegetation, which by the way was despised by the Atlanteans. A child would pick a flower contemptuously thinking "You cannot even move about", or pet it as an English degenerate woman does a dog. The only entrance was by an orifice at the top. But the base was tunnelled so that from every house was a channel for the Zro which having been brought to the highest perfection was thus transferred to headquarters. The receptacle at the base being far below the earth, and the Zro further  heated by friction, it seethed continually into a bluish or purplish smoke.

This was the sole sustenance of the inhabitants of the High House. In early days the old High House, in an island since destroyed by order of the Atla, had been called the House of Blood, the inhabitants subsisting only on blood sucked from the living. The improvements in Zro had changed all that;  but  the idea was the same, to live on the Quintessence of Life. Hence while the 'houses' ate and drank Zro,  the High House drank its vapour. No children were born in it, and none below the rank of High Priest dwelt there.

Except for one matter which was never thought of, though constantly spoken, the inmost mystery of the High House was the 'Living Atla'. This had many names,  'Wordeater',  'Unshaven' (because the razors of Zro were turned on its hair), 'Fireheart', 'Beginning and End' and so on: but especially a word I can only translate as 'To Her', a defective pronoun existing only in the dative. What the Living Atla really was, is a secret of secrets. We know it only from its epithets, its veils. Thus it was 'That Black which makes black white'. It was 'twenty-six feet high and fifteen feet across--Oh my Lords, it is the essence of the Incommensurable!'  It was 'the wife of Zro',  'the heart of Zro', 'desire of Zro', 'the Atla that eats Atlas', 'the swallower up of her own house', 'the pelican', 'the fire-nest of the Phoenix', according to  the greatest of the poets. And the burden of his hymns of worship was that it must be destroyed.

It was impossible to approach the Atla without being instantly sucked up and devoured by it. This was the greatest death, and ardently desired by all. The favour was accorded only to those who discovered improvements in Zro, or otherwise merited signal and supreme recognition from the state. Hidden men listened to the cries of the victim, and thus learned the nature of the death. It appears that the black suddenly broke into a fiery rose, 'the only luminous thing in Atlas', and a shooting forward enclosed  him. For some reason which was never even guessed the Atla refused women. Those who had seen Atla were however useless to instruct. They came forth from the Presence smiling, and even under the most fearful tortures that the magicians could devise, continued to smile. This smile never left them during life, and the conscious superiority of it was so irritating, and so contrary to the harmony of life in Atlas that the women were killed, and their companions for the future forbidden to approach the Atla.

Whatever theories as to its nature may have been formed by the magicians were upset by a famous experiment. A most holy high priest, a man who at puberty had insisted on immediate marriage with all the women of his house, a magician who had formed four new compounds of Zro, and discovered how to pass matter through matter, was honoured by the great death. On reaching the last corridor, where the concentrated spirals of Zro vapour whirled up into the Presence of Atla, he bade farewell to the  appointed listeners in the manner suitable to his dignity, and then, taking a last deep draught of Zro into his  lungs, rushed  into  the antrum. They heard him cry aloud "O!" with surprise, and then with inexpressible rapture the words "Behind Atla, Otla!" which were, and still are, completely unintelligible. Their surprise was greater, when, seven days later he came striding past them without greeting. He went to his 'house' and shut himself up, was never seen or heard again, but was assuredly living at the time of the 'catastrophe'. This man founded a school of philosophy, or rather, it founded  itself on what it supposed him to have discovered; and this school disputes with the orthodox the credit

of the final success.

The lesser mysteries of the High House were concerned almost entirely with the creation of life, and the bridging of the gulf between Earth and Venus. These were connected intimately; the theory was  that if Atlantean brains could exist in bodies sufficiently subtle to traverse aether,  the task was done.  Some of the experiments were crude enough, and, to our minds, horrible. They attempted to breed a new race by crossing with snakes, swans, horses and other animals. The Greek legends of such monsters as Chimaera, Medusa, Lamia, Minotaur, the Centaurs, the Satyrs and the like are mere filtrations of the Atlantean tradition. The only theory behind such experiments was that they were contrary to the natural order, and so worth trying. Men of more scientific mind more plausibly passed Zro vapour through sea-water; but they only created serpents of vast size, which they cast into the sea about the High House as guardians. The sea-serpent, whether legend or fact, is derived from this experiment. It is quite possible that some such survive. Another school, objecting strongly to the sex-process, "which must  be transcended as the Lemurians overcame gemmation" vivisected men and women, taking various parts of the brain, especially the cerebellum, the pineal gland, and the pituitary body, and cultivated them in solutions of Zro under the invisible rays of black phosphorus.  The best results of this work was a race of translucent jelly-folk of great intellectual development; but so far from being able to travel through space, they could hardly move in their own element. Another school argued that as Zro in vapour combined the virtues of the liquid and the solid Zro, so a fiery state  might be produced which would so impregnate their bodies as to make them 'mates of the aether'. This school held that fiery Zro already existed in Nature, "in the heart of the Living Atla", and asserted that those who died by absorption into Atla passed straight to Venus. Many of them therefore tried hard to obtain messages from that planet. Familiar with Newton's first law of motion, they further held it possible to prepare Zro in such a state that a current of it could never be deflected or dissipated, and so, if it could be made in sufficient quantity, a bridge to Venus might be built by which they might travel.  They therefore tunnelled through the planet, as previously explained, to have a sort of cannon for the Zro. But as their supply was pitifully insufficient, they endeavoured also to prepare a Zro which would  have the power of  multiplying itself. Alchemical tradition has some record of this problem.

Yet another group of magicians argued that as Nature had cast off the planets from the Sun-a disputed point, some thinking this due to magic, which if so completely destroys the argument-it would be contrary to Nature to cause the planets to fall back into it. They busied themselves with attempts to increase the Earth's gravitational pull, and (alternatively) to check her course. Their schemes were generally regarded as Utopian-yet they could boast of the discovery of the Zro that lightened bodies, and of a kind of aether-screen which generated mechanical power in inexhaustible quantities by  making matter slightly opaque to aether. This engine only worked on a very small scale. A screen two inches long would tear itself from fastenings that would have held an earthquake, while the rocks in its neighbourhood would melt in a few minutes, and the sea  boil instantly where its  rays struck. The most brilliant of this school asserted "Matter is a strain in the aether." He explained gravitation in this way.  Place two ivory spheres in a rubber tube; the strain on the tube is least when the balls touch. The tendency is therefore for them to come together. Friction alone checks them. Now aether is infinitely elastic and without friction. From these data he calculated the Law of Inverse Squares.

A more mystic school saw life everywhere. It knew all that we know, and more, about ions and electrons; it saw every phenomenon as a manifestation of will. The crowning glory of this school was the discovery that Zro in its ninth stage, eaten and drunken with concentrated  intention,  produced the desired  result, whatever (within  wide  limits)  that result might be. This went far to supersede the use of all specialised forms of Zro, and so to unify the magical practice.

It seems curious with all this magic, Magic itself should be the thing most deplored. But it was the means, and, as such, "that which is in particular not the end". The word for Magic, 'Ijynx', was the only dissyllable in the language, for Magic was the essentially two-fold thing, more two-fold (in a way) than the number two itself. It is interesting here to sketch briefly the mathematics of Atlas. The task is not easy, as their minds worked very differently from ours.

The number 1 was a fairly simple idea; but two was not only two, but also 'the result of adding 1 to 1' and 'the root of 4'. The numbers grew in complexity out of all reason. Seven was 6 plus 1, and 5 plus 2, and 4 plus 3, and so on; as well as 'the root of 49', 'half 14' and the like. They even distinguished 4 plus 3 from 3 plus 4. Each number also represented an idea or group of ideas on all sorts of planes. It would have been quite possible to discuss dressmaking in terms of pure number. To give an example of the way in which their minds thought, consider the number three. Three, in so far as it gives the first plane figure, suggests superficies; with regard to the dimensions of space, solidity. Three itself is therefore 'that ineffably holy thing in which the superficies is the solid'. Of course hundreds of other ideas must be added to this; and to grasp and harmonise them all in one colossal supra-rational idea was the constant task of every mathematician. The upshot of this was that all numbers above 33 were regarded as spurious, illusionary; they had no real existence of their own; they were temporary compounds, unreal in very much the same sense as our square root of 1. They were always expressed by graphic formulae, like our own organic compounds.  To take an example, the number 156 was regarded as a sort of efflorescence of the number 7; it was never written but as 77 plus [(7+7)/7] plus 77. Again 11 was usually written 3 plus 5 plus 3.  It was always the aim to find symmetry in these expressions,  and also 'to find an easy way to 1'.  This last is difficult to explain.

Eleven was their great 'Key of Magic'.  It is a twofold number in  'the act of becoming 1'. Thirty-seven was the essence of 1 inasmuch as multiplying it by 3 gives 111, three ones, which divided again by 3 in another manner, yield 1. "One would rather think of 48 as 37 plus 11 than as 4 times 12" is the statement of an elementary text-book dating from the earliest days of Atlas. It was a sort of moral duty to teach the mind to think in this manner.

The number 7 was the 'perfect number' with them as with us, but for very different reasons. It was the link between Earth and Venus, for one thing; I cannot explain why. It was 'the number of Atla', and the  'house of success' (two being the  'house of battle'). It was also grace, softness, ease, healing and 'joy of Zro' as well as 'play of phosphorus'. Many mathematicians, however, attacked it with rigour; there was at one time an almost general consent to replace it by 8, and its 'rapture-combination' 31, by 33.  Despite the intense preoccupation with such ideas, mathematics as we know them had reached a perfection which if it does not surpass that of our own civilisation, fails principally because of its theorems, handed down to Euclid and Pythagoras, although imperfectly, formed a springboard whence we might leap.

The initiation of children was also a matter reserved for the High House. Weaned at three months, the children were tended by the lower classes until the age of puberty, an occurrence which fitted them at once for initiation. A legate from the High House was sent for, and in his presence the child was brought, acquainted with  Zro by its father and mother, and full instruction in 'working' was further conferred by any member  of the 'house'  who chose to do so, this in practice meaning  by everybody.  The ceremonies were frequently long and exhausting; children often enough died in the course of them. This was not regarded as a serious calamity; some schools of magicians even pretended to rejoice. The representatives of the High House had a prior right to the parents of the child; at times he conducted the initiation in person, a high honour, but invariably fatal. On rare occasions male children were sent over to the Atla to be devoured. The parents of so fortunate a child were advanced in rank on the spot, and had special privileges conferred on them, sometimes even being transferred to a 'House of Houses'. All those who dwelt in the High House were veiled whenever they appeared, in order to prevent it being known that they were  of the same appearance in all respects as their  inferiors. This ordinance had been made after the Great Conspiracy, with which I shall deal in the chapter on History.

 

Of The Underground Gardens Of Atlas, And Of The Alleged Commerce Of The Atlanteans With Incubi, Succubi, And The Demons Of Darkness

 

I have referred to the contempt with which the Atlanteans were prone to regard the vegetable kingdom.  Animals, including man, shared their scorn. The idea may have been that with their advantages they ought to have done much better for themselves. Minerals, however, were regarded as helpless; and hence the extraordinary attention paid to them. Beneath the houses the rock had been tunnelled out into grotto’s, some in odd fantastic forms, but most in immense polyhedra or combinations of curves. Each 'house' had some twenty of such gardens. Three reagents were used in the cultivation; the 'seed of metals',  'the seed of Light', and the seed of '', an untranslatable idea approximating to our mystic's  interpretation of 'Alpha and Omega'. The two former produced simple effects, the first formed jewels, self-luminious, which yet grew like flowers, the second similar effects with metals; while the third brought any mineral to flower in the most extravagant combinations of colour and form. All such conditions as texture, hardness, elasticity, and physical attributes in general, were considered worthy of the profoundest attention. As an instance of these, I may describe particular gardens.

One would have a roof of softly-glowing sapphires, foxglove, bluebell or gentian, and between these champak stars of ruby. The walls would be covered with tendrils of vine within whose depths lurked tiny blossoms of amethyst. The floor would be of malachite, but alive, growing as a coral does, softer than any earthly moss and more elastic to the tread. On every darker leaf might glow dew-drops of self-strung diamond formed from the carbon dioxide f the air by the action of the 'seed of Light'. Another grotto would be a monochrome of blue, various copper salts being 'planted' everywhere, and growing in  incrustations and festoons of every shade of blue from the faintest tinge of coerulean azure and green and grey, in whose abyss would be seen shapes of anemonies, perhaps of such hues as iron oxide, silver chromate, and cupramonium cyanurate. All this floor would in all respects resemble water but for its greater solidity, and floating on it would be giant lilies, great green leaves of emerald with cups of pearl not less than twelve feet in diameter, with corollae of pure gold, so fine that they glimmered green, with pistils of platinum on whose tops trembled great pigeon-blooded rubies. Another might be wholly of metal, a mere bower of jasmine, with its floor of violets. The law of growth of these creatures of wisdom was not that of plants or animals, or even of crystals; it was that of the earth. Constantly growing as the planet approached the sun, they as steadily shrank as she departed to aphelion. This was not growth and decay, but the rise and fall of an eternal bosom. It is probable, too, that this is one of the reasons why Atlas neglected the higher kingdoms; they had learned to grow, but on wrong lines, and it was too late to endeavour to correct the error.

These gardens were the principal places of working. It was hardly possible to pass from one place to another without coming upon one of them, so cunningly were they distributed; and in every garden would be found, joyful and noble, parties of workers intent on their beloved task. The passer-by would gladly join one of such parties, engage in the work for so long as he wished, and then proceed upon his private business. In these same gardens too, were salvers and goblets always filled with Zro, and after toil, refreshment fitted the workers to return to labour.

Now of these workings in the gardens strange tales are told. It is said that the inhabitants falling to repose were visited in sleep by incubi and succubi (whatever the nature of these may be, and I by no means concur in the opinion of Sinistrari), and that they welcomed such with eagerness. Nay, darker legends tell of infamous commerce and intercourse with demons foul and malicious, and pretend that the power of Atlas was devilish, and that the catastrophe was the judgement of God. These mediaeval fables of the debased and perverted phallicism miscalled Christianity are unworthy even to be refuted,  founded as they are on hypotheses contrary to common sense. Nor would they who knew themselves masters of the earth have deigned to degrade themselves, and moreover to vitiate their whole work by commerce with inferiors.

If there be any truth whatever in these stories, it will then be more easily supposable that the Atlanteans aspiring  to  journey sunwards to Venus, might invoke the beings of that planet, should it  be possible for them to travel to us. And that this is impossible, who can assert? On the theory of the Magicians,  power increases as the sun is approached, the inhabitants of Earth being more highly infused with the magical force of Our Star than those of Mars, and they again more than those of great Jupiter, gloomy and disastrous Saturn and Uranus, or Neptune lost in star-dreams. Again, the powers of each particular planet may, nay, must be wholly diverse. So fundamental a condition of existence as the value of g being vastly various, must not the inhabitants differ equally in body and in mind? What lives on the minute and airless Moon can be no inhabitant of what may hide beneath the flaming envelope of the sun,  with its fountains of hydrogen flaming an hundred thousand miles into the aether. And surely so wild an ambition as that of Atlas would not have been held by beings so wise and powerful for so many centuries had they not either a sure memory of coming from Mars, or some earnest of their eventual departure to Venus. Man does not persist in the chimerical for more than a few generations. Alchemy achieved results so startling and so beneficial to humanity at large-one need only mention the discovery  of zinc, antimony, hydrogen, opium, gas itself-that the original ideals were changed for others more  limited  and  more  practical-or at least more immediately realisable.

Nor is this view unsupported by testimony of a sort. "Great and glorious, rays of our father the Sun", says one of the poets of Atlas, "are they within us. Let us call them forth by utterance that is not uttered, by the gesture that is not made, by the working that is above all working, for they are great and glorious, rays of our father the Sun. Then from our bride that waits for us in the nuptial chamber, green in the green West, blue in the blue East, exalted above our father in the even and in the morn, spring forth our heirs and our hosts, to greet us in the darkness. Dim-glimmering are our gardens in the light of the seed of light; they are peopled with shadows; they take form; they are as serpents, they are as trees, they are as the holy Zcrra, they are as all things straight or curved, they are winged, they are wonderful. With us do they work, and that which was but one in seven, and that which was two is become eleven! With us do they work, and give us of the draught miraculous; us do they instruct in magic, and feed us the delicate food. Let us call forth them that are within us, that they that are without may enter in, as it was made manifest by Him that maketh secret." This passage, not devoid of a rude eloquence, makes clear what was held in esoteric circles. For in Atlas the poet was not as in England a holy and exalted being, one set apart for his high calling, throned in the hearts of the people, cherished by kings and nobles, one on whom no wealth and honour are too great to shower, but  one  of the people themselves, of no greater con sequence than any other. Every man was an artist in so far as he was a man; and every man being equally so in nature, whether so in achievement or not mattered nothing, as appreciation was of no moment. Accomplishing Art for the sake of Art, the interest of the creator in his work died with its creation.  It may therefore be possible that these words are those of poetic exaggeration, or that there is a concealed meaning in them, or that  they  are intended  to mask and mislead,  or that the poet was not  himself fully instructed.  Indeed it is certain that only the High  House had  the  secrets of Atlas, and that the magicians of the  House held  the undeniable if sometimes dangerous  doctrine  that  the truth  and  falsehood of any statement alternated as do  day  and night  according  to the status of the hearer of  the  statement. However,  so  strong  is the tradition concerning the  'Angel  of Venus' that it must at least be considered carefully.  The theory

appears  to have been that if the magicians of Venus invited  the Atlanteans,  means  would  assuredly follow,  just as if  a  King summons  a  paralysed  man to his presence,  he  will  also  send officers  to  convey  him.  Now whether the 'Angel of  Venus'  is really an angel in anything like the modern sense of the word, or merely  a title of one of the principal magicians of the  planet, it is evident that the High House ardentl  desired his  presence. That  this  might be manifested by the birth of a child  'without the  stain  of  Atla' was clearly  an  ultimate desideratum,  an outward and visible sign of redemption,  an obvious guarantee  of the  reality  of  the  occurrence.  It was  then  a  Virgin  high priestess  who achieved so notable a renown; whether or not this is a mere poetic parable of the abiogenesis - if it is indeed fair so to describe it - of the eleventh stage of Zro is another and an open question. In any case,  such is the tradition, and numerous parodies of it are still extant in the stories of the births of Romulus  and  Remus,  Bacchus, Buddha and many other legendary heroes of modern times; we even catch an echo in the myths of such barbarian lands as Syria. So much and no more concerning the Underground  Gardens  of Atlas, and of their commerce with the inhabitants of Venus.

 

Of Marriage And Other Curious Customs Of The Atlanteans: And Of Sacrifices To The Gods

 

I have already adverted to that most singular conception of the duty of the married which opposes the customs of Atlas to those of any other race on Earth. But the considerations which established it have yet to be discussed. I will not insist on that gross and cynical point of view which might perceive  in English marriage today a practical vindication of the Atlantean position. On the contrary, in Atlas marriage formed the loftiest of ideals. It resembles the 'Hermetic marriage' of certain alchemists. The bond between the parties was only stronger for the absence of the lower link. The idea underlying this was in the main a particular case of the general proposition that whatever was natural should be transcended. As will be seen in the final chapter, the very stigma of success in their Great Work was the transcending of the sexual process. The bond of marriage was not, however, entirely of this negative character. It had its positive side, and here closely resembled the so-called Christian doctrine of Christ and the church. Husband and wife were to be father and daughter, mother and son, brother and sister, teacher and pupil, and above all, friends. And this relation was to subsist on all planes. The hieroglyph of love was a cross; that of marriage, parallel straight lines, and as the cross was to be transcended in the circle, so were these lines to converge not on earth, but in Venus. In the meanwhile each partner led his own free life; and it often occurred that a woman, having borne two children to a man and married him, would bear two children to another man, and so on perhaps for two centuries, thus acquiring a cohort of husbands. Such an arrangement must clearly have lead to grave confusion had any question of property and inheritance been involved, but notions so unfortunate were unknown. Where all had every heart's desire, of what value were they?  It is true that some division of labour (though little) was involved in the social scheme, but it occurred to no one to regard the supervision of serviles as less honourable than the offering of great sacrifices. In a perfect organism one part is as necessary and decent as any other part, and no sane observer can reason otherwise. For a perfect organism has a single definite aim, and the only dishonourable feather on an arrow would be one that was out of place. Human nature being what it is, one may nevertheless agree that this measureless content with the existing order, except in so far as the purpose of the establishment of that order was unfulfilled, was rendered possible by the extreme lightness of the toil demanded of any individual. But it is impossible for slaves to understand free men. It is always a wonder to Englishmen that a man should devote himself to unremitting toil for an ideal. He is called a crank, basely slandered, the lowest motives being without any reason assigned to his actions, mocked, persecuted, perhaps crucified. This is partly forgivable, as in England philanthropy is almost invariably the mask of vice and fraud.

The ceremony of marriage was simple, dignified, yet poignant. The lovers in the presence of their whole house, publicly embraced for the last time. Their two children pressed them apart. Elevating their hands in a crossed clasp they gave way, and the children passed through, preceding a most holy image which was borne by a priest and priestess between them. Then they parted, and each was severally congratulated and embraced by any of the others who chose, and the priest and priestess  then, exalting  the image and setting it in a suitable  shrine, closed the ceremony by the command "To work" and adding force to the same by their example.

The education of the children was another important matter in which their ideas were wholly opposed to our own. It ceased altogether at the age of puberty, which was sometimes as early as six, never later than fourteen. Were it so delayed, the delinquent was crowned in mockery with a square black cap, sometimes tasselated, and sent among the serviles to instruct them in religion and similar branches of learning, and never permitted to return to Atlas. The ignorance and superstition of the plains was thus kept at a proper height.

The method of education was indeed singular. Certain Atlanteans who made it their study would place the various articles in the hands of the infants, and observe what use they made of them. In the course of a few months the experts had accurately mapped the psychology of the child, and it was led in accordance therewith. The marriage customs of Atlas allowed no too rapid growth in numbers, and it was therefore easy to give each child attention. The method of opposition was again employed in education, the child's natural wish being constantly stimulated by a parallel training in the contrary subject. Children were also shown a series of ordered facts, and an explanation given. But not the least pains was taken to ascertain whether the child had retained those instructions; they were left as impressions on the mind. The brain was not injured by the strain of being constantly forced to bring up its stores from the subconscious. It was found in practice that every child learnt everything that it was shown, and that this learning was always ready for use, while the consciousness was  never  wearied  or overcrowded.  It was also found that those whose memories were what we call good were precisely those who failed to develop in other ways more useful to society.

The most peculiar of their methods was the search for genius. It was the business of the experts to pay the most serious and reverent attention to all that a child did, and whenever they failed to understand the workings of its mind, to place it under the charge of a special guardian, who did his utmost to comprehend sufficiently to be able to encourage it to become yet more unintelligible.

 

Apud eos membrum virile membrano lucido erat;  ob quod  qualis circumscisio die nativitatis facta erat.  Vix credere dignum est, tanquam  verum,  feminarum montes venereales imilutidine