CHAPTER IV

THE SIXTH ROUND ON THE MOON CHAIN
We come again to Globe D, but now in the sixth Round, and our individualised animals are born into it as men of a simple and primitive, but not savage and brutal, type. They are not handsome according to our present ideas of beauty — hair ragged, lips thick, noses squat, and wide at the base. They are living on an island, and food has run short, so that, in his first fully human life, Herakles appears on the scene engaged in a vigour- ous struggle with another savage for the corpse of an eminently undesirable-looking animal. Fighting among the islanders themselves does not seem usual, and only occurs when food runs short ; but there is much of it in repulsing, from time to time, the invasions from the mainland, where the savages are particularly brutal cannibals, fiendishly cruel, and much dreaded by their gentler neigh¬ bours. These unpleasant neighbours cross the straits on primitive looking rafts, and pour over the island, destroying as they go. They are regarded as demons by the islanders, who nevertheless fight fiercely in self-defence. The islanders kill all whom they take prisoners, but do not, like the mainland savages, either torture them living, or eat them dead.
THE SIXTH ROUND ON THE MOON CHAIN 45
These savages of the mainland are from those who became individualised by fear in the fifth Round, and among them may be recognised Scorpio, whose hatred of Herakles, so prominent in future lives, may here have had its root, as even in this very primitive humanity they are in opposed tribes and fight furiously against each other. Scorpio, in Herakles5 second life in this community, leads an attack on a tribe inhabiting the island, presently to be mentioned, and Herakles was in a rescue party, which assailed the savages on their return home, and succeeded in crushing them, and in saving a wounded captive of a much more evolved type, who was being kept for torture.
Among the islanders at this same time we find Sirius, and also Alcyone and Mizar ; there do not seem to be any special relationships — life is com¬ munal, and people live promiscuously — beyond those which are formed by personal attractions in any one life. The intervals between death and re-birth are very short, a few years at most, and our savages are re-born in the same community. The second life shows advance, for help comes from outside which quickens their evolution.
A stranger lands upon the island, a man of much higher type and lighter complexion — a clear bright blue — than the muddy-brown islanders, who cluster round him with much curiosity and admira¬ tion. He comes to civilise the islanders, who are docile and teachable, in order to incorporate them in the Empire, from the capital city of which he has come. He begins by astonishing them. He puts water into a bowl made of the shell of a
46 MAN : WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
fruit, and, taking a small seed-like ball out of his pocket, he drops it into the water ; it catches fire and he lights some dry leaves and presently has a blazing fire, the first fire seen by the savages, who promptly run away and climb up trees, gazing down with terrified eyes at this strange leaping shining creature. He coaxes them down gradually, and they approach timidly, and, finding that no¬ thing harmful ensues, and that the fire is pleasant at night, they incontinently decide that he is a God, and proceed to worship him, and also the fire. His influence being thus established, he fur¬ ther teaches them to cultivate the ground, and they grow a vegetable, like a species of cactus, but red-leaved, which produces underground tubers, somewhat resembling yams; he cuts open the thick stems and leaves, dries them in the sun, and shows them how to make a kind of thick soup with them. The inside pith of the stems is a little like arrowroot, and the juice, squeezed out, yields a coarse sweet sugar. Herakles and Sirius are close comrades, and in their clumsy ignorant way discuss this stranger’s proceedings, both feeling much attracted to him.
Meanwhile, a party of savages from the main¬ land had attacked a tribe living at some distance from the settlement of our tribe, had killed most of the men, carrying off a few as prisoners, with all the women of marriageable age and the children, and killing the elder women ; the children were carried off as animals might have been — merely as specially delicious food. A wounded fugitive arrived at the village with the news, and implored the
THE SIXTH ROUND ON THE MOON CHAIN 47
I
fighting men to rescue the unhappy captives ; Herakles and a troop went off, not averse to a fray, and falling on the savages when they were heavy with gormandising, succeeded in killing the whole band, with the exception of Scorpio, who was absent. In a hut they found a wounded man, evidently, from his colour, of the same race as the stranger who had come to the island, who was being kept with a view to torture, and subsequent feasting on what remained of him. He was lifted on a litter of crossed spears — if long sharpened sticks may be so designated — and carried back to the island, with two or three rescued captives, and the younger women who had been kept alive. Sorely wounded as he was, he gave a cry of joy on recognising the stranger, a well-loved friend from the same city as himself, and he was taken into the stranger’s hut. There he remained until well, and recounted how he had been sent to ex¬ terminate the savage tribes on the mainland coasts; his army had been surrounded and annihilated instead, himself and some of his officers and men having been captured alive. They had been put to death with horrible tortures, but he was left for awhile to gain strength, being too weak to promise amusement by long resistance to torture, and had thus been saved. Herakles nursed him in his rude way with dog-like devotion, and sat for hours listening as the friends — Mars and Mercury — talked together in a tongue to him wholly unknown. Mercury was something of a doctor, and his friend grew rapidly better under his care, his wounds healing and his strength returning.
48 MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
The people were becoming a little more civilis¬ ed under the influence of Mercury, and when Mars, recovered, decided to return to the city, Mercury resolved to remain awhile with the devoted tribe he was educating. An expedition was sent off to convoy Mars through the dangerous belt inhabited by the man-eating savages, and a small escort accompanied him as far as the city, Herakles insisting on becoming his servant, and refusing to leave him. There was much rejoicing in the city on his return, as the people had thought him dead ; the news of the destruction of his army and of his own narrow escape roused great excite¬ ment, and preparations for a new expedition were at once set on foot.
The city was distinctly civilised, with large and handsome buildings in the better quarters, and an immense number of shops. There were many domesticated animals, some of them used for draught purposes and for riding. Commerce was carried on with other cities, and there was a system of canals connecting the city with many at great distances. The city itself was divided into quarters, the dif¬ ferent classes inhabiting different parts of it ; in the centre of it the people were of a distinctly high type and blue complexion, and the ruler and his highest nobles were in touch with a group of people living secluded in a somewhat inaccessible region. These people, some of whom will be known later as the Lords of the Moon, were themselves pupils of still more exalted Beings, who had come thither from some other sphere. Some of the humanity of the Moon succeeded in going beyond the Arhat Initiation,
THE SIXTH ROUND ON THE MOON CHAIN 49
and their superiors were evidently from a humanity which had reached a far higher stage.
It was from These that an order reached the Ruler of the city — which was the capital of a large Empire — for the extermination of the savages of the mainland coasts ; the expedition was led by Viraj — who looked much like a North American Indian — with Mars under him, and was an overwhelming force. Against such a body the poorly armed and undisciplined savages had no chance, and they were completely annihilated ; Scorpio, once more, was the chief of a band, and he and the men with him fought desperately to the last. Herakles followed Mars as his servant and fought under him, and when the battles were over, and it was decided to transplant the docile savages from the island to the mainland, and to incorporate them as a colony of the Empire, Sirius and Herakles met again, to their mutual delight, as great according to their small capacity as the deeper joy of Mars and Mercury on their higher level. Mercury took his people over to the mainland and established them there as cultivators of the soil, and then returned to the city with Mars, Herakles persuading Sirius — who was nothing loth — to accompany them. Thus the two became dwellers in the city, and there lived to a great age, attaching themselves very decidedly to their respective masters, whom they regarded as Deities, as belonging to a divine race and omnipotent.
The extermination of the savages — though done in obedience to an order that none dared to dis¬ obey — was regarded by the soldiers, and even by
most of the officers, as only part of a political
8
50
MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
plan of conquest, intended to enlarge the borders of the Empire ; these tribes stood in the way, and therefore had to be cleared out of it. From the higher standpoint, a stage had been reached beyond which these savages were incapable of advancing on the Moon Chain, bodies suitable to their low stage of evolution being no longer available. Hence, as they died, or were killed off, they were not re-born, but passed into a con¬ dition of sleep ; many bodies of similarly low types were annihilated by seismic catastrophes which laid whole districts waste, and the population of the globe was very much diminished. It was the £ Day of Judgment 5 of the Moon Chain, the separation between those who were capable and those who were incapable of further progress on that Chain, and from that time forward all was directed towards the pressing forward as rapidly as possible of those who remained ; it was a preparation of the remaining population for evolution on another Chain.
It may be noted that, at this time, the year was, roughly, of about the same length as at present ; the relation of the globe to the sun was similar, but was different as regards the constellations.
The whole tribe partially civilised by Mercury escaped the dropping out, while in the city, Herakles and Sirius, together with the households and depen¬ dents of Mars and Mercury1 also just slipped over the
1 In the household of Mars were : Herakles, Siwa, Corona, Vajra, Capella, Pindar, Beatrix, Lutetia, Theodoros, Ulysses, Aurora. In the household of Mercury : Sirius, Alcyone, Mizar, Orion, Achilles, Hector, Albireo, Olympia, Aldebaran, Leo, Castor, Rhea.
THE SIXTH ROUND ON THE MOON CHAIN 51
dividing line, by virtue of their attachment to their respective leaders ; they married — if the term may be applied to the loose connections of that time — into the low-class city population, and incarnation succeeded incarnation in the lower classes of the more civilised people of the time, with very little progress, intelligence being very poor and development very slow. Sirius, in one birth, was observed as a small tradesman, the shop being a hole ten feet square, in which he sold things of various kinds. Herakles, twelve lives further on, was seen as a woman labouring in the fields, advanced enough to cook her rats and other edibles instead of eating them raw, and with a whole pack of brothers as husbands — Capella, Pindar, Beatrix, Lutetia. Women were scarce at the time, and a plurality of husbands was very common.
Very many lives later, improvement was vis¬ ible ; the members of the above-named groups were no longer so primitive, and others had come up below them, but they were only very small em¬ ployers of labour, shop-people and farmers, and they did not go much beyond that stage on the Moon. In one life to which our attention was attracted by the curious agricultural proceedings, Sirius was the wife of a small farmer, who em¬ ployed other men. The harvest was rather a nightmare. Much of the vegetation belonged to what we should now call the fungus family, but gigantic and monstrous. There were trees which grew to a great height in a single year, and which were semi-animal. The cut-off branches writh¬ ed like snakes and coiled round the axe-wielders, contracting as they died ; red sap, like blood.
52 MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
gushed out under the strokes of the axe, and the texture of the tree was fleshy ; it was carnivorous, and during its growth, seized any animal that touched it, coiling its branches round it like an octopus, and sucking it dry. The harvesting of this crop was considered to be very dangerous, and only very strong and skilful men took part in it. When the tree was cut down and the branches lopped off, they were left to die ; then, when all move¬ ment had ceased, the rind was stripped off and was made into a kind of leather, and the flesh cooked and eaten.
Many of the growths we must call plants were semi-animal and semi- vegetable ; one had a large umbrella-like top, with a slit in the middle which allowed the two halves, armed with teeth, to open out ; it bent over, with these jaws gaping open, hanging above the ground, and any animal brushing against it was seized, and the two halves closed over it ; then the stem straightened itself, and the closed halves again formed the um¬ brella surface, while the animal within them was slowly sucked dry. These were cut down when the jaws were above and closed, and the skill re¬ quired consisted in leaping out of reach, as the top swooped downwards to seize the aggressor.
Insect life was voluminous and gigantic, and served largely as food to the carnivorous trees. Some insects were fully two feet long, and of most formidable aspect, and were greatly dreaded by the human inhabitants. The houses were built as quadrangles, enclosing very large courtyards ; these were covered in with strong network, and
THE SIXTH ROUND ON THE MOON CHAIN 53
in the seasons when the large insects were about, the children were not allowed to go outside these enclosures.
Those who individualised in the fifth Round by vanity were born for the most part into city populations, and life after life they tended to drift together by similarity of tastes and contempt for others, even though their dominating idiosyncrasy of vanity led to much quarrelling and often-repeated ruptures among themselves. Separateness became much intensified, the mental body strengthening in an undesirable way, and becoming more and more of a shell, shutting out others. The emo¬ tional body, as they repressed animal passions, grew less powerful, for the animal passions were starved out by a hard and cold asceticism, instead of being transmuted into human emotions ; sex-passion, for instance, was destroyed instead of being changed into love. The result was that they had less feeling, birth after birth, and physically tended towards sexlessness, and while they developed individualism to a high point, this very development led to constant quarrels and rioting. They formed communities, but these broke up again, because no one would obey ; each wanted to rule. Any attempt to help or guide them, on the part of more highly developed people, led to an outburst of jealousy and resentment, it being taken as a plan to manage or belittle them. Pride grew stronger, and stronger, and they became cold and calculating, without pity and without remorse. When the tide of life flowed onwards into the fifth globe — of emotional matter — they remained in activity for but a short time, the emotional body
54
MAN : WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
being dwarfed until it became atrophied, and on the sixth globe the mental body became hardened and lost plasticity, leading to a curious truncated effect, by no means attractive — reminding one, indeed, oddly, of a man who had lost his legs from the knee down¬ wards, and had his trousers sewn up over the stumps.
The type which in the previous Round in¬ dividualised by admiration, and was docile and teachable, also tended to come mostly into city populations, and formed the better class of labourers at first, rising through the lower middle class to the upper, and developing intelligence to a very consid¬ erable extent. They were free from the excessive pride of the preceding type — the pride which deeply tinged their auras with orange — and showed a clear, bright, and rather golden yellow. They were not devoid of emotion, but their emotions, while leading them to co-operation and to obedience to those wiser than themselves, were selfish rather than loving. They saw clearly that co-operation brought about better results than strife, and they co-operat¬ ed for their own advantage rather than with any desire to spread happiness among others. They were much more intelligent than the people whom we have been specially following, and their orderli¬ ness and discipline quickened their evolution. But they gave the impression of having developed in their mental bodies (by a clear vision of what was most to their own advantage) the qualities which should have had their roots in their emotional bodies, founded in and nourished by love and devotion. Hence the emotional bodies were insuffi¬ ciently developed, though not atrophied as in the
THE SIXTH ROUND ON THE MOON CHAIN 55
previously mentioned type. But they also profited little by their sojourn on globe E, while consider¬ ably improving their mental bodies on globe F.
Globes E, F and G, were most useful to the groups of egos who had individualised in one of the three c Right Ways,5 and were hence develop¬ ing in an all-round, rather than in a lop-sided, fashion, as was the case with those who individ¬ ualised in the ‘ Wrong Ways,5 so far as intelli¬ gence was concerned ; but, after all, these egos would be compelled later to develop the emotions they had in the early days stunted or neglected. In the long run, all powers have to be complete¬ ly developed ; and in gazing at the huge sweep of evolution from nescience to omniscience, the progress or the methods at any particular stage lose the immense importance which they appear to have as they loom through the mists of our ignorance and propinquity.
As these three globes on the ascending arc of the sixth Round came successively into activity, very great emotional and mental progress was made by the more advanced egos. As only those were embodied on them who had passed over the critical period, the c Day of Judgment 5 on the Moon Chain, there were no hopeless laggards to be a clog on evolution, and growth was steady and more rapid than before. When the Round was over, prepara¬ tions began to be made for the exceptional condi¬ tions of the final Round, the seventh, during which all the inhabitants, and much of the substance, of the Moon Chain were to be transferred to its successor, that in which our Earth is the fourth, or central, globe.