<\/p>\n
By Alexander Light<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In 1884 the French occultist Saint-Yves d’Alveydre
\n(1842-1909) decided to take lessons in Sanskrit. Having just published his definitive work on
\nthe secret history of the world, called Mission des Juifs (“Mission of the
\nJews”), he was anxious to deepen his understanding of the sacred languages which, he
\nfelt sure, concealed the ultimate mysteries.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Hebrew had already revealed much to him; now it was time to
\ntackle the even more ancient language of Sanskrit, parent of all the Indo-European
\ntongues.
\n Saint-Yves’ Sanskrit teacher, who called himself
\nHardjji Scharipf, was a character of hazy origins and the subject of various rumours. Born on
\nDecember 25, 1838, he supposedly left India after the Mutiny of 1857 and set up in the French
\nport of Le Havre as a bird-seller and professor of Oriental languages.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
His name may have been a pseudonym; he may have been an
\nAfghan; some called him Prince. But whatever his story, the manuscripts now in the Library of
\nthe Sorbonne in Paris show that Hardjji was a learned and punctilious teacher, and the source of
\ntwo still unsolved enigmas: the underground kingdom of Agarttha, and its sacred language.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Three times a week, Hardjji would come to Saint-Yves’
\nluxurious home with a beautifully scripted lesson of grammar and a reading from some Sanskrit
\nclassic. But his diligent pupil became more and more fascinated by Hardjji’s mysterious
\nhints, which began when he signed the very first lesson as “Teacher and Professor of
\nthe Great Agartthian School.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Saint-Yves must have asked him what this “Great
\nAgartthian School” was. He might already have read in the books of the popular travel
\nwriter and historian Louis Jacolliot of an “Asgartha,” supposedly a great city of
\nthe ancient Indian priest-kings, the Brahmatras. Does such a place still exist, then?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Apparently Hardjji made him to believe so, and, what is more,
\nthat it preserves a language and a script known as “Vattan” or
\n“Vattanian,” that are the primordial ones of mankind. For someone in quest
\nof the secret and sacred roots of language, the mention of such things must have been unbearably
\nexciting.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Curiosity overcame him on Christmas Day, 1885, when he asked
\nHardjji to write out his own name in Vattanian characters. The guru obliged, writing it on the
\nback of the lesson sheet and adding wryly: “Here, according to your ardent desire; but
\nreally you are not yet sufficiently prepared for Vattan. Slowly and surely!”
\n Later he must have taught Saint-Yves the Vattanian alphabet
\nand the principles behind its 22 letter-forms, which Saint-Yves would correlate with the Hebrew
\nalphabet and with the zodiacal and planetary symbols.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
By the end of the course of lessons, Agarttha and Vattanian
\nhad evidently become regular topics of conversation, while Saint-Yves’ interests shifted
\nfrom Sanskrit to a kind of comparative Hermeticism. With Hardjji’s approval, he created a
\nsplendid manuscript in red and gold ink containing invocations, sigils, many alphabets, designs
\nand arabesques made from Sanskrit and Vattanian letters; a list of Vedic and Biblical names
\nencoded in a so-called “Hermetic or Raphaelic Alphabet”; eighty Vedic
\nsymbols representing the development of the cosmos; a passage on the “Hermetic
\nSignificance of the Zodiac” encoded in planet and zodiac signs; correlations of these
\nsigns with the names of angels and with Vattanian, Sanskrit, Hebrew, and Hermetic characters;
\nbreathing exercises for the hearing of the inner sound “M” and for soul-travel;
\nnotes on the properties of medicinal plants; alchemical recipes.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Saint-Yves Writes a Book About <\/p>\n And this was not all. Did Hardjji know that Saint-Yves was <\/p>\n This realm, Saint-Yves explains, was transferred underground <\/p>\n Its government is the ideal one of “Synarchy,” <\/p>\n Among its secrets are those of the true relationship of body <\/p>\n Perhaps the oddest thing about this book is Saint-Yves’ <\/p>\n Saint-Yves explains that he is a “spontaneous <\/p>\n There is, for instance, a passage here describing in detail ‘A magnetiser’, he said, ‘runs less ‘When one goes out of one’s body into the <\/p>\n Saint-Yves presumably possessed the secret of this <\/p>\n No sooner was the book printed and ready for the bookshops <\/p>\n Decades later, it turned out that the printer, Lahure, had Saint-Yves d’Alveydre<\/p>\n In his conversations with Erny in 1896, he stated outright <\/p>\n Ossendowski Revives <\/p>\n After the trauma of World War I, the very name of Agarttha <\/p>\n It told of his flight through Central Asia in the aftermath <\/p>\n The prophecy was attributed to the King of the World when he <\/p>\n At first Ossendowski denied this indignantly. When he was <\/p>\n Now his interest was rekindled, and in 1925 he wrote about <\/p>\n Unfortunately Guénon does not support his claim to <\/p>\n So Guénon at the very least did not deny a geographical <\/p>\n Ossendowski’s account was later investigated by Marco Marco Pallis<\/p>\n He testified that the latter’s stories of the King of <\/p>\n Ossendowski himself had back-pedalled in November 1924 when <\/p>\n Often confused or contrasted with Shambala, the spiritual <\/p>\n Until a reputable scholar comes forward with data on the myth <\/p>\n However, Saint-Yves wanted more than the tantalising taste <\/p>\n The Astral World and Delusions of There are, one gathers, definite places or complexes in the <\/p>\n Some find themselves, for example, in what they believe to be <\/p>\n Thus Saint-Yves, convinced that he has penetrated to the <\/p>\n Yet there is a grandeur to this book. Its vivid and elegant <\/p>\n yogaesoteric<\/strong><\/p>\n January 16, 2020<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Alexander Light In 1884 the French occultist Saint-Yves d’Alveydre (1842-1909) decided to take lessons in Sanskrit. Having just published his definitive work on the secret history of the world, called Mission des Juifs (“Mission of the Jews”), he was anxious to deepen his understanding of the sacred languages which, he felt sure, concealed the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-parapsychology-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22983\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAgarttha<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nwriting another book – The Kingdom of Agarttha: A Journey into the Hollow Earth
\n– under the influence of his Oriental studies? It seems doubtful, but in 1886 the book was
\nfinished, typeset, and printed by his regular publisher (Calmann Lévy).
\n To put it bluntly, this book takes the lid off Agarttha. The
\nreader will learn that it is a hidden land somewhere in the East, beneath the surface of the
\nEarth, where a population of millions is ruled by a Sovereign Pontiff, the
\n“Brahatmah,” and his two colleagues the “Mahatma” and the
\n“Mahanga.”<\/p>\n
\nand concealed from the surface-dwellers at the start of the Kali Yuga (the present dark age in
\nthe Hindu system of chronology), which he dates to about 3,200 BC. Agarttha has long enjoyed the
\nbenefits of a technology advanced far beyond our own, including gas lighting, railways, and air
\ntravel.<\/p>\n
\nwhich the surface races have lost ever since the schism that broke the Universal Empire in the
\nfourth millennium BC, and which Moses, Jesus, and Saint-Yves strove to restore. (This was the
\ntheme of Mission des Juifs.)
\n Now and then Agarttha sends emissaries to the upper world, of
\nwhich it has a perfect knowledge. Not only the latest discoveries of modern man, but the whole
\nwisdom of the ages is enshrined in its libraries, engraved on stone in Vattanian
\ncharacters.<\/p>\n
\nto soul, and the means to keep departed souls in communication with the living. When our world
\nadopts Synarchical government, the time will be ripe for Agarttha to reveal itself, to our great
\nspiritual and practical advantage.
\n In order to speed this process, Saint-Yves includes in the
\nbook open letters to Queen Victoria, Emperor Alexander III of Russia, and Pope Leo III, inviting
\nthem to join in the great project.<\/p>\n
\nown stance. Far from presenting himself as an authorised spokesman for Agarttha, he admits that
\nhe is a spy.
\n Dedicating the book to the Sovereign Pontiff and signing it
\nwith his own name in Vattanian characters (just as Hardjji had written it out for him), he
\nexpatiates on how astounded this august dignitary will be to read the work, wondering how human
\neyes could have penetrated the innermost sanctuaries of his realm.<\/p>\n
\ninitiate,” bound by no oath of secrecy, and that once the Brahatmah gets over the
\nshock, he will admit the wisdom of what Saint-Yves has dared to reveal.
\n How did Saint-Yves obtain this information? Already in his
\nfirst book, Clefs de l’Orient (1877), he was writing with the confidence of an
\neyewitness of the psychic phenomena accompanying birth, death, and the relation between the
\nsexes.
\n In the present work he seems to have extended his psychic
\nvision, to say the least, and one can glean from here and there an idea of his methods.<\/p>\n
\nhow the Agartthian initiates travel with their souls while their bodies sleep. Then there is the
\npassage in the notebook already mentioned, on yogic exercises for separating the soul from the
\nbody. Thirdly, there is a snippet of occult gossip in a conversation with Saint-Yves recorded on
\nAugust 16, 1896, by a psychical researcher, Alfred Erny: “He has talked to Papus and
\n[Stanislas de] Guaïta, but did not tell them what they wanted to know: the method of
\ndisengaging and re-engaging oneself in the astral body. It is dangerous: ‘I don’t
\nwant (he said) to put a loaded revolver into your hands which you don’t know how to
\nuse.’<\/p>\n
\ndanger than others in duplicating himself, because he is more trained.’<\/p>\n
\nAstral, another evil spirit may replace you’.”<\/p>\n
\n“somnambulistic” faculty, and used it to gather the information he presents in this
\nbook. But did he gather it, as he claims, from spying on a physical Agarttha beneath the surface
\nof the Earth? Or was it the result of his own projected fantasies or hallucinations?
\n Or, again, did it come from some non-physical location or
\nstate which can be accessed under certain conditions, but which then merely supports the
\npsyche’s own subjective expectations and prejudices? We will return to these questions at
\nthe end.<\/p>\n
\nthan Saint-Yves withdrew it, destroying every copy but one. The work narrowly escaped oblivion,
\nbut this one copy passed after Saint-Yves’ death to Papus, who published it in 1910, with
\nsome omissions, under the auspices of a group of disciples, the “Friends of Saint-
\nYves.”<\/p>\n
\nsecreted another copy. The late Jean Saunier, biographer and chief authority on Saint-Yves, used
\nthis as the basis for the complete French edition of 1981, now translated into English.
\n Whatever reasons and motives were responsible for the sudden
\nwithdrawal of the book, there is no doubt that Saint-Yves remained true to his vision. For
\ninstance, he mentions Agarttha and names its three rulers in his epic poem of 1890, Jeanne
\nd’Arc victorieuse.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\nthat there exists a secret “Superior University” with a “High
\nPriest” who is currently an Ethiopian, and other details just as they appear in this
\nbook. Finally, he mentions Agarttha in veiled terms in L’Archéomètre, the major
\nwork of his last years.<\/p>\n
\n“Agharti”<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nmight have been forgotten, as Saint-Yves himself was. But in 1922, a Polish
\n“scientist” named Ferdinand Ossendowski (1876-1945) published a sensational travel
\nand adventure book.<\/p>\n
\nof the Russian Revolution. While in Mongolia, he heard tell of a subterranean realm of
\n800,000,000 inhabitants called “Agharti”; of its triple spiritual authority
\n“Brahytma, the King of the World,” “Mahytma,” and
\n“Mahynga,” of its sacred language, “Vattanan,” and
\nmany other things that corroborate Saint-Yves.
\n The book ended on a dramatic note of prophecy from one of
\nOssendowski’s informants: that in the year 2029, the people of “Aghardi” will
\nissue forth from their caverns and appear on the surface of the Earth.<\/p>\n
\nappeared before the lamas in 1890. The King had then predicted that there would be 50 years of
\nstrife and misery, 71 years of happiness under three great kingdoms, then an 18-year war, before
\nthe appearance of the Agarthians.
\n An unprejudiced reader, finding in three chapters of
\nOssendowski’s book a virtual outline of Saint-Yves’ Agarttha, not omitting the most
\nimprobable details, would conclude that the author had capped an already good story with a
\nconvenient piece of plagiarism, altering the spellings so as to make his version, if challenged,
\nseem informed from an independent source.<\/p>\n
\nintroduced to the esotericist René Guénon (1886-1951), he said that if it were not for
\nthe evidence of the daily journal he had kept, and of certain objects he had brought back, he
\nwould have thought that he had dreamed parts of this story, adding: “I’d much
\nprefer that!”
\n Back in 1908, the young Guénon had taken part in
\nautomatic writing séances in which Agartthian matters had come up, though whether through
\nthe questioners or the channelled entity is now unclear.<\/p>\n
\nthe striking parallels between Saint-Yves’ Agarttha and the Agharti of Ossendowki, whose
\nsincerity, according to Guénon, there was no reason to doubt.
\n Two years later, Guénon took the matter into his own
\nhands. In his most controversial book, Le Roi du Monde, he announced:
\n“Independently of the evidence offered by Ossendowski, we know from other sources that
\nstories of this kind are widely current in Mongolia and throughout Central Asia, and we can add
\nthat there is something similar in the traditions of most peoples.”<\/p>\n
\nprivileged access by telling us what these sources are, nor what degree of similitude is meant
\nby “stories of this kind.”
\n Near the end of Le Roi du Monde, Guénon faces the
\nquestion of whether Agarttha really exists: “Should its setting in a definite location
\nnow imply that this is literally so, or is it only a symbol, or is it both at the same time? The
\nsimple answer is that both geographical and historical facts possess a symbolic validity that in
\nno way detracts from their being facts, but that actually, beyond the obvious reality, gives
\nthem a higher significance.”<\/p>\n
\nAgarttha. To his way of thinking, if one were found to exist beneath the surface of the Earth,
\nit would only corroborate the superior reality of the symbolic one.<\/p>\n
\nPallis (1895-1985), the traveller, writer on Buddhism, and translator of Guénon, with the
\nadvantage of his own contacts with highly-placed Indians, Tibetans, and Mongolians. One of the
\nlatter, now very old, had been the head lama of a monastery at the time of Ossendowski’s
\nvisit there.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\nthe World and of Agarttha bore no relation to any authentic legend or doctrine whatsoever, and
\nthat Ossendowski’s command of the Mongolian language had not been nearly sufficient to
\nunderstand what he claimed to have heard.
\n Pallis’s Hindu friends, similarly, disclaimed any
\nSanskrit source for Agarttha. The inevitable conclusion was that the credulous Guénon had
\nbeen misled by Saint-Yves’ fantasy, and that promoting belief in Agarttha in Le Roi du
\nMonde had been a foolish mistake.<\/p>\n
\npressed to appear before a group of prominent intellectuals and scholars. He confessed to this
\nhard-boiled audience that Beasts, men and gods was not
\n“scientific” but “exclusively a literary work,” and
\nstated the same in a letter to the Royal Geographical Society.
\n Never mind: once his best-seller had brought the Agarttha
\nmyth out of the esoteric closet, it began to enjoy a new lease on life.<\/p>\n
\ncity of Tibetan Buddhism, it became a recurrent theme of popular occult writers.
\n If we set aside Saint-Yves and Ossendowski, for reasons
\nalready explained, there remain only two independent witnesses to an Indian Agarttha tradition.
\nLouis Jacolliot was led to place it in the past, as the ancient Brahmanic capital. For Hardjji
\nScharipf it was a living initiatic school with its own secret script.<\/p>\n
\nof Agarttha, and especially on the Vattanian alphabet, my working hypothesis is that these were
\npart of a mythology belonging to a restricted and obscure Indian school, which has only surfaced
\nto Western notice on these two occasions.<\/p>\n
\nthat his Sanskrit teacher allowed him. He therefore decided to use his gift for astral travel to
\nexplore Agarttha further, and was rewarded by visions of an underground utopia and its Sovereign
\nPontiff, the spiritual Lord of the World. What is the source, and the ontological status, of
\nsuch visions?<\/p>\n
\nGrandeur<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\nAstral World, which present to the clairvoyant visitor certain invariable features. But the
\nincidental circumstances of such a place vary, according to the visitor’s own cultural
\nconditioning and expectations.<\/p>\n
\nthe Alexandrian Library, or in Atlantis, i.e., a place of the past. To others, it seems current
\nand contemporary, though preferably in an inaccessible location like the Himalayas.
\n The décor is a trivial matter, of course, in comparison
\nto the philosophical truths to be discovered there, but the glamour of it sometimes overwhelms
\nthe traveller. Then his attention fixates on irrelevant details, and an inflated sense of self-
\nimportance may result.<\/p>\n
\nrealm of the world’s spiritual ruler, writes about four-eyed tortoises, two-tongued men,
\nlevitating yogis, and ends up addressing pompous letters to Queen, Emperor, and Pope.
\n I can accept that in some state of altered consciousness he
\nsaw what he claims to have seen. But like many who habitually indulge in altered states, he was
\nnot able to situate his visions, nor himself as witness to them, with the requisite
\nphilosophical detachment. The result is a classic case of the occupational hazard of occultists:
\nmisplaced concretism.<\/p>\n
\nprose lift it far above the tedious wordiness of visionary and channelled writing.
\n In sheer weirdness of imagination it rivals the fantasy
\nfiction of H.P. Lovecraft or Jorge Luis Borges, while in deadpan seriousness and titanic self-
\nconfidence it compares to prophetic works like the Book of Ezekiel or the various
\nApocalypses. And it reminds us that the Earth is a very complex place, with many unexplored
\ncorners, many enigmas, and many surprises in store for us surface-dwellers.<\/p>\n