The Lost Continent.

>Subject: Aleister Crowley on Atlantis
>From: density4@aol.com (Density 4)
>Date: 24 Apr 1995 16:06:03 -0400
>Message-ID: <3nh0bb$l15@newsbf02.news.aol.com>
>
> THE LOST CONTINENT

> By Aleister Crowley
>
> Ordo Templi Orientis

> P.O Box 2303

> Berkeley, CA 94702

>
> (C) COPYRIGHT O.T.O.

> June 21, 1985 e.v.
> Sun in Cancer
> Moon in Leo

>
> The Lost Continent

>
>
>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.

>
>Aleister Crowley
>
>
>I. 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

>amphibian herds of Atlas. This corn was of a kind now unknown,
>flourishing in sea-water,

>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 twentyfour.

> 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,

(TOM and MIKE retch.)

> 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.

>
>II. 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.
>
>Other 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.

(All snicker)

> 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.

>III. 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.

M&TB: EWWWWWWWWW!

> 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 foetor,

> 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,

(CROW, TOM and MIKE react in renewed disgust and dismay)

> 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.

>IV. 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
>utilization 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,
>having 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 equalize
>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
>shewing

> 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.

>V. 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 neighbor by over
>twenty miles of sea. Its diameter was about an 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,

(They clear their throats nervously)

> 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 tunneled 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.

>Subject: Aleister Crowley on Atlantis 2/2
>From: density4@aol.com (Density 4)
>Date: 24 Apr 1995 16:06:14 -0400
>Message-ID: <3nh0bm$l19@newsbf02.news.aol.com>

>[continued]
>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;

(All burst into uproarious laughter)

> 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 tunneled
>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 specialized 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 harmonize 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 civilization, 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.

>VI. 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 tunneled out into grottos, 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 of 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 judgment 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 realizable.

>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 exoteric 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
>consequence 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 ardently 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.

>VII. 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 shewn 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 similutidine
>facies fuere, facies demonicae, sardonicae, Satyricae, cujus os
>erat os vulvae, res horribiles atque ridiculosa. Ferunt similia
>de virorum membris, quae fingunt sicut imagines homunculorum
>fuere. Lege--Judice--Tace.

>Many of the men had ossified extensions of the frontal process
>which amounted to horns,

> and the formation was occasionally
>found in the higher types of women. Curiously carven head-
>dresses of gold were worn by both sexes,

> and those of priestly
>rank adorned these with living serpents, and the high priests
>yet further with feathers or with wings, such being not the
>spoils of dead birds, but the blossoms of the live gold of the
>crowns.

> Some tradition of this custom is found in the pictures
>of the 'Gods' of Egypt, these gods being merely the Atlanteans
>whose mission civilized the country. The names of some of the
>earlier gods confirm this. Nu (Hebrew Noah) is Atlantean for
>arch, Zu (Egyptian Shu) for many ideas connecting with wind, Asi
>means 'cum quasi serpens', obviously the name of an actual High
>Priestess.

> Ra is pure Atlantean for Sun, and 'Mse' (Egyptian
>Chomse) for moon. The idea in 'Mse is that of a strong woman
>('M) closing the mouth of a serpent (S) or dragon, and from this
>we have the XIth card of the Bohemian Tarot, and the legend in
>the Apocalypse.

> In the mystic Greek used by the Gnostics we
>find similar traces, SOPHIA being from S Ph,

> giving the idea of
>'serpent breath' i.e. wisdom.

> IAO is PHALLOS, KTEIS, PROKTOS.
>The word LOGOS means the Boy (G) naturally engendered of the
>Virgin (L) and the Serpent (S). THEOS (root O, first written 0)
>means the sun in his strength and also the Lingam-Yoni conjoined.
CHRISTOS is 'The love of passion of the Rising Sun (R) and the
>serpent' (S). The I and T indicate certain details which are
>foreign to the present discussion. NEUMA (Atlantean N M) is the
>'Arch of the Woman', MARIA, the Woman of the Sun. The words
>MEITHRAS and ABRAXAS are again derived from Atlas.

> "The woman
>entered, Lingam being conjoined with Yoni, bears the sun from
>her serpent womb" and "From the womb's mouth the sun (cometh
>seeking) a womb for his desire, even the womb of a serpent", the
>course of the year being signified in this manner, as usual with
>the ancients.

> This plan of an idea corresponding to each letter

>was carried out very strictly: thus TLA, black, means the stigma
>or mark of the virgin's womb, IA (Hail! Greeting!) 'Face to
>Face', from the other peculiarity described above. These few
>examples will suffice to indicate the singular character of the
>language,

> and the way in which its essential dogmatic symbols
>have been incorporated by the heirs of Atlas in the inmost
>sanctuaries of races which they deemed worthy of such assistance.

>I must not pass over in silence the question of sacrifice to the
>gods, to which a passing reference has already been made. Such
>sacrifices were not very frequent; the victims were the
>'failures', those who were useless to the social economy.

> As
>they represented capital expenditure, the object was to recover
>this, at least, since no interest could be expected. The victim
>was therefore handed over to a High Priest or Priestess, who
>extracted the life by an instrument devised for and excellently
>adapted to the purpose, so that it died of exhaustion. The life
>thus regained was given to 'the gods' in a manner too complex to
>be described in this brief account.

>The early age at which puberty occurred was due to design. The
>normal period of gestation had also been shortened to four
>months. This was all part of the scheme to economize time. Old
>age had been almost done away with by the great readiness of the
>Atlanteans to 'go and see' at the first sign of failing power.

>No doubt, further improvements would have been made but for the
>loss of interest in the matter, all generation being regarded as
>'the old experiment', not likely to repay the trouble of further
>research. In the 200 or 300 years of a man's full vigour, only
>8 years on an average was the wastage of childhood, and even
>this was not all waste, since some time at least must be
>necessary for the experts to discover and direct the tendencies
>of the mind. The body ought therefore to be regarded as an
>engine, the theoretical limit of whose efficiency had been
>reached.

>So much I mention of the customs of the Atlanteans with regard
>to marriage, education and religious sacrifices.

>VIII. OF THE HISTORY OF ATLAS, FROM ITS EARLIEST ORIGINS TO THE
> PERIOD IMMEDIATELY PRECEDING THE CATASTROPHE.

>The origin of Atlas is lost in the obscurity of antiquity. The

>official religious explanation is this: "We came across the
>waters on the living Atla",

> which is pious but improbable. A
>mystic meaning is to be suspected. The lay historian says "We
>came, escaping from destruction, eight persons in a ship,
>bearing the living Zro." This reminds one of later legends of
>presumably equal value. Poets frankly claim "We descended from
>heaven", and it has been seriously urged that seafarers would
>have preferred the plains to the rocks.

> The law of contrariety
>to Nature explains this away. Others maintain that the earliest
>settlers came 'by air,' or 'through air'. This must mean
>balloons or airplanes, as flying was not known until centuries
>after.

> What is definitely known is that the earliest settlers
>were of a purely fighting race.

>An Atlantean Homer,

> Ylo, has described the first battle in such
>detail as to leave no doubt that he is retelling facts--a marked
>contradiction to his earlier books.

> There appear to have been
>but few Atlanteans, unless the names given are those of chiefs,
>which internal evidence contraverts. Their valour seems to have
>been prodigious. The natives were armed with every possible
>instrument of precision, having cavalry and artillery in
>abundance,

> as well as weapons that must have been as superior to
>the modern rifle (unless Ylo exaggerates)

> as that is to the
>arquebus.

> In spite of this the men of Atlas 'smote them with
>rods' or 'fell upon them with their cones',

> and routed them
>utterly. This mention of rods and cones has absurdly suggested
>to commentators that the Atlanteans used their eyes, and
>hypnotised the enemy. To state such an opinion is sufficient to
>expose its author to the contempt of the thoughtful.

> Altogether
>86 battles were fought, extending over five years, before the
>natives were reduced to sue for peace.

> This was granted on
>generous terms, which the colonists broke, as soon as they dared
>to do so, in accordance with the invariable rule of colonists,
>then as much as today. However, it was nigh on a hundred years
>before the first college of magic was established.

> Previously
>the Atla had been carried about as occasion demanded. It was
>now enshrined with some decency of ceremonial upon a mountain.
>About three hundred years later we find ourselves face to face
>with the first great Mystery of Atlas. This is a translation of
>the record of that most strange event.
>"Now it came to pass that all men turned black and died, and
>that the living Atla abode alone, bearing Mercury, whereof the
>Sun knoweth. Thus came again the true men of Atlas, and their
>women, bearing gods and goddesses. And the void suffered
>nothing, and the earth was at peace. Now then indeed arose Art,

>and men builded, being blind. And there was light, and some of
>the light wrought mischief. Wherefore the wise men destroyed
>them with their magic, and there is no record because it is
>written in that which is." A sort of 'Si monumentum quaeris,
>circumspice' seems here implied.

> In any case there were clearly
>two gaps unbridge able between the early struggles of the
>settlers, the period of great buildings, and the modern period,
>which proved stable of 'houses'. The 'houses' were only made
>possible by the perfecting of Zro, and this helps considerably
>to fix the date.

> The next 2500 years were years of peaceable
>progress; the labour-mills were run without a hitch, and the
>next event was the discovery of black phophorus. It had been
>the custom to worship the Atla with lights, and these lights had
>been candles of yellow phosphorus in golden sheathes. At that
>time the Atla was veiled. At one festival of Spring the veils
>were burnt up, the lights extinguished, and the yellow
>phosphorus was found to have been turned into the black powder.

>The magicians examined this, and brought Zro to its ninth stage.

>This revolutionized the condition of things: old age and
>disease were no more, and death voluntary. Strangely enough
>this led directly to the Great Conspiracy.

>At the end of this period of 2500 years the system of 'houses'
>was well established. There were over 400 such 'houses', each
>of perhaps 1000 souls on an average. These were governed by 4
>'houses of houses' whose rulers took orders from the High House,
>at the head of which was the living Atla. The plain principle
>of Atlas was revolution; and like all revolutionary bodies, was
>obliged to adopt the strictest form of autocracy. A democracy
>is always soddenly conservative. The only hope is to catch it
>in one of its moments of crazy enthusiasm, and crush it before
>it has time to recover.

> Caesar and Napoleon both did this as
>far as they could; Cromwell and Porfirio Diaz did the same
>within narrower limits.

>Now a certain sophist--for philosopher one cannot call him--
>tried to enunciate a magical law to the effect that the present
>standard of life was all that could be desired; that further
>progress would be harmful, that Venus was not worth attaining,
>and that the sole endeavour of the magicians should be to
>preserve things as they were.

> That such a proposition could be
>supposed a 'law' reflects no credit on its author or its
>supporters. Yet of these it found many. The ninth stage of Zro
>was a leap calculated to unsettle the calmest mind. Its reality
>had beggared the optimist's daydream. Poets had thrown down
>their stilettos.

> High Priests who had spent decades in hopeful
>experiment saw their results attained by an entirely different
>method. In short, two thirds of the people were infected with
>the heresy, and hoped to hear it promulgated as a Law of Magic.
>It should here be explained that every Law of Magic had its turn
>as the principal law of practical working, and the school
>supporting any law, or insisting on it, became prominent with it.

>Every dominant law in all history had always been made
>insignificant by a new discovery about Zro, or other matter of
>practical importance, just as the "Peace with Honour" battle-cry
>of Disraeli was drowned by the calculation of the cost of
>warships, soldiers and patriotism.

> Each step in Zro had
>consequently implied the rise to power of a new school; and the
>sophist was ambitious, and yet the law he wished to establish
>was the ruling law of the servile races.

>The 'law' was accordingly sent to the High House for approval.
>Some opposition may have been forseen, but no one was prepared
>for the blackness of disapproval which actually radiated,
>striking hearts cold. A course without precedent, no answer was
>vouchsafed. On the contrary, even normal communication was
>suspended.

> The houses which favoured the innovation--333 in
>numbers--took counsel, came to the decision that it was useless
>to oppose the High House, and were about to acquiesce, when a
>woman who had once been in the presence of 'To Her' rose and
>thought vehemently 'The Living Atla is the head of our
>conspiracy'.

> In other words, they were the loyalists, the
>Magicians of the High House the rebels. This was why they had
>cut themselves off, because their own head was against them. It
>was instantly resolved to go to the High House, and demand the
>custody of 'To Her'. Nearing the goal, however, a remnant of
>the ancient reverence half cowed even the ringleaders--I may
>mention that five of every six of the heretics were women

> --when
>they saw a stern phalanx of magicians, its point threatening
>their centre. As they wavered, a woman cried "They are only men
>such as we are." The ranks stiffened;

(CROW takes a breath to say something)

> on all sides the army
>closed upon the tiny phalanx, which only numbered 66 all told.
>It was then that the truth was known. Ere a blow could be
>struck, the attacking party vanished;

> it was instantaneous and
>complete annihilation. From that moment it was certain that the
>ruling power in Atlas was Something infinitely more awful than
>the Living Atla.

> In order to avoid any possible repetition of
>such a disaster--for the Magicians of the High House knew that
>any manifestation of the Supreme must undo the work of centuries--
>they gave out that they had become too terrible to look upon,
>and for the future they always appeared with heavy veils, or
>rather masks, since for the most part they were carven
>fantastically by the wearers in their leisure hours.

> A further
>alteration was made in the system of government. The head of

> the High House
>took no part in affairs of state. Thus the Atla was to all
>intents and purposes deposed, although the same reverence and
>sacrifice were paid to it as formerly. It became a
>'constitutional monarch', in our modern jargon.

>The next thousand years were years of serious trial in other
>ways. The toil of repopulation was excessive,

> and there was a
>revolt or rather strike of the servile races, which was ended by
>the substitution of 'bread from heaven' for those products of
>the earth on which they had formerly been fed, a diet which
>proved so adapted to their natures that no labour troubles ever
>recurred.

>The Greek legends of the wars between Gods, giants, Titans are
>traditional of a real war or series of wars which continued with
>intervals over 200 years. The enemy had developed naval

>armament to an extreme. Their tactics were these:
>
>1. To wipe out the servile races and so to interfere with the
> production of Zro.

>2. To rush and destroy the High House.

>The first of these met with a great deal of success, the
>floating rock being struck with projectiles and sunk.

> This
>occurred chiefly on the outlaying islands, where they were not
>too much afraid to make raids in force. They also sent epidemic
>disease of many kinds. Atlas was reduced to such extremity in
>these ways that at one time the waterways were forced and the
>assault on the High House was actually carried out, bombardment
>continuing day and night for months together.

(Tom and Mike make bomardment noises)

> Through a
>misunderstanding of a well known magical law, Atlanteans at that
>time considered themselves prohibited from employing any other
>defence than the rods and the cones of their forefathers; and
>these, it appears, were useless against machinery,

> or against
>men protected by fortification in such a way that they could not
>be got at from any quarter. Thus the sharklike submarines of
>the enemy were unassailable. The war was therefore at first
>entirely one-sided. A certain youthful magician, however,
>resolving to die for his country if need were, decided to
>retaliate. He had found that Zro in its nascent state (i.e.
>between the globes)

> had the power of bringing about endothermic
>reaction, seawater for example, becoming caustic soda and
>hydrochloric acid; and further that this acid thus produced was
>many thousand times more active than in its normal state.

> For
>example, the rock basins in which he conducted his first
>experiment dissolved as rapidly as butter under boiling oil. He
>then prepared a number of pairs of receiver-globes, and dropped
>them in the vicinity of the enemy's submarines by night. In
>this manner he destroyed the hulls of almost the whole fleet in
>a single night; and the remainder fled in panic at dawn.

> They
>returned the following year, carrying out daylight raids only
>and devoting themselves chiefly to destroying the labour-mills.
>The young magician had been rewarded for his services by being
>presented to the Atla,

> and this example encouraged others to
>find means of attacking the invaders. Artificial darkness was
>therefore invented, and combined with the former method; but
>this was only partially successful, the tremendous pace of the
>'sharks' enabling them to evade any threatening clouds. They
>did enormous damage, and the supplies of Zro were seriously
>curtailed.

> Things now went from bad to worse, and culminated in
>the attack on the High House, the besiegers keeping their
>battleships surrounded by rafts of fire, so that attack was
>impossible even by night.

> It was then that the High House
>called on the heorism of its sons. Armed with long swords of
>Zro, they plunged into the sea, to perish under the tooth of the
>Zhee-Zhou,

> but not before they had time to hack the invading
>battleships to shreds. Their floating torch-rafts only assisted
>the attack by directing the swimmers to their quarry.

> The
>attack on the High House had aroused Atlas at last. A counter
>invasion was plotted and carried out with immediate and complete
>success, the enemy being exterminated, and their country not
>merely ravaged but destroyed by arousing the forces of
>earthquake. All activity of this kind however was deprecable,

> a
>recurrence was guarded against by removing the High House to the
>lofty mountain previously described, and a 'house' was chosen to
>cultivate the art of war, and entrusted with the duty of
>destroying any living thing that might approach within a hundred
>miles of Atlas.

>Only one other adventure of historical importance remains to be
>recorded. It is the attempt of some foolish Atlanteans to found
>an 'Empire', and so to be entirely distinguished from the
>missionary effort referred to previously. The original
>settlement of Atlas, as has been the case with all flourishing
>colonies, was made by a few hardy pioneers, who strengthened
>themselves gradually by growth.

> But Atlas in her momentary
>madness poured out blood and treasure in the fatuous attempt to
>impose alien domination on lands utterly unsuited to the genius
>of the people. The idea, of course, was to increase the supply
>of labour and consequently of crude Zro. In the first place the
>adventure was expensive. It was uneconomical (in the scientific
>sense) to send ships with less than 1000 fighting men. The Zro
>required for these meant the employment of at least 7000
>serviles, and the naval construction was therefore of a colossal
>order.

> But although little difficulty was found in conquering
>the country in the military sense, the natives had to be almost
>exterminated, and the labour of the survivors proved difficult
>to enforce. It was even then not a tenth as efficient as that
>of the serviles at home. The imported serviles moreover caught
>native diseases, and died in hundreds; and though by prodigious
>sacrifices the West African Empire was kept going for nearly 200
>years, it had to end at last no less ingloriously than the
>French adventure in Mexico, or the English in India, and South
>Africa.

>The main causes were the impossibility of breeding children in a
>climate so unsuitable, even of maintaining their own women, and
>above all the fact that the crude Zro was not of a quality equal
>to that obtained in Atlas, and that the Zro generated by the
>Atlanteans themselves was not to be made at all outside their
>own country. The lesson was learnt.

> Until the end no further
>attempt was made to advance in any but the true direction. The
>great majority of the colonists returned to Atlas; but many,
>degenerating as is the fashion with colonists of this conquering
>kind, abandoned Zro for gross food, intermarried with the
>natives, and have generally degenerated yet further to races
>inferior even to the present descendants of those who were in
>those days the equivalents of the serviles of Atlas.

>IX. OF THE CATASTROPHE, ITS ANTECEDENTS AND PRESUMED CAUSES.

>In my remarks on Zro I have a necessarily somewhat diffuse
>account of the properties of this remarkable substance. It must
>now be made clearer that the crude Zro in its nine stages
>produced by the serviles, and consumed in the 'houses' was in
>each stage of inferior quality to that of the same degree
>produced by the Atlanteans, and consumed by the High House.

> For
>example, the crude Zro was made in a labour-mill with all sorts
>of insulations. The first stage of the priest's Zro could be
>made anywhere and at any time, and naturally directed itself to
>the receptable for it without any precautions.

> It must, I
>think, be presumed that the Zro generated in the High House was
>again of far greater purity and potency. Very little of it can
>have been used in the experiments of the magicians, and it is
>therefore necessary to account for enormous quantities, produced
>during many centuries of uninterrupted labour.

> I have, however,
>no data of any kind for this investigation; the mysteries of the
>High House have ever been inscrutable, and were not wholly
>delivered to the Heirs of Atlas. They must be rediscovered by
>the magicians of the new race.

> It may be that in some form or
>other the Zro had been made stable, and used to impregnate the
>column which is alleged to have been driven 'through the Earth';
>perhaps, and less improbably, only to the depth of a few hundred
>miles. This column, however long it may have been, had
>certainly its top immediately beneath the reservoir of the High
>House.

(Mike and the Bots begin humming the Hogan's Heroes theme)

> It had been completed about 70 years before the
>'catastrophe' but apparently no effort was made to utilize it in
>any way. To me it appears probable that in some one mind the
>whole 'catastrophe' was brooding, that the column was part of
>the device, and that the event which I shall now describe was
>the other part.

>This event was the birth of a child in the High House, a child
>without the distinguishing mark of the daughters of Atlas. That
>any child at all should have been born there is so incredible
>that I am inclined to suspect an improper use of the word 'born'.

>I think rather that a magician brought Zro to its eleventh
>stage, when it takes human form, and lives!

> The alternative
>theory is that of the 'Angel of Venus' described in the chapter
>on the Underground Gardens of Atlas. The supporters of this
>theory hold that the child was not born of a priestess, but of
>the Living Atla.

>In any case, the whole country gave itself up to unbridled
>rejoicing. Work was carried on at a greater speed than ever

>before: one might say a delirium of labour. For eleven years
>this continued without cessation, and then without warning came
>the order to repair to the High House--every man, woman and
>child of Atlas.

> What was then done, I know not, and dare not
>guess; that same day seven volunteers, heroic exiles from the
>reward of so many centuries of toil, voluntary maroons on the
>discarded planet,

> the Heirs of Atlas, turned their faces from
>the High House, and severally sought distant mountains, there
>each to guard his share of the Secrets of the Holy Race,

> and in
>due time to discover and train up fit children of other races of
>the earth so that one day another people might be founded to
>undertake another such task as that now ended.

>Hardly had the pinnacle of Atlas melted into the sea behind
>them, than the 'catastrophe' occurred.

> The High House and the
>column beneath it, with all the inhabitants of Atlas, shot from
>the earth with the vehemence of a million lightnings, bound for
>that green blaze of glory that scintillated in the West above
>the sunset.

>Instantly the Earth, its god departed, gave itself up to anguish.

>The sea rushed unto the void of the column and in a thousand
>earthquakes Atlas, 'houses' and plains together were overwhelmed
>forever in the ocean. Tidal waves rolled round the world;

>everywhere great floods carried away villages and towns;
>earthquakes rocked and tempests roared; tumult was triumphant.
>For years after the catastrophe the dying tremors of the Event
>still shook mankind with fear. And the eternal waves of the
>great mother rolled over Atlas, save where Earth in her agony
>thrust up gaunt pinnacles, bare masts of wreckage to mark the
>vanished continent.

> Save for its heirs, of whose successors it
>is my highest honour to be the youngest and the least worthy,

>oblivion fell, like one last night in which the sun should be
>forever extinct, upon the land of Atlas and its people.

>Shall such high purpose fail of emulation, such achievement and
>example not excite us to like striving?

> Then let earth fall
>indeed from her high place in heaven, and mankind be outcast
>forever from the sun!

> Men of Earth! Seek out the heirs of Atlas;
>let them order you into a phalanx, let them build you into a
>pyramid, that may pierce that appointed which awaits you,

> to
>establish a new dynasty of Atlanteans to be the mainstay and
>mainspring of the Earth,

> the pioneers of their own path to
>heaven, and to our lord and Father, the Sun! And he put his
>hand upon his thigh,

> and swore it.

>By the ineffable, Tla, and by the holy Zro, did he swear it,
>and entered into the body of the new Atla that is alive upon the
>earth.

>The best results of this work was a race of translucent jelly-folk of great
>intellectual development

Sampo
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I've undergone a complex personal evolution wherein painful confusion has
given way to what I like to think of as some degree of wisdom, culminating
in my current Zarathustrian sense of self. Is that it?
=======================================================