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Among the really indispensible pieces
of furniture in any occult cosmology are "lost continents". Where, for
instance, would the Theosophists be without them? And the same must be said for
writers of fantastic and weird fiction. Few locales are nearly so exotic as a
now-sunken continent. In its day it may have spawned bizarre life-forms,
advanced technology, and who knows what else? Atlantis has been the site of
adventures too numerous to list, while Lemuria and Hyperborea have at least come
in for their share of the action. But the lost continent of Mu (which some
identify, we think incorrectly, with Lemuria [note]) has
by comparison scarcely felt the tread of either hero or monster. Most of the
weird adventures set in that Pacific land occur in the Cthulhu Mythos of
Lovecraft and his heirs. Our objective here is to examine briefly the relevant
aspects of the lore of Mu and how these have been adapted for use in the Mythos.
Rising from the Imagination
As L. Sprague deCamp recounts it, the
history of Atlantis speculation has been nearly as fantastic as the fiction
based on it. Theorizing has proceeded on the basis of misconstrued zoological
evidence and on the imagined ability of psychics to "read" history
telepathically in the "Akashic Records". But the basis of Mu is, if
anything, even more tenuous. The first researcher to mention it was French
scholar Abbe Charles-Etienne Brasseur (1814-1874). With the aid of an entirely
erroneous "key" to the Mayan alphabet, he thought he deciphered the
Troano Codex (one of the few surviving Mayan texts). It seemed to recount some
kind of volcanic disaster: "it is he, the master of the upheaved earth, of
the swollen earth, beyond measure, he the master . . . of the basin of
water" (DeCamp, p. 37). Coming across two symbols of which he could
otherwise make little sense, Brasseur decided they looked most like his
lexicon's characters for "M" and "U". Thus the derivation of
the name "Mu". All this was taken, however, as evidence for the
existence of Atlantis!
Augustus Le Plongeon (1826-1908), an
archaeologist who explored Mayan ruins in Yucutan, was the next contributor to
our legend. Brasseur's spurious version of the Troano Codex, together with some
wall murals in a Mayan ruin, fired La Plongeon's imagination, resulting in a
tale of romantic and political rivalry between two Atlantean/Muvian princes. At
the story's climax, the continent sinks. The heroine, Queen Moo, flees to Egypt,
while other Muvian refugees emigrated to Central America.
In 1912, Paul Schliemann claimed, in
effect, to have outdone his famous grandfather Heinrich Schliemann as a
vindicator of lost civilizations. Whereas grandpa had actually discovered Troy,
Paul claimed to have found Atlantis, by all odds an even better catch. The
younger Schliemann introduced a new type of "evidence" into the
research an Mu. Up to this point, scholars had relied upon misinterpreted data;
Schliemann broke new ground by fabricating his data outright. The foremost
instance of this was his pretended source called the "Lhasa Record".
This was supposed to be a four thousand year old Chaldean manuscript (cuneiform
tablets?) preserved incongruously in a Tibetan monastery! Incidentally, at
around the same time, every occult researcher was finding secret records in
India and Tibet, including Notovitch's "Life of Saint Issa" [i.e.,
Jesus], and Madame Blavatsky's "Stanzas of Dzyan", and as we
shall see momentarily, Churchward's "Naacal Tablets". At any rate, the
Lhasa Record told how Mu, the high priest of Ra, predicted the destruction of
Atlantis.
"Colonel" James Churchward
was the first to place Mu in the Pacific Ocean, separate from Atlantis which he
regarded as a colony of the former. In his series of books commencing with The
Lost Continent of Mu (1926), he provided the definitive form of the Mu myth.
He incorporated Le Plongeon's Queen Moo as well as Schliemann's priest Ra Mu.
His library of resources contained Brasseur's mistranslation of the Troano
Codex, Schliemann's imaginary Lhasa Record, and his own creation, the Naacal
Tablets, a transcription of the "Sacred Inspired Writings of Mu".
Churchward's Mu was an Anglo-Saxon's paradise, a sort of super-Tahiti with an
apartheid system. Mu stretched across the Pacific Ocean in temperate luxury, the
homeland of ten tribes of different hues, but ruled by white, blond Aryans. Its
civilization and technology were quite advanced, and its religion (called "Osirian"
after a later Atlantean reformer) was pure monotheism with a distinctly
nineteenth century Liberal Protestant flavor. It had no theology or dogma, and
its "fundamental principles . . . were: The Fatherhood of God and the
Brotherhood of Man." It also included reincarnation. (Sacred Symbols of
Mu, p. 19.)
Enter Luveh-Keraph
As with several other aspects of the
occult, Lovecraft took lost continents seriously only as background material for
his stories. But as such, he was quite enthusiastic about the theme:
I've . . . been digesting something
of vast interest as background or source material --- . . . i.e., the
Atlantis-Lemuria tales, as developed by modern occultists & the[o]sophical
charlatans. Really, some of these hints about the lost "City of the
Golden Gates" & the shapeless monsters of archaic Lemuria are
ineffably pregnant with fantastic suggestion; & I only wish I could get
hold of more of the stuff. What I have read is The Story of Atlantis &
the Lost Lemuria, by W. Scott Elliott [sic] (Selected Letters, Vol.
II, p. 58. )
No reader of Lovecraft will be
surprised at hearing that he had read Scott-Elliot, since that book is
mentioned, along with Frazer's Golden Bough and Murray's Witch Cult in
Western Europe, over and over again in HPL's own stories. Scott-Elliot does
not mention Mu. But from references in Lovecraft's "Out of the Eons",
it is clear that he had read at least one of Churchward's works. In that story,
he mentions Churchward and the "old tablets in the primal Naacal
tongue".
If it is evident that HPL took over
Churchward's speculations, it is equally apparent that he used them only as raw
material. He recast the lore of Mu extensively, especially its religion. Whereas
Churchward's Osirian Religion was a spiritual monotheism, Lovecraft peopled Mu's
heavens with his own pantheon, including the Mother Goddess Shub-Niggurath and
"her sons" Nug, Yeb, and Yig the Serpent-God. By implication there
were many others as well. But paramount was the "Dark God" or
"Devil-God" Ghatanothoa, whose hideous aspect acted on the unwary
observer like the countenance of the Medusa. Ghatanothoa had been the
"hellish god or patron demon" of the Elder Ones of Yuggoth, who had
filtered down from outer space to settle earth in the dim past. These creatures
had long since perished, and in their place human beings came to inhabit Mu.
Ghatanothoa, however, still lived to plague his new fearful worshippers, who
offered human sacrifice. The Dark God lay imprisoned within the cliffs of a
mountain, represented below by his hundred priests, chief among whom was Imash-Mo.
Other cults, e. g., that of Shub-Niggurath, had their own hierophants and
shamans as well.
Now all of this could not be further
removed from the Osirian faith of Churchward's Muvians. According to the
Colonel, belief in a devil originated long after the sinking of Mu, in Egypt and
India. Human sacrifice was also a later development, a gross degeneration.
The Call of K'tholo
Colin Wilson, who had begun to weave
his section of the Cthulhu Mythos tapestry with his novel The Mind Parasites,
took up the hanging threads of Mu in his short story "The Return of the
Lloigor". In this tale, he even introduces Churchward as a character! He Is
thinly disguised beneath the alias "Colonel Lionel Urquart", author of
The Mysteries of Mu.
In Wilson's version, the major
departure from "orthodox" Muvianism is again the religious system. He
makes the lost continent the earthly colony of the extraterrestrial Lloigor,
disembodied intelligences who create humanity to serve them. Here, the invaders
from space (from the Andromeda Galaxy, not Yuggoth) have become equivalent to
the gods of Lovecraft's Mu, rather than their original worshippers. Ghatanothoa
"the dark one" appears again, this time as the chief of the Lloigor.
And there is harmony between the gods, not rivalry as in Lovecraft's "Out
of the Eons", where Shub-Niggurath inspires her priest T'yog to assassinate
Ghatanothoa.
Wilson's conception of Mu and its
divinities changes in his novel The Philosopher's Stone. Indeed, it
changes yet again in the course of that very book! The first of the two versions
is contained in a newly-discovered Mayan text, the Vatican Codex. According to
the creation myth found there, there is a "Mother Goddess" (apparently
to be identified with Shub-Niggurath) who acts as a demiurge in creation. Then
from Arcturus descends "Ghatanothoa, the dark god, also known as Father
Yig" (p. 236). He tries to rape "the dawn goddess", who escapes
him. Ghatanothoa nevertheless ejaculates, and his seed forms all living things.
At this point the "Ancient Old Ones" intervene to imprison Ghatanothoa/Yig beneath the earth. They evolve the first human beings from apes,
to be their servants in containing the rest of the Yig-spawn. Parts of this
scenario would actually provide a dim parallel to Churchward's version, since
the latter symbolizes God the Creator as Naga, the seven-headed serpent (cf. Yig).
As The Philosopher's Stone
proceeds, we find that the Vatican Codex account actually represents a later,
corrupt mythology. The truth is rather different. The Old Ones have created man
as a servant, much as the Lloigor had done in the first story. But there is no
mention of Ghatanothoa, Yig, or the Mother Goddess. To act as their high priest,
the Old Ones create the immortal superman K'tholo (the origin of guess who?).
K'tholo, reminiscent of both Churchward's Osiris and his high-priest Ra Mu,
served the Old Ones until their lapse into a dreamless sleep during "The
Night of the Monsters". It seems that the Old Ones tired of acting through
servants and decided to take on individualized, bodily form themselves. They
became great cone-shaped, tentacled behemoths living in underground cities.
(They are, of course, the "Great Race of Yith" from Lovecraft's
"The Shadow out of Time".)
The incarnate Old Ones could not
successfully make the transition into the new mode of existence. Their
subconscious minds began to send forth destructive blasts of energy (= the
invisible enemies of the Great Race in "Shadow"). To avoid complete
destruction, the Old Ones purposely sank into oblivion, dampening their
conscious and subconscious minds alike. This action left Mu without divine
guidance, but K'tholo was able to rule in the Old Ones' stead. One of his acts
was to institute worship of the sun. (Churchward had said the sun was the
paramount symbol for God in Mu.) The point of the new solar cult was to offset
the mournful preoccupation of the people with the torpid Old Ones, called in
this context "the dark gods, who were already haunting men like a
nightmare" (p. 294). This epithet is the only echo of "the Dark God
Ghatanothoa" remaining.
K'tholo ruled wisely, though oft-times
by draconian measures, until the destruction of Mu, which had been described by
Churchward in these terms: "The fires of the underneath burst forth,
piercing the clouds in roaring flames three miles in diameter." (Lost
Continent of Mu, p. 39). Wilson's account of the end of Mu agrees, except
for expanding the girth of the "column of blazing gas" to fourteen
miles (p. 301). In "The Return of the Lloigor", he had pictured the
destruction as caused by the angry Lloigor, but there is no indication of divine
vengeance here.
The Wizard of Lemuria
Lin Carter's tribute to HPL's "Out
of the Eons", is a series of stories beginning with "The Thing in the
Pit". This is a sequel to Lovecraft's story-within-a-story about T'yog the
priest of Shub-Niggurath and his attempt to destroy Ghatanothoa. Centuries
later, another defiant rival priest comes on the scene: Zanthu, the hierophant
of Ythogtha. He seeks to release his patron Old One from the captivity imposed
upon him ages ago by the Elder Gods. Besides introducing August Derleth's Elder
Gods alongside HPL's (Yuggothian) Elder Ones in the same story, Carter has made
a couple of other interesting adjustments in Lovecraft's Muvian scenario. He
mentions Lovecraft's Yeb, Nug, and Yig, plus Vorvadoss, lod, Dagon and Hydra,
and even Great Cthulhu, not mentioned in "Out of the Eons". Carter
adds two Old Ones of his own, Ythogtha and Zoth-Ommog, who together with
Ghatanothoa, we discover, are the sons of Cthulhu himself. The three Cthulhu-spawn are collectively known as the "Demon Trinity", recalling
Churchward's "Triune God" of Mu. (Sacred Symbols of Mu, p. 273.
)
And beyond all these, Carter speaks of
"the thousand gods of primordial and everlasting Mu" (p. 29). It goes
without saying that Muvian monotheist Churchward must be turning in his grave.
Is Lovecraft spinning, too? Perhaps not --- Carter has made a perceptive
observation. In "Out of the Eons", Lovecraft called Shub-Niggurath
"the Goat with a Thousand Young". He also called Nug, Yeb, and Yig
"her sons", implying that her other 997 offspring are Muvian
divinities as well! Hence Carter's thousand gods of Mu!
In "The Thing in the Pit",
the gods are again feuding rivals. And it is on behalf of Ythogtha and against
Ghatanothba that the priest Zanthu dares tamper with the Elder Sign imprisoning
Ythogtha. Ironically, by doing this Zanthu had hoped to avert divine wrath. The
elevation of Ghatanothoa's cult over all others had rankled the other Old Ones,
and it was prophesied that they would one day take vengeance by destroying Mu.
Zanthu reasons that he will rectify matters by freeing Ythogtha from his pit of
captivity. Unfortunately, the plan backfires. The Elder Gods intervene, strafing
Ythogtha's pit with lightning and plunging Mu beneath the waves! Carter cleverly
adapts Churchward's and Wilson's "column of blazing gas" into an
epiphany of the Elder Gods themselves, whom, following Derleth, he describes as
"Great things like Towers of Flame" (p. 35).
Sacred Symbol of Mu
All of our writers,
Churchward,
Lovecraft, Wilson, and Carter, have managed to use the lost continent of Mu as a
vehicle for their high-soaring imaginations. Beut they have done so in different
ways, and it may be interesting to see how their approaches differ. Churchward
in his alleged history and Wilson in his admitted fiction both see Mu as a
symbol for humanity's hidden potential. This is probably the basic significance
of the lost continent theme in all occultism. The idea of a long-lost advanced
culture that is only now rediscovered, stands for occult faculties and
evolutionary powers believed to be lying dormant in all of us. These powers,
like Atlantis or Mu themselves, are long-lost, unsuspected by most, but now
recoverable. To unlock this potentiality, we need only meditate, or otherwise
develop ourselves spiritually. In fact, it is by just this kind of psychic
faculty that theosophical seers claim to have gained their information on
Atlantis and Lemuria (e. g., Edgar Cayce, Rudolf Steiner, W. Scott-Elliot).
Wilson's hero in The Philosopher's Stone uses the same gift of
"time-vision" to rediscover Mu.
Lovecraft uses Mu, and other lost lands
like R'lyeh, to symbolize the outer gulfs of unplumbed space, the chaos beyond
our feeble imagination, which threatens to burst in upon us and sweep away our
fragile anthropocentic worldview. This, of course, is part and parcel of
Lovecraft's conception of weird horror, and does not need rehearsal here.
Suffice it to say that out-of-the-way locales symbolize the disturbing character
of "the beyond".
Carter is concerned simply to tell an
engaging tale. For him, Mu is a flying carpet to carry readers off into realms
of the imagination. To set a story in Mu, or Lemuria, Atlantis, Gonwonlane,
Callisto, etc., is another way of saying "once upon a time". Carter
recognizes fantasy literature as escapism; whete better to escape to than
the lost continent of Mu?
Notes
* Lemuria was
supposedly a land bridge across the Indian Ocean, while Mu was located In the
mid-Pacific.
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