What Are Blavatsky’s Root Races?

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky framed human history as a long spiral of seven major stages. Each stage unfolds on shifting continents, with physical bodies and psychic faculties changing together. That scheme sits at the center of The Secret Doctrine (1888), especially Volume II on anthropogenesis.

What are Blavatsky’s root races? In short: seven successive stages of human evolution in Theosophy, each tied to a continental home, each with seven sub-races, overlapping rather than ending in hard cuts. Present humanity is chiefly the fifth stage. The third and fourth stages are Lemuria and Atlantis, the lost-continent spine I follow on this site.

I open with the definition. Then Polarians and Hyperboreans briefly. Then Lemurians and Atlanteans with full quote weight from The Secret Doctrine and Isis Unveiled. Then the fifth (Aryan) stage with a clear Theosophical label. Then the future sixth and seventh. Last I set Cayce’s five-races reading beside the scheme as a labeled parallel.

What a root race is

In Theosophy a root race is a major stage of human evolution, physical and spiritual together. It is not “race” in the ordinary anthropological or ethnic sense.

Humanity on this Round passes through seven root races. Each root race has seven sub-races, smaller cultural and bodily streams inside the larger stage. Continents rise and fall with the races. Stages overlap: continuity in natural processes is never broken.

Blavatsky co-founded the Theosophical Society in 1875. The Secret Doctrine is the main root-race exposition. Earlier Atlantis material also appears in Isis Unveiled (1877). I read that trail as open esoteric / lost-continent research, not as a modern ethnic taxonomy.

First and second: Polarians and Hyperboreans

The first root race, often called Polarians, is ethereal. In Theosophical summary these are spiritual entities, “shadows” or chhāyas of the Lunar Pitris, still without solid bodies and without the mind-principle awakened (amanasa). The continental cradle is the Imperishable Sacred Land, or Adi-Varsa, in polar esoteric geography.

The second root race, the Hyperboreans, is more physical but still not fully material. Reproduction is described as “sweat-born” in Secret Doctrine summaries. Sense of touch develops. The continental home sits toward the North Pole and northern Asia in popular Theosophical maps.

I keep both stages brief. The denser story on this site begins with the third race and Lemuria.

Third: Lemurians and Lemuria

The third root race is the Lemurians. They are the first to develop solid physical bodies. Mid-race, the sexes separate (the “Fall” in Theosophical reading). Mind awakens when the Manasaputras, the Sons of Mind, incarnate and kindle the mind-principle in humanity.

Lemuria is their continental home. The name comes from nineteenth-century zoologist Philip Sclater’s hypothesized Indian Ocean land-bridge. Blavatsky expands it into a vast Third-Race continent spanning the Indian and Pacific Oceans, with Atlantic prolongations that later seed Atlantis. In Secret Doctrine geography the land runs from Himalayan foothills through India, Ceylon, Sumatra, Madagascar, Australia and Tasmania into the Pacific beyond Easter Island. Lemuria is destroyed chiefly by fire and volcanic submersion. Atlantis later falls by water.

I give this stage real weight. It is the seed of the Atlantean fourth race, and it sits on the site’s main lost-continent spine beside the Third Root Race Lemurians page, William Scott-Elliot’s Lost Lemuria maps, and James Churchward’s Mu as a Pacific neighbor trail. Churchward’s Mu is not identical to Blavatsky’s Lemuria; I keep that clarity label.

Fourth: Atlanteans and Atlantis

The fourth root race is the Atlanteans. In the Theosophical picture they reach peak physical development, develop speech, and wield advanced psychic powers and arts. Later pride, sorcery, and mating with the “mindless” lead toward the deluges.

The Atlantean continent develops from an Atlantic Lemurian prolongation by the coalescence of islands and peninsulas. The last remnant is often called Poseidonis: Plato’s island in Theosophical reading, the final Atlantic holdout before the last sink. Scott-Elliot dates that final submersion to 9564 BCE; that number is his, not Blavatsky’s.

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, in The Secret Doctrine Volume II, ties the fourth race to a Northern Lemurian nucleus in the mid-Atlantic:

In the case of Race-evolution . . . no hard and fast line can be drawn where a new order ends and another begins. Continuity in natural processes is never broken. Thus the Fourth Race Atlanteans were developed from a nucleus of Northern Lemurian Third Race Men, centred, roughly speaking, toward a point of land in what is now the mid-Atlantic Ocean

Meaning: Atlanteans do not appear from nowhere. They grow from a Lemurian nucleus on mid-Atlantic land. Race stages blend; continuity is never broken.

In Isis Unveiled Volume I she reads the Atlantean fall as black magic and war ending in submersion, with Bible and Babylon flood stories as disfigured echoes:

In consequence of this [black magic], war was declared, the story of which would be too long to narrate; its substance may be found in the disfigured allegories of the race of Cain, the giants, and that of Noah and his righteous family. The conflict came to an end by the submersion of the Atlantis; which finds its imitation in the stories of the Babylonian and Mosaic flood.

Meaning: Atlantis sinks after a conflict born of black magic. Cain, the giants, Noah, and the Babylonian flood are, in her reading, later allegories of that same catastrophe.

I do not conflate Blavatsky’s Fourth Root Race with Plato’s Critias alone. Plato’s island story sits beside Poseidonis as the last remnant narrative. The fuller Fourth Race continent story continues on the Fourth Root Race page and beside the 12 kings of Atlantis polity trail.

Fifth: Aryan as Theosophical stage

The fifth root race is the current main stage in Blavatsky. Secret Doctrine estimates place it around a million years. Europeans appear as a later sub-race. Americans are sometimes described as germs of a sixth sub-race of the fifth, not yet the sixth root race itself.

Clarity label: In Theosophy, Aryan names this evolutionary stage and cultural stream. The word links to Sanskrit ārya and to nineteenth-century Indo-Iranian self-designation. It is not the later political racial ideology associated with Nazism. I keep the Theosophical term and explain it so the phrase does not mislead.

This fifth stage inherits Lemurian and Atlantean remnants. Overlap continues; the earlier streams do not vanish when the new order begins.

Sixth and seventh

The sixth root race is future. On the ascending arc, dense matter yields to heightened spiritual and psychic faculties. It grows from advanced individuals of the fifth and overlaps the fifth for long ages. Popular summaries sometimes place an emerging home in South America; that is speculation, not a fixed Secret Doctrine decree.

The seventh root race is the culmination. Detail is thin in The Secret Doctrine. Humanity becomes more ethereal again. Distant future adepts are described as “Mind-born” once more.

I keep both brief. The research spine for Atlantis on this site runs through the third and fourth races.

How I use this in my research

Blavatsky supplies the classic Theosophical Lemuria to Atlantis to fifth-race spine. William Scott-Elliot maps that spine in The Story of Atlantis and The Lost Lemuria. James Churchward’s Mu sits as a Pacific neighbor, labeled separately from Blavatsky’s Lemuria. On-site Third Root Race Lemurians and Fourth Root Race pages expand those stages. Plato’s Critias sits beside Poseidonis as the last-island story, not as proof of the whole Secret Doctrine chronology. The 12 kings of Atlantis page carries the polity layer beside the continental Fourth Race.

I also keep Edgar Cayce as a labeled parallel with real weight. Cayce’s five simultaneous races are not Blavatsky’s seven successive root races. Both trails still place Atlantis and Lemuria on the lost-continent map.

In reading 294-202, Cayce says:

The appearance of man…was in five different places as the five different races, at the same time. The white race appeared in the Carpathian basin, the yellow in Tibet, the red in Atlantis, the brown in Lemuria, the black in Africa.

Meaning: in Cayce’s picture five race centers appear together. Red maps to Atlantis; brown maps to Lemuria. That soft-bridges his reading to Blavatsky’s third and fourth continental homes while keeping the two schemes labeled and distinct.

FAQ

What are Blavatsky’s root races?

Seven successive stages of human evolution in The Secret Doctrine, physical and spiritual together, each tied to shifting continents and each with seven sub-races. Present humanity is chiefly the fifth. Stages overlap; continuity is never broken.

Is Atlantis a root race?

Yes: the fourth root race, the Atlanteans. Blavatsky develops them from a nucleus of Northern Lemurian third-race men centered toward mid-Atlantic land (The Secret Doctrine Vol. II). Poseidonis is the last remnant in Theosophical reading.

How does Lemuria fit?

Lemuria is the third root race’s continental home, spanning Indian and Pacific waters with Atlantic prolongations that seed Atlantis. It falls chiefly by fire; Atlantis later falls by water. Mind awakens mid-race through the Manasaputras.

What does “Aryan” mean here?

In Theosophy it names the fifth evolutionary stage and cultural stream (linked to Sanskrit ārya). It is not Nazi racial ideology. I keep the Theosophical term with that clarity label.

How does Cayce relate?

Edgar Cayce reading 294-202 describes five races appearing at the same time in five places, with red in Atlantis and brown in Lemuria. That is a labeled parallel, not the same scheme as Blavatsky’s seven successive root races.

Related on this site

1. Third Root Race Lemurians: deepest Lemuria / third-race neighbor on the site spine.
2. William Scott-Elliot: Theosophist who mapped Atlantis and Lost Lemuria from Blavatsky’s root-race frame.
3. James Churchward’s Mu: Pacific Mu / Lemuria-adjacent lost-continent trail (Churchward ≠ Blavatsky).
4. Fourth Root Race: dedicated Atlantean / fourth-race page.
5. 12 Kings of Atlantis: Atlantis polity / kings beside the Fourth Race continent story.