HELENA BLAVATSKY
ON DINOSAURS IN MYTH
Nineteenth century engraving of pterodactyls.
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NOTE |
HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY (1831-1891) knew a good racket when she saw one and decided that the best way to make money was to start a cult. The result was Theosophy, one of the most influential philosophical systems of the nineteenth century. She worked on her first Theosophical study, Isis Unveiled, while living a stone's throw from where I went to school in Ithaca, New York. Later, she published her magnum opus, The Secret Doctrine, a two-volume summation of history and myth that appropriated occult works like Donnelly's Atlantis and translations of Hindu epics wholesale, folding their ideas (largely uncredited) into her system of alternative spirituality whereby the universe was alive with consciousness just waiting to help humanity across the aeons.
In the second volume of the Secret Doctrine, on the origins of humanity ("Anthropogenesis"), Blavatsky speculated on the connection between dinosaurs and lost civilizations, creating an occult reflection of the genuine science of her era. The following passage comes from Stanza IX of Vol. 2, published in 1888. |
VOLUME 2
Stanza IX
... Now we find in the Zohar a very strange assertion, one that is calculated to provoke the reader to merry laughter by its ludicrous absurdity. It tells us that the serpent, which was used by Shamael (the supposed Satan), to seduce Eve, was a kind of flying camel—καμηλόμορϕον. [1]
A “flying camel” is indeed too much for the most liberal-minded F.R.S. Nevertheless, the Zohar, which can hardly be expected to use the language of a Cuvier, was right in its description: for we find it called in the old Zoroastrian MSS. Aschmogh, which in the Avesta is represented as having lost after the Fall “its nature and its name,” and is described as a huge serpent with a camel’s neck.
“There are no winged serpents, nor veritable dragons,” asserts Salverte,[2] “. . . grasshoppers are called by the Greeks winged serpents, and this metaphor may have created several narratives on the existence of winged serpents.”
There are none now; but there is no reason why they should not have existed during the Mesozoic age; and Cuvier, who has reconstructed their skeletons, is a witness to “flying camels.” Already, after finding simple fossils of certain saurians, the great naturalist has written, that, “if anything can justify the Hydra and other monsters, whose figures were so often repeated by mediaeval historians, it is incontestably the Plesiosaurus.” [3]
We are unaware if Cuvier had added anything in the way of a further mea culpa. But we may well imagine his confusion, for all his slanders against archaic veracity, when he found himself in the presence of a flying saurian, “the Pterodactyl” (found in Germany), “78 feet long, and carrying vigorous wings attached to its reptilian body.” That fossil is described as a reptile, the little fingers of whose hands are so elongated as to bear a long membranous wing. Here, then, the “flying camel” of the Zohar is vindicated. For surely, between the long neck of the Plesiosaurus and the membranous wing of the Pterodactyl, or still better the Mosasaurus, there is enough scientific probability to build a “flying camel,” or a long-necked dragon. Prof. Cope, of Philadelphia, has shown that the Mosasaurus fossil in the chalk was a winged serpent of this kind. There are characters in its vertebrae, which indicate union with the Ophidia rather than with the Lacertilia.
And now to the main question. It is well known that Antiquity has never claimed palaeontography and palaeontology among its arts and sciences; and it never had its Cuviers. Yet on Babylonian tiles, and especially in old Chinese and Japanese drawings, in the oldest Pagodas and monuments, and in the Imperial library at Pekin, many a traveller has seen and recognised perfect representations of Plesiosauri and Pterodactyls in the multiform Chinese dragons. [4] Moreover, the prophets speak in the Bible of the flying fiery serpents, [5] and Job mentions the Leviathan. [6] Now the following questions are put very directly: --
I. How could the ancient nations know anything of the extinct monsters of the carboniferous and Mesozoic times, and even represent and describe them orally and pictorially, unless they had either seen those monsters themselves or possessed descriptions of them in their traditions, which descriptions necessitate living and intelligent eye-witnesses?
II. And if such eye-witnesses are once admitted (unless retrospective clairvoyance is granted), how can humanity and the first palaeolithic men be no earlier than about the middle of the tertiary period? We must bear in mind that most of the men of science will not allow man to have appeared before the Quaternary period, and thus shut him out completely from the Cenozoic times. Here we have extinct species of animals, which disappeared from the face of the Earth millions of years ago, described by, and known to, nations whose civilization, it is said, could hardly have begun a few thousand years ago. How is this? Evidently either the Mesozoic time has to be made to overlap the Quaternary period, or man must be made the contemporary of the Pterodactyl and the Plesiosaurus.
It does not stand to reason, because the Occultists believe in and defend ancient wisdom and science, even though winged saurians are called “flying camels” in the translations of the Zohar, that we believe as readily in all the stories which the middle ages give us of such dragons. Pterodactyls and Plesiosauri ceased to exist with the bulk of the Third Race. When, therefore, we are gravely asked by Roman Catholic writers to credit Christopher Scherer’s and Father Kircher’s cock-and-bull stories of their having seen with their own eyes living fiery and flying dragons, respectively in 1619 and 1669, we may be allowed to regard their assertions as either dreams or fibs. [7] Nor shall we regard otherwise than as a poetical license that other story told of Petrarch, who, while following one day his Laura in the woods and passing near a cave, is credited with having found a dragon, whom he forthwith stabbed with his dagger and killed, thus preventing the monster from devouring the lady of his heart. [8] We would willingly believe the story had Petrarch lived in the days of Atlantis, when such antediluvian monsters may still have existed. We deny their existence in our present era. The sea-serpent is one thing, the dragon quite another. The former is denied by the majority because it exists and lives in the very depths of the ocean, is very scarce, and rises to the surface only when compelled, perhaps, by hunger. Thus keeping invisible, it may exist and still be denied. But if there was such a thing as a dragon of the above description, how could it have ever escaped detection? It is a creature contemporary with the earliest Fifth Race, and exists no more.
NOTES
[1] De Mirville’s Des Esprits, ii. 423. See also Moses Maimonides, More Nevochim.
[2] “Science Occulte,” p. 646.
[3] “Revolution du Globe,” vol. v., p. 464.
[4] We read in the “Memoire a l’Academie” of the “naive astonishment of Geoffrey St. Hilaire, when M. de Paravey showed to him in some old Chinese works and Babylonian tiles dragons, . . . . saurians and ornithorhynchuses (aquatic animals found only in Australia), etc., extinct animals that he had thought unknown on earth. . . . till his own day.”
[5] See Isaiah, xxx. 6: “The viper and the flying serpent unto the land of trouble and anguish,” and the fiery serpents conquered by the brazen serpent of Moses.
[6] The fossils reconstructed by science, which we know ought to be sufficient warrant for the possibility of even a Leviathan, let alone Isaiah’s flying serpents, or saraph mehophep, which words are translated in all the Hebrew Dictionaries as “saraph,” enflamed or fiery venom, and “mehophep,” flying. But, although Christian theology has always connected both (Leviathan and saraph mehophep) with the devil, the expressions are metaphorical and have nought to do with the “evil one.” But the word Dracon has become a synonym for the latter. In Bretagne the word Drouk now signifies “devil,” whence, as we are told by Cambry (“Monuments Celtiques,” p. 299), the devil’s tomb in England, Draghedanum sepulcrum. In Languedoc the meteoric fires and will-o’-the-wisps are called Dragg, and in Bretagne Dreag, Wraie (or wraith) the castle of Drogheda in Ireland meaning the devil’s castle.
[7] The ultramontane writers accept the whole series of draconian stories given by Father Kircher Œdipus Ægyptiacus, “De Genere Draconum,”) quite seriously. According to that Jesuit, he himself saw a dragon which was killed in 1669 by a Roman peasant, as the director of the Museo Barberini sent it to him, to take the beast’s likeness, which Father Kircher did and had it published in one of his in-folios. After this he received a letter from Christopher Scherer, Prefect of the Canton of Soleure, Switzerland, in which that official certifies to his having seen himself with his own eyes, one fine summer night in 1619, a living dragon. Having remained on his balcony “to contemplate the perfect purity of the firmament,” he writes, “I saw a fiery, shining dragon rise from one of the caves of Mount Pilatus and direct itself rapidly towards Fluelen to the other end of the lake. Enormous in size, his tail was still longer and his neck very extended. His head and jaws were those of a serpent. In flying he emitted on his way numerous sparks (? !) . . . . I thought at first I was seeing a meteor, but soon looking more attentively, I was convinced by his flight and the conformation of his body that I saw a veritable dragon. I am happy to be thus able to enlighten your Reverence on the very real existence of those animals”; in dreams, the writer ought to have added, of long past ages.
[8] As a convincing proof of the reality of the fact, a Roman Catholic refers the reader to the picture of that incident painted by Simon de Sienne, a friend of the poet, on the portal of the Church Notre Dame du Don at Avignon; notwithstanding the prohibition of the Sovereign Pontiff, who “would not allow this triumph of love to be enthroned in the holy place”; and adds: “Time has injured and rubbed out the work of art, but has not weakened its tradition.” De Mirville’s “Dragon-Devils” of our era seem to have no luck, as they disappear most mysteriously from the museums where they are said to have been. Thus the dragon embalmed by Ulysses Aldobranda and presented to the Musee du Senat, either in Naples or Bologna, “was there still in 1700, but is there no more.” (Vol. 2, p. 427, “Pneumatologie.”)
A “flying camel” is indeed too much for the most liberal-minded F.R.S. Nevertheless, the Zohar, which can hardly be expected to use the language of a Cuvier, was right in its description: for we find it called in the old Zoroastrian MSS. Aschmogh, which in the Avesta is represented as having lost after the Fall “its nature and its name,” and is described as a huge serpent with a camel’s neck.
“There are no winged serpents, nor veritable dragons,” asserts Salverte,[2] “. . . grasshoppers are called by the Greeks winged serpents, and this metaphor may have created several narratives on the existence of winged serpents.”
There are none now; but there is no reason why they should not have existed during the Mesozoic age; and Cuvier, who has reconstructed their skeletons, is a witness to “flying camels.” Already, after finding simple fossils of certain saurians, the great naturalist has written, that, “if anything can justify the Hydra and other monsters, whose figures were so often repeated by mediaeval historians, it is incontestably the Plesiosaurus.” [3]
We are unaware if Cuvier had added anything in the way of a further mea culpa. But we may well imagine his confusion, for all his slanders against archaic veracity, when he found himself in the presence of a flying saurian, “the Pterodactyl” (found in Germany), “78 feet long, and carrying vigorous wings attached to its reptilian body.” That fossil is described as a reptile, the little fingers of whose hands are so elongated as to bear a long membranous wing. Here, then, the “flying camel” of the Zohar is vindicated. For surely, between the long neck of the Plesiosaurus and the membranous wing of the Pterodactyl, or still better the Mosasaurus, there is enough scientific probability to build a “flying camel,” or a long-necked dragon. Prof. Cope, of Philadelphia, has shown that the Mosasaurus fossil in the chalk was a winged serpent of this kind. There are characters in its vertebrae, which indicate union with the Ophidia rather than with the Lacertilia.
And now to the main question. It is well known that Antiquity has never claimed palaeontography and palaeontology among its arts and sciences; and it never had its Cuviers. Yet on Babylonian tiles, and especially in old Chinese and Japanese drawings, in the oldest Pagodas and monuments, and in the Imperial library at Pekin, many a traveller has seen and recognised perfect representations of Plesiosauri and Pterodactyls in the multiform Chinese dragons. [4] Moreover, the prophets speak in the Bible of the flying fiery serpents, [5] and Job mentions the Leviathan. [6] Now the following questions are put very directly: --
I. How could the ancient nations know anything of the extinct monsters of the carboniferous and Mesozoic times, and even represent and describe them orally and pictorially, unless they had either seen those monsters themselves or possessed descriptions of them in their traditions, which descriptions necessitate living and intelligent eye-witnesses?
II. And if such eye-witnesses are once admitted (unless retrospective clairvoyance is granted), how can humanity and the first palaeolithic men be no earlier than about the middle of the tertiary period? We must bear in mind that most of the men of science will not allow man to have appeared before the Quaternary period, and thus shut him out completely from the Cenozoic times. Here we have extinct species of animals, which disappeared from the face of the Earth millions of years ago, described by, and known to, nations whose civilization, it is said, could hardly have begun a few thousand years ago. How is this? Evidently either the Mesozoic time has to be made to overlap the Quaternary period, or man must be made the contemporary of the Pterodactyl and the Plesiosaurus.
It does not stand to reason, because the Occultists believe in and defend ancient wisdom and science, even though winged saurians are called “flying camels” in the translations of the Zohar, that we believe as readily in all the stories which the middle ages give us of such dragons. Pterodactyls and Plesiosauri ceased to exist with the bulk of the Third Race. When, therefore, we are gravely asked by Roman Catholic writers to credit Christopher Scherer’s and Father Kircher’s cock-and-bull stories of their having seen with their own eyes living fiery and flying dragons, respectively in 1619 and 1669, we may be allowed to regard their assertions as either dreams or fibs. [7] Nor shall we regard otherwise than as a poetical license that other story told of Petrarch, who, while following one day his Laura in the woods and passing near a cave, is credited with having found a dragon, whom he forthwith stabbed with his dagger and killed, thus preventing the monster from devouring the lady of his heart. [8] We would willingly believe the story had Petrarch lived in the days of Atlantis, when such antediluvian monsters may still have existed. We deny their existence in our present era. The sea-serpent is one thing, the dragon quite another. The former is denied by the majority because it exists and lives in the very depths of the ocean, is very scarce, and rises to the surface only when compelled, perhaps, by hunger. Thus keeping invisible, it may exist and still be denied. But if there was such a thing as a dragon of the above description, how could it have ever escaped detection? It is a creature contemporary with the earliest Fifth Race, and exists no more.
NOTES
[1] De Mirville’s Des Esprits, ii. 423. See also Moses Maimonides, More Nevochim.
[2] “Science Occulte,” p. 646.
[3] “Revolution du Globe,” vol. v., p. 464.
[4] We read in the “Memoire a l’Academie” of the “naive astonishment of Geoffrey St. Hilaire, when M. de Paravey showed to him in some old Chinese works and Babylonian tiles dragons, . . . . saurians and ornithorhynchuses (aquatic animals found only in Australia), etc., extinct animals that he had thought unknown on earth. . . . till his own day.”
[5] See Isaiah, xxx. 6: “The viper and the flying serpent unto the land of trouble and anguish,” and the fiery serpents conquered by the brazen serpent of Moses.
[6] The fossils reconstructed by science, which we know ought to be sufficient warrant for the possibility of even a Leviathan, let alone Isaiah’s flying serpents, or saraph mehophep, which words are translated in all the Hebrew Dictionaries as “saraph,” enflamed or fiery venom, and “mehophep,” flying. But, although Christian theology has always connected both (Leviathan and saraph mehophep) with the devil, the expressions are metaphorical and have nought to do with the “evil one.” But the word Dracon has become a synonym for the latter. In Bretagne the word Drouk now signifies “devil,” whence, as we are told by Cambry (“Monuments Celtiques,” p. 299), the devil’s tomb in England, Draghedanum sepulcrum. In Languedoc the meteoric fires and will-o’-the-wisps are called Dragg, and in Bretagne Dreag, Wraie (or wraith) the castle of Drogheda in Ireland meaning the devil’s castle.
[7] The ultramontane writers accept the whole series of draconian stories given by Father Kircher Œdipus Ægyptiacus, “De Genere Draconum,”) quite seriously. According to that Jesuit, he himself saw a dragon which was killed in 1669 by a Roman peasant, as the director of the Museo Barberini sent it to him, to take the beast’s likeness, which Father Kircher did and had it published in one of his in-folios. After this he received a letter from Christopher Scherer, Prefect of the Canton of Soleure, Switzerland, in which that official certifies to his having seen himself with his own eyes, one fine summer night in 1619, a living dragon. Having remained on his balcony “to contemplate the perfect purity of the firmament,” he writes, “I saw a fiery, shining dragon rise from one of the caves of Mount Pilatus and direct itself rapidly towards Fluelen to the other end of the lake. Enormous in size, his tail was still longer and his neck very extended. His head and jaws were those of a serpent. In flying he emitted on his way numerous sparks (? !) . . . . I thought at first I was seeing a meteor, but soon looking more attentively, I was convinced by his flight and the conformation of his body that I saw a veritable dragon. I am happy to be thus able to enlighten your Reverence on the very real existence of those animals”; in dreams, the writer ought to have added, of long past ages.
[8] As a convincing proof of the reality of the fact, a Roman Catholic refers the reader to the picture of that incident painted by Simon de Sienne, a friend of the poet, on the portal of the Church Notre Dame du Don at Avignon; notwithstanding the prohibition of the Sovereign Pontiff, who “would not allow this triumph of love to be enthroned in the holy place”; and adds: “Time has injured and rubbed out the work of art, but has not weakened its tradition.” De Mirville’s “Dragon-Devils” of our era seem to have no luck, as they disappear most mysteriously from the museums where they are said to have been. Thus the dragon embalmed by Ulysses Aldobranda and presented to the Musee du Senat, either in Naples or Bologna, “was there still in 1700, but is there no more.” (Vol. 2, p. 427, “Pneumatologie.”)
