This book will be excerpted from beginning to end, with my comments interspersed as single paragraphs bracketed by COMMENT: and RS. I'll note the page numbers of my paperback edition but shall not include the scores of footnotes. If any reader of this treatise wishes to know if certain material is documented by Mr. Tomas, please contact me and I'll look in the book for a footnote. This 1972 edition was the first American printing of this international bestseller. I also have in my library the book We Are Not The First by Andrew Tomas, which contains a chapter on Apollonius of Tyana in the context of his visit to the "magical technological palace" of the Indian Sage Iarchas in 26 CE. Following is an "About The Author" from the frontispiece of The Home Of The Gods:

"Andrew Tomas, born in St. Petersburgh [presumably Russia, not Florida] in 1913 and now an Australian citizen, has spent most of his life travelling extensively throughout the world. In fact The Home Of The Gods was begun in Australia, continued in the Himalayas, Russia and France and completed in London. He is the author of the bestselling book on the riddles of Ancient Science, We Are Not The First."

Thus, Andrew Tomas, if still alive, would be 91 this year. His work has had a profound influence on my own. The full title of this book is The Home Of The Gods : Atlantis, From Legend To Discovery. Where I disagree with Andrew Tomas is that not all of these historical references refer to Atlantis, but to The Cosmic Tree, The World Tree, The Sacred Tree, The Holy Mountain, The Sacred Mountain, Mount Olympus, Mount Zion, Mount Meru and Hyperborea, "land beyond the mountains where the North Wind rises". Mr. Tomas was using all of his material in an attempt to validate the existence of the Lost Atlantis, with which in and of itself I do not disagree. It has taken quite a number of persistent researchers over the span of more than a century to piece together the "true" solution to all these legends -- and just in time, I might add, for the Crossover Dreamtime is fast approaching! Rob

Page 7 -- Dedicated to NICHOLAS ROERICH (1874-1947), artist, explorer and philosopher, who wrote this verse about a forgotten race:

We do not know. But they know.
The stones know,
And they remember.
Airships were flying.
Came pouring a liquid fire.
Came flashing
The spark of life and death.
By the might of spirit
Stony masses ascended.
Scriptures guarded wise secrets.
And again all is revealed.

Pages 11-12 -- PRELUDE

Once a youth stood before the image of Quetzalcoatl in Mexico City, reflecting upon the culture hero's links with legendary Atlantis.

In Los Angeles and Hollywood he frequented public libraries examining chronicles of the conquistadores and legends of the American Indians.

In Japan the man learned of a myth that formerly the earth had been connected with heaven by a bridge, and he thought of prehistoric space travel.

Taoists in China spoke to him about the abode of "immortals of the west" and Shambhala, the city of star-men.

In Australia he found out about Dreamtime, a forgotten epoch in which mankind commuted with the sky-beings.

Recently he beheld the mighty Kanchenjunga on [the] Tibetan border, known as the Five Treasuries of the Great Snow, where secret treasures are believed to be stored from time immemorial.

In India he admired the Himalayas and listened to legends about the underground palaces and treasure-vaults of Nagas, the flying serpents who have brilliant lamps to illuminate their subterranean abodes.

The man lived in the Himalayan village of Manali which, according to Brahmin scriptures, was founded by Manu who had rescued his sages from the Great Flood in a bark.

Then he explored the Khufu Pyramid and asked the Sphinx for the answer to his age-old riddle.

In Australia he tried to solve the mystery of a polished steel cube found in a coal stratum, millions of years old.

At the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, near the Place de la Bastille in Paris, he perused eighteen-century volumes of the 'Astronome du Roi' Jean-Sylvain Bailly. In the Louvre he found the ancient Egyptian Zodiac of Denderah.

Then he studied in the reading room of the British Museum Library in London with its wealth of books and manuscripts of great antiquity.

After that -- research work in the Lenin Library of Moscow, meetings with Russian scientists and writers, visits to the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad.

This tale is about the author of this book.

COMMENT: The Egyptian Zodiac of Denderah is considered to be so "mysterious" and significant because it depicts the Stars and Constellations "upside-down" from what they are today, that is, North and South are reversed. However, this can be quite easily explained if the North Pole were located near the Ruins of Zimbabwe in southern Africa, due "south" of the Pyramids. What is now "south" was at that time "north", and so the heavens were reversed. This "problem" is discussed at length by Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky in Worlds In Collision. The "bridge" connecting heaven to earth in the Japanese legend simply refers to the "Rainbow Bridge Bifrost" which connected heavenly "Asgard" with the Earth at our North Pole in the Nordic legends. It is the Cosmic Tree-Trunk, the Golden Pole, the Totem Pole. Shambhala was not another name for Atlantis. It was Planet X Nibiru, The Winged Disk, The Celestial Ship Of The North. The subterranean abodes of the Indian "Nagas" or "flying serpents" call to mind the Duat legends of Ancient Egypt, discussed at length by Zecharia Sitchin in The Stairway To Heaven. RS

Page 26 -- A 3,000-year-old [Egyptian] Twelfth Dynasty papyrus preserved at the Leningrad Hermitage mentions the "Island of the Serpent" and contains this passage: "After you leave my island, you will not find it again as this place will vanish under the sea waves."

COMMENT: This passage could have a double meaning. "Island of the Serpent" could also refer to that "island" in the "heavens" above our North Pole -- "Lake of the Dragons". And the quote above might refer to the fact that after Planet X Nibiru detethers and departs, it will have seemed to have vanished beneath the sea. The Twelfth Dynasty was at the beginning of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom, around 1600 BCE when adjusted for the Velikovskian Historical Reconstruction. RS

Page 27 -- A Maya codex states that "the sky approached the earth and in one day all perished. Even the mountains disappeared under water." The Dresden Codex of the Mayas shows the destruction of the world in pictorial form. On the chart there is a serpent in the sky with torrents of water pouring out from its mouth. Mayan signs indicate lunar and solar eclipses. The moon goddess, the patroness of death, has a frightening appearance. An inverted bowl, from which gushes a destroying flood, in in her hands.

The Popul Vuh, the sacred book of Guatemala Mayas, bears witness to the dire character of the disaster. It says that the roar of fires was heard above. The earth shook and things revolted against man. It rained tar with water. The trees were swinging, houses crumbling, caves collapsing. Then day became black night. The Chilam Balam of Yucatán asserts that the motherland of the Mayas was swallowed up by the sea amid earthquakes and fiery eruptions in a very distant epoch. A white Indian tribe, Paria, used to live in Venezuela, in a village with so significant a name as Atlan. They had a tradition of a calamity which had destroyed their country, a large island in the ocean. A perusal of American Indian mythology discloses an interesting fact that over 130 tribes have legends of a world catastrophe.

Can mythology and folklore be used to some extent in filling the numerous gaps in history? Professor I.A. Efremov of the Soviet Union answers in the affirmative. He insists that "historians must pay more respect to ancient traditions and folklore". Efremov accuses scientists in the West of a certain snobbishness when it comes to the tales of the so-called common people.

COMMENT: To appreciate fully these remarks, the reader has to put this writing into the context of the times in which it was published. Even though Dr. Velikovsky's Worlds In Collision was first published in 1950, it wasn't until the early 1970s that it enjoyed international interest and acclaim. I first heard about Dr. Velikovsky from my dear friend Giovanni Yanello in Brooklyn, NYC, in January 1973, when Gianni came to Texas for a visit and we discussed these matters. This was at the very outset of my interest in these topics. Erich von Daniken was all the rage, too, at the time. Later that year Dr. Maxine K. Asher's expedition would "discover Atlantis" off the coast of Cádiz, only to be chased out of Spain as "Cold War spies". Every heartbeat pumped adrenaline. Several of Dr. Velikovsky's major books had not even been published yet. The journal KRONOS did not exist. Because of the "atheistic" nature of Communism, a lot of the major opinion in this field was Soviet. Thus, it is not at all surprising to read this quote from Professor Efremov, and I feel sure that Dr. Velikovsky would agree completely. There are "catastrophe legends" all over this world. The ancient people may not have had our modern technology to guide their thoughts, but they certainly had as much "common sense" as we do, if not more. From their human experience they knew the difference between an ordinary hurricane and a "cosmic catastrophe", between just another tornado or earthquake and a "cosmic catastrophe". A "flying serpent" in the sky does not accompany these "predictable" events. And also, this idea that "the sky approached the earth" resembles the theme of the treatise "The Wayward Sun" by Rand & Rose Flam-Ath (The Velikovskian Journal, 1997): "But why did the sky fall?" We could speculate about the exact "scientific" meaning of these legends; but when it happens again, and we see it (again?) with our own eyes, I'm certain that instinctively from "race-memory" we'll know exactly what was being remembered, what will have started to happen again. RS

Page 29 -- Interesting supporting arguments are worth mentioning. In ancient Mexico there was a holiday devoted to a past event in which constellations had assumed a new aspect. It follows that in a bygone age the heavens did not have the same appearance as now.

Martinus Martini, seventeenth-century Jesuit missionary in China, wrote in History of China concerning her oldest records. These speak of a time when the sky suddenly began to fall after the earth had been shaken. This is certainly a strong hint at the wobble of the earth for it alone can explain the astronomical phenomena described in Chinese writings.

Two star maps painted on the ceiling of the tomb of Senmouth, Queen Hatshepsut's architect, present a riddle. The cardinal points are correctly placed on one of these astronomical charts but on the other they are reversed, as if the earth had undergone a tilt. In fact, the Harris Papyrus mentions that the earth had turned over in a cosmic cataclysm. The Hermitage Papyrus of Leningrad and the Ipuwer Papyrus also allude to the world having been turned upside down.

COMMENT: The star maps in the tomb of Senmut were also mentioned by Dr. Velikovsky. Senmut was the architect of Queen Hatshepsut, Queen of Sheba, who ruled during 983-971 BCE and visited King Solomon in 975 BCE. Both were alive during the previous period of The Cosmic Tree and saw it with their own eyes. The Papyrus Ipuwer is dated from the end of the Middle Kingdom and describes -- from the Egyptian perspective! -- the Israelite Exodus from Egypt, during which time the Red Sea temporarily "parted" allowing the Israelites to escape but later swallowed up the pursuing Pharaoh's army. Certainly Andrew Tomas was aware of Dr. Velikovsky. RS

Pages 34-36 -- CALENDARS FROM ATLANTIS

Across the Atlantic there is another link between ancient Egypt and Peru. Their calendars had eighteen months of twenty days with a five-day holiday at the end of the year. Is this coincidence or tradition from a common source?

The approximate date of the end of Atlantis can be arrived at from the examination of ancient calendars. The first year of Zoroastrian chronology is 9660 B.C. when "time began". This is very close to the date given by Egyptian priests to Solon for the doomsday of Atlantis, or 9560 B.C.

Ancient Egyptians calculated time in 1,460-year solar cycles. The end of their last astronomical epoch came in A.D. 139. Eight solar cycles from this date can be traced back to the year 11,542 B.C. The lunar calendar of Assyrians divided time in periods of 1,802 years. The last one ended in 712 B.C. Six lunar cycles from this date are followed back to 11,542 B.C. The solar calendar of Egypt and the lunar calendar system of Assyria coincided in the same year -- 11,542 B.C., when both calendars were presumably created.

COMMENT: Trying to analyze and compare ancient calendars is a difficult proposition. I have spent countless hours in this endeavor. It's often an exercise in mathematical futility. We need a completely new and scientific world calendar starting 3 or 4 "shars" ago. As for the Egyptian Sothis Period of exactly 1,461 "Orbit-Years", that simply means that there are 1,461 Earth orbits around the Sun during a period of 1,440 calendar years. 1,461 X 360 = 1,440 X 365.25. Therein lies the "secret" of the Egyptian Sothis Period. One "shar" would contain 2.5 Egyptian Sothis Periods, since 3,600 divided by 1,440 equals 2.5. See also my essay "An Introduction To Galactic Mathematics"

The Brahmins measure time in rounds of 2,850 years from 3102 B.C. Three of these cycles, or 8,550 years, added to 3102 B.C. give us the date of 11,652 B.C.

The Mayan calendar shows that the ancient peoples of Central America had long cycles of 2,760 years. The beginning of one span is traced to the year 3373 B.C. Three periods of 2,760 years, or 8,280 years from 3373 B.C. would take us back to 11,653 B.C. which, within a year is the same date as that of the sages of India.

COMMENT: These figures look a little suspect to me, but I don't plan to analyze them for accuracy. Suffice it to say that "shars" began in 1588 BCE, 5188 BCE (not a typo, just a coincidence of counting), 8788 BCE and 12,388 BCE. The destruction of Atlantis undoubtedly coincided with one of the latter dates. The Flood of Noah would have been in 5188 BCE. RS

Vatican Codex A-3738 contains a significant chronology of the Aztecs according to which the first cycle continued for 4,008 years ending in a flood. The second of 4,010 years was destroyed by hurricanes. The third era of 4,801 years was closed by fires. In the fourth period which lasted 5,042 years, mankind suffered starvation. The present era is the fifth and it began in 751 B.C. The duration of all the four periods listed in this Codex is 17,861 years; and its beginning is traced to an incredibly distant date of 18,612 B.C.

COMMENT: The date of 751 B.C. may be slightly incorrect. A lot of new information about early American calendars has been published since 1972. According to John Major Jenkins, the current Mayan Calendar "officially" commended in 679 BCE, eight years after the final departure of Planet X Nibiru in 687 BCE. "Retrograde calculations" such as those noted below are just that: modern projections backwards based upon suppositions. At any rate, both these approximations comfortably coincide with Planet X's last departure sequence dated 762-687 BCE. These references to destructions by flood, hurricane and fire resemble the references in Buddhism to destructions by water, wind and fire. RS

Bishop Diego de Landa wrote in 1566 that in his time the Mayas reckoned their calendar from a date which was about 3113 B.C. in European chronology. They claimed that 5,125 years had passed before this date in former cycles. This would move the origin of the early Mayas to 8238 B.C., or close to the period of [the] Atlantean cataclysm.

COMMENT: Note the proximity of the date 8238 BCE to the commencement of the "shar" in 8788 BCE. All of these ancient calendars were simply trying to "interpret" the correct length of a "shar". People everywhere were aware that "after long intervals of time" another "cataclysm" of some sort "destroys" the world, and they wanted to be able to warn future generations when it might happen again. And here we are today, pondering the same age-old question. RS

Aside from providing a clue as to the dating of Atlantis, a reasonable supposition can be made on the basis of these figures that many thousand years ago mankind possessed a considerable knowledge of astronomy which is usually characteristic of a high civilization.

The longest day in the Mayan calendar contained 13 hours and the shortest 11. In Ancient Egypt the longest day had 12 hours 55 minutes and the shortest 11 hours 5 minutes. These figures are almost identical with the Mayan hours. But what is really puzzling is this -- 12 hours 55 minutes is not actually the duration of the longest day in Egypt, but in the Sudan. In an attempt to explain this difference, Dr. L. Zajdler of Warsaw suggests that this time reckoning had come from tropical Atlantis.

Archeologist Arthur Posnansky of La Paz, Bolivia, speaking of the uncompleted Sun Temple at Tiahuanaco, claims that the construction was suddenly abandoned about 9550 B.C. The date is familiar -- the priests of Sais told Solon that Atlantis perished in 9560 B.C.

In the words of E.F. Hagemeister of U.S.S.R. science has this to say about the sinking of Atlantis: "The end of the European Ice Age, appearance of the Gulf Stream and submergence of Atlantis occurred simultaneously about 10,000 B.C."

Not all scientists take a similar stand in the problem of Atlantis. Some discard the theory altogether in spite of all the evidence. Others attempt to put Atlantis in the Mediterranean, Spain or Germany. Needless to say, this is not the Atlantis of Plato and Egyptian scholars which they placed "in front of the Pillars of Hercules in the Atlantic sea".

COMMENT: That statement is not factually correct. The priests told Solon only that one had to pass through the Pillars of Hercules (Strait of Gibraltar) in order to sail to Atlantis. No distance from there was ever specified. And as I have demonstrated in Chapter 5 of my book Planet X Nibiru : Slow-Motion Doomsday, an excellent case can be made that Atlantis is modern Antarctica. It did not sink to the bottom of the sea; it pivoted or "sank" to the bottom of the world (geographical bottom of the seas!) and then froze over. It was "destroyed" in the sense that it was no longer accessible by or hospitable to ancient visitors. It is difficult even for us today to travel to and across Antarctica. It would have been impossible by pre-technological ancient peoples. During the preparation of this treatise, an email message came to me from a British source, stating that a new theory is under discussion that Ireland is the true Lost Atlantis. Yawn. I have read all these various theories for 30 years. Atlantis was Antarctica, pure and simple. RS

In the Egyptian section of the Louvre in Paris I saw a carved design inconspicuously exhibited in a staircase with no tablet. However, I recognized the carving as the famous Denderah Zodiac. Originally this ancient Egyptian relic was part of a ceiling in the portico of the temple of Denderah in Upper Egypt. It was brought to France by Lelorrain in 1823.

For many generations the Calendar of Denderah has remained a baffling riddle to science. The zodiacal signs are arranged in a spiral and the symbols are easily recognizable, but Leo is at the point of vernal equinox. Because of the precession of the equinoxes this would indicate a date between 10,950 to 8800 B.C., or the period during which the Atlantean catastrophe took place.

The Zodiac of Denderah is of Egyptian origin but it may have been engraved to commemorate a distant event -- the end of Atlantis and the birth of a new cycle.

COMMENT: Read that word "cycle" to mean "shar"! And the trouble with trying to determine when a particular Constellation like Leo was aligned with the Vernal Equinox is that the Constellations themselves are not of equal length. The "astrological signs" are all equal to thirty degrees, but not the actual Constellations in the sky. This complex topic will not be considered here. RS

Pages 44-45 -- To preserve the products of civilization for an indefinite period against the dangers of devastating wars and geological calamities, nothing would be more effective than underground shelters. This is as true today as it was in the days of Atlantis.

From the story of man's life on the planet many pages have been torn out by the hand of Time. However, legend speaks of a colossal disaster which wiped out an advanced civilization. Most of the survivors became savages. Those who were later rehabilitated by "divine messengers" rose from their primitive state and gave birth to the nations of ancient history from which we ourselves derive our origins. The secret communities of the "Children of the Sun" were small in number but great in knowledge. By means of their high science they excavated a vast network of tunnels, particularly in Asia.

Isolation has been the eternal law of these colonies. Philosophers, scientists, poets, artists, religious devotees, writers and musicians require a peaceful environment in which to pursue their labours. They do not want to hear the tramping of soldiers' boots or the cries of the market place. No one can accuse these philosophers of the vice of selfishness because down through the ages they had shared their wisdom with those who were ready for it. This detachment is of a protective nature. For is not the rule of the fist as strong today as in the times of Caligula? Perhaps, the fist is even more awful in its technological armour.

Lost in the secret valleys between snowy ridges or hidden in mountain catacombs live the Elder Brothers of the human race. Indications of the reality of these colonies came from such widely separated countries as India, America, Tibet, Russia, Mongolia and other parts of the world. Over the expanse of time these reports have appeared in the past five thousand years. Embellished by fancy of the people living in various lands, they contain grains of truth.

Pages 46-51 -- NORTHERN SHAMBHALA

A Shanghai newspaper in the twenties featured an article by Dr. Lao-Tsin about his journey to a utopia in Central Asia. In a colourful narrative antedating James Hilton's Lost Horizon, the surgeon describes his hazardous trek with a Nepalese yogi to the uplands of Tibet. In a desolate mountainous region the two pilgrims found a hidden valley protected from severe northern winds and enjoying a much warmer climate than the surrounding territory. Dr. Lao-Tsin spoke of the 'Tower of Shambhala' and the laboratories which aroused his wonder. The two visitors saw great scientific achievements of the dwellers of the valley. They also watched outstanding feats in telepathy conducted over great distances. The Chinese doctor could have told much more about his stay in the valley if it were not for some promise he had given its inhabitants not to reveal all.

According to the Eastern tradition of Northern Shambhala, where now are found only salt lakes and sands, there was once a huge sea in Central Asia. This sea had an island of which nothing now remains but mountains. In that faraway epoch a great event took place: "Then with the mighty roar of swift descent from incalculable heights, surrounded by blazing masses of fire which filled the sky with shooting tongues of flame, flashed through the aerial spaces the chariot of the Sons of the Fire, the Lords of the Flame from Venus; it halted, hovering over the White Island which lay smiling in the bosom of the Gobi Sea."

On the background of present-day controversy over a cosmic ship crash in Tunguska, Siberia -- let us not ridicule this Sanskrit tradition.

In the folklore and songs of Tibet and Mongolia, Shambhala is exalted to a point where it assumes the form of a supreme reality. During an expedition through Central Asia Nicholas Roerich came across a white frontier post regarded as one of the three outposts of Shambhala. To demonstrate how strong the belief in Shambhala was in lamahood, we will quote the words of a Tibetan monk who told Roerich that "the people of Shambhala at times emerge into the world. They meet the earthly co-workers of Shambhala. For the sake of humanity they send out precious gifts, remarkable relics."

After examining the traditions of Buddhism in Tibet, Csoma de Koros (1784-1842) placed the land of Shambhala beyond Syr Daria River between 45 and 50 degrees north latitude. It is a notable fact that a seventeenth-century map (published in Antwerp, Belgium) shows the country of Shambhala.

Early Jesuit travellers in Central Asia, such as Father Stephen Cacella, recorded the existence of an unknown domain called 'Xembala'.

Explorers Colonel N.M. Prjevalsky and Dr. A.H. Franke mention Shambhala in their works. Professor Grünwedel's translation of an ancient Tibetan book The Path to Shambhala is an interesting document. However, the geographical pointers seem to be purposely vague. They are of no use to anyone without a thorough familiarity with ancient and modern names of places and monasteries. Geographical indications may be confused for two reasons. Those who actually know of the colonies will never disclose where they are, so as not to disturb the humanitarian work of the Guardians. On the other hand, references to these retreats in oriental literature and folklore may sometimes seem to be conflicting because they allude to communities in diverse localities.

After having studied the subject for many years, I wrote this chapter in the Himalayas, and to me the name 'Shambhala' covers the White Island in the Gobi, hidden valleys and catacombs in Asia and other places, and a great deal more.

COMMENT: "Geographical indications may be confused" for another, simpler and more obvious reason, not considered by Andrew Tomas: Shambhala no longer exists. Shambhala was just another name for Hyperborea, Yggdrasill, Asgard, Mount Olympus, Mount Zion and Mount Meru -- The Cosmic Tree. It is not here anymore. Most writers would never even think to discuss it in this manner, as I am doing. Analyzing this material in terms of The Cosmic Tree is my own unique "contribution" to this whole field of Planet X research. These secret caverns of "Guardians" may have been related to Shambhala in some way, but they do not represent Shambhala's true location. Note the reference above that it was thought to be in "northern" latitudes. RS

Lao Tse (sixth century B.C.), the founder of Taoism, searched for the abode of Hsi Wang Mu, the goddess of the west, and found it. Taoist tradition asserts that the goddess was a mortal thousands of years ago. After having become 'divine' she retreated to the Kun Lun Mountains. Chinese monks insist that there is a valley of great beauty in the range which is inaccessible to travellers without a guide. The valley is the home of Hsi Wang Mu, who presides over an assembly of genii. These may be the world's greatest scientists.

In this connection the sighting of a strange aircraft over the Karakoram (which is an extremity of Kun Lun) by the Roerich Expedition is quite significant. The strange disc may have come from an aerodrome or spacedrome of the 'gods'.

COMMENT: Reading this, it has just occurred to me for the first time that perhaps the Duat described by Zecharia Sitchin in The Stairway To Heaven, the "hidden place" or "northern port" from which "conveyances" that looked like "tomcats" departed for Yggdrasill, or "climbed up and down the Golden Pole", may still exist near the modern Altai Mountains! After the detethering/departure sequence played itself out and there was no longer a "Cosmic Tree" beyond the north (Greek, hyper borea), the Duat "conveyance port" continues to operate as an "airport" even until today. Perhaps it is from this secret location of "Shambhala" that some of our UFOs originate. Mongolia is about as far off the beaten path as one can get on this Earth. The trouble here is that this is generally where the next North Pole will be located. Was this Duat "conveyance port" deliberately constructed for logistical reasons near the site of the next North Pole, perhaps even to assist in the electromagnetic beam's tethering process soon to occur again? It is a fascinating idea indeed to contemplate, amongst all the other "mysteries" from eons long past. RS

From what has been said by now, it is clear how difficult it is to establish a contact with the dwellers of the secret communities. Yet these meetings have taken place more often than reported. The absence of records is explained by the inevitable vow of secrecy which is demanded of the visitors to these ancient colonies for a justifiable reason. The 'Mahatmas' do not wish to be disturbed by curiosity seekers, treasure hunters or sceptics, for they are the custodians of Ancient Science and the guardians of the Treasure of the Ages.

COMMENT: We can say only "Bravo!" to this. One certainly hopes that "records" are being kept of our planetary history, independently of the periodic "sharicly" random destructions of various libraries and museums across the rest of the world. Yes, so many mysteries! RS

It would be appropriate to quote from one of the letters of the Mahatmas themselves inspiringly outlining the scope of their humanitarian activities: "For countless generations hath the adept builded a fane of imperishable rocks, a giant's Tower of Infinite Thought, wherein the Titan dwelt, and will yet, if need be, dwell alone, emerging from it but at the end of every cycle, to invite the elect of mankind to co-operate with him and help in his turn enlighten superstitious man." Thus wrote Mahatma Koot Humi in July 1881

The origin of these unknown communities is lost in the night of time. It is more than likely that our elders in evolution ordered the exodus from Atlantis of the people of the 'Good Law'.

COMMENT: People regularly ask me about why we have not actually seen Planet X Nibiru with a telescope if I am so certain that it is coming back. My speculative answer can vary from one conversation to another, but there is a "lingering thought" in the back of my mind, recalled again here by the idea that there is an "emergence" of this "Titan" from time to time. It could be that Planet X Nibiru is cloaked or in another dimension. Thus, we can't see it, even with the Hubble Space Telescope. If it reflects no light, it would not be visible. Perhaps it may suddenly "emerge" or "decloak", or "come crashing through the dimensional fabric of Space", when it is time for this event to publicly begin. It could be that this "emergence" from this "other dimension" will cause a booming trumpet-like noise, remembered in our history as Gabriel's Horn or Gjallar's Horn. Personally I truly anticipate that during the commencement of the arrival sequence, there will sound a great "cosmic herald" which will announce Planet X's arrival and which will scare the living daylights out of all of us! Mark my words. Anybody want to bet a little money here, against this possibility? RS

All the material and spiritual achievements of Atlantis in her splendour may still be preserved in the secret colonies. Though not represented in the United Nations Organization, this tiny republic may be the only permanent state on the planet Earth and custodian of a science that is as old as the rocks. The sceptics would do well to bear in mind that messages from the Mahatmas are still preserved in state archives of certain governments.

In the folklore of Russia there is a myth of the underground city of Kitezh, where justice reigns. The Old Believers, persecuted by the Czarist government, searched for this Promised Land. "Where to find it?" asked the young. "Follow the path of Batu," answered the old, Batu Khan, the Tartar conquerer, [who] had come from Mongolia in his westward drive. The direction meant that the utopia was to be found in Central Asia.

Another rendition of the legend pointed to Lake Sveltloyar in Russia but it has no basis because the lake bottom has been explored and nothing discovered. It seems that the tradition of Kitezh should be placed alongside with that of Northern Shambhala. The same can be said of the myth of Belovodye.

COMMENT: Obviously, the terms Kitezh and Belovodye are identical with Shambhala, Hyperborea, Yggdrasill, Asgard, etc. To my knowledge, the bottom of Lake Baikal, also in this same general area, has not been determined. Why this would be "significant" to Andrew Tomas, I do not know; but the next North Pole will certainly be located in the vicinity of Lake Baikal. RS

In the Journal of the Russian Geographical Society for 1903 there is an article by Korolenko entitled "The Journey of Ural Cossacks into the Belovodye Kingdom". Likewise the West Siberia Geographical Society published in 1916 an account by Beloliudov, "To the History of Belovodye".

Coming from scientific bodies, both of these articles are of extreme interest. They speak of a strange tradition which was circulating among the 'Staroveri' or Old Believers in Russia. An earthly paradise existed somewhere in 'Belovodye' or 'Belogorye' -- the land of the White Waters and White Mountains. Let us recall here that Northern Shambhala was founded on the White Island.

The geographical location of this phantom kingdom may be less vague than it appears at first sight. There are many salt lakes in Central Asia, some drying and covered with a white layer. The Chang Tang and Kun Lun are snow-capped.

Nicholas Roerich learned in the Altai Mountains that there was a 'secret valley' beyond the great lakes and high mountains. Many people had tried to reach Belovodye but without success, he was told. However, a few had found it and stayed there for a short time. Two men in the nineteenth century reached the utopia and resided there temporarily. They returned and described wonders about the lost colony but "of still other wonders they were not permitted to speak".

This account has many points of similarity with that of Dr. Lao-Tsin, related earlier.

COMMENT: This account also has a similarity with the visit of Apollonius of Tyana and Damis of Ninevah to Indian Sage Iarchas, whose "palace" was located in or near the Himalayas, probably in Kashmir or Tibet. There were marvelous "scientific technologies" on display for Apollonius and Damis. Whether we ever get additional and more definitive information about this place, for our own present purposes, depends entirely upon the whims of these "Guardians". RS

That the people of these secret settlements are science-conscious can be concluded from a story of Roerich about a lama who was returning to his monastery from one of the communities. The monk had met two men carrying a thoroughbred sheep in a narrow subterranean passage. The animal was required for scientific breeding in the hidden valley.

Vatican archives preserve rare reports of missionaries in the nineteenth century which affirm that in times of crises the emperors of China used to send deputations for advice to the 'Genii of the Mountains'. These documents do not show where the Chinese couriers went to, but it could only be to the Chang Tang, Kun Lun or Himalayas.

These records of Catholic missionaries (and a work by Monseigneur Delaplace, Annales de la Propagation de la Foi) indicate the belief of the Chinese sages in superhuman beings living in inaccessible parts of China. The chronicles describe the 'Protectors of China' as human-like in appearance but physiologically different from man.

COMMENT: "Human-like" but "physiologically different" is correct. They were Saurians from Planet X Nibiru. RS

Pages 51-54 -- SACRED MOUNTAINS AND LOST CITIES

Many mountains throughout the world are considered to be the abodes of 'gods'. This is especially true of India, where this chapter is written.

Hindus believe in the divine character of Nanda Devi, Kailas, Kanchenjunga and numerous other high peaks. They think the mountains are residences of the gods. What is more, it is not only the peaks that are considered sacred but the bowels of the mountains as well.

COMMENT: Mount Kailasa is often mistaken for the "mythical" Mount Meru. After Planet X Nibiru departed and Mount Meru was no longer there, the legends became transferred over to Mount Kailasa, a real peak in the Himalayas. So also in Greece. When Mount Olympus disappeared from "beyond the north", the legends and stories got moved to a tall Greek mountain which took the place of the Celestial Mountain and only symbolizes the true, lost Mount Olympus. RS

Shiva is said to have his seat on Mount Kailas (Kang Rimpoche). He is also known to have descended upon Kanchenjunga, whereas the goddess Lakshmi, on the contrary, is reputed to have ascended to heaven from the peak. In analysing these myths one forms an impression of a two-way air or space traffic that was going on in a distant epoch when gods walked among men.

COMMENT: Shiva is the Hindu equivalent of Nibiruan Prince Enki/Poseidon/Seth, and Lakshmi is their name for Princess-Royal Inanna/Aphrodite/Hathor. Inanna was Commander of the Baalbeck Airport. After her lover Duke Dumuzi/Adonis/Aten-Ra was appointed as Lord of India, undoubtedly Inanna and Dumuzi flew back and forth to visit one another. See my essay "The Vengeful Birth Of Lord Hellespontiacus"

Ever since mankind had risen from the state of savagery at the dawn of civilization, there appeared a belief in beneficent, powerful gods. Certain localities on earth and abodes in heaven were allocated to these sky-beings. In ancient Greece Mount Parnassus and Olympus were thought to be the thrones of these gods.

According to the Mahabharata, Asuras live in the sky while Pauloma and Kalakanjas reside in Hiranyapura, the golden city, floating in space. At the same time the Asuras have subterranean palaces. Nagas and garudas, the flying creatures, likewise have underground abodes. Do these myths allegorically speak of space platforms, cosmic flights and spacedromes on earth?

COMMENT: Parts of this word "Hiranyapura" are similar to "Hyperborea" -- "yapura" is practically identical with "yper", and both words begin with H. This was indeed a "golden city, floating in space" -- "beyond the north". And the idea of the "bowels" or "subterranean palaces" of these mountains also being sacred places references the fact that the subterranean parts of the Duat or Yggdrasill were also considered "sacred" and "off-limits" to humans who were not "sponsored" to enter the Duat. See The Stairway To Heaven by Zecharia Sitchin or my commentary in Osiris & Isis for more details. RS

The Puranas mention 'Sanakadikas' -- the Ancients of Space Dimensions. These beings remain a mystery if the possibility of space travel in remote antiquity is not accepted.

Since interstellar navigation is impossible without astronomy, the statement in the Surya Siddhantas that Maya, a ruler of Atala (Atlan?), received astronomy from the sun-god, seems to indicate a cosmic source of this knowledge.

COMMENT: The Hindu Goddess Maya is identical with the Greek Goddess Maia. They are the equivalents of Nibiruan Crown-Princess Ninlil, consort of Crown-Prince Enlil. She was also known as Ma'at in Egypt, Majesta in Rome, Myesyats in Russia and Tien-Mu in China. RS

Whether the gods are Grecian, Egyptian or Indian, they invariably pose as man's benefactors, showering upon him useful knowledge and warning him in critical times.

The scriptures of India speak of Mount Meru, the centre of the world. On the one hand, it is identified with Mount Kailas in Tibet; on the other, it is said to rise 84,000 yojanas or 411,600 miles above the earth. Is Mount Kailas a gateway to space which had existed long before the last cataclysm destroyed Atlantis?

COMMENT: It has been so long since I first read this book that I'd forgotten about this information. It is my hypothesis that Planet X Nibiru tethers itself about 60,000 miles (100,000 kilometers) above our North Pole, about one-fourth the distance to the Moon. This Indian number of 411,600 miles seems quite excessive to me. And purely from the vestigial legends, it would be impossible to know if this number is accurate or merely a human "guesstimation" of the distance to "the golden city". Mount Meru was located at the "centre of the world". Identical ideas can be found in other cultures, and "centre" in this case means Earth's Axis of Rotation "around" Polaris, or Planet X occluding Polaris!, at the "centre" of the sky. RS

Tales of superior beings residing on certain mountains are scattered far and wide. In American Indian mythology of the Pacific north-west, Mount Shasta in California occupies a prominent place. One legend recounts the story of the Flood. It tells how an ancient hero Coyote ran to the top of Mount Shata to save himself. The water followed him but did not reach the peak. On the only dry spot, the top of the mountain, Coyote made a fire. When the Flood subsided, Coyote brought fire to the few survivors of the cataclysm and became their culture hero.

COMMENT: Like Mount Olympus in Greece and Mount Kailasa in India/Tibet, Mount Shasta in California is probably only a "symbolic remembrance" of the vanished Cosmic Mountain. It is curious here that a "coyote" ran up the mountain. Is the American Indian "animal" that climbs up and down the "totem pole" a "coyote"? In Siberia this "animal" was a "tomcat"; in Scandinavia, a "squirrel" named "Ratatosk"; in Central America, a "monkey". See my book Planet X Nibiru : Slow-Motion Doomsday and my Commentary on The Stairway To Heaven for additional details. RS

In these myths we also hear of ancient times when the Chief of the Sky-Spirits descended upon Mount Shasta with his family. Visits of the earth-people to the abodes of the Sky-People are also mentioned.

Mount Shasta myths may refer to actual incidents of the past -- the Great Flood, landing of aviators or astronauts, and the establishment of underground shelters inside the mountain. Moreover, this colony may still be alive. There is evidence which supports this supposition.

After the Gold Rush days in California, in the middle of last century, prospectors reported mysterious flashes over Mount Shasta. These had sometimes taken place in clear weather, showing that they had nothing to do with lightning. Electricity could not account for the flashes because the country was not yet electrified. In more recent times cars on the roads of Mount Shasta have been known to develop ignition trouble without any apparent cause.

When a forest fire swept over Mount Shasta in 1931, a mystery fog appeared which stopped it from advancing. The demarcation line of the fire damage could be seen for many years. It went around the central zone in a perfect curve.

A curious article was featured by the Los Angeles Times in 1932. Its author, Edward Lanser, claimed that after interviewing residents in the Mount Shasta area, it emerged that the existence of a strange community on or in the mountain had been known for decades. The inhabitants of the phantom village were white, tall, noble-looking men with close-cropped hair and a band across their foreheads. They were dressed in white robes. Merchants said that the men used to come to their shops on rare occasions. The purchases were always paid for with gold nuggets, well in excess of the value of the goods. When seen in the forest the Shastians tried to avoid contact by escaping or by instantly vanishing from sight. Strange cattle belonging to the Shasta dwellers have appeared on the slopes of the mountain. They were unlike any animals known in America. To add to the enigma, rocket-like airships have been observed over Mount Shasta territory. They were wingless and noiseless, sometimes diving into the Pacific Ocean to continue out on the sea as vessels or submarines.

Is there a shelter of the Sky-People in the heart of the mountain as the old Indian legends say? Did they truly escape from a global deluge in aircraft?

Similar secret communities seem to exist in Mexico. In his book Mysteries Of Ancient South America Harold T. Wilkins writes of an unknown people in Mexico which used to barter goods with the Indians. They were supposed to have come from a lost jungle city.

Roerich's report spoke of mysterious men and women from the mountains who bought goods in Sinkiang and paid for them with ancient gold coins. California, Mexico and Turkestan are far apart, yet the tales about the strange people seem to have many points of resemblance.

L. Taylor Hansen in He Walked The Americas tells of an American couple who were flying over Yucatán's jungle in their private plane many years ago. Because of fuel shortage they were forced to crash-land. In the jungle they came upon a secret Mayan city camouflaged against survey from the air.

The Mayas live in ancient splendour in complete isolation from the outer world to preserve their hoary culture, which, no doubt, has its origin in Atlantis. The Americans pledged not to reveal the location of their city. After a long stay in Yucatán, the American couple returned to the United States with an extremely high opinion of the moral and intellectual level of the secret inhabitants of Mexico.

In the Incidents Of Travel In Central America, Chiapas And Yucatán J.L. Stephens, noted American archaeologist, cites the story of a Spanish padre in 1838-9 who saw from the Cordillera: "A large city spread over a great space, and with turrets white and glittering in the sun. Tradition says that no white man has ever reached this city; that the inhabitants speak the Maya language, know that strangers have conquered their whole land, and murder any white man who attempts to enter their territory. They have no coin, no horses, cattle, mules, or other domestic animals."

The Spanish conquistadores recorded the Aztec tradition of hidden outposts in the jungle with vast stores of treasure and supplies. These reserve bases had become almost forgotten when the invaders landed in Mexico. Verrill writes that "because no one has ever discovered any of these 'lost cities' does not prove that they did not exist or that they may not exist at the present time".

The Quechua Indians of Peru and Bolivia point to an extensive subterranean network in the Andes. Considering the outstanding engineering achievements of pre-Inca master builders, these tales could be true.

Colonel P.H. Fawcett sacrificed his life in search of a lost city which, he thought, could prove the reality of Atlantis. He claimed to have seen the ruins of such a city in South America.

The legends of lost cities, sacred mountains, hidden valleys and catacombs should be examined without any bias as some of these traditions lead to the colonies of Atlantean descendants or even of still earlier races.

Page 59-60 -- 'AMPHIBIANS' BRING SCIENCE

The spectacular rise of Sumerians from thousands of years of barbarism to a brilliant epoch is puzzling if we discard the myths of some wonderful beings who came as civilizers.

Babylonian tradition speaks of regular visitations of the gods who taught men the arts and crafts. One of these mysterious being was Oannes, the fish-god.

COMMENT: The subjects of Oannes, the Sumerians and the Dogons are discussed in great length by Robert K.G. Temple in The Sirius Mystery and Murry Hope in The Sirius Connection. Parts of their books have been analyzed by me elsewhere in Osiris & Isis. RS

Berosus, a Chaldean priest who lived at the time of Alexander the Great, left an excellent record of the activities of Oannes and his comrades. Learned Berosus writes that in ancient Babylon people were like beasts. Then a strange creature emerged out of the Persian Gulf. Its body was similar to that of a fish but under the fish's head there was a human head. The feet were joined, forming something like a fish's tail. Yet this odd creature could speak, although described by ancient Babylonians as "an animal destitute of reason".

Oannes came out daily from the sea to give the primitive inhabitants of Mesopotamia "an insight into letters and sciences and arts of every kind". He instructed the first men of Babylon how "to construct cities, to found temples, to compile laws, and explained to them the principles of geometrical knowledge". The early Babylonians were also taught agriculture and, as Berosus says, -- "in short, he instructed them in every thing which could tend to soften manners and humanize their lives."

The chronicle states that since the appearance of Oannes and "other amphibians" -- "nothing material has been added by way of improvement of his instructions."

A tale about "amphibians" or "animals destitute of reason" who acted as science teachers, does not make much sense. Oannes was no god because Berosus clearly says that "his voice and language were articulate and human". Where this culture bearer had come from, is a question which can be answered only if we admit the existence of a superior civilization in former times, or else on other planets.

Berosus tells us that Oannes's head was contained within the fish's head. Is this not a good description of a space helmet within which could be seen the face of a man? Feet subjoined to the fish's tail may be a crude definition of the appearance of the lower part of a pressurized suit. How could the primitive people find words to describe these strange visitors except by a comparison with known things?

Whoever the creatures were, the facts speak for themselves as immediately after their visitations, men began to build cities, construct canals and experiment in the realm of abstract thought. It is then that art, music, religion and science were born in Babylon.

COMMENT: Not considered by Andrew Tomas is the idea that these "Saurians" might be some sort of aquatic reptile, like an alligator, crocodile or sea-snake. In Flying Serpents & Dragons R.A. Boulay presents compelling evidence that these Nibiruans are "reptilian" or "saurian"; Sitchin disagrees completely, making them simply a different species of "mammalian humanoids" from another Planet. Until we have further proof, this mystery will remain unknowable. But from the standpoint of "common sense", I tend to think that they are "aquatic reptiles" whose behavior resembles what one would associate with an "amphibian". It would be far easier to confuse a "reptile" with an "amphibian" (or vice-versa) than to confuse a "humanoid" with either one of them. This is "basic knowledge", for crying out loud! Ideally, there should be absolutely no doubt in our recorded history about such an important fact as this. It is unfortunate that we have been left in the dark about this. RS

Dwellers in the Euphrates valley were beast-like before Oannes, but after him they became civilized and reached a high level of intellectual development. By the second millennium before our era, the mathematicians of Babylon were already proficient in algebra and geometry. The astronomers had exact tables in algebra and knew the position of celestial bodies at any time. And it all started with a fish-like 'god' who had come out of the waters of the Persian Gulf.

Pages 61-64 -- FROM THE LAND OF SUNRISE

Garcilasso de la Vega transmitted to us the history of the Incas. The Sun, the great parent of mankind, in token of compassion sent Manco Copac and Mama Ocllo to teach men the arts of agriculture and women the crafts of weaving and spinning. The people of Peru accepted the Children of the Sun and laid the foundations of the city of Cuzco. Another legend describes bearded white men who came from the east and imparted the blessings of civilization to the natives.

Blood tests on the tissues of five Inca mummies in the British Museum were made in 1952 by B.E. Gilbey and M. Lubran and reported to the Royal Anthropological Institute. Three out of the five mummies possessed traces of Group A, which is utterly foreign to the American Indian. None was rhesus-negative but one had the substances D and c with the absence of C and E. This combination is rare among the Indians. Further, another royal Inca mummy had the substances C, E and c, with the absence of D. This blood sample is very unique, and almost without a parallel on our earth. These overwhelming facts prove that the Inca kings could not have belonged to the original population of South America.

It should also be noted that the Spanish conquistadores heard the Inca courtiers speak a secret language which their subjects could not understand.

A similar tradition exists in Mexico, Guatemala and Yucatán where [respectively] Quetzalcoatl, Kukumatz or Kukulkán is called a god-man. He was a white man with a ruddy complexion and long beard. On his shoulders was a long robe of black linen with short sleeves. Toltecs, skilful craftsmen, builders, sculptors and agriculturalists followed Quetzalcoatl.

The Feathered Serpent, or Quetzalcoatl, arrived from an eastern land and opened in Mexico an era of great prosperity and progress. One version has an interesting detail as to the manner of his arrival Quetzalcoatl is said to have landed at the spot now known as Vera Cruz in a strange, winged ship. In Codex Vindoonensis he is shown descending to earth from a hole in the heavens.

COMMENT: Certain liberal-minded Christian historians have speculated that after the Hebrew Jesus Christ "ascended into Heaven" from Palestine, he made an appearance in Central America, because this description of a bearded white "god-man" fits the general description of the Christ. It could be suggested just as easily that this "god-man" with the long beard, ruddy complexion and linen garments was Apollonius of Tyana. Apollonius once wrote, "Live unobserved; but if that cannot be, then slip unobserved from life." When Apollonius at the age of 100 decided to "slip away", he sent Damis of Ninevah to Rome with a private letter for their friend Emperor Nerva. After Damis left for Rome, Apollonius entered a Greek cave and was never seen again. One can only "presume" that he "died". In fact, he could have transported himself in some "miraculous" manner to Mexico, to continue his Hermetic work in an entirely different cultural milieu. Sitchin equates the Greek Hermes with the Egyptian Thoth and the Mayan Quetzalcoatl. All three, in turn, are merely equivalents of Nibiruan Prince Nannar, God of Magic. Apollonius was a Master of these secret Hermetic teachings. By contrast, we have absolutely no "official" record that the Hebrew Jesus (Bar Abbas of Nazareth) was familiar with Hermeticism. And Apollonius would have arrived in Mexico from a land to the east. We can never know the truth about this mystery, but it is fascinating to speculate on the possibilities. See specifically http://www.apollonius.net/turinshroud.html for additional information concerning the Crucifixion and Resurrection. RS

When culture hero's mission was interrupted by enemies, he returned to the coast and set out for the country of Tlapallan on a raft of snakes. Another myth describes how the messenger cast himself on to a funeral pyre. His ashes then flew up and were changed into birds while his heart became the planet Venus. Quetzalcoatl was resurrected and went to heaven as a god. Was his winged ship -- a spaceship, and the funeral pyre -- its fiery launching?

As civilizer, architect, agriculturist and religious leader Quetzalcoatl left behind him an unforgettable mark on the history of Mexico. He is still greatly venerated in that country.

According to Pedro de Cieza de León, Viracocha of the Incas was a tall white man who came from the land of dawn. He instilled kindness in the hearts of Quechua Indians and revealed to them the secrets of civilization. After completing his mission, he disappeared into the sea. Viracocha's name means 'foam of the sea'. The sentiments of the Indian in regard to the legend of the white demigod have been so strong that even today some Peruvian Indians salute a friendly white stranger with the greeting -- "Viracocha".

COMMENT: Here another intriguing comparison can be made to Apollonius. Flavius Philostratus related in Life Of Apollonius Of Tyana that Apollonius' mother's husband, Apollonius Menodotus, was not his true father, who in fact was the Sea-God Proteus, colleague of Poseidon, God of the Sea. And Poseidon, as we know from Sitchin, was the Greek name for Nibiruan Prince Enki. A truly enigmatic Trident of Poseidon (see Page 76 below) is carved onto the cliffs of the Peruvian Bay of Pisco, pointing directly to the "landing strips" in the Nazca Plain. After visiting the Incas, did Apollonius return to his "heavenly father" in the sea? Is that the reason a mysterious "fish symbol" became associated with early Christianity? RS

There is considerable similarity between the legends of Quetzalcoatl and Viracocha in America, and the tradition of Oannes, the Fish-Man, in Babylon, geographically so for apart. The mythology of many races abounds in stories about gods who once trod the earth. Fanciful as the myths are, there is no doubt that some of them may be records of actual historical events.

All these apostles of civilization, descending from the sky or emerging out of the sea, plant ready-made culture among primitive tribes. Who were the founders of solar dynasties? They were the last Atlanteans who had been saved from the Great Flood in airships and spaceships as the Epic of Gilgamesh suggests.

The British scientist W.J. Perry believed that the Age of the Gods was largely bound up with the Children of the Sun: "The conclusion, therefore, seems forced upon us that the various groups of Children of the Sun throughout the world are derived from one primordial stock." That source may have been the legendary Atlantis.

In the East, India in particular, the guest is a sacred person because gods are believed to have appeared unexpectedly in olden times in the form and attire of man. To retain for themselves the favours of possible celestial visitors, the Hindus treat the guest with veneration and hospitality up to this day, even if he is only human. This tradition goes back for thousands of years to a time when gods trod the earth.

In India I had a few embarrassing moments when standing decorated with tropical garlands, men and women prostrated at my feet to pay homage to a visiting 'god'.

Pages 66-67 -- Puzzling portrait galleries exist in the caves of the Kimberley Ranges in Western Australia. The aborigines say they were made by another race. The technique of artwork and the employment of a blue pigment not used by the aborigines, attributes the authorship of these drawings to a people of non-Australian origin. The Kimberley rock paintings portray figures with peculiar head-dress or halos but no mouths. In the land of bare-footed natives, the figures are painted with sandals on their feet.

These 'Wandjina' pictures are supposed to represent the first men. It should be noted here that they are depicted with three or seven fingers and toes. The Wandjina are connected with the Rainbow Serpent paintings in the Kimberleys. The Rainbow Serpent is the term for 'Dreamtime' or the prehistoric age.

There is a remarkable affinity between the Tassili rock paintings and those of the Kimberleys. The creatures without mouths may be beings in space helmets. Numerous theories have been advanced to explain the Mouthless Ones, yet none is satisfactory.

COMMENT: In my essay "Nibiruan Physiology", I describe the Celtic God Cú Chulainn, who was said to have had seven fingers and toes. Thus, in my chart of comparison between the Saurian and the Neanderthal, I note that Saurians can have "up to seven" fingers and toes, compared to our five. So, here we find something else to bolster that idea in these Wandjina paintings. The "Rainbow Serpent" refers of course to the fact that atop the "Rainbow Bridge Bifrost" there are "serpent-gods" living in Asgard, Shambhala, "the golden city floating in space". The peculiar term "Dreamtime" must refer to that period when The Cosmic Tree is tethered to our North Pole. The majestic arrival sequence and what followed must have seemed like a "dream" to surviving humans. In retrospect, yes, it is a "Dreamtime" for us, too. But to play the Devil's Advocate, this could refer to something entirely different, for it is impossible to know. In any case, it is an intriguing word, this "Dreamtime"! RS

Page 76 -- In the Andes, south of Lima, Peru, in the Bay of Pisco, conquistadores of the sixteenth century found "the miraculous sign of the Three Crosses", which actually looks more like the trident of Neptune with branches. This engraving in rock is 810 feet high and can be seen from a distance of 12.5 miles.

The purpose and meaning of this 'Chandelier of the Andes' have remained obscure until Beltran Garcia, the Spanish scientist and direct descendant of Garcilaso de la Vega, offered his theory. He believes that the trident in rock was used by the Incas, or their predecessors, as a gigantic seismograph. In his opinion, it was a pendulum with pulleys and cords to register earthquakes not only in Peru but in the whole world. This explanation may be much nearer the truth than the one brought by the conquistadores. They thought the Sign of the Three Crosses was carved by God to thank the Christians for the conquest of the Americas.

COMMENT: "Carved by God"? This perfectly demonstrates how throughout the history of Christianity, there have always existed such arrogant zealots. The true reason for the Pisco Trident is this: Following the Pyramid Wars, the Nibiruans were exhausted from fighting one another and turned their attention to a looming problem of great concern: depletion of the South African gold mines. New sources of gold were discovered in what is now Peru, and Nibiruan Emperor Anu ordered that the gold-mining operations be transferred there. He placed Prince Enki in charge of the new mining operations, to replace the older Duke Nergal. Then the Nazca Plain was constructed as the new Spaceport, since the old Sinai Spaceport had been sabotaged and destroyed by Prince Utu during the Wars. This destruction, incidentally, also took out the Spaceport satellite cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Enki is the equivalent of Poseidon, Neptune, Satan and Shiva, all of whom are depicted carrying tridents (pitchforks). Undoubtedly, Prince Enki created the Pisco Trident in order to "mark his territory", so to speak. However, if the Trident can be seen from 12.5 miles out to sea, then it also could have been designed to "point the way" to the Nazca landing strips, and it does just that! I'm a bit surprised that this detail was overlooked by Andrew Tomas. Photographs of both the Pisco Trident and the Nazca Plain can be seen HERE.

Page 78 -- Babylonians knew of the 'horns of Venus'. They wrote of the crescent of the planet. Since Venus is nearer to the sun than the earth, it shows phases like the moon. But the 'horns of Venus' are [not] visible to the naked eye. The burning question is -- how could ancient Babylonian priests watch the phases of Venus without a telescope? They were also aware of Jupiter's four large moons -- Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. Till the invention of the telescope by Galileo mankind had known nothing of these satellites. Strictly speaking, Babylonians should have had no knowledge about them, either.

COMMENT: The same rhetoric is advanced also when considering the Dogon knowledge of Sirius B, "Digitaria". It could be that at certain times, from the pristine unpolluted dark skies of the Chaldean deserts, the "horns of Venus" and Jupiter's four largest moons could actually be seen with the naked eye. (Note: Tomas left the word "not" out of the above sentence. I'm sure that this was a simple typo.) And as is discussed elsewhere in Osiris & Isis, Sirius B used to be a Red Giant Star, "redder than Mars". Then it imploded and became invisible. On the other hand, the phrase "horns of Venus" may refer to the "wings" of the Winged Disk, the "horns" of the "heavenly heifer", thereby having a completely different meaning. This is unknown. RS

There are only two explanations for these astronomical observations of the phases of Venus and the four major moons of Jupiter conducted in antiquity. The first theory that the priests of Babylon had a telescope sounds somewhat far-fetched and most scientific opinion does not even entertain it as a probability. However, the British Museum has a remarkable piece of rock crystal, oval in shape and ground to a planoconvex form. It was discovered by Sir A. Henry Layard during the excavations of Sargon's palace at Nineveh. Sir David Brewster suggested that the crystal disc was a lens but most scientists rejected his theory.

The second hypothesis is that in the course of many generations the priests of Chaldea and Sumer had preserved the elements of antediluvian astronomy. It must be borne in mind that the sages of Babylon were not only priests but scientists as well. Their astronomy was closely linked with religion and reserved exclusively for the elect priesthood.

Page 79 -- The African Dogons, who have a theocratic system and old traditions, know of the dark companion of Sirius situated at a distance of almost nine light-years from the earth, and visible only through a telescope. Likewise, the Mediterranean people possess the knowledge of Pleiades beyond the seventh invisible to the naked eye. Are these folk memories from a vanished science?

In the study of early astronomy the accuracy of the ancients in measuring the parallax of the sun has always been a riddle because this could not be computed with the instruments then in use.

The Huat Nan Tzu book (c. 120 B.C.) as well a the Lun Heng of Wang Chhung [sic] (A.D. 82) outline the centripetal cosmogony in which 'whirlpools' solidify worlds out of primary matter. These writings of ancient china give a preview of modern ideas on the formation of galaxies.

Thus we are faced with two alternatives -- either to admit the existence of superior astronomical instruments in antiquity, or to assume that the priests of Babylon, Egypt or India were the custodians of a prehistoric science at least ten thousand years old.

COMMENT: For the record, the analogy of the "whirlpool" has also been applied to the "Golden Pole" leading up to the "Golden Cage" (the turning millwheel) on top -- "the golden city floating in space"! RS

Pages 83-84 -- The pundits of India also wrote about the infinitely small in such books as the Surya Siddhanta or Brihath Sathaka. In olden times they divided the day into sixty kala or ghatika, each equal to twenty-four minutes, in turn subdivided into sixty vikala, each equivalent to twenty-four seconds. Then followed a sixty-fold division of vikala into para, tatpara, vitatpara, ima and kashta. After this split-up of time the Brahmins arrived at the smallest unit of kashta, which is equal to approximately 0.00000003 second (a three-hundred millionth of a second). Needless to say, without precision instruments, 'kashta' -- as a fraction of the micro second, is absolutely meaningless. We are inclined to conclude that this measurement of time is merely a tradition preserved by the pundits from an advanced technological civilization probably familiar with nuclear physics. In fact, the author made a startling discovery during his stay in India. The 'kashta' (3 X 10[-8 power] second) is surprisingly close to the life-spans of certain mesons and hyperons!

COMMENT: On the other hand, these may be measurements connected with the Nibiruan Day, not the Earth Day. One Nibiruan Day = 10 Earth Years, or 120 Earth Months. If their day were then divided into 60 "kala" (or "ghatika"), then one of these "kala" would equal 2 Earth Months. If each of these "kala" were then divided into 60 "vikala", then 1 "vikala" would almost exactly equal 1 Earth Day, which could then be further subdivided into smaller units, as described above. Let's see. A "vikala" was divided into 60 "para". One Earth Day = 1,440 Earth Minutes (24 X 60). Divide that by 60, and you get 24 Earth Minutes for each "para". 24 Earth Minutes = 1,440 Earth Seconds. 1,440 / 60 "tatpara" = 24 Earth Seconds for each "tatpara". And so on. Finally then, such a "kashta" would become the equivalent of 0.00000003 of 1 Earth Day, not 1 Earth Second! Even then, it would still be a tiny fraction of a second. The question therefore inevitably arises: why would this matter, for either us or them?! RS

Page 86 -- The statue of Memnon in Egypt spoke as soon as the rays of the rising sun fell upon its mouth. The sound issued from the base of the figure. In the words of Juvenal -- "Memnon sounds his magic strings." The Incas had a speaking idol in the valley of Rimac. Needless to say, the construction of these statues required a knowledge of physics.

COMMENT: Apollonius of Tyana and Damis of Ninevah, when travelling up the River Nile on their way from Alexandria to Ethiopia in July 69 CE, heard this statue of Memnon speak at sunrise. See Life Of Apollonius Of Tyana by Flavius Philostratus, Book IV, Chapter IV. RS

Pages 93-95 -- RELICS CREATE A DILEMMA

Muhiddin Piri Reis, or Admiral Piri Reis (1470-1554), published in Turkey a navigation atlas Bahriyye in 1520. His maps with marginal notes, drawn on roe-skin, were discovered at the palace of Topkapi in Istanbul on 9 November 1929 by Halil Edhem, Director of the National Museums.

COMMENT: In August 1965 I toured the exquisite Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul. RS

In his notes Admiral Piri reveals the story of his maps. In a naval battle with Spain in 1501, a Turkish officer Kemal took prisoner a Spaniard who had been with Columbus on three of his historic voyages. The captive had a set of curious maps.

Christopher Columbus may have known where he was going thanks to these maps. If this supposition is correct, then we can understand the words of his son Ferdinand who wrote in The Life Of The Admiral Christopher Columbus that: "He noted down any helpful hints that sailors or other persons might drop. He made such good use of all these things that he grew convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt, that to the west of the Canary and Cape Verde Islands lay many lands which could be reached and discovered."

Among the articles confiscated by the Turks from the Spaniard were the maps drawn by Columbus in 1498, or six years after the discovery of the West Indies. Yet the charts show a complete outline of the continents of North and South America, their rivers, Greenland and Antarctica -- all unknown in 1498. The distance between South America and Africa is surprisingly correct.

COMMENT: There is an excellent book on the subject of the Piri Reis Maps and other ancient maps, if you can find it. It is titled Maps Of The Ancient Sea Kings by Charles H. Hapgood (New York, 1966). All of the Piri Reis Maps are pictured in this book. Andrew Tomas refers to this as a "Piri Reis Map" (singular), as if this were a large "world map". I have always been under the impression that there are "maps" plural. RS

Professor Dr. Afetinan of Turkey in his book The Oldest Map Of America writes: "In the chapter on this 'Western Sea' we read all that is known about the discovery of America at the time. Of this he (Piri Reis, A.T.) recounts, on hearsay again, how a certain book from the time of Alexander the Great was translated in Europe and after reading it how Christopher Columbus went and discovered the Antilles with the vessels he obtained from the Spanish government. It is quite evident today that Piri Reis came into possession of the map that the great discoverer used."

COMMENT: That is an interesting little footnote of history which I'd never paid any attention to before. Apollonius of Tyana "inherited" certain documents from Alexander The Great, and many of these were subsequently acquired by Roman Emperor Hadrian in about 120 CE. If Apollonius "magically transported himself" (like he did when he disappeared from Rome and instantly reappeared at a port city south of there, where Damis was waiting for him) from "the east" to Mexico and Peru as "Quetzalcoatl" and "Viracocha", then he may have known in advance from Alexander's private map collection that such "western lands" indeed existed, and perhaps simply decided to tour them after "slipping away unobserved from life" in Greece. Why not? RS

Many things are puzzling about the Piri Reis map. Who drew a chart in Columbus's or perhaps even in Alexander the Great's times with the contours of Antarctica free of ice, and how did he do it? After all, it is only in the International Geophysical Year that the continent was sounded through the ice sheet and charted. Greenland is shown as two or three islands. Greenland is buried under 5,000 feet of glaciers and it is only recently that a French Polar expedition disclosed the fact that Greenland comprises two main islands.

COMMENT: Yes, indeed! The Piri Reis Map of "Antarctica" (Atlantis!) is most intriguing. Both Antarctica and Greenland pivoted into polar positions only after the last Polar Axis Shift in about 1587 BCE. Before that, both islands were unfrozen and mapable. Thus, the only conclusion to be drawn is that these islands were charted before they were buried under ice, snow and glaciers! It could be that the maps of Alexander and perhaps even Columbus were copies of other original maps from an even greater antiquity; but the original maps had to have been drawn before 1587 BCE. Simple. RS

Arlington H. Mallery, an American authority on cartography, asked the U.S. Hydrographic Office to check the enigmatic map. Commander Larsen, on behalf of [the] U.S. Navy, then made a statement: "The Hydrographic Office of the Navy has verified an ancient chart -- it's called the Piri Reis map, that goes back more than 5,000 years. It's so accurate, only one thing could explain it -- a worldwide survey. The Hydrographic Office couldn't believe it, either, at first. But they not only proved the map genuine, it's been used to correct errors in some present-day maps."

According to Mallery, the archaic chart had a record of every mountain range in Northern Canada and Alaska, including some ranges which the U.S. Army Map Services did not have on their maps. But the U.S. Army has since found them.

The longitude on this map is exact. This is baffling as it is only two hundred years since we learned how to calculate it. Mallery even remarked: "We do not know how they could map so accurately without an aeroplane."

This map demonstrates the existence of science in a faraway epoch which is considered to have possessed none. Did the expedition of Alexander the Great come into possession of papyri from the temple of Sais in Egypt? Its priests definitely knew about America, for, as Plato writes, Solon was told that the Atlantic "is a real sea and the surrounding land may be most truly called a continent."

The arguments set forth in favour of the very ancient origin of the Piri Reis map which Christopher Columbus allegedly possessed, can be substantiated by another startling fact. Space satellites have disclosed that our planet is somewhat pear-shaped. A letter from Columbus is still extant in which he states that the earth is "pear-shaped". Two decades ago we did not know about the strange form of our planet. How did Columbus learn about it?

COMMENT: This refers to the fact that Earth has an "equatorial bulge" making it somewhat "pear-shaped" instead of being precisely round. RS

Pages 98-103 -- SKYSHIPS OF ANTIQUITY

It is quite reasonable to surmise that most of the legends about skyships in olden times are echoes of aviation and astronautics from a former civilization. Despite the strong opposition to the theory of an advanced technology in the dim past, coming from the majority of scientists, there are numerous facts which support this hypothesis.

The Ramayana of India contains detailed descriptions of a "vimana" or airship. It was self-propelled by a yellowish-white liquid. The vimana was large -- it had two stories, windows, dome with a pinnacle. The airship of antiquity could fly with the "speed of the wind" according to one's skill, and gave forth a "melodious sound". Its control required high intelligence. The craft could travel in the sky or stop and remain motionless in the air.

The vimanas were kept in "vimana griha" or hangars. The ancient records state that the vimana soared above the clouds and from the altitude "the ocean looked like a small pool of water". The aviator could see the "country round about the ocean and the mouths of rivers meeting the ocean".

The archaic planes were employed in warfare by kings and for sport by the "foremost people among pleasure seekers". It is most unlikely that such precise details could be mere fancy.

In China the Emperor Shun, who lived about 4,200 years ago, constructed a flying chariot. Shun is not only the first recorded pilot but also the first parachutist.

Chu Yuan (340-278 B.C.) wrote a description of an air trip in a poem called "Li Sao". As he knelt at the grave of the Emperor Shun, a jade chariot drawn by four dragons appeared. Chu Yuan boarded the craft and flew at a high altitude across China in the direction of the Kun Lun Range. In his aerial journey he observed the earth, unaffected by the winds and dust of the Gobi. Chu Yuan not only successfully landed upon the completion of the flight but also subsequently made another survey of the Kun Lun Mountains from the air.

The founder of the Shang dynasty, the Emperor Cheng Tang (1766 B.C.) ordered Ki Kung Shi to build a flying chariot. The ancient engineer completed the assignment and tested the aircraft in flight, reaching the province of Honan. However, the vessel was destroyed by imperial edict so that the secret of its mechanism would not fall into wrong hands.

The flying machines of ancient China were either a product of scientific experimentation or a memory from a precataclysmic race. As the Chinese had no technology at the time, there is no alternative but to accept the second possibility.

Chu Yuan's flight to the Kun Lun may, perhaps, give us the clue to the source of this technical knowledge in ancient China. The mighty Kun Lun Range is considered by the Chinese people to be the abode of 'gods'.

These skyships were traditionally reserved for the Emperors and Taoist scholars who were supposed to act as intermediaries between the 'genii of the mountains' and mankind.

An indirect proof of our theory that in ancient times man knew of aviation, is found in the presence of the words 'flying chariot' in Chinese vocabulary. When confronted with the appearance of the aeroplane early in this century, the Chinese did not have, like ourselves, to invent a new term -- they used the old one -- fei chi (flying chariot).

In the twelfth year of the Emperor Yao's reign (2346 B.C.) a strange man appeared. His name was Chih Chiang Tzu-yu. He was so skilful an archer that the Emperor named him 'Divine Archer' and appointed him 'Chief Mechanician'.

In the annals of Chinese history he is reported to have ridden a 'celestial bird'. When "carried into the centre of an immense horizon" he noticed that he could no longer observe the rotary movement of the sun. In space, beyond the earth, our astronauts are also unable to see the sun rise or set. Does the ancient record of the 'Chief Mechanican's' flight intimate that man could bridge interplanetary space thousands of years ago?

The great Chinese thinker Chuang Tzu wrote an essay entitled "Travel to the Infinite" in the third century before our era. He relates how he rode on the back of a fabulous bird of enormous size into space to the distance of 32,500 miles from the earth.

According to Taoist beliefs 'Chen Jen' or perfect men, are able to fly through the air on the wings of the wind. They pass on the clouds from one world to another and live in the stars. Teng Mu, a scholar of the Sung dynasty, wrote about "other skies and other earths". Ma Tse Jan, a distinguished physician of old China, after having mastered the philosophy of Taoism, was taken to heaven alive.

In his travels through Tibet and Mongolia Professor Nicholas Roerich saw passages in Buddhist books about "iron serpents which devour space with fire and smoke" and "inhabitants of the distant stars".

Viacheslav Zaitsev in the Soviet magazine Neman (No. 12, 1966) writes about the strange stone discs discovered in the district of Baian-Kara-Ula on the border of China and Tibet. They have holes in the centres like gramophone records. A double groove inscribed with hieroglyphics spirals from the centre to the edge of the discs.

Professor Tsum-Um-Nut, with four colleagues, has deciphered the writing in the grooves. However, their discovery was so sensational that at first the Peking Academy of Prehistory did not allow the Chinese scientists to publish their findings. After the permission had been granted, a book appeared under an intriguing title, Disc Hieroglyphics Speak Of Spaceships 12,000 Years Ago.

An analysis of the stone particles from the discs revealed amazing results -- they contained a large quantity of cobalt and some other metal. Tested under an oscillograph the discs displayed a peculiar frequency as if they had been electrically charged thousands of years ago.

The carvings of [the] Baian-Kata-Ula discs depict the sun, moon and the stars as well as some strange dots gliding from the sky towards the earth.

COMMENT: These "strange dots gliding from the sky towards the earth" probably were intended to depict the "rainbow bridge" connecting Earth to Heaven, beyond the North. RS

Tschi Pen Lao, of the University of Peking, has discovered curious drawings in the mountains of Hunan and on an island in Lake Tungting. Made about 45,000 B.C. these granite carvings portray people with large trunks and cylindrical craft. It is difficult to admit the existence of spacehelmets and spaceships so long ago -- yet what other explanation can one offer?

From the study of myths and historical records it follows that men flying heavenward and cosmic guests coming earthward were a reality in a bygone age. Whether these space visitors came from another planet or from a secret Atlantean colony in a remote part of our globe, is largely a matter for speculation. However, there is no contradiction between the two versions if we assume, on the basis of available data, that Atlantis had contact with other planetary civilizations.

COMMENT: On the other hand, it could be that all of these memories of space travellers reflect periods when Planet X Nibiru is tethered to our North Pole. Certainly Atlantis experienced such a "Golden Age" as this. RS

In an article, "By the Path of Legends", U. Tkachev, writing in the Soviet magazine Smena, stresses the usefulness of imagination in the field of science. Because of the affinity of his ideas with the plot of the present book we will cite it:

"The earth was visited by an expedition of cosmonauts. It is upon the continent of Atlantis that the spaceship landed. Apparently the earth was not their principal base as otherwise their stay would have left more definite traces. Evidently the astronauts possessed such a technology that they could construct satellites with their own peculiar conditions for life. Using these as bases, they reached the earth and other planets in 'planetoplanes'. Presumably they acquainted the Atlanteans with but few branches of culture, none of which could be employed for enslaving the neighbouring peoples because of their immeasurable humaneness. In all likelihood, these were -- painting, sculpture, architecture, mathematics and astronomy. Possibly they had visited the earth a number of times and these flights were recorded in folklore as the descents of gods upon the earth. The Atlanteans founded the first state in the history of earth. Their continent sank 11,500 years ago. The principal site of culture perished. Knowledge was gradually lost by mankind. Occasionally ancient science would come to the surface."

Dr. Carl Sagan, an American astrophysicist of the first magnitude, has made interesting conclusions on the basis of mathematical computations. He suggests that if each advanced civilization in our galaxy sends a spaceship once a year by our time reckoning, in the direction of neighbouring stars, the interval between cosmic visits would be equal to about 5,500 years. According to Dr. Sagan's calculations, the explorers from other solar systems are soon to fly over us on their regular inspection tour. Upon landing on earth the cosmonauts would be greatly surprised at the progress mankind has achieved since the first dynasty in ancient Egypt.

COMMENT: The late Dr. Carl Sagan of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, was one of the most vociferous critics of Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky. Their "Velikovsky Affair" is legendary amongst certain academicians. Books have been written about it. Dr. Sagan would never have considered the writings of Zecharia Sitchin, Andrew Tomas or me to be anything other than "fanciful mythological imaginings". And Dr. Sagan got his timeframe wrong: the period is 3,600 years, not 5.500 years! RS

Incidentally, the tradition of Aztecs speaks of a promise of the 'sons of heaven' to return in 6,000 years -- that is in our historical epoch.

Dr. C. Sagan believes that "the earth may have been visited many times by various galactic civilizations during geological times and it is not out of the question that artifacts of these visits still exist". The American scientist recommends us not to discard ancient myths which may contain accounts of appearances of space visitors described as 'gods' or 'angels' in scriptures and folklore.

COMMENT: According to the accompanying footnote, Dr. Sagan expressed this view in an article published by the Los Angeles Times. Generally, Dr. Sagan scoffed at any and all reports of visits by extraterrestrials to Earth. RS

Today the reaction of simple men and women who have never seen an automobile or aeroplane in some isolated part of the world, would be much the same as the one shown by the ancients when confronted with the appearance of a strange apparatus. In the fifties a jeep was dismantled, carried over the 13,400-foot Rohtang Pass in the Himalayas, and reassembled on the Lahoul side. As it descended into a valley, the surprised natives who had never seen a mechanically propelled vehicle, came out to worship this manifestation of supernatural power. When the first plane landed in Ladakh in 1948, the reaction of Tibetans to this flying monster was even more comic -- they brought hay to feed it.

COMMENT: Leonard "Mr. Spock" Nimoy had a television series in the 1970s titled "In Search Of". I watched most of the episodes. In one of them, Mr. Nimoy reported on a tribe of natives in New Guinea who, not understanding the science behind the airplanes flying overhead, built models of these "sky boats" in their villages and worshipped them as "gods". RS

K.E. Tsiolkovsky, the Russian pioneer in astronautics, when asked to express his opinion on the probability of interplanetary contacts, said that the visitation of our planet by cosmonauts could have taken place in the past, and would indeed occur in the future.

Faced with the same question in 1930 Professor N.A. Rynin of U.S.S.R. answered that "if we turn to tales and legends of hoary antiquity, we will notice strange coincidences among legends of countries separated by oceans and deserts. These coincidences in legends comprise the visitation of earth by dwellers of other worlds in time immemorial. Why not admit that a grain of truth still lies in the kernels of these legends?"

If beings from other planets paid us visits in a forgotten epoch, then it is clear how fruits and grains unknown to earth were brought by the 'gods' from other 'lokas' or worlds, as Brahmin books claim.

The subject of cosmic contacts in past ages, possibly in the Atlantean era, has been contemplated by men of science. It is assuredly worthy of a serious consideration in this Space Age, when we ourselves are about to explore other planets.

Behind legends can be dimly discerned a distant epoch in which a vanished race might have attained to a high degree of technology.

Pages 108-109 -- In 1969 the Cosmic-Ray exploration at Giza took an unforeseen turn. It was aptly described by John Tunstall in the Times Saturday Review for 26 July 1969:

"Scientists who have been trying to X-ray the Pyramid of Khephren at Giza, near Cairo, are baffled by mysterious influences which are throwing into utter confusion the readings of their Space Age electronic equipment. The equipment was demonstrated with dramatic success at the New York World's Fair and the agreement for the joint U.A.R.-United States pyramid project was signed on 14 June 1966. Between 1966 and early 1967 the cosmic ray measuring equipment was installed in the burial chamber at the base line of Khephren's pyramid."

On his second visit to Giza John Tunstall interviewed Dr. Amr Gohed, the Arab scientist in charge of the installation at the Khephren pyramid. This is his story:

"He showed me the new I.B.M. 1130 machine surrounded by hundreds of tins of recordings from the pyramid stacked in date order. Though hesitant at first, he eventually told me of the complete impasse that had been reached.

"'It defies all the known laws of science and electronics,' he said, picking up a tin of recordings made in October, 1968. He put the tape through the computer, which traced the pattern of cosmic ray particles on paper. He then selected a recording of the next day in October and put it through the computer. But the recorded pattern was completely different. The salient points which should be repeated on each tape were absent.

"'This is scientifically impossible,' he told me. But it is happening before the scientists' eyes.

"After long discussion and many cups of Arabian coffee, I put the ultimate question to Dr. Gohed: 'Has all this scientific know-how been rendered useless by some force beyond man's comprehension?' He hesitated before replying, then said: 'Either the geometry of the pyramid is in substantial error, which would affect our readings, or there is a mystery which is beyond explanation -- call it what you will, occultism, the curse of the Pharaohs, sorcery, or magic, there is some force that defies the laws of science at work in the pyramids.'"

This is a tremendously significant development at Giza. Where does this force field come from? What superior science and technology created it? As modern physics cannot neutralize cosmic rays, the prehistoric engineers must have had a superior science.

And so the Treasure of the Sphinx still awaits discovery.

Pages 117-119 -- SEEK IN THE MOUNTAINS AND THE SEA

Secret storehouses of a prehistoric civilization are located not only in the Mediterranean basin but also in other parts of the world.

For weeks I used to admire Kanchenjunga with its veil of snow, looming high above the horizon. Why is this Himalayan peak called the 'Five Sacred Treasures of the Great Snow'? Are treasures really buried deep within its bosom? Hillmen from Sikkim and Bhutan pay homage to the Five Treasures of Kanchenjunga. Tibetan folklore affirms that the precious things hidden in the innermost recesses of the mountain, have been guarded for centuries.

Nicholas Roerich, the famous painter and explorer, writes in Himalayas, The Abode Of Light that the Himalayan foothills contain entrances to subterranean passages leading far below Kanchenjunga. He remarks that a closed stone door has been seen leading to the Five Treasures of the Great Snow but the time is not ripe for its opening.

Also from Nicholas Roerich we learn that there are other secret storehouses in the Himalayas. On the Karakoram pass at an elevation of 19,500 feet, Roerich's groom said that great treasures were buried in the snowy ridge. He remarked that even the lowly ones among the natives knew of vast caverns which contained treasures from the beginning of the world. He wondered if Professor Roerich was aware of the books recording the location and contents of these subterranean vaults. The man of the mountains was asking Roerich why foreigners, who claimed to know so much, could not find the entryway to underground palaces. Then he concluded that the gates to them were guarded by a mighty fire which outsiders could not pass.

These legends of hidden treasures are persistently heard in Asia. The Tibetan epic of Ghessar Khan predicts the opening of the Treasures of the Mountains.

COMMENT: Indeed, I cannot think of a better location to hide secret treasures than in the forbidding Himalaya Mountains. When I spent a week in Kathmandou, Nepal, in January 1970, the days were warm, but there was lingering snow all over the ground. Kathmandou is the "jumping-off point" for those who seek to climb Mount Everest. One afternoon I took a two-hour tourist flight from Kathmandou out to Mount Everest and the Himalayas. It was some of the most remote but spectacular vistas that I have ever seen in my life. But I had absolutely no desire to be on the ground or climb any of the mountains. I also saw that IMAX film about Mount Everest. You could not pay me any amount of money to climb that mountain. I have never been a "mountain person" anyway. I prefer hot, flat desert lands to mountains. I rather enjoy the smaller, more rolling ranges like the Ozarks and the Ouachitas; but as for the Alps, the Rockies, the Himalayas -- no, thank you. Somebody else can do that particular investigative research. Incidentally, my tourist plane was a French Fokker from the era of World War II. Right after we got back to Kathmandou, the same plane took off on a routine commuter flight to New Delhi. It crashed along the way. Stunned is an understatement when I read about it in the Paris International Herald-Tribune the next morning during breakfast at the Royal Hotel. The fourth of my nine Leo cat-lives had just been used up. I'm down to about two left now. RS

India has a number of secret repositories according to H.P. Blavatsky. She wrote that initiated yogis knew of a vast network of underground galleries which run from cave temples. This engineering feat suggests a high technology in remotest antiquity.

In her travels through Tibet, Blavatsky met Buddhist pilgrims who claimed that in a secluded part of Altyn Tagh Ridge there existed a vast network of galleries and halls housing a collection of several million books. Madame Blavatsky estimated that the British Museum could not have accommodated all the cultural treasures of this underground library.

The locality is described by her as a deep gorge with a small cluster of unimpressive houses to mark the site of what may be the world's greatest library. It is secure from intrusion and nothing will disturb its age-old manuscripts. The entrances are thoroughly concealed and the vaults with books lie deep within the bowels of the earth. It is most unlikely that our world will ever see this fabulous treasure-house of culture. But we can be more optimistic about the treasures of Atlantis buried in Egypt.

COMMENT: One certainly hopes that this is true. One hopes that in this great world library there is a copy of every single book that has ever been published in the history of this planet. RS

The sages of the East are in a position to present strange documents which will upset the opinions held by our historians. Blavatsky predicts that some of these manuscripts will soon be released.

Our central topic of secret halls of records left by a former civilization may be hotly debated. Nevertheless, more significant than the writer's theories is the testimony given by Plato, Cicero, Manetho, Josephus, Proclus, Ibn Abd Hokm, Masoudi, and in recent time, by Blavatsky and Roerich.

The stage is now set for a momentous event in world history -- the discovery of Atlantean antiquities. The prophetic words of Ignatius Donnelly, the American pioneer of Atlantology, uttered late in the last century, ring now in our ears: "Who shall say that one hundred years from now the great museums of the world may not be adorned with gems, statues, arms, and implements from Atlantis, while the libraries of the world shall contain translations of its inscriptions, throwing new light upon all the past history of the human race, and all the great problems which now perplex the thinkers of our day."

COMMENT: For additional information on Atlantis, see Chapter 5 of my Planet X Nibiru : Slow-Motion Doomsday. RS

Pages 124-125 -- IT HAS ALL HAPPENED BEFORE

Civilization is largely the product of human intelligence. From caves to skyscrapers, from boomerangs to space satellites, is a jump achieved by the power of mind. Deprive man of one half of his present intellect, and the whole social edifice of today will suffer a setback comparable with a planetary disaster. Culture the mind, and you will have a sky-rocketing civilization. Develop the moral nature of humanity, and you will have a utopia to live in.

Intellectual development in human society is not unlike a chain reaction in nuclear physics. Jean Sylvain Bailly, the French astronomer of the eighteenth century, summed up this process like this: "Ideas have been successively gathered together, heaped up; they have mutually engendered each other, the one has led to another. It remains therefore merely to rediscover this succession, to begin with the earliest ideas; the path is traced out; it is a journey that one may make again because it has already been made."

COMMENT: My own present work reflects these sentiments in a microcosm: Alexander Von Humboldt, Professor William Smith, Sir Paul Brunton, Sir E.A. Wallis Budge, Dr. Whitfield Leggett Russell, Madame Helena P. Blavatsky, U.S. Congressman Ignatius Donnelly, Miss E. Valentia Straiton, Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky, Giorgio de Santillana, Hertha von Dechend, Erich von Daniken, Peter Tompkins, Gerald Hawkins, Andrew Tomas, Robert K.G. Temple, Murry Hope, Zecharia Sitchin, Darío Salas Sommer, William Bramley, R.A. Boulay, Rose and Rand Flam-Ath, prominent amongst others for two centuries, all have led to me; and from me there will inevitably be those who follow on this mesmerizing path to ultimate cosmic truth about the origin and home of our Archons, our "custodial gods". RS

Behind Copernicus, Galileo and Bruno stood the shades of Pythagoras, Aristarchus, Anaxagoras, Anaximenes and other Greek philosophers. Newton acknowledged his debt to antiquity by saying: "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

But many of these giants of the classic world studied, in their turn, at the feet of Egyptian hierophants. From whom did the wise priests of the Land of the Nile receive their secret philosophic and scientific tradition? From Thoth, who had come from an island in the Western Sea. Thus the fount of learning can be traced to legendary Atlantis.

Much of the New World civilization is an enigma without the Atlantis theory. No race ever built such roads as the Peruvians. They crossed the deepest canyons and pierced the highest mountains by tunnels which are still in use. On ancient asphalt-surfaced roadways modern cars travel today. No people, past or present, ever erected such megalithic structures as the pre-Incan races. No other nation ever has woven, by hand or machine, textiles of the workmanship of ancient Peruvians. No civilization ever had such an accurate astronomical calendar, in which every one of the 18,980 days were individually distinguishable, as the Aztecs and the Mayas.

COMMENT: One of the reasons for my including the foregoing excerpt was the notation of a "?" that I had placed in the margin of this book years ago next to the mention of "18,980 days". At the time I first read this book, I was greatly absorbed by the mathematics of ancient calendars, and apparently I'd intended to come back "later" and analyze this figure. Well, here we are. The first thing to do is to divide it by the number of days in one year: 18,980 / 365.25 = 51.964. Thus, this figure refers to the number of individual days in the basic Mayan cycle of "about 52 years" (13 X 4). Despite all that has been written about the Mayan Calendar, I personally have always thought that it is "illogical" because in no way can it be precisely mathematically reconciled with the Precession of the Equinoxes as other ancient calendars can be. The reason for these "peculiarities" in the Mayan Calendar is that they incorporated a Venus cycle along with an Earth cycle. Why Venus? Well, even Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky confused Venus with Planet X Nibiru. Perhaps after Nibiru last departed, the Mayas felt that it had somehow "usurped" the orbital position of Venus. But that is only a guess. Surely somewhere there is a "valid" reason as to why the Mayas so venerated Venus, and thus why Dr. Velikovky was so mistaken. RS

Pages 128-131 -- Archaeology considers the civilizations of Mohenjo-Daro, Sumer or Egypt as the earliest in history. In fact, science does not recognize any history as such prior to about 5000 B.C. Nevertheless, there may be relics of advanced nations buried in the oceans. If discoveries are ever made to that effect, history will have to make drastic corrections.

The rise of man from simple agricultural states of the valleys of the Nile, Tigris and Euphrates to our present technological era is too short a period for so fantastic an advance, unless man carried with him hereditary traits from another cycle of civilization.

To have progressed from ox-pulled carts to luxurious automobiles and from boomerangs to earth satellites in the short period of six thousand years is truly a miracle. But science has no place for miracles. Unknown factors could account for them. The time is too brief because it represents but a fraction of one per cent of the total accepted age of man. The "Caveman to spaceman in twenty-five thousand years" idea may be altogether erroneous.

COMMENT: Exactly what is meant by "caveman to spaceman in twenty-five thousand years", I do not know. Obviously Mr. Tomas was referring to a phrase in or the title of some book or television program. However, I disagree with this. We have only to look at the swift technological progress of the past century to understand that one invention quickly led to another, and that to another, and so on and so on. Just consider the evolution of Internet technology within the past decade. When I got my first computer in 1994, there was not even a World Wide Web. Email was UNIX-based and cumbersome for someone like I. But today, our computers are not only word-processors and more but also home entertainment centers (based upon old electronic stereophonic and VCR technologies) and clocks (based upon digital watches). We have integrated so many previously unrelated technologies into one machine with our latest, top-of-the-line computers. I can perfectly understand how we could have evolved from a purely non-technological society two centuries ago into our modern world. The discovery of electricity was at the heart of it. The Roman Empire was different from our modern era mainly because they did not discover electricity. Otherwise, their lives were as technologically advanced for their time as ours are for our time. The Romans had running water, traffic signs, home postal delivery and more. What they didn't have was electricity. How advanced would the world be today if Benjamin Franklin had lived at the time of Emperor Hadrian, followed by Thomas Edison during the reign of Emperor Septimius Severus and Empress Julia Domna Bassianus? Within that span, would there have been invented (ipso facto as in our time) an International Space Station a century later, even before the Council of Nicaea had had time to convene and plunge the Greco-Roman World back into philosophical primitivity?! RS

It is anticipated that these views will be condemned by most scientists. Nevertheless, the controversy can be resolved overnight in our favour if one of the Atlantean 'time capsules' becomes accessible to the public. Until then the author is prepared to act as a target for the outbursts of irritated professors.

COMMENT: As contemporary examples, I cite the unceasingly vitriolic, almost hysterical attacks by ex-Velikovskian C. Leroy Ellenberger on the ideas propounded by Planet X specialist James McCanney, or the denunciations by Professors Carl Sagan and Stephen Jay Gould of the historical achievements of Dr. Velikovsky. Some academicians are simply too slavish and weak-willed to ponder the real meaning of life outside the strict parameters of their entrenched establishment doctrines. Apollonius of Tyana encountered this same sort of "robot behavior" when he engaged the pseudo-philosopher Euphrates in debate at the headquarters of Roman Emperor Vespasian in Alexandria in 69 CE, before he and Damis departed for Ethiopia and before Jerusalem was destroyed the following spring by General and future Emperor Titus, son of Vespasian and friend of Apollonius. RS

To summarize: man is more ancient than our academies conjecture. The earth has experienced violent cataclysms, mainly due to axis shifts and falls of huge meteorites. In these geological upheavals great civilizations disappeared without a trace.

Bhagavata Purana, a sacred book of India, speaks of four ages which have passed, each destroyed by the fury of the elements. Our present cycle is the fifth.

Hesiod, an ancient Greek poet who lived in the eighth century before our era, writes about a similar belief in Greece. There were four ages in the past. First, the gods created a golden race. They were mortal yet lived like gods. The second race was silver. They were of inferior intelligence. The next cycle was that of brass. Men were then strong and warlike and they destroyed themselves. The fourth era was the age of heroes whose adventures inspired men ever since. According to ancient Greek lore we are now in the fifth age -- the age of iron. They believed we should likewise be destroyed by Zeus as were the other races. Censorinus (b. 238 A.D.) writes that the Greeks thought the world was either inundated or burnt after each epoch.

Ancient Egyptians divided history into three principal eras. First was the kingdom of the gods. In the second period demigods and heroes ruled on earth. Then with their departure, men reigned over Egypt and the world. When classic historians and myths speak of gods and demigods, we do not take them seriously. Yet superior men could have walked the earth in a golden era.

In China the people of Yunnan have preserved the memory of an age when levitation of heavy rocks was a commonplace matter, when all were prosperous and lived long lives. The Pai tribesmen sing of that bygone epoch in these words:

In olden days rocks used to walk,
Is this true or false?
In olden days the rocks could walk,
This is true not false.
At that time the world was all peace,
Do you believe what I say?
At that time the world was all peace,
I believe what you say.
At that time there were no rich or poor,
Do you believe what I say?
At that time there were no rich or poor,
I believe what you say.
At that time people lived hundreds of years,
Do you believe what I say?
At that time people lived hundreds of years,
I believe what you say.

It is easy to call legends mere fantasy and laugh at the traditions of many peoples. It is much more difficult to appraise history in its entirety.

This work has an aim and a moral. Its aim is to call the attention of the public to the startling possibility of a discovery of a hidden depository left by a race now considered mythical. Its moral is contained in the question: "Are we not treading upon the footsteps of Atlantis?"

At the entrance of La Sainte Chapelle in Paris a guide was explaining to us the meaning of various ornaments. Before the panel depicting Noah's Ark and the Flood he delivered an oration on the biblical story of the Flood and concluded: "And so, mesdames et messieurs, people and animals began to multiply and, the process is still going on -- till the next Flood."

According to Plato, the Atlanteans perished when they were engaged in imperialistic wars. But in a better epoch they loved peace, cherished camaraderie and despised avarice.

COMMENT: Sound familiar, America? RS

It is only hoped that the modern world may ensure a better destiny for itself than Atlantis. The Catalan poet Jacinto Verdaguer mourned Atlantis in these words:

Atlantis, woe to thy children!
Alas, shall we live to see another dawn?
Our ancestor's words came true one by one:
His Atlanteans, land and gods are no more.

Plutarch in Isis and Osiris recorded the opinion and belief of the most ancient sages "that there will become a fated and predestined time when the earth will be completely levelled, united and equal, there will be but one mode of life and but one form of government among mankind who will all speak one language and will live happily".

The discovery of the Treasure of the Ages will completely revolutionize all of our views on ancient history. From the lessons of the past, mankind will learn to avoid the mistakes of the vanished race. Man will then be able to find his proper place on this beautiful planet, his true mission and work towards a glorious future.

Page 136 -- At the source of all ancient civilizations there always stands a divine bearer of culture. Thoth brought a ready-made culture from a western land. His titles 'Lord of the Overseas' and 'Guardian of the Two Lands' by which he is referred to in the Book of the Dead and certain Pharaonic inscriptions, suggest that he was an Atlantean leader. A significant myth about the god Thoth says that it was on wings that he transported the gods to the east -- to "the other side of the lake Kha". Airlift of a cultural élite from Atlantis to Egypt?

COMMENT: This "Lake of Kha" is just another name for the "Lake of Sa" or "Pool of Natron" or "Pillar of Thoth". See Illustration 6 of Planet X Nibiru : Slow-Motion Doomsday. The "two lands" were Planet Earth Tiamat and Planet X Nibiru. Thoth was/is Hermes ("Salute, Hermes!"), Prince Nannar of Planet X, member of The Council Of Twelve. Even Darío Salas Sommer (pseudonym, John Baines) writes of Thoth's ancient influence on Egypt in his spellbinding The Stellar Man. One wonders, in passing, if Señor Sommer is keeping up with the latest in this field of research. Or is he simply laughing all the way to the bank from his retirement villa in Santiago de Chile? RS

Pages 138-142 -- MYTHS PROVEN TRUE

The Mansi tribe in the Arctic tundra of Siberia has a legend. Long, long ago a firebird lived with the ancestors and it was so warm that giant trees grew and queer animals grazed. But someone stole the firebird and severe cold and winds set in. The strange trees and animals perished.

This is not a myth but a scientific fact as fossils of prehistoric trees and animals are found in Siberian tundra. Verbal accounts, handed down from generation to generation, can often preserve an amazing degree of accuracy.

COMMENT: Giant trees and queer animals? Did these animals look like tomcats, squirrels, monkeys or coyotes? All of the above? None of the above? "The strange trees and animals perished" when The Cosmic Tree last detethered and departed. In 1588-87 BCE when Planet X Nibiru arrived last time and the North Pole shifted from the North Atlantic Ocean to the Arctic Ocean, the change was so swift and the Siberian cold so sudden that whole animals froze to death instantaneously. Even the food in their stomachs was undigested because of the abrupt polar cold. Some of these animals were so perfectly preserved that when discovered centuries later and defrosted, their meat was still fresh enough to be eaten. See also Chapter 2 of Slow-Motion Doomsday. RS

We have talked a great deal about myths in this book. The average person thinks they are a by-product of fancy. However, this is not always the case. Folklore, as the collective memory of the human race, contains many records of past events, often coloured by ancient story-tellers and unavoidably distorted because of the passing of legends from one generation to another. But not unfrequently traditions are actual fossils of history. It is utterly unscientific to discard mythology as a collection of fables. A reality of yesterday, is a myth today. The world we live in, will be hardly more than a myth itself ten thousand years from now. In that distant future, sages will engage in polemics about the mythical character of legends connected with our vanished civilization.

Until about two hundred and fifty years ago the cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii were nothing but a myth. After their excavation and discovery the two cities became history. When I saw Pompeii, the city seemed to be only asleep.

Among the more fabulous stories of Herodotus is the tale of a distant country where griffins guard a golden treasure. Soviet archaeologists have discovered that country. It is Altai, or Kin Shan in Chinese, meaning the golden mountain. Gold mines have been located there since ancient times. In the valley of Pazyrka scientists have found remains of a high culture. Rich decorations prominently display the griffin. Thus a vague myth about griffins guarding the gold has ceased to be a mere legend.

COMMENT: There is more to this than Mr. Tomas realized. The "griffins guarding the gold" were the Saurian guards at the various "checkpoints" in and around the Duat, or "Hidden Place" where the "celestial chariots" landed and departed, climbing up and down "the golden pole" to "the golden city floating in space": Hyperborea, which lay beyond the Rhipaean Mountains, which were in turn accessible from the Altais. See also Chapter 8 of Slow-Motion Doomsday. RS

Although the mountain stronghold of Petra, lost in the desert south of the Dead Sea, was described by Eratosthenes, Pliny, Eusebius and others, in time it became a legendary city. It was only at the dawn of the nineteenth century that Burckhardt gained entrance into the gorge and beheld an edifice carved out of solid rock, an amphitheatre and numerous caves. Once again a fable was turned into fact.

When Heinrich Schliemann started excavations on the mounds of Hissarlik in Asia Minor in 1870 in search of the legendary city of Troy, professors thought he was mad. Yet the Iliad of Homer was right -- Troy was no myth. Schliemann found ruins of a city which was even more ancient than Troy itself. Eventually Troy's remains were identified to the triumph of Heinrich Schliemann.

The story of Diego de Landa, written in 1566, about the Sacred Well of Sacrifice in Yucatán into which human victims and jewellery were thrown, has been regarded by historians as a mere tale. Then in the nineteenth century an American diplomat and archaeologist E.H. Thompson discovered the well of Cichén-Itzá and validated the old Indian legends.

Six hundred years ago a Chinese ambassador, Chow-Ta-Kwan, submitted to his emperor a report of a fantastic walled city, the hub of a thriving kingdom, south of China, completely lost in the jungle. When the document was published in 1858, Western scholars dismissed it as fiction. Before long a French naturalist -- A.H. Mouhot -- stumbled upon the remains of Angkor Thom in Indo-China. The description of the legendary jungle city by the mandarin surprisingly corresponded to the actual panorama of Angkor Thom.

COMMENT: During October 1969, I borrowed a Citroën Deux Chevaux from an Embassy colleague in Saigon. I drove through the Tay Ninh semi-warzone in western central South Vietnam to the Cambodian border and crossed as a tourist. Prince Sihanouk was still in power. The Khmer Rouge were only a minor nuisance, and the Americans had not yet invaded. Crossing that border was like stepping back in time, going from darkness into light. Cambodia was a veritable paradise on Earth back then. I spent over a week driving around Cambodia, including Phnom Penh, Sihanoukville, Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat. I stayed at Phnom Penh's elegant old colonial French Hotel Metropole and gambled at the posh, Monte Carlo style riverboat casino near the palace. The Phnom Penh International Film Festival was in full swing. At that time remote Angkor was not a popular tourist destination. I had the whole Angkor complex practically all to myself for two full days, driving through the jungles, not seeing another vehicle, smoking "Cambodian Red Bhanga" (legally available in all the open farmers' markets), taking photographs, listening only to the animal sounds coming from the immense, old trees. You wouldn't believe some of the photographs that I still have of this magnificent temple and palace complex! By now the place is probably swarming with tourists. And I brought a large grocery sack full of Cambodian Red back to Vietnam. It lasted me well into the next year after I returned stateside in January 1970. It was still an easy matter to smuggle drugs back in those innocent, halcyon days, especially when travelling on an official or diplomatic passport. Let me add also as an aside that I was one of only three American men in the history of the Vietnam War who dared to make this drive from Saigon to Phnom Penh. We three "daredevil explorers" became Saigon legends in that respect, at least amongst the Americans. The French businessmen and rubber plantation scientists regularly made this road trip, however, and they had assured me that it was not nearly so dangerous as the Americans exaggerated it to be. But skittish Americans always exaggerate danger, even until the present day. RS

When Marco Polo returned to Europe with tales of black stones found in China which burned and heated daily baths, the Venetians of his day only laughed. First of all, no stones could burn, secondly how could anyone in the world afford such a luxury as a hot bath daily? The reader has, no doubt, recognized the reference to coal in Polo's story. His accounts of black oil of the Caspian available in large quantities from the bowels of the earth, were also ridiculed. What were amusing tales to the citizens of Venice, are now scientific facts familiar even to children.

At times it is difficult to ascertain where myth ceases and history commences, or where history ends and myth begins. There is a tendency in scientific circles nowadays to regard mythology and folklore as sources of history. Dr. Carl Sagan, a prominent United States astrophysicist, has successfully proved this point by referring to the voyage of La Perouse to the north-west of America in 1786. The legends of Indians who saw the ships of the navigator, contain amazingly accurate details as to the actual appearance of the French fleet which had visited the lands of these tribes. This shows how an actual event can be preserved in the memory of the masses by verbal transmission from one generation to another.

COMMENT: Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky, not Carl Sagan, was the pioneer in interpreting myth in terms of history and science. In fact, today's The Velikovskian Journal styles itself as "A Journal of Myth, History and Science". RS

Guatemalan Indians have interesting legends which date to the sixteenth century. When miraculous appearances of gods and their way of life were closely examined by the University of Oklahoma, it became apparent that the mythological beings were none other than the Spanish invaders.

Allowance must be made for inaccuracies, distortions and exaggerations which creep into a tale transmitted through the centuries. None the less, it may contain a kernel of truth and a chronicle of life in bygone epochs. In this light, we should not cast aside legends speaking of a highly advanced civilization of the past which perished in a planetary catastrophe.

Present-day science is gradually reiterating the wisdom of the ages. Have we not proven the correctness of the formula of Democritus -- "in reality there is nothing but atoms and space"?

The children of ancient Greece were taught that the earth was a globe floating in infinite space. Their teachers knew about the relative sizes of the sun and the moon, and their approximate distances from the earth. Philosophers delivered lectures in forums about the Milky Way as a conglomeration of stars, each a sun in itself. In colonnaded temples leaned men in tunics and togas spoke of life on other planets.

Almost two thousand years later the schoolchildren of Europe were taught that the earth was flat, the centre of creation, and that the stars were holes in the firmament. What right have we then to look down upon the sages of the classic world who possessed more wisdom than the theologians of the Dark Ages?

The tradition of the ancients in regard to a treasure hidden thousands of years ago, is not a myth. If we but take it as a working hypothesis, a great discovery could be made in this century.

Its impact on our life may be stronger than imagined. Evidence of a sudden geological cataclysm that had destroyed Atlantis, will necessitate adjustment in a science which admits no abrupt catastrophes on a planetary scale. History, with so many missing chapters, will gain an undistorted picture of the story of mankind. Our sociology will find out what social and economic systems had existed in the pre-cataclysmic world, and how they had developed -- a fact of utmost importance in the modern conflict of ideologies. Archaic instruments or machinery constructed on principles unknown to us, might set our science on a new track. The acquaintance with the beliefs of the vanished race will show the growth of human consciousness. The discovery of a new world in time can be equated with the discovery of an inhabited world in space -- both can set mankind in upheaval.

Great revelations have been made by questioning the accepted opinions of the times. Roger Bacon has well diagnosed the causes of human error in his Opus Majus: "For every person, in whatever walk of life, both an application to study and in all forms of occupation, arrives at the same conclusion by the three worst arguments, namely, this is a pattern set by our elders, this is the custom, this is the popular belief: therefore it should be held."

Like our predecessors we still live in a mentally conditioned society in which every departure from the recognized mode of thinking is regarded as a revolt against the idols of the time. But thousands upon thousands of people nowadays are beginning to think for themselves on all subjects. To them this book will be more than fiction.

COMMENT: When this book was published in the 1970s, the best decade of my life in many ways, indeed more and more people were beginning to think for themselves. That changed in the 1980s, and today we are worse off intellectually than at any time I can remember. But at least now, we have the Internet, making available every idea under the Sun to anyone who seeks to know about it. The contemporary, pathetic, mainstream American "intellect" (if one can call it such) hit rock bottom years ago and now is hopelessly mired in vacuous mindlessness.