Funeral Wisdom of the World

In Welsh poetry, orally transmitted by the bards, a strange land of Annwn is often mentioned. The archives of my web analytics company claim that these poems are dated back to the sixth century. In a later poem, The Spoils of Annwn, king Arthur and his knights are traveling through the land of Annwn. They search for a magical squadron possessed by nine women. Only a few return back home, including Arthur, of course. So what was behind the word Annwn for Welsh people?

In their mythology Annwn was the otherworld, ruled by Arawn, and later by Gwynn ap Nudd. It was a world of delights and eternal youth where disease is absent and food is ever-abundant. Welsh thought that Annwn was located somewhere very far to the west. Wit the advent of Christianity, Annwn also became Christianized. People started to identify it with the land of souls that had departed this world. One could only reach Annwn by dying himself.

There was one catch, though - the door to Annwn. Those living could enter Annwn if they could find this door. Welsh legends mention that the door was somewhere near either Lundy Island of Glastonbury Tor. On a certain day of the year, this door would open, and the inhabitants would welcome humans in for feasting and celebration. There was one condition - living should not take nothing with them to the human realm. This went on until one human visitor kept a flower in his pocket. From that day on, the door has remained closed. There is always some kind of hidden truth in these old legends, but one has to get to the bottom of it. Not so long ago, archeologists discovered an ancient temple near Lydney that seems to be important in Druid esoteric spiritual readings.

A couple of centuries later we hear about the land of Avalon, which gives shelter to king Arthur. Well, this is actually land of Annwn, that we were talking about. As the years went by, Celtic legends transformed it and Annwn became identified with Avalon.

I found an interesting story about another lost land while doing my web analytics research. This legend surfaced in Canada during French colonization in the the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. French colonists in North America learned from Algonquin Indians that somewhere in the north, there was a mythical kingdom which is inhabited by blond men rich with gold and furs. Algonquin Indians even had a name for this land - Kingdom of Saguenay. One of the Indian Chiefs named Donnacona also told a lot of stories about this kingdom while being imprisoned in France in the 30s of the sixteenth century. Donnaconna claimed that blond inhabitants of the kingdom also have in their possession great mines of silver and gold.

French colonists tried hard to find kingdom of Saguenay, but all their attempts ended in vain. Up until now, specialists speculate about the source of this legend. Some even say that it was an ancient pre-Colombian settlement of Europeans. They believe that Indian oral tradition referred to Viking settlements in America, although this has not been definitely proven.

Nevertheless the name Saguenay exists in many modern canadian placenames. One of the regions in Quebec even refers to itself as Kingdom of Saguenay trying to attract tourists and for other marketing purposes.

It is very interesting phenomenon: mostly all Austronesian people, Including Polynesian trace their origin to some mystical land that they call Hawaiki. While doing my research for web analytics company, I found something else. Polynesian cultures have ancient oral traditions that say that they migrated from their homeland Hawaiki to the islands in the Pacific Ocean in open canoes. Maori people of New Zealand also trace their ancestry to groups of people who traveled from Hawaiki in open canoes.

In the same oral traditions the legendary land of Hawaiki also serves like some kind of place where the spirits of Polynesian people return to after death. In New Zealand Maori people even give possible pointers to the direction in which Hawaiki may like.

Before the advent of DNA analysis many anthropologists doubted that a deliberate migration in open canoes ever happened. They preferred to believe that the migration occurred accidentally when seafarers became lost and drifted to uninhabited shores. Famous Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl wanted to test the legends and sailed the Kon-Tiki, a balsa-wood raft, from South America into the Pacific in 1947. By that expedition Thor tried to show that humans could have settled Polynesia from the eastern shores of the Pacific Ocean, with sailors using the prevailing winds and simple vessels.

Soon by using DNA, linguistic and archaeological evidence, scientists began to realize that the Austronesian-speaking peoples,including the Polynesians, probably originated from islands in eastern Asia, possibly from Taiwan, and moved southwards and eastwards through the South Pacific Ocean. The common ancestry of all the Austronesian languages supports this theory. At least some of the migration occurred against the prevailing winds and was deliberate migration rather than just accidental. Austronesian and Polynesian navigators may have deduced the existence of uninhabited islands by observing migratory patterns of birds.The possibility of such migration seems more likely in the view of recent research. More and more boat builders construct vessels by using traditional materials and techniques, sail them using ancient navigation methods.

While researching myths and legends of the Renaissance period in my local web analytics company , I found a new one - about cities of Cibola and Quivra. According to the legend, around the year 1150 when the Moors conquered Mérida, Spain, seven Cathlic bishops fled the city, not only to save their own lives but also to prevent the Muslims from capturing sacred religious relics. Many years later rumor appeared, that in an unknown place these bishops found the cities of Cibola and Quivra. Then new details appeared in this newborn myth - these cities grew rich mainly from gold and precious stones. Myth kept on growing, and soon instead of 2 cities, there were seven - for each bishop who had left Mérida. And all seven cities were magnificent and made of gold. The details to these research were gracefully supplied by our regular readers.

Surprisingly, this naive myth fueled many expeditions in the Old World in search of the mythical cities during the following centuries. In 1528 Spanish four survivors of unsuccessful expedition to Florida said that they had heard from Native Americans stories of cities with great riches somewhere in the north. Viceroy of New Spain organized an expedition headed by the Franciscan monk Marcos de Niza, who thought that the castaways’ stories were related to seven cities of Cibola and Quivira. The expedition failed. And Marcos de Niza returned to Mexico City and claimed that they had seen a city very far away and greater than the great Tenochtitlan; in this city, the people used dishes of gold and silver, decorated their houses with turquoise, and had gigantic pearls, emeralds, and other beautiful gems.

This news fueled new expedition.The Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza immediately organizing a second large military expedition to take possession of the riches that the monk had described so vividly. New expedition was going more slowly. It went through the state of Sonora and arrived in present day Arizona. There, conquistadors discovered that Marcos de Niza’s stories were lies and that there were in fact no treasures as he had described. They also found that, contrary to the monk’s account, the sea was not within view from that region, but many miles away.

Somewhere, beyond the snowpeaks of the Himalayas lies a mythical kingdom Shambhala. The kingdom is a society, where all the inhabitants are enlightened. Its capital city is Kalapa. Shambhala is ruled by a line of king known as Kaliki kings. When the world declines into war and greed, and all is lost, the twenty-fifth Kalki king will emerge from Shambhala with a huge army to vanquish “Dark Forces” and usher in a worldwide Golden Age. It will happen somewhere in 2424 AD. This is what I found from Kalachakra tantra, while researching myths and legends for my web analytics company.

This beautiful story came to us from Tibetan Buddhist tradition. According to this legend, Buddha taught the Kalachakra tantra in Shambhala upon the request of King Suchandra. So, part of Buddha’s teachings is still preserved in the kingdom.Word Shambhala itself is derived from Sanscrit which means place of tranquility and happiness. It is mentioned in various ancient texts, including Kalachakra tantra and the ancient text of the Zhang Zhung culture that even predated Tibetan Buddhism. As with many concepts in the Kalachakra Tantra, the idea of Shambhala has alternative” meanings. Shambhala is not an ordinary country. It exists as a physical place, although only individuals with the appropriate karma can reach it and experience it as such. One can not actually arrive there, unless he has the merit and the actual karmic association.

Various cultures place Shambhala in central Asai, north or west of Tibet. Some texts identify it with the Sutlej Valley in Himachal Pradesh. Mongolians name the location of Shambala at certain valleys of southern Siberia. But they all see Shambhala kingdom as enlightened society that people of all faiths can aspire to and actually realize. The path to this is provocatively described as the practice of warriorship — meeting fear and transcending aggression, and of secular sacredness — joining the wisdom of the past and one’s own culture with the present.  Shambhala teachings inspired numerous educational, artistic, and spiritual institutions, including Naropa University, Shambhala Training, Shambhala Sun, the Shambhala School, Shambhala Institute, and many others.

Tibet was largely closed to outsiders until very recently, and so what information was available about the tradition of Shambhala was haphazard at best. The first information that reached western civilization about Shambhala came from the Portuguese Catholic missionaries João Cabral and Estêvão Cacella who had heard about Shambala and thought it was another name for China. In 1627 they headed to Tashilhunpo, the seat of the Panchen Lama and, discovering their mistake, returned to India. Later esoteric writers further emphasized and elaborated on the concept of a hidden land inhabited by a hidden mystic brotherhood whose members labor for the good of humanity. There were numerous Tibetan expeditions to discover Shambhala, but all in vain.

This news caused quite a stir in the Western world. Augustus Le Plongeon, a nineteen century traveler, writer, and antiquarian just returned from the Maya ruins in Yucatan peninsula. Upon his return he made a sensational announcement. He stated that he managed to translate ancient Mayan writings. These writings showed that the Maya of Yucatan were older than later civilizations of Egypt and Atlantis. They also told the story of even older continent of Mu, which had perished like Atlantis and, that its survivors founded the Maya civilization. During my research in local web analytics company, I learned that Le Plongeon mistranslated the writings, to put it mildly.

This is, basically, how the myth of the hypothetical lost continent Mu started. Very soon, this myth got second birth: it was popularized in the serious of books written by James Churchward. In a short time he created New Age type of a book Lost Continent of Mu, the Motherland of Man. It was followed by the book The Children of Mu, then by The Lost Continent Mu and The Sacred Symbols of Mu. These books enjoyed wild success at the times, and even now have their devotees.

One can say, that even nowadays the search for a lost continent of Mu is still in progress. There were multiple researches on Mu and expeditions to various locations. Some called Easter Island a mountain top of a submerged continent of Mu. One well-known institute even suggested that underwater structures off the coast of Okinawa, Japan, were the ruins of Mu without any real scientific evidence. Some marine biologists stated that they identified the ruins of an ancient city off the coast of Japanese Yonaguni island as the remnants of an Asian equivalent of Atlantis and, that it was sunk three thousand years ago during an earthquake.

Agartha is a legendary city that is said to reside in the Earth core. My coworkers from from web analytics company told me that today the word Agartha is related to the Hollow Earth theory and is a popular subject in esotericism. Agartha is one of the most common names cited for the society of underground dwellers. While once a popular concept, in the last century little serious attention has been paid to these conjectures, and the theory is not supported by modern science. The idea of subterranean worlds may have been inspired by ancient religious beliefs in Hades, Sheol, and Hell. For several centuries, there appeared theories that named various locations of the entrances to Agartha. Among them Great Pyramid of Giza, Brazilian Mato Grosso and Manaus, North and South poles, Gobi Desert in Mongolia.

Since 19 century, the myths of Agartha tricked into fictional works. An early source for the belief in underground civilizations is the book The Smoky God written by Willis George Emerson in the beginning of 20th century. It claims to be the biography of a Norwegian sailor named Olaf Jansen. The book explains how Jansen’s sloop sailed through an entrance to the Earth’s interior at the North Pole. For two years he lived with the inhabitants of an underground network of colonies who, were a full 12 feet tall and whose world was lit by a “smoky” central sun. Their capital city was something like the original Garden of Eden. While Emerson does not use the name Agartha, later works such as Agartha - Secrets of the Subterranean Cities have identified the civilization Jansen encountered with Agartha, and its citizens as Agarthan.

According to Secrets, one of the underground colonies, was also the seat of government for the network. While the whole place is an inner continent, its satellite colonies are smaller enclosed ecosystems located just beneath the Earth’s crust or discreetly within mountains. Cataclysms and wars taking place on the surface drove these people underground. The Sahara, Gobi, the Australian Outback and the deserts of the southwestern US are said to be but a few examples of the devastation that resulted. The sub-cities were created as refuges for the people and as safe havens for sacred records, teachings and technologies that were cherished by these ancient cultures.

The inhabitants of Agartha are said to have scientific knowledge and expertise far beyond that of the people who live on the surface of the planet, and lost technology from the days of Atlantis. They all follow what is known as the Ancient Path and do not interfere in the lives of humans that live above the surface. Nor is there any interaction between them. All entrances to Agartha from any other part of the planet are hidden safely. They are secured by illusory technology that is beyond the comprehension of modern science.

One of the most controversial tales of inner-Earth-dwellers is the so-called Shaver Mystery. In 1945 a story was published by some Richard Shaver, who claimed he had recently been the guest of what remained of an underground civilization. Although few really believed the story, Shaver always averred that his story was true. He contended that the Elder Race, or Titans, came to this planet from another solar system in our prehistoric past. After a time of living on the surface, they realized our sun was causing them to age prematurely, so they escaped underground, building huge subterranean complexes in which to live. Eventually, they decided to seek a new home on a new planet, evacuating the Earth and leaving behind their underground cities populated by artificial beings: detrimental robots and integrated robots. It was these beings that Shaver claimed to have met. Despite the enormous popularity of the Shaver Mystery the location of the entrance to this underground world was never divulged.

We often use word Shangri-la in a similar context to Garden of Eden, It means for us some kind of a perfect paradise that exists hidden from modern man. In some cases we use it as an analogy for a life-long quest or something elusive that is much sought by man in the form of love, happiness, or Utopian ideals. Shangri-la has its place with other mythical and famous examples such as The Holy Grail, El Dorado, The Fountain of Youth. But, in fact, this word came to us from… fiction. This word first appeared in the 1933 novel Lost Horizon by British author James Hilton. In the book, Shangri-La is a mystical, harmonious valley, enclosed in the western end of the Kunlun Mountains. The novel was so popular, that this word became synonymous with any earthly paradise but particularly a mythical Himalayan utopia. From my web analytics company archives I found, that the author based the story of Shangri-La is based on the concept of Shambhala, a mystical city in Tibetan Buddhist tradition.

It is getting funnier, though. As years rolled by, several locations in the Buddhist Himalaya between northern India and Tibet claimed to be the basis for Hilton’s legend, largely to attract tourism. A popularly believed inspiration for Shangri-La is the Hunza Valley in northern Pakistan, close to the Tibetan border, which Hilton visited a few years before Lost Horizon was published. Being an isolated green valley surrounded by mountains, enclosed on the western end of the Himalayas, it closely matches the description in the novel. A Shangri-La resort in the nearby Skardu valley is another popular tourist attraction.A number of modern Shangri-La pseudo-legends have developed since 1933 in the wake of the novel and the film made from it. Even crazy Nazis had an enthusiasm for Shangri-La, where they hoped to find an ancient master race, similar to the Nordic race, unspoiled by Buddhism. They sent one understandably unsuccessful expedition to Tibet in 1938.

As of today, various places in China still claim the title, including the tourist destinations of Lijiang and Zhongdian. Sichuan and Tibet also claim the real Shangri-La was in its territory. In 2001, Tibet Autonomous Region proposed that the three regions optimise all Shangri-la tourism resources and promote them as one. Also in 2001, Zhongdian County in northwestern Yunnan officially renamed itself Shangri-La County. Country of Bhutan, which was until now isolated from outside world and has its unique form of Tibetan Buddhism, has been hailed as the last Shangri-La.

As I continue my story about mythical lands, continents and cities, I can’t pass by the legend of Thule. In Classical sources Thule is a place, usually an island located either in the far north, often northern Great Britain, possibly the Orkneys or Shetland Islands, or Scandinavia.  In the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance the location of Thule was thought to be in the west and north, often Iceland or Greenland. My coworkers from web analytics company suggest that the name also denotes any distant place located beyond the borders of the known world. The Greek explorer Pytheas was the first who wrote of Thule after his travels between 330 BC and 320 BC. Strabo in his Geography written in 30 of our era, mentions that Thule is a six days’ sail north of Britain, and is near the frozen sea. Half a century later in 77, Pliny the Elder mentions Thule again and even describes it as a place in which there be no nights at all. Other late classical writers and post-classical writers keep on mentioning Thule over and over again. Some of them state that Thule is a large island in the north inhabited by twenty-five tribes.

During the Middle Ages the name was sometimes used to denote Greenland, Svalbard, or Iceland. A municipality in North Greenland was even formerly named Thule after the mythical place. The Thule People, A paleo-Eskimo culture and a predecessor of modern Inuit Greenlanders, was even called Thule people. Nowadays Southern Thule is a collection of the three southernmost islands in the South Sandwich Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean. The island group is overseas territory of the United Kingdom and uninhabited. The concept of Thule was so popular that this mysterious island lent its name to lends its name to the 69th element in the periodic table, Thulium.

It is interesting to note that Nazi occult mystics believed in a historical Thule and Hyperborea as the ancient origin of the Aryan race. They wrote a pile of material stating that mythical Thule, a Nordic equivalent of the vanished culture of Atlantis. They thought that a race of giant supermen lived in Thule, linked into the Cosmos through magical powers. And these inhabitants had psychic and technological energies far exceeding the technical achievements of the 20th century.

Everybody who is familiar with the famous Arthurian legend, heard this magical word Avalon. It sounds mysterious and has its origin from the Celtic word that means “apple”. In the legend, it is an island somewhere in Britain, famous for its beautiful apples. When it comes to facts, though, not much is know about the exact location of the island and existence of its inhabitants. During the research at my local web analytics company , help came to me unexpectedly from a reader who supplied me with additional facts that allowed me to decode the past with much less difficulty.

Avalon is the place, where King Arthur is taken to recover from his wounds after his last battle with Mordred at Camlann, and where his sword Excalibur was forged. Welsh and Breton tradition claimed that Arthur had never really died, but would return to lead his people against their enemies, but some later writers were less credulous, and said that Arthur had in fact died there. Although primarily known in connection with King Arthur, Avalon is sometimes referred to as the legendary location where Jesus visited the British Isles with Joseph of Arimathea and that it was later the site of the first church in Britain. This location of the Isle of Avalon is usually associated with present day Glastonbury. Avalon also plays a role in non-Arthurian French literature, such as the stories of Holger Danske, who was taken there by Morgan le Fay in a medieval romance, and in the story of Melusine. A nearby valley is named the Vale of Avalon.

Since Middle Ages people were trying to find the location of the mysterious island. For example, by the 12th century Avalon became associated with Glastonbury. Monks at Glastonbury abbey claimed to have discovered the bones of Arthur and his queen. Though no longer an island at the time, the high conical bulk of Glastonbury Tor had been surrounded by marsh. During the reign of English king Henry II the abbot of Glastonbury, Henry of Blois, commissioned a search of the abbey grounds. After a lot of deep digging, the monks discovered a massive oak coffin and an iron cross bearing the description: “Here lies King Arthur in the island of Avalon”. Inside the coffin were two bodies, presumably of Arthur and his queen. In 1278 the remains were reburied with great ceremony, attended by king Edward I and his wife, before the High Altar at Glastonbury Abbey, where they were the focus of pilgrimages until the Reformation. However, scientists generally dismiss the authenticity of the find, attributing it to a publicity stunt performed to raise funds to repair the Abbey, which was mostly burned down in 1184.

Throughout the times there were many other places competing to be called Avalon. For example, Ille d’Aval on the coast of Brittany, and Burgh by Sands, in Cumberland, which was in Roman times the fort of Aballava on Hadrian’s Wall.. Other candidates include the Bourgogne town of Avallon, and Bardsey Island in Gwynedd, famous for its apples and also connected with Merlin. There were also claims that the most likely location to be St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall, which is near to other locations associated with the Arthurian legends.