Table of Contents
This page follows one source: Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater, Man: Whence, How and Whither (1913), chapter VIII, “The Fourth Root Race”. The book is a Theosophical text. The authors present it as a record of clairvoyant research into the past, so everything below is what the book says, not established history. The book is in the public domain. You can read the full text on archive.org.
In Theosophy, humanity develops through a series of “Root Races”. Each Root Race has seven sub-races. The fourth Root Race is the Atlantean one.
The Fourth Root Race in the book’s timeline
How the race was founded
According to the book, the Head of the Hierarchy began work on the fourth Root Race soon after His arrival. He used the future Manu, the guide and founder of a race, to pick the best Lemurian types. The Manu tested candidates for many years. Tribes were kept apart and inter-married for long periods. He ran experiments in different climates at the same time.
Progress sped up when Initiates came and lived in improved bodies. The Manu took the bodies of the seventh Lemurian sub-race, improved in this way, as the nucleus of the first Atlantean sub-race, the Rmoahal. The book says this took about a million years of work. Then the Manu took incarnation Himself and founded the race through His own family.
The Manu as ancestor
This is the book’s own line on what a Manu is (ch. VIII, archive.org):
In the most literal sense the Manu of a Race is its Progenitor, for the whole Race has its Manu as its physical ancestor.
The City of the Golden Gates
After many generations, the young race took possession of its continent, Atlantis. The Manu arranged for groups of egos, or souls, to come in from the Moon Chain. They arrived in “ship-loads” and took bodies in the new race. Some came into the Tlavatli sub-race and some later into the Toltec. The Manu then incarnated among the Toltecs and founded the City of the Golden Gates, the first of many cities with that name.
When it was founded
The founding was about one million years ago, one hundred and fifty thousand years before the first great catastrophe which rent the continent of Atlantis.
The Toltecs were then the ruling race. The book describes them as warriors who went all over the world and conquered its people. In the City of the Golden Gates, only the aristocracy and the middle class were Toltec. The lower classes were largely captives from wars with other sub-races.
The 700-year group, 600,000 B.C.
The book dates the first ship-load of the “700-year group” to about 600,000 B.C. That is some 250,000 years after the first great cataclysm. Mars and Mercury, two future Masters, came with it. Egos were kept apart by how they had individualised, meaning how they first became separate souls. The ship-loads went on arriving until the catastrophe of 75,000 B.C.
The authors follow a set of people they call “the Clan” through many lives. Members gathered at times, for example in the City of the Golden Gates when Mars was King. The book names the Theosophical Society as a modern gathering of the same Clan.
220,000 B.C.: Mars and Mercury
For 220,000 B.C., the book places Mars as Emperor in the City of the Golden Gates, with the inherited title “Divine Ruler”. Mercury was the chief Hierophant, the head of the State religion. Many members of the Clan were incarnated there at that time.
Black magic and the catastrophes
In the book, black magic spread through Atlantis and led to the second great catastrophe, in 200,000 B.C. Two large islands were left. They sank in 75,025 B.C.
Ruta and Daitya
The spread of black magic in Atlantis led up to the second great catastrophe of 200,000 B. C., which left as remnants of the great continent which had joined Europe and Africa to America the huge islands of Ruta and Daitya. They endured until the catastrophe of 75,025 B. C. overwhelmed them beneath the waters of the ocean we now call the Atlantic.
The book also says the fifth Race was led out of Atlantis in 79,997 B.C. Around 100,000 B.C., it describes a “White Emperor” in the City of the Golden Gates and a rival “Dark Emperor” with his own cult. It presents this as part of the build-up to a later catastrophe.
The races and sub-races
Lemurians (Third Root Race)
The Lemurians came before the Atlanteans. The book cites Subba Rao for the colours of three Root Races (ch. VIII):
Subba Rao distinguished the Lemurians as blue-black, the Atlanteans as red-yellow, and the Aryans as brown-white.
The book adds that the Lemurian Manu had evolved a blue sixth sub-race and a bluish-white seventh, while most Lemurians stayed black.
The seven Atlantean sub-races
The book names the Atlantean sub-races and describes some of them.
- Rmoahal. The first sub-race, formed from the seventh Lemurian sub-race. The Manu moved the colour from blue through purple into red. The first descendants were smaller, “had no nervous organisation worth speaking of”, and had shapeless astral bodies.
- Tlavatli. The second sub-race. Some of the early ship-loads of egos came into it.
- Toltec. The third sub-race, rich red-brown, “the most splendid and imperial of the Atlantean peoples, which ruled the world for tens of thousands of years”. It founded the City of the Golden Gates.
- Turanian. The fourth sub-race, which the book calls “a Chinese stage”.
- Original Semites. The fifth sub-race.
- Akkadian. The sixth sub-race. The book shows one ego trading among a people like the later Phoenicians.
- Mongolian. The seventh sub-race.
Fifth Root Race: Aryan
The fifth Root Race is the Aryan one, brown-white in Subba Rao’s scheme. The book says its future members were picked out a million years ago by Vaivasvata Manu, the Manu of the fifth Race. That is why H. P. Blavatsky dates its founding to a million years ago, although it was only led out of Atlantis in 79,997 B.C.
Source
- Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater, Man: Whence, How and Whither: A Record of Clairvoyant Investigation (Adyar and London: Theosophical Publishing House, 1913), chapter VIII, “The Fourth Root Race”. Public domain. Full text on archive.org
