EVOLUTION and INVOLUTION
The Seven Root-races

Much of this information comes to us from Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, the Theosophical Society and also from Alice A. Bailey. We note that much of HPB's geological information, unreliable at the time she wrote it, was later confirmed by contemporary scientists and geologists.

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PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS

A series of seven Root-races will evolve on earth during the present grand cycle, each living on its own "continent." The word "continent" here denotes all the dry land during the period of any specific Root-race. The midpoint of any one Root-race sees the beginning of the emergence of the next and is marked by a series of geological cataclysms involving the submergence of old landmasses and the elevation of new ones - all in strict accordance with Karmic law.

At the beginning of human life in the first Root-race (in the mid-Paleozoic era - about 500-million to 250-million years ago), the entire earth was a watery sea, with the only dry land being at the north pole.

During the second Root-race, more land rose from under the water and was joined to the first land, and during the third root-race the earth's "waist" appeared - a reference to the Himalayas.

Today, at the midpoint of the fifth Root-race, there is twice as much water as land. When our root-race nears its end, seismic and volcanic catastrophes will result in the submergence of our own continental system and the emergence of new lands for the sixth Root-race.

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The

1) The Polarians
. 2) The Hyperboreans
. . 3) The Lemurians
. . . 4) The Atlanteans
. . . . 5) The Aryans
. . . . . 6) The 6th Root Race
. . . . . . 7) The 7th Root Race
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Pure Spirit

Dense Matter

This diagram illustrates the clockwise progression of the Root Races.
At the top is pure Spirit - At the bottom is the densest matter.
Thus humanity reached the densest material state in the mid-Atlantean age.
Progress on the right side is descending and is called Evolution.
Progress on the left side is ascending and is called Involution.
We presently live at about 7:30 on the clock.

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The 1st Root-race

The Polarians were primarily spiritual (Astral/Etheric) and did not leave any physical remains.

The First Root-race, i.e. the "first men" on earth (irrespective of form), were the progenitors of the "celestial men." In Indian philosophy, these were the Pitris, of which there are seven classes or Hierarchies.

Unlike Judeo-Christianity, "man" in Blavatsky's cosmology is the creation of higher spiritual hierarchies, but not of "God."  The "first men" are described as the astral shadows of the Progenitors, "... so ethereal in constitution that they could not be affected by any elements - flood or fire."

The Polarians reproduced through fission [dividing], as the ameba does today.  They were devoid of all understanding (such as mind, intelligence or will). They were ethereal, asexual, and even devoid of desire.  The individuals of this Race did not actually die.  Instead, they "melted gradually away, becoming absorbed into the bodies of their own 'sweat-born' progeny (the Second Race), which was more solid than their own."

The Imperishable Sacred Land

The first continent - called "The Imperishable Sacred Land" - is the most mysterious of the seven continents. It is said to be located in the region of the north pole.

This "Sacred Land" does not share the fate of the other continents, for it is the only one whose destiny is to last from the beginning to the end of the Manvantara. Of this mysterious and sacred land very little can be said, except that "the polestar has its watchful eye upon it, from dawn to the close of the Day of the GREAT BREATH ( in India called, The Day of Brahma ).

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The 2nd Root-race

The Hyperboreans were also non-physical (etheric).

Hyperborea

During the Second Root-race, more land emerged from under the waters. The second continent - Hyperborea - comprised the regions around the north pole in the arctic circle, including Greenland, Scandinavia, northern Asia and northern North America.

Esoteric philosophy teaches us that after the first geological disturbance in the Earth's axis, which ended in the sweeping to the bottom of the Seas the whole second Continent, there came another disturbance by the axis resuming its previous degree of inclination; and the Earth was indeed raised once more out of the Waters.

The ever-blooming lands of the Second Continent (Greenland, among others) were transformed from Edens into Hyperborean Hades, and the bulk of the Second Race perished in this first great throe of the globe during the human period.

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The 3rd Root-race

The Lemurians were the first "men" with physical bodies.  They are described as a race of giants that inhabited the "Lost Continent" of Lemuria, which is where we now find the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Some modern Theosophists (mistakenly) identify Lemuria with the ancient, actual supercontinent of Gondwanaland.

During the Lemurian cycle, infant humanity steadily evolved, but the lines of cleavage between spirit and matter were not yet recognized. The life of humanity was then centered completely within the physical body.

A great human crisis occurred with the Individualization of Man, for the Lemurians eventually became "animal man," and reproduction through fusion was initiated as the race divided into two sexes.

Lemuria

Lemuria - the third continent - embraced large areas in the Indian and Pacific oceans, and also portions of what is now Africa. It even projected around South Africa into the North Atlantic; it included Sweden, Norway, and also Asia, which was then a "broken prolongation" of it.

Australia is the largest relic of Lemuria and other fragments are found in the many Pacific islands; it also included a large portion of what now exists as California - that is, the areas east and south of the San Andreas fault.

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The 4th Root-race

The Atlanteans are generally considered to have had great occult and/or technological powers. But this technology (including their flying machines) was a gift from the extraterrestrial Hierarchy and was neither invented nor developed by humanity itself. They inhabited the lost continent of Atlantis, which was destroyed due to their abuse of psychic and super-physical powers. The survivors became our present fifth, Aryan, Root-race.

The Atlantean Root-race consisted of the following sub-races

1) Rohmahls
2) Tlavatlis
3) Toltecs
4) First Turanians
5) Original Semites
6) Akkadians
7) Mongolians

In Atlantean times, the lines of demarcation between pure physical life and that which could be called the goal of effort began to control the animal nature. Man started to be acquisitive and to surround himself with what he wanted.

Gradually, the mental element unfolded among our Atlantean ancestors. The first stages of civilization began. A period of urban existence superceded that of a nomadic and agricultural existence. Men began to congregate together for their greater material comfort and protection.

Atlantis

Atlantis was an immense continental system that (more or less) covered the face of the globe, with its main center in what is now the Atlantic Ocean. As well as covering the North and South Atlantic regions, it included portions of the North and South Pacific, as well as islands in the Indian ocean. Sri Lanka (Ceylon) was the northern headland of one of the Pacific-Atlantean land-masses. Sweden and Norway formed part of Atlantis on the European side, and eastern and western Siberia and Kamchatka belonged to it on the Asiatic side.

Other surviving remnants of Atlantis are the Azores, the Canaries, and the island of Madeira - all of which were once mountain-peaks on the Atlantean continent.

Egypt is far older than Europe as it now appears on the map. Atlanto-Aryan tribes began to settle in Egypt when the British Islands and France were not even in existence. The Nile Delta, as a firm and fertile land, has been inhabited for more than 100,000 years.

America is also older than Europe and was forming while Atlantis was sinking. When the Atlanteans were in their prime, the European continent was not yet in existence as we now know it, but there was free communication between Atlantis and Egypt, and with such portions of Europe as did exist. Modern geology shows us that the British Isles have been submerged and re-elevated four times, and that the straits between them and Europe were dry land during a former epoch.

The large continent of Atlantis first divided [split] and later broke into seven major islands. When the main part of Atlantis began to sink, settlers migrated to the new lands that were rising in the east, west, and south. These new lands became the Americas, Africa, parts of Asia, and the present European countries. Egypt was already a major Atlantean outpost at this time.

Remnants of Atlantis have been discovered in the Mediterranean Sea near Greece, and in the Atlantic Ocean near the Bahamas. Some people have proclaimed that these are the "sites" of Lost Atlantis - not realizing that they were just tiny pieces of a globe-spanning civilization.

In 1936, Edgar Cayce predicted, "The first signs of Atlantis rising will occur in the Bahamas, near the island of Bimini". He also predicted this would happen in either 1967 or 1968.

In 1968, near Bimini, a pilot spotted what has become known as The Atlantis Road (>)

The sinking of Atlantis began in the Eocene epoch (55 to 34 million years ago) and most of it was gone by the end of the Miocene epoch (23 to 5 million years ago). The largest remaining island, Ruta, situated in the Pacific Ocean, was destroyed about 850,000 years ago at the time of a shifting of the earth's axis. Daitya, a fairly large island in the Indian Ocean, though smaller than Ruta, sank about 270,000 years ago.

The last remaining portion of an island of noteworthy magnitude, Poseidonis - about the size of Ireland at the time of its end - situated in the Atlantic Ocean beyond the "Pillars of Hercules" [the Straits of Gibraltar], was submerged in 9565 BC in a great cataclysm involving massive earthquakes and tidal waves. This was the "Atlantis" of which Plato wrote.

It was from the 5th sub-race of Atlanteans, known today as the Semites, that the first Aryans emerged. They migrated to India and produced what was known in those distant times as the Rama Empire. They apparently were rivals of the remaining Atlanteans in the leadership of the antediluvian world, and this led to a war between the two empires, including the use of ancient forms of nuclear weapons. See Sodom and Gomorrah, et al.

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The 5th Root-race

We are the Fifth Root-race, referred to as the Aryans. 

Aryan is an English word derived from the Sanskrit "Arya," meaning "noble" or "honorable." The Old Persian equivalent is "Ariya."

Ethnologically, the Aryans were the original Indo-European nomadic tribesmen, an aggressive race of horsemen that moved east into India and West into the "near East" and Europe. 

It is unfortunate that the term "Aryan" was adopted and perverted by Adolph Hitler with his fantasies of an "Aryan" Overman, a title still used today by right-wing, white-power extremists.  Hitler and his inner circle were actually black magicians who perverted many mystical symbols, including the ancient swastika. 

"Aryan," when used in the Theosophical context and here in our essay, has nothing to do with Hitler, Nazism, or any racist ideology.

The constituent "sub-races" of  the Aryan Root-Race are as follows:

Ø) Atlanteans

. 1) Hindus
. . 2) Sumerians
. . . 3) Egyptians
. . . . 4) Hellenes
. . . . . 5) Europeans
. . . . . . 6) Nova Man
. . . . . . . 7) Future Man

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The current Root-race, our present apex of humanity, is comprised of the fifth sub-race, the European. Being the 5th sub-race of the 5th Root-race, it is primarily mental in its constitution. However, the emerging sixth sub-race, the Novae, is even now beginning to develop out of European stock, and it is primarily intuitional in nature.

The Fifth Continent

The fifth continent is called "America," but Europe and Asia Minor are its equals - for it was there that the fifth root-race first evolved.

Beginning some 4 to 5 million years ago, the early fifth Root-race migrated from Atlantis to Central Asia, where we now find the Gobi Desert and northwestern China. This vast stretch of Asiatic country is now a lofty plateau, but back then was comparatively low and fertile, having just begun to rise above the waters. At that time Europe was largely under water. The Alps were being uplifted, with only the peaks and a few foothills as yet above the sea.

About a million years ago, the fifth Root-race, in its Central Asian cradle, had developed into a distinct human stock. Geological and climatic changes then led to a series of westward migrations to the newly risen lands.

Europe in the early Quaternary period (roughly a million years ago) was very different from the Europe of today. Spain was joined to north Africa by land across the present Strait of Gibraltar, and the Sahara was a broad sea. A further upheaval of the continent changed the entire map of Europe. The last serious change occurred some 12,000 years ago, and was followed 3,000 years later by the submersion of Plato's Atlantic island, which he called Atlantis after its parent continent.

    The fifth sub-race (the European) originated 9000 years ago and has another 16,000 years to live before a series of cataclysms cause the submergence of many parts of Europe, including Britain, most of France, Holland, some of Spain, and a good deal of Italy. This will affect the Americas and will essentially wipe out the whole Aryan race. But it will also usher in the sixth Root-race that is already beginning to develop. This will not take place overnight, for there will be preliminary signs, such as the slow sinking of various coastlines and great earthquakes.

The sixth sub-race (the Nova or "New" man) is already developing within the European sub-race of the Aryan Root-race.

The Nova prototypes among us are called Masters, Magisters, Adepts and Amazing People, but few of them are known to the public at large.

Starry-eyed advocates of Aquarius proclaim that this "New Age" is already upon us. However, we still have quite a ways to go.

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The 6th Root-race

The 6th Root-race constitutes the distant coming of an advanced racial expression that will demonstrate group consciousness, telepathic rapport, high intelligence and intuitive skills, all combined with numerous other qualities. 

The Sixth Continent

The principal home of the sixth Root-Race will be the Americas. Much of the land of the Americas that is now above the waters will then be under them, and new land, now forming at the sea bottom, will have risen above its surface. North and South America will then be more widely united. New land will rise out of the present Pacific ocean, thus raising the old Lemurian beds again to be joined to the western coast of the Americas.

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The 7th Root-race

The Seventh Continent

Well, it's coming! .But it is a long time away. Don't try to look too far into the future - It will only confuse you.

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