In dealing with the early Root-Races in the Second Stanza, H.P. Blavatsky referred to the Chinese "Shan-Hai-King," or The Classic of Mountains and Seas, with its stories of "men having two distinct faces on their heads, before and behind, monsters with bodies of goats and human faces, etc." Contemporary scholars attribute The Classic to a series of unknown contributors between the 3rd century BC and the 2nd century AD, but it was originally attributed to Yu the Great (2100 BC). In 1953, Henriette Mertz published Pale Ink as a fascinating study into The Classic from the perspective of geography (the Chinese sailed to North and South America thousands of years ago). But no one has been able to decode the meaning behind the scores of unusual animals, humans, and gods presented in its geography. Considering H.P. Blavatsky's comments, The Classic may be a compilation of all the "various animals and men, of fishes, reptiles and other monstrous animals assuming each other's shapes and countenances" in the early Root-Races of humanity:
On page 6, there is an animal living on Mount Loftyglare that looks like a human but with "hog bristles."
On page 15, there is a bird living on Mount Ewenext that looks like an owl but with a human face.
On page 20, there are deities living on Mount Sealstamp that possess a "human face" with a "horse's body" or an "ox's body."
On page 31, there is an animal living on Mount Hiddenabyss with a horse's body, bird wings, a human face, and a serpent's tail. There is also a bird with a human face, a monkey's body, and a dog's tail.
On page 39, there is an animal living on Mount Creeperlink with a leopard body but a "human head" and a "single eye."
On page 64, there is an ox on Mount Grand with a "single eye" and a "serpent's tail."
On page 110, there are people living in Threehead Country who "have a single body but three heads."
On page 115, there are people living in Threebody Country that have "one head and three bodies." In the Singlearm Country, there are people with "one arm and three eyes."
On page 121, there are people living in Oneeye Country that have only "one eye that is set right in the middle of their face." In Softsharp Country, there are people who have "only one hand and only one foot" and whose "knees turn backwards so that their foot sticks up in the air."
On page 123, there are people living in Nogut Country who are "tall and have no gut."
On page 128, there are people living in Hairy Folk Country who are "born hairy."
On page 145, there are people living in the Country of Ghosts who have "a human face and only one eye."
On page 146, there are people living in the land of Armour who have "a human head with three horns."
On page 169, there are "Small People" living in Roastdwarf Country who are only nine inches tall.
One page 175, there are people living near Mount Longriver who live to more than "800 years old." On an island there is a divine man with "a human face and a bird's body."
On page 176, there is a person living in the Great Wilderness "with his arms back-to-front."
On page 177, there are people living in the Beside Country who can "go up to the sky and come back down again." Nearby, there are also people with "three faces and a single arm" who never die.
On page 187, there are children living in Progenyless Folk Country with "no bones." There is a person living on Mount Steamfather who has "both male and female sexual organs."
These Chinese myths correspond with H.P. Blavatsky's statements about "men with wings, four and two-faced men, human beings with two heads, with the legs and horns of a goat (our 'goat-men'), hippocentaurs, bulls with the heads of men," and so forth. They are also corroborated in many of the world's religious traditions. For example, the 8th century BC Greek author, Hesiod, wrote in Theogony in Verses 116-146 of the "Cyclopes" (plural) with its "one round eye which lay set in the middle of each forehead." Each forehead may well have been a distinct face on its single head, before and behind.
Aristophanes, a Greek comedian from the 5th century BC, lampooned the character Pseudartabas (who represents a Persian government official) in Verses 90-110 of the Acharnians by mocking him as the "Great King's Eye." When requested to speak, Pseudartabas can only reply incoherently, "Iyartaman exarxas apisona satra." In English, he continues, "You not will get goldo, you wide-arse Yawonian." The old farmer Dikaiopolis hilariously responds, "Good grief, that's clear enough!" Aristophanes must have enjoyed his laugh; he had just compared a contemporary man of his period with an unintelligible Cyclops from the historical past: the Hyperborean and Lemurian ages.
Finally, Plato, in his 5th century BC dialogue The Symposium, recounted just how human beings were split apart by Zeus in past ages. In Verses 189-193, the "shape of each human being was rounded whole, with back and sides forming a circle. Each one had four hands and the same number of legs, and two identical faces on a circular neck. They had one head for both the faces, which were turned in opposite directions, four ears, two sets of genitals." When Zeus splits a human being, he tells Apollo "to turn the face and the half-neck attached to it towards the gash" who then turns "round the face" and pulls "the skin from all around the body towards what's now called the stomach." Zeus follows up by moving "their genitals round to the front" which, until then, had been on "the back of their bodies" when "sexual reproduction occurred not with each other but on the earth" like some bugs. Now, if a "man met with a woman and entwined himself with her, they would produce and the human race would be continued." With the new method of reproduction, the previous androgynous humanity slowly dies out and only the two male and female sexes remain. Considering how Zeus and Apollo rip the human being apart and flip his exterior organs completely around, it is no wonder that the Chinese authors of The Classic describe a humanity with "arms back-to-front," with "one hand" and "one foot," or with knees "turned backwards so that their foot sticks up in the air." The human organism undergoes radical changes in the First, Second, and Third Root-Races.
These three Root-Races go to war with one another in The Secret Doctrine 2:63. The "LHAS (Spirits)" of the "HIGH" coming from "BELOW" slew "THE FORMS, WHICH WERE TWO-AND FOUR-FACED. THEY FOUGHT THE GOAT-MEN, AND THE DOG-HEADED MEN, AND THE MEN WITH FISHES' BODIES." These "Lhas" are the Lemurian leaders of the early Third Root-Race, or the "Sweat-born," who wage war on the Hyperborean humanities, per The Secret Doctrine 2:67. They are both on the "White Island" in the vicinity of Greenland near Norway and Ireland. They are referred to as "Romaka-pura in the West" by the Atlantean Asuramaya. It does not mater whether Romaka-pura indicates hair-pores or the city of Rome. Both translations are correct. The original people of the White Island (millions and millions of years ago) are born from hair-pores. Their descendants on the final island of Poseidonis belonging to the remnants of this extended land mass from the North Pole into the northern Atlantic Ocean fled to Rome (on another extended land mass) and the Mediterranean Sea some "11,000 or 12,000 years ago" as a result of the most recent major geological cataclysm, per G. de Purucker's Studies on page 24. The Lemurians are born on high as an up-and-coming Root-Race but come from below because they travelled northwards into the regions of the Hyperborean peoples to conquer. Looking at this specific geographical region, the new Lemurian civilization stretched from the North Pole southwards out of the Arctic Circle across from Norway and Ireland into the Atlantic Ocean and at some lower latitude veered off westwards into the Pacific Ocean and eastwards into the Indian Ocean.
Sources:
Aristophanes, Lysistrata and Other Plays, trans. Alan M. Sommerstein (London: Penguin Books, 2002).
Anne Birrell, trans., The Classic of Mountains and Seas (London: Penguin Books, 1999).
H.P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine (Pasadena: Theosophical University Press, 2019).
Hesiod and Theognis, Theogony, Works and Days, Elegies, trans. Dorothea Wonder (London: Penguin Books, 1973).
Henriette Mertz, Pale Ink: Two Ancient Records of Chinese Exploration in America (USA: BiblioBazaar, 2008).
Plato, The Symposium, trans. Christopher Gill (London: Penguin Books, 1999).
G. de Purucker, Studies in Occult Philosophy (Pasadena: Theosophical University Press, 1973).
(Photo by Maarten Deckers on Unsplash)