James Churchward
& the Legend of MU
The finding of one of James Churchward's Mu books gave the band its'
name and their obsession with this fabled lost continent.
Anglo-American explorer, James Churchward, who later termed himself 'Colonel'
was a close friend of Auguste and Alice Le Plongeon. This French doctor
and his wife had propounded the theory of the sunken lost civilisation
of Atlantis in the later part of the 19th.
The Le Plongeons' had done significant work in discovering and photographing
ancient Mayan cities that had been lost in the jungles of Central America.
Basing their theories on translations of Mayan texts the couple had a
identified a Queen Moo who ruled over the ancient Mayax civilisation and
they, then, went on to construct an evermore elaborate 'history' for Atlantis
and inadvertantly created a sub-culture of 'occult' writing that continues
to this day.
Whilst working in India on relief work Churchward discovered a previously
unknown civilisation of his own. Initially based on some ancient manuscripts
shown to him in a monastery, he set out to discover more. His findings
were set down in the five main volumes of the Mu series published during
the 1920s and 30s.
1. The Lost Continent of MU
2. The Children of MU
3. The Sacred Symbols of MU
4. The Cosmic Forces of MU
5. The Second Book of the Cosmic Forces of MU
The basic premise is that by studying various ancient texts Churchward
had discovered the existence of a long lost continent with an advanced
civilization that 60,000 years ago had sunk below the Pacific Ocean after
a cataclysmic earthquake. The Hawaiian Islands were the only few remnants
of this ancient continent still visible.
The first volume in the series -- The Lost
Continent of Mu -- set out Churchward's theory utilizing a "vast
knowledge of science, ancient art and history, mythology and the occult"
to recreate the splendor and doom of this hidden antediluvian world.
"The Garden of Eden was not in Asia but on
a now sunken continent in the Pacific Ocean. The Biblical story of Creation
came first not from the peoples of the Nile or the Euphrates Valley
but from this now-submerged continent, Mu -- the Motherland of Man."
Volume #2 in the series is The Children of Mu
"the strange, true story of the pioneers of Mu."
According to the back cover,
"Sixty-three million people lived on the now
lost continent of Mu over 200,000 years ago.
The children of Mu became the most influential
people on earth...America was one of the first colonies of Mu...Mu had
an incredibly sophisticated government, flowering of culture and scientific
technology."
Volume #3 in this series is The Sacred Symbols
of Mu, "the strange, true story of the
occult origins of ancient and modern religions." The book
says that
"all religions have a common origin in the
Sacred Inspired Writings of Mu. Evidence of this original religion dates
back 170,000 years ago. Osiris (who lived 20,000 BC) and Jesus taught
identically the same religion. Both learned from this ancient book.
Moses condensed the forty-two questions of the Osirian religion into
the Ten Commandments. The Lord's Prayer is to be found in The Sacred
Inspired Writings of Mu. Jesus condensed the text to suit the languages
of his day. And the Last Words of Jesus on the cross were in the language
of Mu -- unknown in Palestine!"
Volume #4 is The Cosmic Forces of Mu and
Churchward mocks the sacred cows of modern science and reveals that biological
evolution is a myth, that there is no such thing as atomic force, that
all disease can be conquered by using appropriately coloured light rays,
that the Earth's temperatures and seasons have become inalterably fixed
in their present state and that the earth cannot be hurled off into space
or drawn into the sun.
The next volume is #5, Second Book of the Cosmic
Forces of Mu, and Churchward continues to draw conclusions from
the ancient documents and lore of Mu to present some startling revisionist
theories about the age of the earth, the nature of mountains and volcanic
processes, and the Ice Age and Flood.
In the 1970s Tony Earll's Mu Revealed
(one of countless books written about the sunken civilisations Atlantis,
Mu and Lemuria) claimed to be "an astonishing
account of the archaeological discovery that proves the existence of Mu."
From the cover:
"When the Hurdlop expedition began excavating,
it was with the hope of proving or disproving James Churchward's startling
theories about Mu, the ancient lost continent of the Pacific...What
they found was beyond their wildest expectation -- the diary of Kland,
a young priest who had emigrated from Mu before its destruction! Painstakingly
restored and translated, the diary scrolls provide breathtaking glimpses
into the everyday life of Mu at the height of its splendid, doomed culture."
The idea of a sunken civilisation that was the motherland of the human
race is a compelling one and it has endured throughout the years. But
what some people consider "quasi archaelogical/mystical hokum"
has not been accepted universally and the following quote from The
Directory of Possibilities (ed. Colin Wilson & John Grant)
published by Webb & Bower in 1981 explains why:-
"The Maya of South America have their own legends
of a continent, Mu, which disappeared beneath the waves of the Pacific.
The name seems to have been invented by a French scholar, Abbe Brasseur,
who believed he had succeeded in translating ancient Mayan books in
the 1860s (it is now generally accepted that his translations were largely
wishful thinking). In the 1920s James Churchward began writing a series
of books purporting to reveal secret evidence (from ancient Indian documents)
about Mu, but internal evidence suggests that most of his facts were
invented."
If you want to make up your own mind and find out more about the the
lost continent of Mu (or Lemuria) then these sites are worth a look:-
SpiritWeb
Lemuria.net
The
Myth of Lemuria
From
Mu to Thule
I haven't yet found a decent site with information about James Churchward,
author of the Mu books. Here are a couple of sites about Augustus Le Plongeon
who 'discovered' Atlantis and inspired Churchward:-
emuseum
article
http://www.ku.edu/~hoopes/506/LePlongeon.htm
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