The Sacred Symbols of Mu

by James Churchward

This is the third book in James Churchward's Mu series, one of several which slipped into the public domain in the US because some paperwork wasn't submitted on time to the copyright office. This one seemed to be the most on-topic for this site.

According to Churchward, Mu was a lost continent in the Pacific Ocean, which was destroyed in a global cataclysm tens of thousands of years ago; Mu was the original home of mankind, and all subsequent civilizations descended from it. The Pacific islands and their inhabitants are supposed to be the last survivors of this primordial motherland. Churchward's Mu was a huge continent, which stretched from Micronesia in the West to Easter Island and Hawaii in the East. Churchward also believed in a literal mid-Atlantic Atlantis. He proposed a global network of huge gas-filled caverns which, if vented, could cause large areas of land to be submerged.

Churchward served with the British Army for thirty years. He claimed that, while posted in India, he befriended a priest ('Rishi'), who revealed to him ancient tablets written in an otherwise unknown language. The Rishi taught Churchward how to read this language, Naacal. The tablets described the land of Mu, the Lemuria of the Theosophists. He also claimed that he was able to discern writing from Mu on a mysterious set of tablets discovered in Mexico by an explorer named William Niven.

Churchward's Mu theory hasn't achieved even the marginal credibility of Atlantis. For one thing, his science is absurd. The Pacific appears to have been free of large land masses for billions of years. In fact, the Pacific basin may mark the place where the Moon was expelled from the proto-earth. Coral atolls that dot the Pacific have taken millions of undisturbed years of activity to form. And the Pacific was one of the last regions on the planet to be settled by humans; this is proven by linguistic evidence, and the well-documented oral traditions which describe the history of the Polynesian migrations.

It doesn't help matters that Churchward's books are largely absent of apparatus such as footnotes or bibliography, and his basic source material cannot be independently confirmed. In his Mu-monomania, he employs circular and tautological reasoning. Often, he will make a startling assertion, and before supporting it, will move on to some other train of thought. At other times, he writes factually about, say, Egyptian mythology, without any clue for the reader as to why this proves anything about Mu. The reader is simultaneously entertained and irritated by this intellectual shell game.

However, Churchward may have the last laugh yet. There was a large land mass in the Pacific that was submerged during prehistoric times: Sundaland, the continental shelf around Indonesia, which was exposed during the ice ages. It was most certainly the route that humans used to get to Australia, as only a few kilometers of water separated Sundaland from Australia at that time. Although it was submerged slowly as the result of rising sea levels at the end of the ice age, the region has some of the most violent volcanoes on Earth (such as the famous Krakatoa). A documented eruption in that region about 60,000 years ago may have decimated the human race, producing a 'population bottleneck' during which our species was reduced to a few hundred individuals; this has emerged from mitochondrial DNA studies. Some have hypothesized that Sundaland may have been home to an early lost civilization, perhaps the home of the mysterious voyagers who charted the anomalous ice-age maps which the early modern map-makers incorporated in their atlases. While not Mu or Lemuria, of all of the nooks and crannies where a lost civilization might have existed, Sundaland is one of the most plausible; only time will tell.

--J. B. Hare

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PREFACE

This work on Sacred Symbols has been compiled at the suggestion of the late Irving Putnam who felt and assured me that such a work would be appreciated by the public.

The kindly way in which the public have received my first two books on Mu calls for my most sincere thanks and makes me feel that my life's work has not been in vain.

In this work I have given my personal view why religion is in such a chaotic state today. There are over three hundred religions and sects and only One God.

J. C.

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

I wish particularly to point out in the present volume that I am not giving the meanings of symbols in the vestments in which they are now garbed. I am giving their origin and original meanings.

Up to the time of Mu's submersion all symbols retained their original meanings. From the time of Mu's destruction I must pass over about 5,000 or 6,000 years. Those were years when seemingly no history was written except a few scraps in India and Egypt.

During this time mankind apparently was reviving and repeopling the earth, after its almost total destruction by the submersion of Mu and other lands and the subsequent formation of gas belts and mountains.

On entering Egypt 6,000 years ago we find that many of the original symbols had survived but were very much Egyptianized, especially in pattern or design, with an incomprehensible theology attached to them. A multitude of new ones had besides been added, most of them having esoteric or hidden meanings.

This confusion increased when Upper and Lower Egypt merged into one kingdom. The two peoples not

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only commingled personally, but also their two sets of symbols. Thus two sets were made into one without any being discarded. It meant at least two symbols for every conception. So great was the confusion of symbols in Egypt, 4,000 to 5,000 years ago, that hardly one-half of the priesthood understood those used in the temples of other cities, although they might be but a few miles away.

The next period to note in Egyptian history is the reigns of the Ptolemys.

Many Greek philosophers then went to Egypt and were taught the Egyptian Sacred Mysteries. This knowledge they took back to Greece, commencing about 600 B. C. In Greece the Sacred Mysteries were Grecianized, new names and further theology were added. The result, generally, was the creation of amusing myths. The familiar Grecian myths may therefore be said to be influenced by the legends and teachings of Egypt and India.

The next point to note is Mu's destruction, which removed her motherly control over religion and science throughout the world. The consequence was that each colony framed its own laws, at the same time making changes in religion to suit themselves.

It is very noticeable among all ancient people that directly the control of the Motherland was removed, those countries began to fall back. As time went on they so degenerated in science and religion that the teachings of the First Great Civilization were at last entirely

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forgotten and became a thing of the past. Myths, those shadows of the past, alone remained. Here and there, however, solitary flowers strove to raise their heads out of the weeds which now choked the world's garden.

Coming down to present times, I find writers, supposed to be scholars, giving meanings to symbols that are purely mythical, the outcome, it may be, of fantastic dreams, and absolutely erroneous. Where they got their ideas I cannot imagine. Certainly not from the ancient writings. The result is that science has drifted into an age of theories. Theories are made subservient to facts. A fact cannot be a fact unless their crazy theories prove it. The more abstruse and bizarre the theory is, the more, apparently, it is scientifically thought of. A theory that is not even understood by the originator himself, and by no one else on earth, meets with scientific approval.

SYMBOLS AND FREE MASONRY.--Freemasons in their ceremonies use many of the ancient symbols. They freely admit that the original meanings are now forgotten but they know that originally the symbols were sacred, being used in religious ceremonies in the infinite days that are past and had a religious and moral meaning in line with the First Religion of Man--their origin.

Symbols and symbolisms are a principal division of archaeology. I am not a professional archaeologist, but I love the ancient and for over fifty years have been

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diligent in the study of it. When Mu went down the school of archaeology went with her.

ARCHAEOLOGY.--The date when archaeology was first studied reaches far back into the distant past. More than 15,000 years ago, the ancients had special colleges for its study.

In these colleges a very profound knowledge of their past was attained. The further we go back, the more profound we find that archaeological knowledge.

Like all other ancient sciences, archaeology had a dark cloud cast over it when Mu the Motherland sank and the First Great Civilization was wiped out. Only seeds, remnants of mankind, were left here and there, out of which a new civilization was in time to develop.

It is virtually within memory of living man that the study of archaeology has been again undertaken. Those who today call themselves archaeologists are, generally, diggers of the remains of man who lived, say, from 1,000 to 5,000 years ago. These are but of yesterday in human history. Why do they not go back to the beginning, as the ancients did 15,000 years ago? The archaeological study of the ancients included the whole history of man from his beginning 200,000 years before, if the astronomical evidence whereby such dates are computed may be accepted.

Archaeology embraces much more than it is thought to do. As the ancients studied it, it was a fascinating story. It may be deemed a religion for, at every step, the student is confronted with works of a Supreme Conception,

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with symbols of the power and wisdom of the Creator. The sights cause him contemplation, contemplation brings him in touch with the Supreme, the great Architect and Builder of all. As the student progresses, he becomes aware that other branches of science are intimately connected with it: geology, chemistry, astronomy and the Cosmic Forces. These must all be mastered to obtain the full benefit of what has been written and left behind by our forefathers for us, to act as guideposts to the greater knowledge.

NATURE.--Nature shows man what is the Origin of Life. It shows man's connection with the Great Source and the Great Cosmic Forces which control the Universe.

It also shows the origin of these Forces. Thus archaeology is but one letter in the long word that unfolds the wonders and glories of Creation, it brings man in closer touch with the Heavenly Father.

Again, incidentally, it shows that true science is the twin sister of religion: they are inseparable for without religion man could not comprehend the Cosmic Forces, and without fully comprehending these Forces he could not approach the Great Divine Love which rules the Universe.

The first chapters of the Bible were intended to teach man the workings of these Cosmic Forces. They failed to do so however because of the mistranslations of the Mosiac writings, which were in the tongue and characters of the Motherland, and were copies of the Sacred [paragraph continues]

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Writings of Mu that Moses expounded when he was High Priest of the temple at Sinai. The esoteric temple writings of ...