Читать книгу Hidden Realms, Lost Civilizations, and Beings from Other Worlds - Jerome Clark - Страница 13

Though neglected by modern writers on Shasta, Eugene E. Thomas’ 1894 novel, Brotherhood of Mt. Shasta, helped shape the evolving occult beliefs that Dweller set in motion. The protagonist, young Donald Crane, finds that a colony of masters, descended in part from Lemuria, lives secretly inside the mountain. Crane goes through seven steps on his way to mystical enlightenment before joining the “Sacred Brotherhood. “

If Frederick Spencer Oliver and Eugene Thomas first put forth the idea of Mount Shasta as a hideaway for a lost colony of mystical adepts with sunken-continent connections, a man who shared a middle name with Oliver—Harvey Spencer Lewis (1883–1939)—did much to fill in the details and to reinforce the link between Shasta and Lemuria. In his early adult life, Lewis, a journalist and editor in New York, developed interests in psychical research and occultism, much of it focused on Rosicrucianism. In 1909, in France, he was initiated into the order. On his return to the United States he became First Imperator of the Ancient and Mystic Order Rosae Crucis (AMORC), founded in 1915. In the 1920s AMORC moved to San Jose, California, where the organization, which still exists, remains headquartered.

Writing as “Selvius” in the August 1925 issue of the Rosicrucian magazine The Mystic Triangle, Lewis declared, “For fifty years or more the natives of Northern California and tourists, explorers, and government officials have contributed facts, and some fancies, to the accumulating mass of evidence proving the existence of the ‘mystic village’ (a name used by common agreement) and supplying the most astounding facts ever attributed to human beings.” These “facts” included numerous observations of mysterious phenomena on the mountainside as well as the regular appearances of odd individuals, dressed in pure white robes, “gray-haired, barefoot and very tall,” paying for goods with nuggets of pure gold. Moreover:

A symbol of the Rosicrucians, a mystical organization that believes in many occult practices. Some followers of this faith believed that there was a link between Lemuria and Mt. Shasta Mary Evans Picture Library).

At midnight, throughout the whole year, a ceremony is performed in this village, called the “ceremony of adoration to Guatama.” This latter word is their name for America; and the real purpose of the ceremony is to celebrate the arrival on this continent of their forebears when the continent of Lemuria disappeared beneath the quiet waters of the Pacific. At such ceremonies wonderful lights are used to such an extent that the whole southern side of Mt. Shasta is illuminated and made visible at great distances. These same lights are used at sunrise, daily[,] and are often seen by passengers on the Shasta Limited [train] which passes Shasta at about sunrise in certain seasons.

Though inclined to reclusiveness, the Lemurians—numbering no more than a few hundred—were good neighbors, helping farmers grow bumper crops with their advanced agricultural knowledge and making generous charitable contributions. On one occasion, apparently unremarked upon in the local press, a Lemurian walked all the way down to San Francisco, where he was given the key to the city, “much to the embarrassment of the simple soul who came to bring greetings on the anniversary of the establishment of their community in California.”

Either Lewis was extraordinarily credulous, or he was simply imaginative and making it up as he went along. (Needless to say, actual residents of the Shasta area knew nothing of any of this until occult pilgrims started showing up and asking them questions.) In any case, his piece completed what Oliver had begun, linking lost continents and survivors holed up at Shasta. In 1931 AMORC published a book titled Lemuria: The Lost Continent of the Pacific, its author identified as one “Wishar Spenly Cervé,” in fact a clumsy anagram of Harvey Spencer Lewis. The book, essentially a considerable expansion of the original “Selvius” piece, identifies coastal California as the product of a collision of the eastern edge of the broken-up, sinking Lemuria with the North American continent. Just before that catastrophe, however, a group of wise Lemurians had already relocated to the top of Mount Shasta, knowing they would be safe there from the rising waters.

The end of Mu (another name for Lemuria) came when volcanic action and floods overwhelmed the continent, as shown in this illustration from James Churchward’s The Lost Continent of Mu (Mary Evans Picture Library).

True Lemurians—in this account anyway—did not, and do not, look exactly like us. Seven feet (2.1 meters) tall, they have large foreheads topped with short hair, but thick and long in the back (in other words, mullets). A walnut-sized lump in the middle of their foreheads represents what amounts to a third eye, through which they sense distant sights and images and engage in telepathic exchanges with their fellows. The third eye also gives them access to all knowledge of time, space, science, spirit, and history. Not all Lemurians perished in the cataclysm—the others scattered and lost their distinctive characteristics to become the ancestors of the present human race—but the Shasta colonists, by keeping to themselves and discouraging outsiders from any but the most minimal interaction (if that), have preserved the otherwise-lost race in its original form.

An article in the May 22, 1932, edition of the Los Angeles Times’s Sunday magazine electrified occultists with what appeared to be independent confirmation of a Lemurian Shasta. Writer Edward Lanser reported that on a recent trip from Los Angeles to Seattle aboard the Shasta Limited, he had awakened early to catch the sunrise. The distant mountain’s southern slope, he noticed, was eerily illuminated with a “strange, reddish-green light.” The light apparently did not come from a forest fire because no smoke accompanied it. Awhile later, as he was eating breakfast, he spoke with the conductor, inquiring if he knew anything about the curious phenomenon. “Lemurians,” the conductor replied matter-of-factly. “They hold ceremonials up there.”

On his return trip, Lanser said, he drove to Siskiyou County and spent the night in Weed. Lanser related:

I discovered that the existence of a “mystic village” on Mt. Shasta was an accepted fact. Business men, amateur explorers, officials and ranchers in the country surrounding Shasta spoke freely of the Lemurian community, and all attested to the weird rituals that are performed on the mountainside at sunset, midnight and sunrise. Also they freely ridiculed my avowed trek into the sacred precincts, assuring me that an entrance was as difficult and forbidden as is an entrance into Tibet.

It appeared that, although the existence of these last descendants of the ancient Lemurians have [sic] been known to Northern Californians for more than 50 years, only four or five explorers have penetrated the invisible protective boundary of this Lemurian settlement; but no one has ever returned to tell the tale. … It’s safe to say that fifty out of a hundred people living within a reasonable distance of Shasta have at some time or other tried to approach the Lemurians, yet many—who are known to have penetrated at least part of the mystery—will vehemently deny, perhaps out of some well-founded fear, having much such an investigation or having any knowledge concerning the Lemurians.

Lanser also cited the alleged telescopic observations of Lemurian activity by “the eminent scientist Prof. Edgar Lucien Larkin, for many years director of the Mt. Lowe Observatory in Southern California.” Larkin is also mentioned in Lewis’ Lemurian chronicles. Owned and run for public-relations purposes by the Pacific Electric Railway, “Mount Lowe Observatory” was more tourist attraction than scientific establishment, and Larkin was no scientist, eminent or otherwise, but a Hearst newspaper contributor, inventor, and Atlantis buff who had died in 1924. Moreover, as William Bridge Cooke demonstrated in a later article in the Mount Shasta Herald (June 27, 1940), for optical and geographical reasons, Larkin could not have seen what some accounts claimed he saw from his vantage point 800 miles (1,287 kilometers) to the south. In any event, the whole issue is surely moot, since there is no reason to believe that Larkin himself ever made these claims. As far as anyone can determine, they first saw print in 1925, when Lewis publicized them and Larkin was conveniently not around to dispute them.

Though frequently cited in esoteric literature, Lanser’s story appears to be either a parody or an outright hoax. It seems to have drawn in equal parts on Lewis’ writings (especially the “Selvius” piece) and on Lanser’s own freewheeling imagination. We can only infer as much, because the Times story was his one and only, if lasting, contribution to Shasta/Lemuria lore.

In its August 1935 issue the Rosicrucian Digest warned readers of fraudulent mystics—unnamed, but possibly the emerging psychic charlatans Guy and Edna Ballard (see below)—claiming to have discovered Lemurian temples at Shasta and offering to lead deep-pocketed pilgrims to them. “The naïve believer will lose time and money as well,” the magazine predicted.

The following year AMORC went further in a letter to the Mount Shasta City Chamber of Commerce. On May 28 the Mount Shasta Herald reprinted portions of the communication, which accompanied a copy of the AMORC-published book on Lemuria. AMORC declared it was “amused by the rumors that we originated these tales [about Lemurians] or merely accepted them as facts. … We are no more responsible for the facts than is the publisher who publishes Anderson’s Fairy Tales or the Arabian Nights.” In other words, the book was never intended to be anything other than a collection of colorful folktales. The letter warned of phony expeditions whose unnamed guides always managed to find an excuse for their failure to deliver the promised goods. Presumably, AMORC’s fear of potential legal liability was such that it was willing to jettison its own book, certainly not issued initially as an anthology of yarns and myths—though Lewis can only have been a conscious fabulist who created much of the lore out of his own head, not out of pre-existing Shasta traditions.

AMORC was already moving away from its founder’s claims of flesh-and-blood Lemurians on the mountain. In the Rosicrucian Digest for January 1936, John P. Scott recounted his inquiries in the area. “No storekeepers in the vicinity,” he wrote, “have ever exchanged merchandise for gold nuggets with any strange inhabitants of this mountain. There are no Lemurian temples or ruins on the mountain.” Nonetheless, though many of the stories AMORC itself had promoted were, strictly speaking, hooey, the Lemurians still exist, if not here, then there on “other planes.” He explained, “Many earthbound spirits from the old civilization which once existed in this locality are still there, held closely … by their materialistic ideas. Mt. Shasta seems to us to be a so-called ‘sensitive spot,’ in which it is easier to contact those on the other planes than most other places.”

This notion echoes a concept that figures in Oliver’s book—not in the novel’s narrative but in an interlude within the text, “Seven Shasta Scenes”:

A long tunnel stretches away, far into the interior of majestic Shasta. Wholly unthought is it that there lie at the tunnel’s far end vast apartments, the home of a mystic brotherhood, whose occult arts hollowed that tunnel and mysterious dwelling: “Sach” the name is. Are you incredulous as to these things? Go there, or suffer yourself to be taken as I was, once! See, as I saw, not with the vision of flesh, the walls, polished as by jewelers, though excavated as by giants; floors carpeted with long, fleecy gray fabric that looked like fur, but was a mineral product; ledges intersected by the boulders, and in their wonderful polish exhibiting veinings of gold, of silver, of green copper ores, and maculations of precious stones. Verily, a mystic temple, made afar from the madding crowd.

Oliver, however, does not tie this “mystic brotherhood” to a remnant Lemurian colony, a connection made subsequently by Eugene Thomas.

Lewis Spence (1874–1955) was not yet another pseudonym of Harvey Spencer Lewis. He was a Scottish journalist, political activist, folklorist, and occultist. Among his fascinations was the subject of lost continents, on which he wrote several important books. One of them was The Problem of Lemuria (1933). Spence cited Lanser’s account of Shasta Lemurians in the context of Lemurian survivals. “The proof that a native white race once dwelt in the Pacific area and that its vestiges are still to be found there is, I am convinced, of the highest moment to the whole study of a difficult question,” he wrote.

The location of Lemuria, according to Lewis Spence (Mary Evans Picture Library).