In Chapter V, H.P. Blavatsky revisited the evolution of the five Root-Races from their Dhyani-Chohanic astral origins.
(Chapter V). ORGANIC EVOLUTION AND CREATIVE FORCES: The "primitive germ" that is in mankind--the "pre-primordial ATOM"--stretches back "an immeasurable and inconceivable distance (in time, through not in space) from the origin even of our Solar system." As to "time," our solar system lives some 60 billion years in each embodiment, but our secondary universe lives some 311 trillion years. The "pre-primordial ATOM" containing the "primitive germ" is precisely that atom in the "thread of radiance" which re-emerges with the new Maha-Manvantara "on the day when the Great Law calls all things back into action," per The Secret Doctrine 2:80. This is the "PRIMARY IMPULSE to the law of evolution and gradual slow development." But as to "space," the distance is not so great between the origins of the Maha-Manvantara and our solar system because we primarily evolve in conjunction with our solar system throughout the Great Age. When a solar system dies, we re-embody in the same solar system when it is reborn. G. de Purucker alluded to this affiliation in Dialogues 1:245, "The entities belonging to any one solar system belong to it as a family, begin with it at the beginning of any Maha-Kalpa, and end with it at the end of that Maha-Kalpa." In G. de Purucker's diagram in Fountain-Source on page 437, this "pre-primordial ATOM" streams through Adi-Buddhi, Mahat, and Cosmic Kama. Then Cosmic Kama splinters into the "primordial atoms" of Cosmic Jiva as the life-principle that shapes the "evolution of worlds" with its consolidation through the Astral Light into the physical Sthula-Sarira. During the embodiment of our present solar system, the Earth chain has lived and died several times over tens of billions of years. Most recently, it re-embodied a few billion years ago when the Dhyani-Chohans went to work constructing its humanities. The first three Rounds slipped away, and we entered the Fourth Round, ultimately dropping to its "midway point of evolution" when mankind's "astral prototypes" began to "pass into the physical." During this period, the "forms of Men and mammalia previous to the separation of sexes" were "woven out of astral matter" through "Aeons of slow differentiation." These forms evolved with the "early Lemurian races" during the Jurassic age some 25,000,000 years ago, and perhaps even longer as the mammals of that age developed from "UNKNOWN ROOTS." With the demise of Lemuria south of the equator some eight to twelve million years ago in the Eocene period, the Fourth Root-Race headed northwards. Within the last 1,600,000 years in the Quaternary period, Europe and Africa rose from the waters. The Fourth Root-Race initially migrated to the mountainous regions in Southern Europe and Eastern Africa but eventually to the low-lying flatlands as the oceanic waters drained away. Around the same time, the Fifth Root-Race became sui generis in Central Asia as the waters receded there as well. In Europe, Caucasian and African types settled the land. Both groups equally belonged to the Fourth and Fifth Root-Races. The Caucasian and African types mixed. In The Secret Doctrine 2:740-741, H.P. Blavatsky asserted that the "earliest Palaeolithic men in Europe" were of "pure Atlantean and 'Africo'-Atlantean stocks." The Europeans became "absorbed in other races, engulfed by successive waves of migration overflowing from Africa, possibly from a lost Atlantis" and "from prolific Asia." The intermingling of these three types produced their children as the "FORERUNNERS OF THE GREAT ARYAN INVASION." That is, the yellow, white-brown, and black peoples of the world all produced the Adamite Fifth Root-Race. Further, "As to the African tribes--themselves diverging offshoots of Atlanteans modified by climate and conditions--they crossed into Europe over the peninsula which made the Mediterranean an inland sea. Fine races were many of these European cave-men; the Cro-Magnon, for instance." These white and black races in the Fifth Root-Race came together and interblended. The peninsular deluge separated them again, but the seeds of the future 4th Sub-Race with its Family Races and National Races had already been established. With the "GREAT ARYAN INVASION" from Central Asia as well as from modern India (which appeared after the Americas, Europe, and Africa), the European and African forerunners grew from their seeds to launch the most recent Family and National Races in the 4th Sub-Race. H.P. Blavatsky outlined this evolutionary development into the 4th Sub-Race in Isis Unveiled 1:576. To begin with, the "nomadic Caucasian" constituted the 1st and 2nd Sub-Races of the Fifth Root-Race. Then the "Hamite" and "Shemites" (a Hamite and Aryan hybrid) constituted the 2nd and 3rd Sub-Races. Subsequently, the "Aryan" in the second-half of the 3rd Sub-Race produced the three Family Races of"Median, Persian, Hindu" belonging to the 4th Sub-Race. In this 4th Sub-Race, the "Gothic and Slavic peoples of Europe" represented the transition from the 3rd National Race into the 4th National Race of the "Hindu" Family Race. As these Europeans further mix with Africans, the 4th Family Race will bloom. This is why Africa has been spoken of as the reservoir of life. The African type, as it continues intermarrying into the Caucasian and Asian types to establish new blended races, symbolizes the future of humanity in the 4th Family Race of the 4th Sub-Race during the 432,000 year Kali-Yuga, then an ascent into the 5th Sub-Race of the Fifth Root-Race, and finally the meteoric rise of the Sixth Root-Race of the Fourth Round.
Sources:
H.P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled (Pasadena: Theosophical University Press, 1998).
H.P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine (Pasadena: Theosophical University Press, 2019).
G. de Purucker, The Dialogues of G. de Purucker (Pasadena: Theosophical University Press, 1948).
G. de Purucker, Fountain-Source of Occultism (Pasadena: Theosophical University Press, 1974).
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