Books: Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel

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"So he drove out the man; and he placed _at the_ EAST _of the garden
of Eden_ cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to
keep the way of the tree of life."

The man driven out of the Edenic land was, therefore, driven
_eastward_ of Eden, and the cherubims in the east of Eden faced him.
The land where the Jews dwelt was eastward of paradise; in other
words, paradise was west of them.

And, again, when Cain was driven out be too moved _eastward_; he
"dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden," (chap. iv, verse
16.) There was, therefore, a constant movement of the human family
eastward. The land of Nod may have been _Od_, _Ad_, Atlantis; and
from _Od_ may have come the name of _Odin_, the king, the god of
Ragnarok.

In Ovid "the earth" is contradistinguished from the rest of the
globe. It is an island-land, the civilized land, the land of the
Tritons or water-deities, of Proteus, Ægeon, Doris, and Atlas. It is,
in my view, Atlantis.

Ovid says, (book ii, fable 1, "The Metamorphoses")

"_The sea circling around the encompassed earth_. . . . The earth has
upon it men and cities, and woods and wild beasts, and rivers, and
nymphs and other deities of the

{p. 369}

country." On this land is "the palace of the sun, raised high on
stately columns, bright with radiant gold, and carbuncle that rivals
the flames; polished ivory crests its highest top, and double folding
doors shine with the brightness of silver."

In other words, the legend refers to the island-home of a civilized
race, over which was a palace which reminds one of the great temple
of Poseidon in Plato's story.

The Atlantic was sometimes called "the sea of ivory," in allusion,
probably, to this ivory-covered temple of Ovid. Hence Croly sang:

Now on her hills of ivory
Lie giant-weed and ocean-slime,
Hiding from man and angel's eye
The land of crime."

And, again, Ovid says, after enumerating the different rivers and
mountains and tracts of country that were on fire in the great
conflagration, and once more distinguishing the pre-eminent earth
from the rest of the world:

"However, the genial Earth, _as she was surrounded with sea_, amid
the waters of the _main_," (the ocean,) "and the springs dried up on
every side, lifted up her _all-productive face_," etc.

She cries out to the sovereign of the gods for mercy. She refers to
the burdens of the crops she annually bears; the wounds of the
crooked plow and the barrow, which she voluntarily endures; and she
calls on mighty Jove to put an end to the conflagration. And he does
so. The rest of the world has been scarred and seared with the fire,
but he spares and saves this island-land, this agricultural,
civilized land, this land of the Tritons and Atlas; this "island of
the innocent" of Job. And when the terrible convulsion was over, and
the

{p. 370}

rash Phaëton dead and buried, Jove repairs, with especial care, "his
own Arcadia."

It must not be forgotten that Phaëton was the son of _Merops_; and
Theopompus tells us that the people who inhabited Atlantis were the
_Meropes_, the people of Merou. And the Greek traditions[1] show that
the human race issued from _Upa-Merou_; and the Egyptians claim that
their ancestors came from the _Island of Mero_; and among the Hindoos
the land of the gods and the godlike men was _Meru_.

And here it is, we are told, where in deep caves, and from the seas,
receding under the great heat, the human race, crying out for mercy,
with uplifted and blistered hands, survived the cataclysm.

And Ovid informs us that this land, "with a mighty trembling, sank
down a little" in the ocean, and the Gothic and Briton (Druid)
legends tell us of a prolongation of Western Europe which went down
at the same time.

In the Hindoo legends the great battle between Rama and Ravana, the
sun and the comet, takes place _on an island_, the Island of Lanka,
and Rama builds a stone bridge sixty miles long to reach the island.

In the Norse legends Asgard lies to the west of Europe; communication
is maintained with it by the bridge Bifrost. Gylfe goes to visit
Asgard, as Herodotus and Solon went to visit Egypt: the outside
barbarian was curious to behold the great civilized land. There he
asks many questions, as Herodotus and Solon did. He is told:[2]

"The earth is round, and _without it round about lies the deep
ocean_."

[1. "Atlantis," p. 171.

2. The Fooling of Gylfe--The Creation of the World--The Younger Edda.]

{p. 371}

The earth is Ovid's earth; it is Asgard. It is an island, surrounded
by the ocean:

"And along the outer strand of that sea they gave lands for the
giant-races to dwell in; and against the attack of restless giants
they built a burg within the sea and around the earth."

This proves that by "the earth" was not meant the whole globe; for
here we see that around the outside margin of that ocean which
encircled Asgard, the mother-country had given lands for colonies of
the giant-races, the white, large, blue-eyed races of Northern and
Western Europe, who were as "restless" and as troublesome then to
their neighbors as they are now and will be to the end of time.

And as the _Elder_ and _Younger Edda_ claim that the Northmen were
the giant races, and that their kings were of the blood of these
Asas; and as the bronze-using people advanced, (it has been proved by
their remains,[1]) into Scandinavia from the _southwest_, it is clear
that these legends do not refer to some mythical island in the Indian
Seas, or to the Pacific Ocean, but to the Atlantic: the west coasts
of Europe were "the outer strand" where these white colonies were
established; the island was in the Atlantic; and, as there is no body
of submerged land in that ocean with roots or ridges reaching out to
the continents east and west, except the mass of which the Azores
Islands constitute the mountain-tops, the conclusion is irresistible
that here was Atlantis; here was Lanka; here was "the island of the
innocent," here was Asgard.

And the Norse legends describe this "Asgard" as a land of temples and
plowed fields, and a mighty civilized race.

And here it is that Ragnarok comes. It is from the

[1. Du Chaillu's "Land of the Midnight Sun," vol. i, pp. 343, 345,
etc.]

{P. 372}

people of Asgard that the wandering Gylfe learns all that he tells
about Ragnarok, just as Solon learned from the priests of Sais the
story of Atlantis. And it is here in Asgard that, as we have seen,
"during Surt's fire two persons, called Lif and Lifthraser, a man and
a woman, concealed themselves in Hodmimer's holt," and afterward
repeopled the world.

We leave Europe and turn to India.

In the Bagaveda-Gita Krishna recalls to the memory of his disciple
Ardjouna the legend as preserved in the sacred books of the Veda.

We are told:

"The earth was covered with flowers; the trees bent under their
fruit; thousands of animals sported over the plains and in the air;
white elephants roved unmolested under the shade of gigantic forests,
and Brahma perceived that the time had come for the creation of man
to inhabit this dwelling-place."[1]

This is a description of the glorious world of the Tertiary Age,
during which, as scientific researches have proved, the climate of
the tropics extended to the Arctic Circle.

Brahma makes man, Adima, (Adam,) and he makes a companion for him,
Héva, (Eve).

_They are upon an island_. Tradition localizes the legend by making
this the Island of Ceylon.

"Adima and Héva lived for some time in perfect happiness--no
suffering came to disturb their quietude; they had but to stretch
forth their hands and pluck from surrounding trees the most delicious
fruits--but to stoop and gather rice of the finest quality."

This is the same Golden Age represented in Genesis, when Adam and
Eve, naked, but supremely happy, lived

[1. Jacolliet, "The Bible in India," p. 195.]

{p. 373}

upon the fruits of the garden, and knew neither sorrow nor suffering,
neither toil nor hunger.

But one day the evil-one came, as in the Bible legend the Prince of
the _Rakchasos_ (Raknaros--Ragnarok?) came, and broke up this
paradise. Adima and Héva leave their _island_; they pass to a
boundless country; they fall upon an evil time; "trees, flowers,
fruits, birds, vanish in an instant, amid terrific clamor";[1] the
Drift has come; they are in a world of trouble, sorrow, poverty, and
toil.

And when we turn to America we find the legends looking, not
westward, but _eastward_, to this same island-refuge of the race.

When the Navajos come out of the cave the white race goes _east_, and
the red-men go _west_; so that the Navajos inhabit a country _west_
of their original habitat, just as the Jews inhabit one _east_ of it.

"Let me conclude," says the legend, "by telling how the Navajos came
by the seed they now cultivate. All the wise men being one day
assembled, a Turkey-Hen came flying _from the direction of the
morning star_, and shook from her feathers an ear of blue corn into
the midst of the company; and in subsequent visits _brought all the
other seeds they possess_."[2]

In the Peruvian legends the civilizers of the race came _from the
east_, after the cave-life.

So that these people not only came from the east, but they maintained
intercourse for some time afterward with the parent-land.

On page 174, _ante_, we learn that the Iroquois believed that when
Joskeha renewed the world, after the great battle with Darkness, he
learned from _the great tortoise_

[1. Jacolliet, "The Bible in India," p. 198.

2. Bancroft's "Native Races," vol. iii, p. 83.]

{p. 374}

--always the image of an island--how to make fire, and taught the
Indians the art. And in their legends the battle between the White
One and the Dark One took place in the east near the great ocean.

Dr. Brinton says, speaking of the Great Hare, Manibozho:

"In the oldest accounts of the missionaries he was alleged to reside
_toward the east_, and in the holy formula of the meda craft, when
the winds are invoked to the medicine-lodge, the _east is summoned_
in his name, the door opens in that direction, and there _at the edge
of the earth_, where the sun rises, on _the shore of the infinite
ocean that surrounds the land_, he has his house, and sends the
luminaries forth on their daily journey."[1]

That is to say, in the east, in the _surrounding_ ocean of the east,
to wit, in the Atlantic, this god, (or godlike race,) has his house,
his habitation, upon a land surrounded by the ocean, to wit, an
island; and there his power and his civilization are so great that he
controls the movements of the sun, moon, and stars; that is to say,
he fixes the measure of time by the movements of the sun and moon,
and he has mapped out the heavenly bodies into constellations.

In the Miztec legend, (see page 214, _ante_,) we find the people
praying to God to gather the waters together and enlarge the land,
for they have only "a little garden" to inhabit in the waste of
waters. This meant an island.

In the Arabian legends we have the scene of the catastrophe described
as an island west of Arabia, and it _requires two years and a half of
travel to reach it_. It is the land of bronze.

In the Hindoo legend of the battle between Rama, the

[1. Brinton's "Myths of the New World," p. 177.]

{p. 375}

sun, and Ravana, the comet, the scene is laid on the _Island_ of
Lanka.

In the Tahoe legend the survivors of the civilized race take refuge
in a cave, in a mountain on an _island_. They give the tradition a
local habitation in Lake Tahoe.

The Tacullies say God first created an _island_.

In short, we may say that, wherever any of these legends refer to the
locality where the disaster came and where man survived, the scene is
placed upon an island, in the ocean, in the midst of the waters; and
this island, wherever the points of the compass are indicated, lies
to the west of Europe and to the east of America: it is, therefore,
in the Atlantic Ocean; and the island, we shall see, is connected
with these continents by long bridges or ridges of land.

This island was Atlantis. Ovid says it was the land of Neptune,
Poseidon. It is Neptune who cries out for mercy. And it is associated
with Atlas, the king or god of Atlantis.

Let us go a step further in the argument.

{p. 376}

CHAPTER III.

THE BRIDGE.

THE deep-sea soundings, made of late years in the Atlantic, reveal
the fact that the Azores are the mountaintops of a colossal mass of
sunken land; and that from this center one great ridge runs southward
for some distance, and then, bifurcating, sends out one limb to the
shores of Africa, and another to the shores of South America; while
there are the evidences that a third great ridge formerly reached
northward from the Azores to the British Islands.

When these ridges--really the tops of long and continuous
mountain-chains, like the Andes or the Rocky Mountains, the backbone
of a vast primeval Atlantic-filling, but, even then, in great part,
sunken continent, were above the water, they furnished a wonderful
feature in the scenery and geography of the world; they were the
pathways over which the migrations of races extended in the ancient
days; they wound for thousands of miles, irregular, rocky,
wave-washed, through the great ocean, here expanding into islands,
there reduced to a narrow strip, or sinking into the sea; they
reached from a central civilized land--an ancient, long-settled land,
the land of the godlike race--to its colonies, or connections, north,
south, east, and west; and they impressed themselves vividly on the
imagination and the traditions of mankind, leaving their image even
in the religions of the world unto this day.

As, in process of time, they gradually or suddenly settled

{p. 377}

into the deep, they must at first have formed long, continuous
strings of islands, almost touching each other, resembling very much
the Aleutian Archipelago, or the Bahama group; and these islands
continued to be used, during later ages, as the stepping-stones for
migrations and intercourse between the old and the new worlds, just
as the discovery of the Azores helped forward the discovery of the
New World by Columbus; he used them, we know, as a halting-place in
his great voyage.

When Job speaks of "the island of the innocent," which was spared
from utter destruction, he prefaces it by asking, (chap. xxii):

"15. Hast thou marked _the old way_ which wicked men have trodden?

"16. Which were (was?) cut down out of time, _whose foundation was
overflown with a flood_."

And in chapter xxviii, verse 4, we have what may be another allusion
to this "way," along which go the people who are on their journey,
and which "divideth the flood," and on which some are escaping.

The Quiche manuscript, as translated by the Abbé Brasseur de
Bourbourg,[1] gives an account of the migration of the Quiche race to
America from some eastern land in a very early day, in "the day of
darkness," ere the sun was, in the so-called glacial age.

When they moved to America they wandered for a long time through
forests and over mountains, and "they had a _long passage to make,
through the sea, along the shingle and pebbles and drifted sand_."
And this long passage was through the sea "which was parted for their
passage." That is, the sea was on both sides of this long ridge of
rocks and sand.

[1. Tylor's "Early Mankind," p. 308.]

{p. 378}

The abbé adds:

"But it is not clear how they crossed the sea; they passed as though
there had been no sea, for they passed over scattered rocks, and
these rocks were rolled on the sands. This is why they called the
place 'ranged stones and torn-up sands,' the name which they gave it
in their passage within the sea, the water being divided when they
passed."

They probably migrated along that one of the connecting ridges which,
the sea-soundings show us, stretched from Atlantis to the coast of
South America.

We have seen in the Hindoo legends that when Rama went to the Island
of Lanka to fight the demon Ravana, he built a bridge of stone, sixty
miles long, with the help of the monkey-god, in order to reach the
island.

In Ovid we read of the "settling down a little" of the island on
which the drama of Phaëton was enacted.

In the Norse legends the bridge Bifrost cuts an important figure. One
would be at first disposed to regard it as meaning, (as is stated in
what are probably later interpolations,) the rainbow; but we see,
upon looking closely, that it represents a material fact, an actual
structure of some kind.

Gylfe, who was, we are told, A king of Sweden in the ancient days,
visited Asgard. He assumed the name of Ganglere, (the walker or
wanderer). I quote from the "_Younger Edda, The Creation_":

"Then asked Ganglere, 'What is the path from earth to heaven?'"

The earth here means, I take it, the European colonies which surround
the ocean, which in turn surrounds Asgard; heaven is the land of the
godlike race, Asgard. Ganglere therefore asks what is, or was, in the
mythological past, the pathway from Europe to the Atlantic island.

{p. 379}

"Har answered, laughing, 'Foolishly do you now ask. Have you not been
told that the gods made a bridge from earth to heaven, which is
called Bifrost? You must have seen it. It may be that you call it the
rainbow. It has three colors, is very strong, and is made with more
craft and skill than other structures. Still, however strong it is,
it will break when the sons of Muspel come to ride over it, and then
they will have to swim their horses over great rivers in order to get
on.'"

Muspel is the blazing South, the land of fire, of the convulsions
that accompanied the comet. But how can Bifrost mean the rainbow?
What rivers intersect a rainbow?

"Then said Ganglere, 'The gods did not, it seems to me, build that
bridge honestly, if it shall be able to break to pieces, since they
could have done so if they had desired.' Then made answer Har: 'The
gods are worthy of no blame for this structure. Bifrost is indeed a
good bridge, but there is nothing in the world that is able to stand
when the sons of Muspel come to the fight.'"

Muspel here means, I repeat, the heat of the South. Mere heat has no
effect on rainbows. They are the product of sunlight and falling
water, and are often most distinct in the warmest weather.

But we see, a little further on, that this bridge Bifrost was a real
structure. We read of the roots of the ash-tree Ygdrasil, and one of
its roots reaches to the fountain of Urd:

Here the gods have their doomstead. The _Asas ride hither every day
over Bifrost_, which is also called Asa-bridge."

And these three mountain-chains going out to the different continents
were the three roots of the tree Ygdrasil, the sacred tree of the
mountain-top; and it is to this "three-pronged root of the
world-mountain" that the

{p. 380}

Hindoo legends refer, (see page 238, _ante_): on its top was heaven,
Olympus; below it was hell, where the Asuras, the comets, dwelt; and
between was Meru, (Mero Merou,) the land of the Meropes, Atlantis.

The _Asas_ were clearly a human race of noble and godlike qualities.
The proof of this is that they perished in Ragnarok; they were
mortal. They rode over the bridge every day going from heaven, the
heavenly land, to the earth, Europe.

We read on:

"Kormt and Ormt,
And the two Kerlaugs
These shall Thor wade
Every day,
When he goes to judge
Near the Ygdrasil ash;
_For the Asa-bridge
Burns all ablaze--_
The holy waters roar."

These rivers, Kormt and Ormt and the two Kerlaugs, were probably
breaks in the long ridge, where it had gradually subsided into the
sea. The Asa-bridge was, very likely, dotted with volcanoes, as the
islands of the Atlantic are to this day.

"Then answered Ganglere, 'Does fire burn over Bifrost?' Har answered:
'The red which you see in the rainbow is burning fire. The
frost-giants and the mountain-giants would go up to heaven if Bifrost
were passable for all who desired to go there. Many fair places are
there in heaven, and they are protected by a divine defense.'"

We have just seen (p. 371, _ante_) that the home of the godlike race,
the _Asas_, to wit, heaven, Asgard, was surrounded by the ocean, was
therefore an island; and that around the outer margin of this ocean,
the Atlantic,

[1. Elder Edda, "Grimner's Lay," 29.]

{p. 381}

the godlike race had given lands for the ice-giants to dwell in. And
now we read that this Asa-bridge, this Bifrost, reached from earth to
heaven, to wit, across this gulf that separated the island from the
colonies of the ice-giants. And now we learn that, if this bridge
were not defended by a divine defense, these troublesome ice-giants
would go up to heaven; that is to say, the bold Northmen would march
across it from Great Britain and Ireland to the Azores, to wit, to
Atlantis. Surely all this could not apply to the rainbow.

But we read a little further. Har is reciting to Ganglere the wonders
of the heavenly land, and is describing its golden palaces, and its
mixed population of dark and light colored races, and he says:

"Furthermore, there is a dwelling, by name Himinbjorg, _which stands
at the end of heaven, where the Bifrost bridge is united with
heaven_."

And then we read of Heimdal, one of the gods who was subsequently
killed by the comet:

"He dwells in a place called Himinbjorg, near Bifrost. He is the
ward," (warder, guardian,) "of the gods, and sits _at the end of
heaven, guarding the bridge against the mountain-giants_. He needs
less sleep than a bird; sees an hundred miles around him, and as well
by night as by day. _His teeth are of gold_."

This reads something like a barbarian's recollection of a race that
practiced dentistry and used telescopes. We know that gold filling
has been found in the teeth of ancient Egyptians and Peruvians, and
that telescopic lenses were found in the ruins of Babylon.

But here we have Bifrost, a bridge, but not a continuous structure,
interrupted in places by water, reaching from Europe to some Atlantic
island. And the island-people regarded it very much as some of the
English look

{p. 382}

upon the proposition to dig a tunnel from Dover to Calais, as a
source of danger, a means of invasion, a threat; and at the end of
the island, where the ridge is united to it, they did what England
will probably do at the end of the Dover tunnel: they erected
fortifications and built a castle, and in it they put a ruler,
possibly a sub-king, Heimdal, who constantly, from a high lookout,
possibly with a field-glass, watches the coming of the turbulent
Goths, or Gauls, or Gael, from afar off. Doubtless the white-headed
and red-headed, hungry, breekless savages had the same propensity to
invade the civilized, wealthy land, that their posterity had to
descend on degenerate Rome.

The word _Asas_ is not, as some have supposed, derived from Asia.
Asia is derived from the _Asas_. The word _Asas_ comes from a Norse
word, still in use in Norway, _Aas_, meaning _a ridge of high
land_.[1] Anderson thinks there is some connection between _Aas_, the
high ridge, the mountain elevation, and _Atlas_, who held the world
on his shoulders.

The _Asas_, then, were the civilized race who inhabited a high,
precipitous country, the meeting-point of a number of ridges. Atlas
was the king, or god, of Atlantis. In the old time all kings were
gods. They are something more than men, to the multitude, even yet.

And when we reach "Ragnarok" in these Gothic legends, when the jaw of
the wolf Fenris reached from the earth to the sun, and he vomits fire
and poison, and when Surt, and all the forces of Muspel, "ride over
Bifrost, _it breaks to pieces_." That is to say, in this last great
catastrophe of the earth, the ridge of land that led from the British
Islands to Atlantis goes down for ever.

[1. The Younger Edda," Anderson, note, p. 226.]

{p. 383}

And in Plato's description of Atlantis, as received by Solon from the
Egyptian priests, we read:

"There was an island" (Atlantis) "situated in front of the straits
which you call the Columns of Hercules; the island was larger than
Libya and Asia put together, and _was the way to other islands_, and
from the islands _you might pass through the whole of the opposite
continent_," (America,) "which surrounds the true ocean."

Now this is not very clear, but it may signify that there was
continuous land communication between Atlantis and the islands of the
half-submerged ridge, and from the islands to the continent of
America. It would seem to mean more than a passage-way by boats over
the water, for that existed everywhere, and could be traversed in any
direction.

I have quoted on p. 372, _ante_, in the last chapter, part of the
Sanskrit legend of Adima and Héva, as preserved in the Bagaveda-Gita,
and other sacred books of the Hindoos. It refers very distinctly to
the bridge which united the island-home of primeval humanity with the
rest of the earth. But there is more of it:

When, under the inspiration of the prince of demons, Adima and Héva
begin to wander, and desire to leave their island, we read:

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