SHAM-BHALA
The Original Magic Kingdom
Hidden or Buried in the Sands of Human Imagination?
Expeditions - Spiritual or Spying?
Separating the Spiritual Truth from Myth & Legend
Shambhala has meant many things to different people in different times
'May I quickly take birth in Shambhala, the treasury of jewels,
And complete the stages of the path in Highest Yoga Tantra.'
From 'The Guru Yoga of Kalachakra' by Ling Rinpoche
And complete the stages of the path in Highest Yoga Tantra.'
From 'The Guru Yoga of Kalachakra' by Ling Rinpoche
Shambhala, which in Sanskrit means “place of peace, of tranquillity,” is thought of in Tibet as a community where perfect and semi-perfect beings live and are guiding the evolution of humanity. Shambhala is considered to be the source of the Kalachakra, which is the highest and most esoteric branch of Tibetan mysticism.
Legends say that only the pure of heart can live in Shambhala, enjoying perfect ease and happiness and never knowing suffering, want or old age. Love and wisdom reign and injustice is unknown. The inhabitants are long-lived, wear beautiful and perfect bodies and possess supernatural powers; their spiritual knowledge is deep, their technological level highly advanced, their laws mild and their study of the arts and sciences covers the full spectrum of cultural achievement, but on a far higher level than anything the outside world has attained.
By definition Shambhala is hidden. Of the numerous explorers and seekers of spiritual wisdom who attempt to locate Shambhala, none can pinpoint its physical location on a map, although all say it exists in the mountainous regions of Eurasia. Many have also returned believing that Shambhala lies on the very edge of physical reality, as a bridge connecting this world to one beyond it.
Legends say that only the pure of heart can live in Shambhala, enjoying perfect ease and happiness and never knowing suffering, want or old age. Love and wisdom reign and injustice is unknown. The inhabitants are long-lived, wear beautiful and perfect bodies and possess supernatural powers; their spiritual knowledge is deep, their technological level highly advanced, their laws mild and their study of the arts and sciences covers the full spectrum of cultural achievement, but on a far higher level than anything the outside world has attained.
By definition Shambhala is hidden. Of the numerous explorers and seekers of spiritual wisdom who attempt to locate Shambhala, none can pinpoint its physical location on a map, although all say it exists in the mountainous regions of Eurasia. Many have also returned believing that Shambhala lies on the very edge of physical reality, as a bridge connecting this world to one beyond it.
Gurdjieff would have agreed on something way back in the now Gobi Desert, but in Vajrayana Buddhism, Shambhala is another story, very connected with King Gesar of Tibet (14th C) and an enlightened mandala of associated Buddhist activists, warrior saints capable of liberating the world. Legend is that when technology overwhelms and threatens the very continuity of human existence as we know it, the King of Shambhala will be reborn to master the technologies with light technology and save the human world. Legend has long said that it would be a reincarnation of Dudjom Rinpoche - with his disciples. In the Nyingma no one would disagree with that. The Nyingma termas have you practice being Gesar as a reincarnation of Padmasambhava, of whom Dudjom Rinpoche is the living representative for our age - still.
As the chief dancer of King Gesar as Padmasambhava, for 15 years, I can tell you that there's some implicit faith that the Nyingma lamas carry the connection to the promised land of Shambhala not as mythic remains in the deserts of Central Asia nor in the depths of the Himalayas - but in a hyperdimension that becomes available when it's possible to save world culture from within. --Robert Bruce Newman
The last volume of Trungpa's collected writings begins with the book: Shambhala, The Sacred Path of the Warrior. The first part is: How to be a Warrior. The first chapter is: Creating an Enlightened Society. Part Two is: Sacredness, the Warrior's World. The first chapter is: Now. The second chapter is: Discovering Magic. The next chapter is: How to Invoke Magic. Part 3 is: Authentic Presence. I believe it discusses the enlightened king. The last chapter of the book is called: the Shambhala Lineage.
The next book in volume 8 is: Great Eastern Sun; the Wisdom of Shambhala. It discusses the five qualities of the [spiritual] warrior: Profound; Brilliant; Just; Powerful; and All-Victorious. This book is dedicated to Gesar of Ling. Personally I found this book unreadable, too overrun by his presentation of himself as king. But in general all this work of his brings the Shambhala myth to life in our times, magnificantly, full of a brilliant vision not to be found under the Gobi desert. He simply believed and manifested that he was of the line of the enlightened kings of Shambhala (rigzdens, lineage or power holders), of which a future incarnation of Dudjom Rinpoche is prophesized to be the last.
As the chief dancer of King Gesar as Padmasambhava, for 15 years, I can tell you that there's some implicit faith that the Nyingma lamas carry the connection to the promised land of Shambhala not as mythic remains in the deserts of Central Asia nor in the depths of the Himalayas - but in a hyperdimension that becomes available when it's possible to save world culture from within. --Robert Bruce Newman
The last volume of Trungpa's collected writings begins with the book: Shambhala, The Sacred Path of the Warrior. The first part is: How to be a Warrior. The first chapter is: Creating an Enlightened Society. Part Two is: Sacredness, the Warrior's World. The first chapter is: Now. The second chapter is: Discovering Magic. The next chapter is: How to Invoke Magic. Part 3 is: Authentic Presence. I believe it discusses the enlightened king. The last chapter of the book is called: the Shambhala Lineage.
The next book in volume 8 is: Great Eastern Sun; the Wisdom of Shambhala. It discusses the five qualities of the [spiritual] warrior: Profound; Brilliant; Just; Powerful; and All-Victorious. This book is dedicated to Gesar of Ling. Personally I found this book unreadable, too overrun by his presentation of himself as king. But in general all this work of his brings the Shambhala myth to life in our times, magnificantly, full of a brilliant vision not to be found under the Gobi desert. He simply believed and manifested that he was of the line of the enlightened kings of Shambhala (rigzdens, lineage or power holders), of which a future incarnation of Dudjom Rinpoche is prophesized to be the last.
Western Spin on Buddhist Mystique
Shambhala holds its secrets tightly. For many centuries, legends of the deep mysteries of the East leaked into the Western world and were met with wonder, awe and the projection of a cultural gloss that was not inherent to the original practice or myths. Westerners made the journey to the East seeking that which though based on a lived reality was buried in a gloss that had more to do with the seekers' expectations than any civilization that ever actually existed. That is not to say there weren't marvelous spiritual teachings to be found in India, Nepal, Tibet and the Gobi regions.
However, they have been misconstrued by occultists, Theosophists, NAZIs, spiritual wannabees, channels, New Agers, and a variety of "Ascended Masters" groups who conveniently define what Shambhala means to suit their tastes. Still, expeditions were mounted on false expectations, which complicated finding the goal -- the ultimate source of wisdom and hidden world governance. Maybe part of Shambhala's magic is the ability to cast a spell of invisibility around its true heart. The role of the Shambhala legend has often been as political as spiritual. By the late 1800's Russia, Japan and China were vying to annex Tibet and the Gobi. Trading companies encouraged their penetration. Pseudo-scientific ideas made them the holy grail of anthropology and archaeology. Wars were fought based on these notions and great nations were influenced in their crucial decisions.
However, they have been misconstrued by occultists, Theosophists, NAZIs, spiritual wannabees, channels, New Agers, and a variety of "Ascended Masters" groups who conveniently define what Shambhala means to suit their tastes. Still, expeditions were mounted on false expectations, which complicated finding the goal -- the ultimate source of wisdom and hidden world governance. Maybe part of Shambhala's magic is the ability to cast a spell of invisibility around its true heart. The role of the Shambhala legend has often been as political as spiritual. By the late 1800's Russia, Japan and China were vying to annex Tibet and the Gobi. Trading companies encouraged their penetration. Pseudo-scientific ideas made them the holy grail of anthropology and archaeology. Wars were fought based on these notions and great nations were influenced in their crucial decisions.
Silk Road to Shambhala
Misconceptions about the East are as old as time, but they ramped up in the Enlightenment era. The Theosophical syncretism of Madame Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine, the spiritual mashup of the multi-volumed "Life & Teachings of the Masters of the Far East," and the ramblings of a British postman in the Lobsang Rampa tales created a set of 'classics' that could hardly be farther from the truth. Today we laugh at tales of opening the Third Eye with a bamboo shoot.
Artist Nicholas Roerich tried to immortalized its felt-sense in numerous paintings of the noble heights. His Nazi mentors sought the root of the so-called Aryan race more than primordial wisdom they also hoped to turn to their metaphysical advantage. Though spiritual and magical, the culture the westerners found was bound to be radically different than colonialist fantasies about it.
Terms such as enlightenment, self-realization and God-realization were bandied about as if people knew what that meant. Some advocated physical austerities, marathon meditation, kundalini, breathwork, others absolute mental concentration, and every combination thereof does exist in some sect or cult. But Shambhala is more than a place, or culture or wisdom way. It is a utopian vision of spiritual perfection, protection, and a deal with death.
Irrational Geographic
Edwin Bernbaum, in his book The Way to Shambhala, states:
Of all the regions of Central Asia, the Tarim Basin southwest of Turpan . . . comes closest in size and shape to Tibetan descriptions of Shambhala. A huge oval-shaped area enclosed by the Kunlun, Pamir, and Tien Shan ranges, it could be viewed as an enormous lotus blossom surrounded by a ring of snow mountains. The small kingdoms that have existed side by side in the numerous oases sprinkled around the fringes of the basin may well have provided the model for the ninety-six principalities of the outer region of Shambhala. Until shortly before the Kalachakra reached India and Tibet, Buddhism had been flourishing in the Tarim Basin for nearly eight hundred years. During part of that time, caravans following the silk route to China had brought the outside influences of Manicheism and Nestorian Christianity to bear on the development of Buddhist art thought in the area.
Shambhala may have corresponded historically to the Tarim Basin as a whole or to one the major oases such as Yarkand, Kashgar, or Khotan. Some scholars have singled out Khotan the largest and most fertile oasis on the southern rim of the basin. Watered by melting snows of the Kunlun Mountains, it supported a thriving center of Buddhist learning, a people who loved music and culture, and a school of painting that impressed the Chinese and influenced Tibetan art. According to an old Khotanese tradition, an Indian prince of the third century B.C., who was blinded by rivals, fled his homeland to cross the intervening mountains and found a local dynasty in Khotan. Archeological finds show that Indians did, in fact, colonize the oasis around that time. According to a Tibetan legend about the founding of Shambhala, a member of Buddha’s clan, called Shakya Shambha, was forced by enemies to flee north from India. After crossing many mountains, he came to a land that the conquered and that later became known after him as “Shambhala.” Because of its similarity, the Tibetan legend may have come from the Khotanese tradition, suggesting a possible link between the hidden kingdom and Khotan.
Artist Nicholas Roerich tried to immortalized its felt-sense in numerous paintings of the noble heights. His Nazi mentors sought the root of the so-called Aryan race more than primordial wisdom they also hoped to turn to their metaphysical advantage. Though spiritual and magical, the culture the westerners found was bound to be radically different than colonialist fantasies about it.
Terms such as enlightenment, self-realization and God-realization were bandied about as if people knew what that meant. Some advocated physical austerities, marathon meditation, kundalini, breathwork, others absolute mental concentration, and every combination thereof does exist in some sect or cult. But Shambhala is more than a place, or culture or wisdom way. It is a utopian vision of spiritual perfection, protection, and a deal with death.
Irrational Geographic
Edwin Bernbaum, in his book The Way to Shambhala, states:
Of all the regions of Central Asia, the Tarim Basin southwest of Turpan . . . comes closest in size and shape to Tibetan descriptions of Shambhala. A huge oval-shaped area enclosed by the Kunlun, Pamir, and Tien Shan ranges, it could be viewed as an enormous lotus blossom surrounded by a ring of snow mountains. The small kingdoms that have existed side by side in the numerous oases sprinkled around the fringes of the basin may well have provided the model for the ninety-six principalities of the outer region of Shambhala. Until shortly before the Kalachakra reached India and Tibet, Buddhism had been flourishing in the Tarim Basin for nearly eight hundred years. During part of that time, caravans following the silk route to China had brought the outside influences of Manicheism and Nestorian Christianity to bear on the development of Buddhist art thought in the area.
Shambhala may have corresponded historically to the Tarim Basin as a whole or to one the major oases such as Yarkand, Kashgar, or Khotan. Some scholars have singled out Khotan the largest and most fertile oasis on the southern rim of the basin. Watered by melting snows of the Kunlun Mountains, it supported a thriving center of Buddhist learning, a people who loved music and culture, and a school of painting that impressed the Chinese and influenced Tibetan art. According to an old Khotanese tradition, an Indian prince of the third century B.C., who was blinded by rivals, fled his homeland to cross the intervening mountains and found a local dynasty in Khotan. Archeological finds show that Indians did, in fact, colonize the oasis around that time. According to a Tibetan legend about the founding of Shambhala, a member of Buddha’s clan, called Shakya Shambha, was forced by enemies to flee north from India. After crossing many mountains, he came to a land that the conquered and that later became known after him as “Shambhala.” Because of its similarity, the Tibetan legend may have come from the Khotanese tradition, suggesting a possible link between the hidden kingdom and Khotan.
Mountainous Mystique
In 880 BC, the Buddha is reputed to have relayed the Kalachakra Tantra – a complex system of philosophy and meditation for attaining enlightenment - to sect of followers in Andhra, India. This document, later adopted by Tibetan Buddhists and elaborated upon in a series of subsequent manuscripts, speaks in depth of a kingdom called Shambhala – an paradise where only most spiritually resplendent of beings can reside. Though the texts depict Shambhala as physical city-state – one with a lotus-shaped perimeter divided into 96 districts and ruled over by a specific chronology of kings – they also maintain that it is separated from the tangible world by a spiritual boundary. As the Dalai Lama stated in 1981, “[If] you lay out a map and search for Shambhala, it is not findable; rather it seems to be a pure land which, except for those whose karma and merit have ripened, cannot be immediately seen or visited.”
It is the goal of all Tibetan lamas to one day, after years of intense study and reflection, to perceive the awesome grandness of this ethereal oasis through the achievement of enlightenment and the cycle of rebirth. Nonetheless, that did stop rumors of Shambhala’s supposed material riches from slowly seeping into Western Europe, due to increased academic interest in Buddhism in the mid-18th Century. Much like the Spanish conquistadors led astray legends of the golden city of El Dorado or the Fountain of Youth, embellished tales of Shambhalah as a lost city populated by god-kings, oracles and an endless caches of jewels quickly spread through less discerning circles.
Would-be treasure hunters, however, were quickly felled by contradictory accounts of the holy city’s location. Various sources-including some from within Tibet itself-placed Shambhalah at different points throughout Central Asia. Nepal, the Gobi Sea, India and Siberia were, at one time, all considered likely prospects.
Such gossip only served to deepen the legend’s mystique to fringe groups of esoteric devotees and occultists, who fixated on the idea of Shambhalah as the last refuge of a lost civilization or intelligences from beyond the plane of human existence. In Germany, some proto-Nazi organizations, such as the Ariosophists, speculated that Shambhalah was the birthplace of Aryan race and viewed it as an analog to the Asgard of Norse mythology.
Drawing from these conclusions, Heinrich Himmler deployed as an SS unit to Tibet in May 1938 to not only collect data and artifacts that supported those views on Aryan lineage, but also substantiate rumors of Shambhalah’s existence. Within six months, the squad completed the arduous task of reaching the Tibetan capital of Lhasa - but would eventually fail to locate their mythical conquest before returning to Germany.
Luckily, the Tibetan manuscripts themselves do provide some insights - in the form of prophecy - as to when Shambhalah will be revealed once and for all time. In an interesting counterpoint to the Bible’s Book of Revelation, the Kalachakra Tantrathat states that the world of man will eventually degenerate through war, greed and moral corruption. At that point, a tyrannical ruler will ascertain the kingdom’s true location and invade, only to be fought off and defeated by the 32nd King of Shambhlah, Rudra Cakrin, and his army of the pure hearted. In doing so, the world will be ushered into an age of enlightenment and unprecedented global unity.
Not so luckily for us, however, is the fact that the Tibetan calendar places the date of this transformation in the year 2425.
Shambhala of the Heart
Maybe each of us have a Shambhala of the Heart that is unique.
Nicholas Roerich (1874-1947) was a Russian painter, writer and spiritual teacher. Nicholas and his wife Helena Reorich were co-founders of the theosophicak Agni Yoga Society. Born in pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg, Russia, he lived around the world until his death in Punjab, India. Trained as an artist and a lawyer, his interests lay in literatury, philosophy, archeology and especially art. To his credit, he was a philosopher, author, explorer, member of the Theosophical Society, member of the League of Nations.
In 1929Nicholas Roerich was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by the University of Paris. (He received a second nomination in 1935.) His concern for peace led to his creation of the Pax cultura (the motto of the cultural artifact protection movement, and is symbolized by a maroon on white emblem consisting of three solid circles in a surrounding circle).
Roerich strove to link all scientific and creative disciplines to advance true culture and international peace, citing the power of art and beauty to accomplish such a feat. In honor of his efforts, in 1935 The Roerich Peace Pact was established, which obligated nations to respect museums, cathedrals, universities and libraries as they did hospitals, and became part of the United Nations organizational charter.
Between 1925 and 1928, he led an expedition from India, through Tibet, to Outer Mongolia and the Altai Mountain region in Siberia, north of East Turkistan - a journey which covered 15,500 miles across 35 of the world’s highest mountain passes.The purported aim was to study plants, ethnology, and languages, and to paint. His primary purpose, however, was to find Shambhala.
To reach the fabled land, one needed to perform an enormous amount of spiritual practices. In other words, the journey to Shambhala was actually an inner quest.
Although some will make claim that Shambhalla exists only within your heart and mind there are those that would differ. The idea that Shambhalla is located in the material world is firmly rooted in Tibetan tradition. However the opinions as to its location differ considerably.Shambhalla is part of our soul's memory, thus it is imbedded in our collective consciousness. Through the Ages, around the world, stories have been passed down about this mythological kingdom. The mythical paradise of Shambhalla, sometimes thought to be in a parallel world or dimension , is a land of a thousand names. The Hindus call it "Paradesha" or "Aryavarsha", the land from which the Vedas came from; the Buddhists "Shambala"; the Chinese know it as " Hsi Tien", the Western Paradise of Hsi Wang Mu, the Royal Mother of the West; the Russians knew it as "Belovodye" and "Janaidar", the Christians and the Jews the "Garden of Eden". In the esoteric literature it has become known as "Shangri-La", "Agarttha" or "the Land of the Living".It has the name of "Forbidden Land"; "the Land of White Waters"; the "Land of Radiant Spirits"; the "Land of Living Fire"; the "Land of the Living Gods" and the "Land of Wonders". The people of Tibet and Mongolia believe that Shambhala is a hidden kingdom with a community where perfect and semiperfect beings live, guiding the evolution of mankind. It is the gateway between the physical and spiritual world, hidden from the non-believer by a psychic barrier. Beneath the land of Shambhalla lies a cavernous underworld.
New Age
In esoteric circles Shambhala is the home of the Ascended Masters, Secret Chiefs, or the Great White Brotherhood – the hidden hand behind the formation and guidance of Freemasons, the Sufis, the Knights Templars, the Rosicrucians, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the Theosophical Society – both Wallace and Roerich were members of the Theosophical Society, this is how Wallace met his Master. Roerich seems to have been an emissary of sorts for the Great White Brotherhood – even bringing a mysterious stone to guide the League of Nations on behalf of the Masters. According to legend, the 'Chintamani Stone' was believed to be a part of a magical meteorite from a solar system in the Orion constellation. This Chintamani Stone is sent wherever a spiritual mission vital to humanity is set up, and is returned when that mission is completed.
A mysterious stone was indeed mentioned by Wallace in one of his typical 'Dear Guru' letters to Roerich: “And I have thought of the admonition 'Await the Stone.' We await the Stone and we welcome you again to this glorious land of destiny.” Not surprisingly, occultists regard Roerich as the guiding hand behind the placement of America's Great Seal and the All-Seeing Eye, and matter-of-factly state that it was at Roerich's insistence that Wallace approach Roosevelt about finally printing the All-Seeing Eye on the dollar bill.
Henry Wallace was well versed in occult knowledge himself. In a letter to Roerich he stated, “the search – whether it be for the lost word of Masonry, or the Holy Chalice, or the potentialities of the age to come – is the one supremely worthwhile objective. All else is karmic duty. But surely everyone is a potential Galahad? So may we strive for the Chalice and the flame above it.” The chalice he refers to, according to Michael Howard, is the Holy Grail, regarded by the Rosicrucians as a feminine symbol for perfection, and 'the age to come' is the dawning of the Aquarian Age. This I agree with, and further, "the age to come" is synonymous with Aleister Crowley's "New Age of Horus" – a Roerich occult contemporary. It seems that Novus Ordo Seclorum and Annuit Coeptis (He has blessed our beginning) has even deeper occult meanings than we're led to believe.
Nicholas Roerich (1874-1947) was a Russian painter, writer and spiritual teacher. Nicholas and his wife Helena Reorich were co-founders of the theosophicak Agni Yoga Society. Born in pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg, Russia, he lived around the world until his death in Punjab, India. Trained as an artist and a lawyer, his interests lay in literatury, philosophy, archeology and especially art. To his credit, he was a philosopher, author, explorer, member of the Theosophical Society, member of the League of Nations.
In 1929Nicholas Roerich was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by the University of Paris. (He received a second nomination in 1935.) His concern for peace led to his creation of the Pax cultura (the motto of the cultural artifact protection movement, and is symbolized by a maroon on white emblem consisting of three solid circles in a surrounding circle).
Roerich strove to link all scientific and creative disciplines to advance true culture and international peace, citing the power of art and beauty to accomplish such a feat. In honor of his efforts, in 1935 The Roerich Peace Pact was established, which obligated nations to respect museums, cathedrals, universities and libraries as they did hospitals, and became part of the United Nations organizational charter.
Between 1925 and 1928, he led an expedition from India, through Tibet, to Outer Mongolia and the Altai Mountain region in Siberia, north of East Turkistan - a journey which covered 15,500 miles across 35 of the world’s highest mountain passes.The purported aim was to study plants, ethnology, and languages, and to paint. His primary purpose, however, was to find Shambhala.
To reach the fabled land, one needed to perform an enormous amount of spiritual practices. In other words, the journey to Shambhala was actually an inner quest.
Although some will make claim that Shambhalla exists only within your heart and mind there are those that would differ. The idea that Shambhalla is located in the material world is firmly rooted in Tibetan tradition. However the opinions as to its location differ considerably.Shambhalla is part of our soul's memory, thus it is imbedded in our collective consciousness. Through the Ages, around the world, stories have been passed down about this mythological kingdom. The mythical paradise of Shambhalla, sometimes thought to be in a parallel world or dimension , is a land of a thousand names. The Hindus call it "Paradesha" or "Aryavarsha", the land from which the Vedas came from; the Buddhists "Shambala"; the Chinese know it as " Hsi Tien", the Western Paradise of Hsi Wang Mu, the Royal Mother of the West; the Russians knew it as "Belovodye" and "Janaidar", the Christians and the Jews the "Garden of Eden". In the esoteric literature it has become known as "Shangri-La", "Agarttha" or "the Land of the Living".It has the name of "Forbidden Land"; "the Land of White Waters"; the "Land of Radiant Spirits"; the "Land of Living Fire"; the "Land of the Living Gods" and the "Land of Wonders". The people of Tibet and Mongolia believe that Shambhala is a hidden kingdom with a community where perfect and semiperfect beings live, guiding the evolution of mankind. It is the gateway between the physical and spiritual world, hidden from the non-believer by a psychic barrier. Beneath the land of Shambhalla lies a cavernous underworld.
New Age
In esoteric circles Shambhala is the home of the Ascended Masters, Secret Chiefs, or the Great White Brotherhood – the hidden hand behind the formation and guidance of Freemasons, the Sufis, the Knights Templars, the Rosicrucians, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the Theosophical Society – both Wallace and Roerich were members of the Theosophical Society, this is how Wallace met his Master. Roerich seems to have been an emissary of sorts for the Great White Brotherhood – even bringing a mysterious stone to guide the League of Nations on behalf of the Masters. According to legend, the 'Chintamani Stone' was believed to be a part of a magical meteorite from a solar system in the Orion constellation. This Chintamani Stone is sent wherever a spiritual mission vital to humanity is set up, and is returned when that mission is completed.
A mysterious stone was indeed mentioned by Wallace in one of his typical 'Dear Guru' letters to Roerich: “And I have thought of the admonition 'Await the Stone.' We await the Stone and we welcome you again to this glorious land of destiny.” Not surprisingly, occultists regard Roerich as the guiding hand behind the placement of America's Great Seal and the All-Seeing Eye, and matter-of-factly state that it was at Roerich's insistence that Wallace approach Roosevelt about finally printing the All-Seeing Eye on the dollar bill.
Henry Wallace was well versed in occult knowledge himself. In a letter to Roerich he stated, “the search – whether it be for the lost word of Masonry, or the Holy Chalice, or the potentialities of the age to come – is the one supremely worthwhile objective. All else is karmic duty. But surely everyone is a potential Galahad? So may we strive for the Chalice and the flame above it.” The chalice he refers to, according to Michael Howard, is the Holy Grail, regarded by the Rosicrucians as a feminine symbol for perfection, and 'the age to come' is the dawning of the Aquarian Age. This I agree with, and further, "the age to come" is synonymous with Aleister Crowley's "New Age of Horus" – a Roerich occult contemporary. It seems that Novus Ordo Seclorum and Annuit Coeptis (He has blessed our beginning) has even deeper occult meanings than we're led to believe.
Foreign Myths
Alexander Berzin
November 1996, revised May and December 2003 [
Introduction
Many foreign myths have grown around the legend of Shambhala found in the Kalachakra literature. Some were spread to win military or political support, such as the identification of Russia, Mongolia, or Japan as Shambhala. Others appeared within occult movements and mixed Buddhist ideas with concepts from other systems of belief. Several even spawned expeditions to find the fabled land.
Two camps arose among the occult versions. One side regarded Shambhala as a utopian paradise whose people will save the world. The British novelist, James Hilton, fits into this camp. His 1933 work, Lost Horizon, describes Shangrila as a spiritual paradise found in an inaccessible, hidden valley in Tibet. Shangrila is undoubtedly a romantic corruption of Shambhala. The other side depicted Shambhala as a land of malevolent power. Several postwar accounts of the connection between Nazism and the Occult present this interpretation. It is important not to confuse either of these distortions with Buddhism itself. Let us trace the phenomenon.
Theosophy Madame Helena Blavatsky (1831-1891) was born in the Ukraine to Russian nobility. Endowed with extrasensory powers, she traveled the world in search of occult, secret teachings and spent many years on the Indian subcontinent. From 1867 to 1870, she studied Tibetan Buddhism with Indian masters, most likely from the Tibetan cultural regions of the Indian Himalayas, during her purported stay at Tashilhunpo Monastery in Tibet.
Blavatsky encountered Tibetan Buddhism at a time when European Oriental scholarship was still in its infancy and few translations or accounts were available. Further, she was able to learn only disjointed fragments of its vast teachings. In her private letters, she wrote that because the Western public at that time had little acquaintance with Tibetan Buddhism, she decided to translate and explain the basic terms with more popularly known concepts from Hinduism and the Occult. For example, she translated three of the four island-worlds (four continents) around Mount Meru as the sunken lost islands of Hyperborea, Lemuria, and Atlantis. Likewise, she presented the four humanoid races mentioned in the abhidharma and Kalachakra teachings (born from transformation, moisture and heat, eggs, and wombs) as the races of these island-worlds. Her belief that the esoteric teachings of all the world’s religions form one body of occult knowledge reinforced her decision to translate in this manner and she set out to demonstrate that in her writings.
Together with the American spiritualist Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, Madame Blavatsky founded the Theosophical Society in 1875 in New York. Its international headquarters moved to Madras, India, shortly thereafter. When her colleague Alfred Percy Sinnett identified Theosophy with esoteric Buddhism in Esoteric Buddhism (1883), Blavatsky refuted his claim. According to her posthumously published Letters of H. P. Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett, Blavatsky’s position was that Theosophy transmitted the “secret occult teachings of trans-Himalaya,” not the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism. Nevertheless, through her writings, the West first came to associate Shambhala with the Occult and many subsequently confused this connection with the actual teachings of Buddhism.
In 1888, Blavatsky mentioned Shambhala in her main work, The Secret Doctrine, the teachings for which she said she received telepathically from her teachers in Tibet. She wrote in a letter that although her teachers were reincarnate “byang-tzyoobs” or “tchang-chubs” (Tib. byang-chub, Skt. bodhisattva), she had called them “mahatmas” since that term was more familiar to the British in India.
The Tibetan source of the teachings in The Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky claimed, is The Stanzas of Dzyan, the first volume of commentaries to the seven secret folios of Kiu-te. “Kiu-te” transcribes the Tibetan “rgyud-sde,” meaning “tantra division,” which is the title of the first section of the Kangyur, the Tibetan translations of Buddha’s words. “Dzyan” transcribes the Sanskrit “dhyana” (Jap. zen), meaning mental stability. Blavatsky was aware that The Kalachakra Tantra was the first item in the tantra division of the Kangyur, since she mentioned that fact in one of her notes. She explained, however, that the seven secret folios were not actually part of the published Kiu-te, and thus we do not find anything similar to The Stanzas of Dzyan in that collection.
It is unclear to what extent Blavatsky actually studied the Kalachakra texts directly. The earliest Western material on the topic was an 1833 article entitled “Note on the Origins of the Kalachakra and Adi-Buddha Systems” by the Hungarian pioneer scholar Alexander Csomo de Körös (Körösi Csoma Sandor). De Körös compiled the first dictionary and grammar of Tibetan in a Western language, English, in 1834. Jakov Schmidt’s Tibetan-Russian Dictionary and Grammar soon followed in 1839. Most of Blavatsky’s familiarity with Kalachakra, however, came from the chapter entitled “The Kalachakra System” in Emil Schlagintweit’s Buddhism in Tibet (1863), as evidenced by her borrowing many passages from that book in her works. Following her translation principle, however, she rendered Shambhala in terms of similar concepts in Hinduism and the Occult.
The first English translation of The Vishnu Purana, by Horace Hayman Wallace, had appeared in 1864, three years before Blavatsky’s purported visit to Tibet. Accordingly, she explained Shambhala in terms of the Hindu presentation in this text: it is the village where the future messiah, Kalki Avatar, will appear. The Kalki, Blavatsky wrote, is “Vishnu, the Messiah on the White Horse of the Brahmins; Maitreya Buddha of the Buddhists; Sosiosh of the Parsis; and Jesus of the Christians.” She also claimed that Shankaracharya, the early ninth-century founder of Advaitya Vedanta, “still lives among the Brotherhood of Shamballa, beyond the Himalayas.”
Elsewhere, she wrote that when Lemuria sank, part of its people survived in Atlantis, while part of its elect migrated to the sacred island of “Shamballah” in the Gobi Desert. Neither the Kalachakra literature nor The Vishnu Purana, however, has any mention of Atlantis, Lemuria, Maitreya, or Sosiosh. The association of Shambhala with them, however, continued among Blavatsky’s followers.
Blavatsky’s placement of Shambhala in the Gobi Desert is not surprising since the Mongols, including the Buryat population of Siberia and the Kalmyks of the lower Volga region, were strong followers of Tibetan Buddhism, particularly its Kalachakra teachings. For centuries, Mongols everywhere have believed that Mongolia is the Northern Land of Shambhala and Blavatsky was undoubtedly acquainted with the Buryat and Kalmyk beliefs in Russia.
Blavatsky might also have received confirmation of her placement of Shambhala in the Gobi Desert from the writings of Csoma de Körös. In an 1825 letter, he wrote that Shambhala is like a Buddhist Jerusalem and lay between 45 and 50 degrees longitude. Although he felt that Shambhala would probably be found in the Kizilkum Desert in Kazakhstan, the Gobi also fell within the two longitudes. Others later would also locate it within these parameters, but either in East Turkistan (Xinjiang, Sinkiang) or the Altai Mountains.
Although Blavatsky herself never asserted that Shambhala was the source of The Secret Doctrine, several later Theosophists made this connection. Foremost among them was Alice Bailey in Letters on Occult Meditation (1922). Helena Roerich, in her Collected Letters (1935-1936), also wrote that Blavatsky was a messenger of the White Brotherhood from Shambhala. Moreover, she reported that in 1934 the Ruler of Shambhala had recalled to Tibet the mahatmas who had transmitted to Blavatsky the secret teachings.
Dorjiev’s Assertion of Russia as Shambhala The first major exploitation of the Shambhala legend for political purposes also involved Russia. Agvan Dorjiev (1854-1938) was a Buryat Mongol monk who studied in Lhasa and became the Master Debate Partner (Assistant Tutor) of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama. In the face of British and Chinese machinations for control of Tibet, he convinced the Dalai Lama to turn to Russia for military support. He did this by telling him that Russia was Shambhala and Czar Nicholas II was the reincarnation of Tsongkhapa, the founder of the Gelug tradition. Dorjiev went on several missions to the Russian Imperial Court, but was never able to secure any help. He was able, however, to convince the Czar to build a Kalachakra Temple in St. Petersburg.
The first public ceremony in the temple took place in 1913. It was a ritual for the long-life of the Romanov Dynasty on its 300th anniversary. According to Albert Grünwedel, the German explorer of Central Asia, in Der Weg nach Shambhala (The Way to Shambhala) (1915), Dorjiev spoke of the Romanov Dynasty as the descendants of the rulers of Shambhala.
[For more detail, see: Russian and Japanese Involvement with Pre-Communist Tibet: The Role of the Shambhala Legend.]
Mongolia, Japan, and Shambhala
The next political exploitation of the Shambhala legend occurred in Mongolia. Baron von Ungern-Sternberg, a German who lived in Russia, was an avid anti-Bolshevik. During the Civil War that followed the Russian Revolution of 1917, he fought in Siberia with the White Russian (Czarist) forces. With Japanese support, he successfully invaded Outer Mongolia in 1920 to free it from the Chinese. Notorious for his cruelty, Ungern slaughtered thousands of Chinese, collaborator Mongols, Russian Bolsheviks, and Jews, earning himself the nickname “Mad Baron.” Ungern believed that all Jews were Bolsheviks.
Sukhe Batur established the Mongolian Communist Provisional Government in Buryatia and led a Mongol army against Ungern. He rallied his troops by telling them that by fighting to free Mongolia from oppression, they would be reborn in the army of Shambhala. With the help of the Soviet Red Army, Sukhe Batur took Urga (Ulaan Baatar), the Mongolian capital, in late 1921. The People’s Republic of Mongolia was founded in 1924.
After the Japanese takeover of Inner Mongolia in 1937, Japan too exploited the Shambhala legend for political gain. To try to win the allegiance of the Mongols, it spread the propaganda that Japan was Shambhala.
[For more detail, see: Exploitation of the Shambhala Legend for Control of Mongolia.]
Ossendowski and Agharti In the 1922 book Beasts, Men and Gods, Ferdinand Ossendowski (1876–1945), a Polish scientist who spent most of his life in Russia, wrote of his recent travels in Outer Mongolia during the campaigns of Baron von Ungern-Sternberg. Ossendowski related that several Mongol lamas had told him of Agharti, an underground kingdom beneath Mongolia, ruled by the King of the World. In the future, when materialism will ruin the world, a terrible war will break out. At that time, the people of Agharti will come to the surface and help end the violence. Ossendowski reported that he convinced Ungern of his story and that, subsequently, Ungern twice sent missions to seek Agharti, led by Prince Poulzig. The missions were unsuccessful and the Prince never returned from the second expedition.
Kamil Gizycky was a Polish army engineer who also fought against the Bolsheviks in Siberia and then joined Ungern’s forces in Mongolia. He made no mention of Agharti in his account of the events of the time, Poprzez Urjanchej i Mongolie (Across Urankhai and Mongolia) (1929). Interestingly, he did relate that Ossendowski helped the Mad Baron by offering him the formula for making poison gas.
Although the Kalachakra texts never described Shambhala as an underground kingdom, Ossendowski’s report clearly parallels the Kalachakra account of the Kalki ruler of Shambhala coming to the aid of the world to end an apocalyptic war. The appearance here of Agharti, however, is noteworthy. The name does not appear in either the Kalachakra literature or the works of Madame Blavatsky.
The first appearance of Agarthi (Agharta, Asgartha, Agarthi, Agardhi) was in the French novel Les Fils de Dieu (The Sons of God), written in 1873 by Louis Jacolliot. Another French author, Joseph-Alexandre Saint-Yves d’Alveidre, popularized the Agharti legend in his 1886 novel Mission de l’Inde en Europe (Mission of India in Europe). There, he described it as an underground kingdom with a university that is a repository of secret knowledge. Originally located at Ayodhya India, it was moved to a secret location beneath the Himalayas 1800 years before the Common Era. Its king, a “mahatma,” guards its secrets and has not revealed them, since they would enable Antichrist forces to build powerful weapons. Once the evil forces have been destroyed, the mahatmas will reveal their secrets for the benefit of mankind.
Saint-Yves d’Alveidre may have in fact borrowed several elements of his story from the Kalachakra discussion of Shambhala. The number 1800 appears repeatedly as a motif in the Kalachakra literature and the classical texts do report that the leaders of Shambhala did possess the knowledge for building weapons to defeat the invader forces. Nevertheless, the two Frenchmen clearly wrote works of fiction.
In Ossendowski und die Wahrheit (Ossendowski and the Truth) (1925), the Swedish explorer of Tibet, Sven Hedin, dismissed Ossendowski’s claims of hearing of Agharti from Mongolian lamas. He wrote that the Polish scientist had taken the myth of Agharti from Saint-Yves d’Alveidre and molded it to his story in order to appeal to a German reading public familiar to a certain degree with the Occult. Hedin acknowledged, however, that Tibet and the Dalai Lama were the protectors of secret knowledge.
An additional explanation, however, could be that Ossendowski used the Agharti myth to gain Ungern’s favor. Ungern would undoubtedly have identified the materialistic Antichrist forces, which Agharti would help to defeat, as the Bolsheviks, against whom he was fighting. Since Sukhe Batur was rallying his troops with the promise of Shambhala, Ungern could similarly use the Agharti story for his own gain. If this were the case, we could trace from here the version of the Shambhala legend that described Shambhala in an unfavorable light.
Roerich, Shambhala, and Agni Yoga Nikolai Roerich (1874 – 1947), a Russian painter and ardent student of Theosophy, had been on the building committee for the St. Petersburg Kalachakra Temple and had designed its stained glass windows. His wife, Helena, was the translator of Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine into Russian. Between 1925 and 1928, he led an expedition from India, through Tibet, to Outer Mongolia and the Altai Mountain region in Siberia, north of East Turkistan. The purported aim was to study plants, ethnology, and languages, and to paint. His primary purpose, however, was to find Shambhala.
According to several accounts, Roerich’s mission was to return to Shambhala a chintamani (wish-granting gem) entrusted to him by the League of Nations. His group claimed to have located Shambhala in the Altai region. Even nowadays, Roerich’s followers continue his conviction that the Altai Mountains are a great spiritual center, connected in some way with Shambhala.
Roerich’s search for Shambhala was perhaps partly inspired by Grünwedel’s Der Weg nach Shambhala, which contained a translation of The Guidebook to Shambhala (Tib. Sham-bha-la’i lam-yig), written in the mid-eighteenth century by the Third Panchen Lama (1738-1780). The Panchen Lama, however, explained that the physical journey to Shambhala could only take one so far. To reach the fabled land, one needed to perform an enormous amount of spiritual practices. In other words, the journey to Shambhala was actually an inner quest. This explanation, however, did not seem to deter intrepid adventurers such as the Roerichs from trying to reach Shambhala by merely trekking there.
In 1929, the Roerichs created Agni Yoga, incorporating the Theosophical teachings as its basis. Perhaps they also followed Blavatsky’s model of translating Buddhist terminology with images and terms that were more familiar from Hinduism and the Occult. The Roerichs, after all, asserted that Shambhala was the source of all Indian teachings. They also called its rulers “the Lords of Fire who will fight the Lords of Darkness.”
Agni is the Sanskrit word for fire – specifically, the sacred purificatory fire of the Vedas. Accordingly, Roerich explained that the masters of Shambhala harness its powers for purification. Practitioners of Agni Yoga choose Buddha, Jesus, or Muhammad as a guide for spiritual practice. Concentrating on their chosen guides, they pray for peace while performing simple visualizations of the purification of obstacles.
In Buddhist tantra practice, meditators conclude intensive retreats with so-called “fire pujas.” In these rituals, they offer several grains and butter into a fire to purge and pacify any obstacles that might arise from mistakes made during their meditation. In the flames, they visualize the fire-deity Agni, a figure clearly borrowed from Hinduism. Roerich may have witnessed such pujas either at the Kalachakra Temple in St. Petersburg or during his travels in the Mongol regions and derived his idea of Agni Yoga from it.
Thus, the primary association that Roerich made for Shambhala was as a place of peace. In Shambhala: In Search of a New Era (1930), Roerich described Shambhala as a holy city north of India. Its ruler reveals the teachings of Maitreya Buddha for universal peace. Each tradition describes Shambhala according to its own understanding and thus the legend of the Holy Grail, for example, is a version of the Shambhala story. Constantine the Great, Chinggis Khan (Genghis Khan), and Prester John are among those who have received messages of teachings from “the Mysterious Spiritual Abode and Brotherhood in the heart of Asia.”
Roerich even coined the term “Shambhala Warriors,” later adopted in the 1980s by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, a Tibetan Incarnate Lama of the Karma Kagyu and Nyingma lineages who adapted and expressed Buddhist ideas in a modern American vernacular. Trungpa wrote, however, that his idea of the Shambhala warrior had nothing to do with the Kalachakra teachings or with Shambhala itself. It was a metaphor for someone striving for self-improvement for the benefit of others. Roerich, on the other hand, used the term for “the Brothers of Humanity,” who will bring world peace from Shambhala. The concept of “Kalachakra for World Peace,” associated with the Kalachakra initiations given by His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama in the West since 1981, is probably also a legacy of Roerich’s ideas.
After returning from Asia, Roerich traveled to New York where, in 1929, he was instrumental in promulgating the Roerich Pact, an international treaty for the protection of world cultural monuments. The banner of peace Roerich proposed had three circles, which, he explained, are found in all spiritual traditions, including that of the “Rigden Jyelpos,” the Kings of Shambhala. Nothing like this, however, is found in the Kalachakra texts. Numerous countries around the world signed the pact, including the United Sates in 1935. The symbol of three circles was later adopted as an insignia worn on armbands by physically disabled persons indicating their need for gentle treatment.
In Shambhala: In Search of a New Era, Roerich also hinted at a similarity between Shambhala and Thule, the hidden land at the North Pole, which, as we shall see below, inspired the Germans in their quest for a secret land. He also mentioned the association of Shambhala with the underground city of Agharti (Agarthi), reached through tunnels under the Himalayas. Its inhabitants will emerge at the “time of purification.” In her Collected Letters (1935 – 1936), Helena Roerich pointed out that Saint-Yves d’Alveidre had mistakenly identified Shambhala with Agharti, but they are not the same place.
Jocelyn Godwin, in Arktos, The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism and Nazi Survival (1993), identified agni power with vril. Vril is the psychokinetic power protected by the inhabitants of Thule, which the Nazis tried to obtain for helping to strengthen their Aryan superrace. Roerich, however, never made this association.
[See: The Nazi Connection with Shambhala and Tibet.]
Steiner, Anthroposophy, and Shambhala As a counterpoint to Blavatsky and Roerich’s presentations of Shambhala as a benevolent land that will help establish world peace, alternative versions emphasized the apocalyptic aspect of the legend. They associated Shambhala primarily with the destructive forces of regeneration that will do away with old outmoded ways of thinking and will establish a new world order of peace. Thus, the destructive force of Shambhala is ultimately benevolent. These versions also had their roots in Theosophy.
In 1884, Dr. Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden founded the German Theosophical Society. After an initial failure, Annie Besant invited Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), an Austrian spiritualist, to reestablish it in 1902. Steiner left the society in 1909 primarily because he could not agree with Besant and C. W. Leadbetter’s declaration of the sixteen-year-old Krishnamurti as the messiah. In a series of lectures given in Berlin and Munich in 1910 and 1911, Steiner taught what some have labeled “a Christianized version of Theosophy.” Steiner, however, claimed that his teachings derived from his clairvoyant reading of “the akashic records,” not from Theosophy.
Akasha is the Sanskrit word for space, and these occult records purportedly contain all the wisdom of mankind. The Kalachakra texts refer to the fully purified subtlest level of mental activity that is the basis for a Buddha’s omniscient awareness as “the space vajra pervasive with space.” They do not present it, however, as a record of all knowledge that can be tapped by psychic means.
According to Steiner, Christ the true prophet will reveal the Land of Shamballa (Shambhala) with his Second Coming. Shambhala, which disappeared long ago, is the seat of Maitreya. In a lecture entitled “Maitreya – Christ oder Antichrist (Maitreya – Christ or Antichrist),” Steiner explained that “whatever will come from the lips of Maitreya will come through the power of Christ.”
Steiner emphasized the conflict between good and evil, as personified by Lucifer and Ahriman. Blavatsky had already differentiated Lucifer from Satan. According to The Secret Doctrine, Lucifer is the “Light-Bearer,” the “Astral Light” within each of our minds that is both our tempter and liberator from pure animalism. It serves to both create and destroy, and manifests in sexual passion. Although Lucifer can uplift humanity to a higher plane, the Latin scholastics had transformed him into the purely evil Satan.
Blavatsky also wrote about the Zoroastrian dualism and struggle between Ahura Mazda and Ahriman, as the forces of light and darkness. Steiner, however, went a step further than Blavatsky and transformed the dualism into an antagonism between Lucifer and Ahriman. In Occult Science, An Outline, Steiner characterized Lucifer as a being of light, the bridge between Man and God, bringing us closer to Christ. The “Children of Lucifer,” then, are all those who strive for knowledge and wisdom. Ahriman, in contrast, leads mankind downward to its lower, material, carnal, animalistic nature.
Steiner called himself a Luciferian and, by his logic, Maitreya is the Antichrist. Since people have perverted Christ’s actual teachings, Maitreya, as the Antichrist, will come from Shambhala and purge the world of their blemish and teach the true message of Christ. In 1913, Steiner’s followers founded the Anthroposophical Society, although Steiner himself did not join until he reestablished it in 1923.
According to The Kalachakra Tantra, Raudrachakrin, the twenty-fifth Kalki ruler of Shambhala, will defeat the non-Indic invaders who will try to conquer the world. These invaders will follow the teachings of a line of eight prophets: Adam, Abraham, Noah, Moses, Jesus, Mani, Muhammad, and Mahdi. Historical analysis suggests that the model for these invaders were the late tenth-century Ismaili Shiite forces of Multan (present-day Pakistan), an ally of the Egyptian Fatimid Empire. The Fatimids, with their Mahdi messiah, sought to conquer the Islamic world before the predicted apocalypse and the end of the world five hundred years after Muhammad. People throughout the region lived in great fear of an invasion, including the Buddhist-Hindu-Muslim region of Afghanistan where the Kalachakra historical teachings likely developed. The predicted conflict and defeat of the invaders, however, was a spiritual metaphor for the internal battle against fear and ignorance. It presented an effective method for the terrorized people at that time to overcome their strongly felt anxieties.
[See: The Kalachakra Presentation of the Prophets of the Non-Indic Invaders.]
Steiner was probably unaware of the historical context and metaphoric meaning of the Shambhala legend. Thus, he and several others in the following decades took Shambhala as the seat of spiritual power from which the reform of Christianity will arise. Steiner’s emphasis on Maitreya and Shambhala as the real sources of Christian reform in the future probably also reflects his dismay at the Theosophist promotion of Krishnamurti as the new savior.
[See: Holy Wars in Buddhism and Islam: The Myth of Shambhala.]
The Kalachakra texts do not even mention the teachings of Christianity. However, they do indicate methods for Hindus and Muslims to find alternative meanings of doctrines in their own religions that would allow them to form a united spiritual front with Buddhists to face the terrors of an invasion. They even point out teachings that Buddha gave which parallel some of the Hindu and Muslim assertions. If followers of those religions were interested, they could use their own beliefs as stepping-stones for reaching the Buddhist path. Nevertheless, the Kalachakra texts do not assert that the Buddhist teachings contain the true meanings of Hinduism or Islam. Nor do they in any way assert that Shambhala will be the source of reform that will bring people back to the true doctrines of the founders of those two religions, let alone back to the pure teachings of Christ.
[See: Religious Conversion in Shambhala.]
Alice Bailey and the “Shambhala Force” The British Theosophist Alice Bailey (1880-1949) was a medium who claimed to channel and receive occult letters from a Tibetan master. After losing her battle with Annie Besant for leadership of the Theosophical movement, she founded the Lucifer Trust in 1920 in the United States. Originally calling her trust the Tibetan Lodge, she changed its name once more in 1922 to the Lucis Trust. Her lectures and writings spawned the New Age movement. She called the New Age both the Aquarian Age and the Age of Maitreya.
In Initiations, Human and Solar (1922), Letters on Occult Meditation (1922), A Treatise on Cosmic Fire (1925), and A Treatise on White Magic (1934), Bailey wrote extensively about “the Shambhalla Force.” Reminiscent of Roerich, she took Shambhala to be “the seat of Cosmic Fire,” which is a force for purification. Rather than conceiving of this force as benevolent agni, however, she followed Steiner’s lead and associated it with Lucifer. Thus, she spoke of it as a source of destructive power to eject degenerate forms of teachings and to establish a pure New Age.
The Shambhala Force, Bailey explained, is the highly volatile energy of self-will. In itself, it is extremely destructive and can be the source of “Evil.” When seen as the Divine Will, however, initiates can harness it for the ultimate “Good.” A “Hierarchy” in Shambhala, headed by Maitreya, protects the Force and, at the proper time, will initiate the ripe into “the Mysteries of the Ages,” “the Plan.” One wonders if her ideas inspired the Star Wars vision of “the Force,” as a power that can be harnessed for good or evil, and which is guarded by a brotherhood of Jedi Warriors.
Like Steiner, Bailey adapted the concept not only of Lucifer, but also of the Antichrist, and this time associated it with the Shambhala Force. Borrowing Theosophical concepts, she said that the Shambhala Force had made its presence known twice before in history. The first time was during the Lemurian Age, heralding the individualization of mankind. The second was “during the Atlantean days of struggle between the Lords of Light and the Lords of Material Form, the Dark Forces.” Nowadays, she continued – referring to the period between the two World Wars – it is manifesting as the force to destroy what is undesirable and obstructive in present world forms of government, religion, and society.
Doreal and the Brotherhood of the White Temple Bailey’s teachings spawned several further occult movements that associated Shambhala with even more esoteric ideas. One example is the Brotherhood of the White Temple, founded in 1930 by the American spiritualist Morris Doreal (1902-1963). In Maitreya, Lord of the World, Doreal wrote that Shamballa (Shambhala) is the Great White Temple of Tibet, located 75 miles beneath the Himalayas. Its entrance is underground, with space around it bent into a warp that leads into another universe. He described Shambhala as having two halves. The southern half is the section where adepts and great gurus live. The northern half is the land where the avatar or world teacher Maitreya lives. In the future, Maitreya will come with the warriors of Shambhala, who are the “light bearers of the Aquarian Age,” to conquer the dark forces of evil in the world.
Doreal’s main work was The Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean, which he claimed to have recovered from beneath the Great Pyramid in Egypt and to have translated from the Atlantean language. He also claimed to have received secret initiations from Tibetan monks.
Haushofer, the Thule Society, and Nazi Germany After the Second World War, Bailey accounted for the Nazi policies by asserting that Hitler had appropriated the Shambhala Force and as a “tool of the Dark Forces,” had misused it to fight the "Energy of Light."
Similar to Bailey’s claims of the connection between Hitler and the Shambhala Force, several postwar studies on Nazism and the Occult have asserted that the Nazis sent expeditions to Tibet to seek the help of the forces of Shambhala and Agharti to carry out their Master Plan. Bailey, however, only mentioned Shambhala in this connection and said nothing about Agharti. These accounts, on the other hand, purport that the masters of Shambhala refused to assist the Nazi expeditions, but the adepts of Agharti agreed and returned with them to Germany. Moreover, they attribute the Nazi search for occult support in Tibet to the beliefs of Karl Haushofer and the Thule Society. Haushofer was the founder of the Vril Society in association with the Thule Society and was a major influence on Hitler’s occult thinking. The Thule and Vril Societies combined beliefs from various sources. Let us trace some of these beliefs briefly, in chronological order, before we examine these postwar studies.
The Ancient Greeks wrote not only of the sunken island of Atlantis, but also of Hyperborea, a northern land whose people migrated south before ice destroyed it. The late seventeenth-century Swedish author Olaf Rudbeck located it at the North Pole and several other accounts related that before its destruction, it broke into the islands of Thule and Ultima Thule.
The British astronomer Sir Edmund Halley, also in the late seventeenth century, forwarded the theory that the earth is hollow. The French novelist Jules Verne popularized the idea in Voyage to the Center of the Earth (1864). In 1871, the British novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton, in The Coming Race, described a superior race, the Vril-ya, who lived beneath the earth and planned to conquer the world with vril, a psychokinetic energy. In Les Fils de Dieu (The Sons of God) (1873), the French author Louis Jacolliot linked vril with the subterranean people of Thule. The Indian freedom advocate, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, in The Arctic Home of the Vedas (1903), identified the southern migration of the Thuleans with the origin of the Aryan race. In 1908, the American author Willis George Emerson published the novel The Smokey God, or A Voyage to the Inner World, which described the journey of a Norwegian sailor through an opening at the North Pole to a hidden world inside the Earth.
The Thule Society was founded in 1910 by Felix Niedner, the German translator of the Old Norse Eddas. It identified the Germanic people as the Aryan race, the descendants from Thule, and sought its transformation into a superrace through harnessing the power of vril. As part of its emblem, it took the swastika, a traditional symbol for Thor, the Norse God of Thunder. In doing so, the Thule Society followed the precedent of Guido von List who, in the late nineteenth century, had made the swastika an emblem for the neo-Pagan movement in Germany.
Together with Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels and Phillip Stauff, von List had been prominent in founding the Ariosophy movement, popular before and during the First World War. Ariosophy blended the concept of races from Theosophy with German nationalism to assert the superiority of the Aryan race as a rationale for Germany to conquer the global colonial empires of the British and the French as the rightful ruler of the inferior races. The Thule Society embraced the Ariosophy beliefs. It must be pointed out, however, that the Theosophical movement never intended its teachings on races as a justification for asserting the superiority of one race over another, or the destined right of one race to rule the others.
When Rudolf Freiherr von Sebottendorf established a Munich branch of the Thule Society in 1918, he added anti-Semitism and the sanctioned use of assassination to the Society’s creeds. He had picked up these elements during his years in Turkey and his acquaintance there with the Order of Assassins. This secret order traced back to the Nazari sect of Ismaili Islam, against whom the Crusaders had fought.
Later in 1918, after the Bavarian Communist Revolution, anti-Communism also joined the Thule Society’s set of aims. In 1919, the Munich Thule Society gave rise to the German Workers Party. Hitler joined it that same year and, becoming its head in 1920, renamed it the Nazi Party and adopted the swastika for its flag.
Karl Haushofer was a German military advisor to Japan after the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. He was extremely impressed by Japanese culture, studied the language, and later became instrumental in forging the alliance between Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. He also learned Sanskrit and purportedly studied for a year in Tibet. He founded the Vril Society in Berlin in 1918, which in addition to the Thule Society creeds, also advocated searching for vril among supernatural beings beneath the earth. The most likely location would be in Tibet, which he saw as the homeland of the Aryan migrants from Thule.
Haushofer also developed Geopolitics, according to which a race gains power by expanding its living space (Germ. Lebensraum) through the conquest of its neighboring lands. In the early 1920s, Haushofer headed the Institute for Geopolitics in Munich and, starting in 1923, began to teach Hitler his views. Haushofer was instrumental in convincing Hitler to establish the Ahnenerbe (Bureau for the Study of Ancestral Heritage) in 1935. Its main charge was to locate the origins of the Aryan race, especially in Central Asia. In 1937, Himmler incorporated this bureau into the SS (Germ. Schutzstaffel, Protection Squad).
In 1938-1939, the Ahnenerbe sponsored the Third Expedition of Ernst Schäffer to Tibet. During its brief stay, the anthropologist Bruno Beger measured the skulls of numerous Tibetans and concluded that they were an intermediary race between the Aryans and Mongolians and could serve as a link for the German-Japanese alliance.
[For more detail, see: The Nazi Connection with Shambhala and Tibet.]
The Nazi Search for Shambhala and Agharti According to Pauwels, Bergier, and Frére A number of scholars have questioned the accuracy of the postwar studies on Nazism and the Occult. Whether or not they accurately represent Nazi thought during the Third Reich, still they represent a further popularized distortion of the Shambhala legend. Let us examine two slightly different versions from among them.
According to the version found in Le Matin des Magiciens (The Morning of the Magicians) (1962) by the French researchers Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier and in Nazisme et Sociétés Secrètes (Nazism and Secret Societies) (1974) by Jean-Claude Frére, Haushofer believed that two groups of Aryans migrated south from Hyperborea-Thule. One went to Atlantis, where they intermarried with the Lemurians who had also migrated there. Recall that Blavatsky had associated the Lemurians with Atlantis and Shambhala, and Bailey had associated both the Lemurians and Atlanteans with the Shambhala Force. The descendents of these impure Aryans turned to black magic and conquest. The other branch of Aryans migrated south, passing through North America and northern Eurasia, eventually reaching the Gobi Desert. There, they founded Agharti, the myth of which had become popular through the writings of Saint-Yves d’Alveidre.
According to Frére, the Thule Society equated Agharti with its cognate Asgaard, the home of the gods in Norse mythology. Others assert, less convincingly, that Agharti is cognate with Ariana, an Old Persian name known by the ancient Greeks for the region extending from Eastern Iran through Afghanistan to Uzbekistan – the homeland of the Aryans.
After a world cataclysm, Agharti sank beneath the earth. This accords with Ossendowski’s account. The Aryans then split into two groups. One went south and founded a secret center of learning beneath the Himalayas, also called Agharti. There, they preserved the teachings of virtue and of vril. The other Aryan group tried to return to Hyperborea-Thule, but founded instead Shambhala, a city of violence, evil, and materialism. Agharti was the holder of the right-hand path and positive vril, while Shambhala was the keeper of the degenerate left-hand path and negative energy.
The division of right-hand and left-hand paths had appeared already in Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine. There, she wrote that at the time of the Atlanteans, humanity branched into right- and left-hand paths of knowledge, which became the germs of white and black magic. She did not associate the two paths, however, with Agharti and Shambhala. In fact, she did not mention Agharti at all in her writings. The terms right- and left-hand paths derive from a division within Hindu tantra. Early Western writers often characterized left-hand tantra as a degenerate form and misidentified it with Tibetan Buddhism and its teachings of anuttarayoga tantra.
According to Pauwels and Bergier, the Thule Society sought to contact and make a pact with Shambhala, but only Agharti agreed to offer help. By 1926, the French authors explained, there were already colonies of Hindus and Tibetans in Munich and Berlin, called the Society of Green Men, in astral connection with the Green Dragon Society in Japan. Membership in the latter society required ritual Japanese suicide (Jap. hara-kiri, seppuku) if one lost one’s honor. Haushofer had purportedly joined the society during his early years in Japan. The leader of the Society of Green Men was a Tibetan monk, known as “the man with green gloves,” who supposedly visited Hitler frequently and held the keys of Agharti. Expeditions to Tibet followed annually, from 1926 to 1943. When the Russians entered Berlin at the end of the war, they found nearly a thousand corpses of soldiers of the Himalayan race, dressed in Nazi uniforms but without identification papers, who had committed suicide. Haushofer himself committed hara-kiri before he could be tried at Nürenberg in 1946.
The Nazi Search for Shambhala and Agharti According to Ravenscroft A slightly different account of the Nazi search for Shambhala and Agharti appeared in The Spear of Destiny (1973) by the British researcher Trevor Ravenscroft. According to this version, the Thule Society believed that two sections of Aryans turned to worship of two evil forces. Their turning to evil brought about the decline of Atlantis and, subsequently, the two groups established cave communities in mountains submerged beneath the Atlantic Ocean near Iceland. The legend of Thule arose from them. One group of Aryans followed the Luciferic Oracle, called Agarthi (Agharti), and practiced the left-hand path. The other group followed the Ahrimanic Oracle, called Schamballah (Shambhala), and practiced the right-hand path. Note that Ravenscroft reported the reverse of Pauwels, Bergier, and Frére’s assertions that Agharti followed the right-hand path and Shambhala the left.
Ravenscroft went on to explain that according to the “Secret Doctrine” – alluding to Blavatsky’s book by the same name – which appeared in Tibet ten thousand years ago, Lucifer and Ahriman are the two forces of Evil, the two great adversaries of human evolution. Lucifer leads people to set themselves up as gods and is associated with the lust for power. Following Lucifer can lead to egotism, false pride, and the misuse of magic powers. Ahriman strives to establish a purely material realm on the earth and uses the perverse sexual craving of people in black magic rites.
Recall that although Blavatsky had written about Lucifer and Ahriman, she did not make the two a pair and did not associate either of the two with Shambhala or Agharti. Moreover, Blavatsky explained that although Latin scholastics had transformed Lucifer into a purely evil Satan, Lucifer had the power both to destroy and to create. He represented the light-bearing presence in everyone’s minds that could uplift people from animalism and bring about a positive transformation to a higher plane of existence.
It was Steiner who had emphasized Lucifer and Ahriman as representing the two poles of destructive power. However, Steiner described Lucifer as the ultimately benevolent destructive force for regeneration and Ahriman as purely malevolent. Moreover, Steiner associated Lucifer with Shambhala, not Agharti and, in fact, like Blavatsky and Bailey, did not mention Agharti at all. In addition, none of the three occult authors described Shambhala as located underground. Only the Roerichs had associated Shambhala with the underground city of Agharti, but had clarified that the two were different and never asserted that Shambhala was underground.
Ravenscroft, like Pauwels, Bergier, and Frére, also asserted that through the initiative of Haushofer and other Thule Society members, exploratory teams were sent to Tibet annually from 1926 to 1942 to establish contact with underground cave communities. They were supposed to convince the masters there to enlist the aid of Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers to further the Nazi cause, especially for creating an Aryan superrace. The adepts of Shambhala refused to help. As followers of the Ahrimanic Oracle, they were concerned only with furthering materialism. Moreover, Shambhala had already affiliated itself with certain lodges in Britain and the United States. This was perhaps a reference to Doreal, whose Brotherhood of the White Temple in America was the first major occult movement to assert Shambhala as an underground city. Moreover, this account also fits well with Haushofer’s disdain for Western materialistic science, which he called “Jewish-Marxist-Liberal Science,” in favor of “Nordic-Nationalistic Science.”
Ravenscroft continued that the masters of Agharti agreed to help the Nazi cause and, from 1929, groups of Tibetans came to Germany, where they became known as the Society of Green Men. Joined by members of the Green Dragon Society of Japan, they set up occult schools in Berlin and elsewhere. Note that Pauwels and Bergier asserted that colonies of not only Tibetans, but also Hindus were present in Berlin and Munich from 1926, not 1929.
Himmler was attracted to these groups of Tibetan-Agharti adepts and, from their influence, established the Ahnenerbe in 1935. Recall that Himmler did not establish the Ahnenerbe, but rather incorporated it into the SS in 1937.
A Theory to Explain the Anti-Shambhala Sentiment and Pro-Agharti Bias of the German Occult Movements It is difficult to ascertain whether Haushofer and the Thule Society actually asserted any of the above points, which mix occult descriptions of Shambhala with both Ossendowski’s depiction of Agharti and the legends of Thule and vril. It is also difficult to ascertain whether Haushofer tried and succeeded in influencing Hitler and official Nazi institutions, such as the Ahnenerbe, to send expeditions to Tibet to secure aid from the two supposedly subterranean lands – or even if the Thule Society itself sent such expeditions. The only mission to Tibet officially sanctioned by the Ahnenerbe – the Third Tibetan Expedition (1938-1939) of Ernst Schäffer – clearly had a different, though equally occult agenda. Its primary purpose was to measure the skulls of Tibetans to determine if they were the source of the Aryans and an intermediary race between the Aryans and the Japanese.
Aside from certain factual inaccuracies and contradictions between the above two accounts of Haushofer and the Thule Society’s beliefs, two points of agreement seem significant. Firstly, Steiner and Bailey associated with Shambhala the regenerative power to destroy outmoded orders and to establish new reformed ones. They represented this ultimately benevolent power with Lucifer. Haushofer and the Thule Society, on the other hand, purportedly associated Lucifer and this benevolent power with Agharti. For them, Shambhala became a land of purely malevolent destructive power, represented by Ahriman and unbridled materialism. Secondly, although the Thule Society and the Nazis first sought the help of Shambhala, representing the evil path of materialism, they were refused. Instead, they received the support of Agharti, representing the ultimately positive path of destruction of the weak and creation of the Master Race as the next step forward in human evolution.
Let us leave aside, for the moment, the question of whether the Thule Society and the Ahnenerbe actually sent missions to Tibet seeking aid from Shambhala and Agharti. However, let us assume, also for the moment, that Haushofer actually did combine the legends of Shambhala and Agharti with the Thule Society’s beliefs and that the resulting melange did represent the Nazi occult position. If this were the case, then a possible theory to explain the claim that Shambhala rejected the Nazi’s approach, while Agharti accepted it would be as follows.
Through Dorjiev, Shambhala was associated with Russia and later also with Communism, while through Ossendowski, Agharti was associated with the anti-Communist anti-Semitic forces of the German Baron von Ungern-Sternberg. Since the Bavarian Communist Revolution of 1918, the Thule Society and Hitler were avidly anti-Communist. Before this, they were both already anti-Semitic. Thus, in their eyes, Shambhala was a dark, negative force that supported purely materialistic “Jewish-Marxist-Liberal Science.” With his anti-Communist bias, Hitler signed the Anti-Commintern Pact with Japan in November 1936, in which both countries declared their mutual hostility toward the spread of international Communism. Both agreed that they would not sign any political treaties with the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, to avoid a European war on two fronts, Hitler signed the Nazi-Soviet Pact with Stalin in August 1939. He broke this pact, however, in June 1941, when the Nazi forces invaded the Soviet Union.
An occult explanation and justification of Hitler’s about-face might have been through an allegory. Shambhala (the Soviet Union, Communism, and the Jews) was basically evil (acknowledged by the Anti-Commintern Pact). Nevertheless, Hitler first sought an alliance with it (the Soviet-Nazi Pact). Shambhala refused (Hitler placed the blame on the Soviet Union for why he broke the pact). Hitler then turned to and received support from Agharti. (Ungern, an earlier anti-Semitic anti-Bolshevik German, had also sought help from Agharti, but had failed to locate the fabled land. Thus, Ungern had failed in his mission. Since Hitler’s expeditions had found Agharti-Asgaard and received its help, the Nazis would surely succeed.)
Supporting Evidence for the Theory The following facts would support the above theory explaining the German Occult depiction of Shambhala as a land of malevolent forces. In Der Weg nach Shambhala (The Way to Shambhala) (1915), the German explorer of Central Asia, Albert Grünwedel, reported that Dorjiev had identified the Romanov Dynasty as the descendants of the rulers of Shambhala.
In Sturm über Asien (Storm over Asia) (1924), the German spy Wilhelm Filchner connected the Soviet drive to take over Central Asia with the Romanov interest in Tibet from the beginning of the century. In 1926, the Roerichs delivered soil purportedly from the mahatmas of Tibet to Soviet Foreign Minister Chicherin to place on Lenin’s grave. Helena Roerich referred to both Marx and Lenin as mahatmas and claimed that emissaries of the Himalayan mahatmas had even met with Marx in England and Lenin in Switzerland. The mahatmas supported the Communist ideals of universal brotherhood.
In “Aus den letzten Jahrzehnten des Lamaismus in Russland (Concerning the Last Decades of Lamaism in Russia)” (1926), the German scholar W. A. Unkrig cited Filchner’s book and repeated Grünwedel’s report concerning Dorjiev, the Romanovs, and Shambhala. He also reported the ceremony at the Buddhist temple in Saint Petersburg to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the Romanov Empire. Warning against the influence of this temple and an alliance of the Soviet Union, Mongolia, and Tibet, Unkrig ended his article with the Latin quote, “Domine, libera nos a Tartaris (God save us from the Tartars).” This fit in well with Haushofer’s Geopolitics and his recommendation for Germany to conquer living space in Central Asia, the homeland of the Aryan race.
Already in 1910, Steiner was lecturing in Berlin and Munich about Shambhala as the seat of Maitreya, the Antichrist who will rid the world of perverted spiritual teachings. Tiere, Menschen und Götter (Beasts, Men, and Gods), the popular German translation of Ossendowski’s book, appeared in 1923. It introduced Agharti as a source of power that Baron von Ungern-Sternberg sought for support in his battle against the Mongolian Communist leader Sukhe Batur, who was rallying his troops with stories of Shambhala. Recall that the Thule Society identified Agharti with Asgaard, the home of the Aryan Norse gods.
During the first half of the 1920s, a so-called “occult war” took place among the Occult Societies and Secret Lodges in Germany. In 1925, Steiner was murdered and many suspected that the Thule Society had ordered his assassination. In later years, Hitler continued the persecution of Anthroposophists, Theosophists, Freemasons, and Rosicrucians. Various scholars ascribe this policy to Hitler’s wish to eliminate any occult rivals to his rule. Steiner, for example, had commissioned the German translation of Bulwer-Lytton’s novel on vril, The Coming Race, under the more explicit German title Vril, oder eine Menschheit der Zukunft (Vril, or the Race of the Future). Moreover, since Steiner and Anthroposophy spoke of Shambhala as the land of the future messiah and benevolence, it makes sense that the Thule Society and Hitler would describe it in the opposite manner, as a land of malevolence.
Between 1929 and 1935, five books by the French adventurer Alexandra David-Neel appeared in German translation, such as Heilige und Hexen (Mystiques et Magiciens du Thibet, With Mystics and Magicians in Tibet). David-Neel had spent many years studying and traveling in Tibet and she reported that adepts there had extraphysical powers that allowed them to defy gravity and run at superhuman speed. Consequently, fantasy about Tibet as the land of mysterious magical powers grew wildly.
In 1936, Theodor Illion, a German explorer who traveled in Tibet in the early 1930s, published Rätselhaftes Tibet (In Secret Tibet) under the pseudonym Theodor Burang. In it, he too described supernatural powers that Tibetan adepts possessed. In his second book, Finsternis über Tibet (Darkness over Tibet) (1937), he described his being led to an underground city in the “Valley of Mystery,” where an “Occult Fraternity” channeled spiritual energy to gain power. Its ruler was the sorcerer Prince Mani Rimpotsche. Although this “Prince of Light” pretended to be a benevolent ruler, he actually was the head of a malevolent cult, a “Prince of Darkness.” Illion never mentioned Shambhala, but his popular works would also have added weight to the Nazi occult assertion of Shambhala as a land of malevolent magic.
Evidence Countering the Assertion of Official Nazi Support of the German Occult Beliefs about Shambhala Let us suppose that the Nazi occult movement, as represented by the Thule Society, used the Shambhala-Agharti allegory to justify Hitler’s changing policy toward the Soviet Union. Still, it seems highly unlikely that official Nazi institutions, such as the Ahnenerbe, had Shambhala and Agharti on their agendas, even on their hidden agendas. Let us examine the evidence that would support that conclusion.
Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933. In the same year, Sebottendorf, the founder of the Munich branch of the Thule Society, published Bevor Hitler kamBefore Hitler Came), in which he outlined Hitler’s debt to “Thulism.” Hitler quickly banned the book and forced Sebottendorf to retire. Although Hitler clearly advocated the Thule Society’s beliefs, he disavowed any connection with established occult movements. He did not want to leave open the possibility for rivalry to come from any quarter.
Haushofer and the Thule Society, however, were not the only behind-the-scenes influences on the Ahnenerbe. Sven Hedin, the Swedish explorer of Tibet and favorite of the Nazis, also played a significant role. Between 1922 and 1944, he wrote several popular books in German on his travels in Tibet, such as Tsangpo Lamas Wallfahrt (The Pilgrimage of the Tsangpo Lamas) (1922). Several others were translated into German from English, such as My Life as an Explorer (1926) (Germ. Mein Leben als Entdecker, 1928) and A Conquest of Tibet (1934) (Germ. Eroberungszüge in Tibet, 1941). Moreover, in Ossendowski und die Wahrheit (Ossendowski and the Truth) (1925), Hedin debunked Ossendowski’s claim that Mongolian lamas had told him about Agharti. In it, he exposed Agharti as a fantasy appropriated from Saint-Yves d’Alveidre’s 1886 novel.
Frederick Hielscher, whom Hitler authorized to establish the Ahnenerbe in 1935, was a friend of Sven Hedin. Moreover, Hitler invited Hedin to give the opening address at the 1936 Berlin Olympics and in 1937, Hedin published Germany and World Peace. From 1939 to 1943, Hedin made several diplomatic missions to Germany and continued his pro-Nazi publishing activities. The clearest evidence of his influence on the Ahnenerbe is the fact that, in 1943, its Tibet Institut (Tibet Institute) was renamed the Sven Hedin Institut für Innerasien und Expeditionen (Sven Hedin Institute for Inner Asia and Expeditions).
Haushofer was indeed instrumental in starting the Ahnenerbe and in its agenda being based on many of the Thule Society’s beliefs. Nevertheless, because of Hedin, it is unlikely that the Ahnenerbe sought and received support from Agharti in Tibet. Hedin acknowledged that Tibet was a repository of ancient hidden knowledge, but did not attribute occult significance to it. Nor did he associate this knowledge with Shambhala or Agharti.
Moreover, it seems highly improbable that groups of Tibetans were present in Berlin and Munich from 1926 or 1929, under the auspices of the Thule Society. If that were the case, then since the Ahnenerbe unofficially was associated with the Thule Society, there would have been no need for it to send an expedition to Tibet to measure the skulls of Tibetans. They could have made these measurements in Germany. Thus, the assertion that the Thule Society sponsored annual journeys to Tibet from 1926 to 1942 also seems highly questionable.
The Kalmyk Connection The report by Pauwels and Berger that at the end of the war, the Russians found in Berlin a large number of corpses of soldiers of the Himalayan race, dressed in Nazi uniforms, who had committed suicide, also needs scrutiny. The unspoken implication is that the Russians found the corpses of the Tibetan-Agharti adepts who were assisting the Nazi cause and that, like Haushofer, they committed ritual suicide.
Firstly, hara-kiri was a Japanese samurai custom, which many Japanese soldiers in the Second World War enacted to avoid capture. Followers of Tibetan Buddhism, however, consider suicide an extremely negative act with dire consequences in future lives. It is never justifiable. The report inappropriately attributes Japanese customs to Tibetans. Secondly, any soldiers of Himalayan origin found in Nazi uniform would most likely have been Kalmyk Mongols, not Tibetans. Further, the Kalmyks’ fighting in the German army does not prove their support of Nazi ideology or the support of it by their Tibetan Buddhist beliefs. Let us examine the historical facts, supplementing them with information gained from interviews with Kalmyks living in Munich Germany who had participated in many of the events described below.
The Kalmyk Mongols are practitioners of the Tibetan form of Buddhism and have a long history of association with Germans. A large group of them migrated west from the Dzungaria region of East Turkistan between 1609 and 1632. They settled in Russia along the lower Volga, where it empties into the Caspian Sea. There, they continued their nomadic herder way of life.
In 1763, Czarina Catherine II the Great invited almost thirty thousand Germans to settle in the Volga region to the north of the Kalmyks. She wanted them to farm the fertile land and secure it against the “Tartars.” She tried to force Christianity and agriculture on the Kalmyks, causing many to flee back to Dzungaria in 1771. Eventually, however, those who remained in Russia were accepted, especially since they were excellent soldiers. During the Napoleanic Wars (1812-1815), for example, the Russian Army had a Kalmyk regiment. Over the next century, Kalmyk soldiers were prominent in divisions throughout the Czarist Army.
Although the life styles and customs of the agrarian Volga Germans and nomadic Kalmyk herdsmen differed greatly, the neighbors gradually came to respect each other. The Germans, in fact, took interest in the Kalmyks. As early as 1804, Benjamin Bergmann published a four volume work on their language and religion, entitled Nomadische Streifereien unter der Kalmüken in den Jahren 1802 und 1804 (Nomadic Migrations among the Kalmyks in the Year 1802 and 1804). Sven Hedin passed through Kalmykia on one of his early expeditions to Dzungaria and expressed great admiration for its people.
After the Communist Revolution in 1917, many Kalmyks remained loyal to the Czarist forces and continued to fight on the White Russian side, especially under Generals Vrangel and Deniken. Before the Red Army broke through to the Crimean Peninsula at the end of 1920, about twenty Kalmyk families fled across the Black Sea with Vrangel and relocated in Warsaw Poland and Prague Czechoslovakia. A much larger number left with Deniken, with the majority settling in Belgrade Serbia and smaller numbers in Sofia Bulgaria and in Paris and Lyon France. The Kalmyk refugees in Belgrade built a Buddhist temple there in 1929. The Communists severely punished the Kalmyks who remained behind, beheading ten thousand.
In 1931, Stalin collectivized the Kalmyks, closed the Buddhist monasteries, and burned the religious texts. He deported to Siberia all herdsmen owning more than five hundred sheep and all monks. Partially due to Stalin’s collectivization policies, a great famine struck from 1932 to 1933. Approximately sixty thousand Kalmyks died.
After Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in September 1941, Goebbels invited to Berlin several prominent Kalmyks from Belgrade, Paris, and Prague to help with a propaganda campaign. The Nazis wished to win the Kalmyks to the German side against the Russians and never sent any of those under their rule to concentration camps. Thus, Goebbels organized this nucleus into a committee to free the Kalmyks from the Communist regime. In this connection, he helped them print a Kalmyk language newspaper and used them to broadcast radio news in Kalmyk directed toward Kalmykia.
When the Nazi Sixteenth Panzer Division under Field Marshal Mannstein took Kalmykia early in 1942, three members of this committee accompanied them. A number of Belgrade Kalmyks also participated in the invasion, having joined the German army after the Nazi occupation of Serbia in April 1941. The people of Kalmykia greeted the German army with butter and milk, the traditional offering to welcome guests, as liberators from Stalin’s oppressive rule. The Germans said they would dismantle the collectives and would divide and privatize the land. They allowed the Kalmyks to practice Buddhism once more. In response, the Kalmyks exhumed the religious texts they had buried for safekeeping and built a makeshift temporary temple. In November and December 1942, however, the Red Army retook Kalmykia and destroyed everything the people had rebuilt.
The German troops invited the Kalmyks to retreat and continue the fight with them. About five thousand joined the Nazi military, forming the Kalmykian Voluntary Cavalry Corps. Only a few woman and children accompanied them. The Kalmyk troops fought with the Nazi army behind the lines, especially around the Azov Sea. The majority of the Kalmyk population, however, remained in Kalmykia. In December 1943, Stalin declared them all German collaborators and deported the lot to Siberia. They returned only during the Khruschev era, between 1957 and 1960.
In the early autumn of 1944, in the face of the imminent Russian invasion of Serbia, many Belgrade Kalmyks fled to Munich Germany to avoid Communist persecution. A learned Buddhist teacher and several monks accompanied them. At the end of 1944, the Kalmyk cavalry troops that survived in Russia, together with their families, retreated with the German army. About two thousand went to Selesia Poland and fifteen hundred to Zagreb Croatia, where they were reorganized to fight against the partisans.
Thus, although a number of Kalmyks were in Germany and Nazi-held territory in the final months of the war, only a few were in the Berlin area, still engaged in propaganda work. The Kalmyk soldiers in Nazi uniform were in Poland and Croatia, not in Germany. Although several Kalmyk monks performed Tibetan Buddhist rituals in the Kalmyk barracks and homes in Nazi-held territory, they prayed for peace and the welfare of all beings. No Tibetans were among them and they did not conduct “occult” ceremonies for a Nazi victory, as some postwar occult accounts report.
After the war, the Kalmyks left in Western European countries were intered in displaced persons camps in Austria and Germany, especially in the Munich area. Released in 1951, they settled first in Munich. Later that year, the Anna Tolstoy Foundation resettled the majority of them in New Jersey, USA. Tito handed those left in Serbia over to the Soviets, who promptly deported them to Siberia.
Postwar Assertions of Shambhala and Flying Saucers Occult interpretations of other Nazi activities, associating them with Shambhala, also appeared after the war. For example, a 1939 German expedition to Antarctica, led by Captain Alfred Ritscher, mapped one-fifth of the continent, claimed it for Germany, and named it Neu-Schwabenland. Further Nazi expeditions to Antarctica and naval activity in the South Atlantic continued until the end of the war.
In the late 1950s, separately from this, Henrique Jose de Souza, the president of the Brazilian Theosophical Society at that time, proposed a new hollow earth theory. Inside the earth lies Agharti, with its capital Shambhala, as the source of flying saucers that emerge to the surface through tunnels at the North and South Poles. Accordingly, the Brazilian Theosophical Society built as its headquarters in São Lourenço, Minas Gerais, a Greek-style temple dedicated to Agharti. De Souza’s student, O. C. Hugenin, popularized his mentor’s theory in From the Subterranean World to the Sky: Flying Saucers (1957). R. W. Bernard, in his 1964 book The Hollow Earth, had the flying saucers from Shambhala in Agharti under the Earth come out through secret tunnels under the Himalayas in Tibet.
Based on the Nazi Antarctic expeditions and the above accounts, the German Occultist Ernst Zündel wrote several books in the 1970s, including UFO’s: Nazi Secret Weapons?, claiming that the Nazis had a secret base in an area of warm water lakes they had found in Antarctica. There they hid their secret weapon, UFOs. Zündel is also infamous as the most outspoken proponent of the view that the Holocaust never happened.
The association of flying saucers with Shambhala derives from the account of the allegorical future apocalyptic war found The Stainless Light commentary to The Abbreviated Kalachakra Tantra. In this account, Raudrachakrin, the twenty-fifth Kalki ruler of Shambhala, will come from his land mounted on a stone horse with the power of the wind and defeat Mahdi, the leader of the non-Indic hordes. Although Raudrachakrin represents the deep awareness of voidness with the subtlest level of mental activity and the stone horse represents the subtlest level of energy-wind on which this awareness rides, some have interpreted the image as a flying saucer coming from Shambhala.
Concluding Remarks The Kalachakra account of Shambhala has sparked the imaginations of many foreign political figures and occult authors. Distorting the original legend and interpolating ideas of fancy, they have incorporated the myth into their writings to serve their own agendas. It is an injustice to Buddhism to attribute these distortions to the original intent of the Kalachakra teachings. Continuing research will disentangle more of the truth.
FDR, The Gobi, and Climate Change
The expedition was funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and organized through the help of then Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace (later, vice president with FDR), a student of Roerich. One of the purposes was to gather samples of drought-resistant grasses for the Great Plains areas.
Scientists and other specialists at USDA were initially ecstatic about planning the expedition since the Gobi Desert at the time was one of the last unexplored places in the world.
When they found out, however, that a Russian familiar with the Gobi Desert was leading the expedition instead of one of them, they expressed xenophobic resistance in complaining. But it was President Roosevelt himself who proposed the expedition as he believed that trees at one time grew in the Gobi Desert and that when the trees were cut down, the climate changed. If trees could be grown there again, he thought, it would correct the climate.
But for the Roerichs and Wallace, the expedition also meant the possibility of finding Shambhala. Wallace would later be scandalized when he ran for president by an ultraconservative journalist who published some of Wallace’s personal letters to Roerich, dubbing them “The Guru Letters.” What the journalist missed was the secret file President Roosevelt kept of his correspondence with Roerich’s wife, Helena.
Roerich’s Shambhala Nicholas Roerich chronicled their Asian travels in a number of works, including Altai-Himalaya: A Travel Diary, Heart of Asia, and Shambhala.
“Shambhala itself is the Holy Place, where the earthly world links with the highest states of consciousness,” he explains in Heart of Asia.
“In the East they know that there exists two Shambhalas – an earthly and an invisible one.”
November 1996, revised May and December 2003 [
Introduction
Many foreign myths have grown around the legend of Shambhala found in the Kalachakra literature. Some were spread to win military or political support, such as the identification of Russia, Mongolia, or Japan as Shambhala. Others appeared within occult movements and mixed Buddhist ideas with concepts from other systems of belief. Several even spawned expeditions to find the fabled land.
Two camps arose among the occult versions. One side regarded Shambhala as a utopian paradise whose people will save the world. The British novelist, James Hilton, fits into this camp. His 1933 work, Lost Horizon, describes Shangrila as a spiritual paradise found in an inaccessible, hidden valley in Tibet. Shangrila is undoubtedly a romantic corruption of Shambhala. The other side depicted Shambhala as a land of malevolent power. Several postwar accounts of the connection between Nazism and the Occult present this interpretation. It is important not to confuse either of these distortions with Buddhism itself. Let us trace the phenomenon.
Theosophy Madame Helena Blavatsky (1831-1891) was born in the Ukraine to Russian nobility. Endowed with extrasensory powers, she traveled the world in search of occult, secret teachings and spent many years on the Indian subcontinent. From 1867 to 1870, she studied Tibetan Buddhism with Indian masters, most likely from the Tibetan cultural regions of the Indian Himalayas, during her purported stay at Tashilhunpo Monastery in Tibet.
Blavatsky encountered Tibetan Buddhism at a time when European Oriental scholarship was still in its infancy and few translations or accounts were available. Further, she was able to learn only disjointed fragments of its vast teachings. In her private letters, she wrote that because the Western public at that time had little acquaintance with Tibetan Buddhism, she decided to translate and explain the basic terms with more popularly known concepts from Hinduism and the Occult. For example, she translated three of the four island-worlds (four continents) around Mount Meru as the sunken lost islands of Hyperborea, Lemuria, and Atlantis. Likewise, she presented the four humanoid races mentioned in the abhidharma and Kalachakra teachings (born from transformation, moisture and heat, eggs, and wombs) as the races of these island-worlds. Her belief that the esoteric teachings of all the world’s religions form one body of occult knowledge reinforced her decision to translate in this manner and she set out to demonstrate that in her writings.
Together with the American spiritualist Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, Madame Blavatsky founded the Theosophical Society in 1875 in New York. Its international headquarters moved to Madras, India, shortly thereafter. When her colleague Alfred Percy Sinnett identified Theosophy with esoteric Buddhism in Esoteric Buddhism (1883), Blavatsky refuted his claim. According to her posthumously published Letters of H. P. Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett, Blavatsky’s position was that Theosophy transmitted the “secret occult teachings of trans-Himalaya,” not the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism. Nevertheless, through her writings, the West first came to associate Shambhala with the Occult and many subsequently confused this connection with the actual teachings of Buddhism.
In 1888, Blavatsky mentioned Shambhala in her main work, The Secret Doctrine, the teachings for which she said she received telepathically from her teachers in Tibet. She wrote in a letter that although her teachers were reincarnate “byang-tzyoobs” or “tchang-chubs” (Tib. byang-chub, Skt. bodhisattva), she had called them “mahatmas” since that term was more familiar to the British in India.
The Tibetan source of the teachings in The Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky claimed, is The Stanzas of Dzyan, the first volume of commentaries to the seven secret folios of Kiu-te. “Kiu-te” transcribes the Tibetan “rgyud-sde,” meaning “tantra division,” which is the title of the first section of the Kangyur, the Tibetan translations of Buddha’s words. “Dzyan” transcribes the Sanskrit “dhyana” (Jap. zen), meaning mental stability. Blavatsky was aware that The Kalachakra Tantra was the first item in the tantra division of the Kangyur, since she mentioned that fact in one of her notes. She explained, however, that the seven secret folios were not actually part of the published Kiu-te, and thus we do not find anything similar to The Stanzas of Dzyan in that collection.
It is unclear to what extent Blavatsky actually studied the Kalachakra texts directly. The earliest Western material on the topic was an 1833 article entitled “Note on the Origins of the Kalachakra and Adi-Buddha Systems” by the Hungarian pioneer scholar Alexander Csomo de Körös (Körösi Csoma Sandor). De Körös compiled the first dictionary and grammar of Tibetan in a Western language, English, in 1834. Jakov Schmidt’s Tibetan-Russian Dictionary and Grammar soon followed in 1839. Most of Blavatsky’s familiarity with Kalachakra, however, came from the chapter entitled “The Kalachakra System” in Emil Schlagintweit’s Buddhism in Tibet (1863), as evidenced by her borrowing many passages from that book in her works. Following her translation principle, however, she rendered Shambhala in terms of similar concepts in Hinduism and the Occult.
The first English translation of The Vishnu Purana, by Horace Hayman Wallace, had appeared in 1864, three years before Blavatsky’s purported visit to Tibet. Accordingly, she explained Shambhala in terms of the Hindu presentation in this text: it is the village where the future messiah, Kalki Avatar, will appear. The Kalki, Blavatsky wrote, is “Vishnu, the Messiah on the White Horse of the Brahmins; Maitreya Buddha of the Buddhists; Sosiosh of the Parsis; and Jesus of the Christians.” She also claimed that Shankaracharya, the early ninth-century founder of Advaitya Vedanta, “still lives among the Brotherhood of Shamballa, beyond the Himalayas.”
Elsewhere, she wrote that when Lemuria sank, part of its people survived in Atlantis, while part of its elect migrated to the sacred island of “Shamballah” in the Gobi Desert. Neither the Kalachakra literature nor The Vishnu Purana, however, has any mention of Atlantis, Lemuria, Maitreya, or Sosiosh. The association of Shambhala with them, however, continued among Blavatsky’s followers.
Blavatsky’s placement of Shambhala in the Gobi Desert is not surprising since the Mongols, including the Buryat population of Siberia and the Kalmyks of the lower Volga region, were strong followers of Tibetan Buddhism, particularly its Kalachakra teachings. For centuries, Mongols everywhere have believed that Mongolia is the Northern Land of Shambhala and Blavatsky was undoubtedly acquainted with the Buryat and Kalmyk beliefs in Russia.
Blavatsky might also have received confirmation of her placement of Shambhala in the Gobi Desert from the writings of Csoma de Körös. In an 1825 letter, he wrote that Shambhala is like a Buddhist Jerusalem and lay between 45 and 50 degrees longitude. Although he felt that Shambhala would probably be found in the Kizilkum Desert in Kazakhstan, the Gobi also fell within the two longitudes. Others later would also locate it within these parameters, but either in East Turkistan (Xinjiang, Sinkiang) or the Altai Mountains.
Although Blavatsky herself never asserted that Shambhala was the source of The Secret Doctrine, several later Theosophists made this connection. Foremost among them was Alice Bailey in Letters on Occult Meditation (1922). Helena Roerich, in her Collected Letters (1935-1936), also wrote that Blavatsky was a messenger of the White Brotherhood from Shambhala. Moreover, she reported that in 1934 the Ruler of Shambhala had recalled to Tibet the mahatmas who had transmitted to Blavatsky the secret teachings.
Dorjiev’s Assertion of Russia as Shambhala The first major exploitation of the Shambhala legend for political purposes also involved Russia. Agvan Dorjiev (1854-1938) was a Buryat Mongol monk who studied in Lhasa and became the Master Debate Partner (Assistant Tutor) of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama. In the face of British and Chinese machinations for control of Tibet, he convinced the Dalai Lama to turn to Russia for military support. He did this by telling him that Russia was Shambhala and Czar Nicholas II was the reincarnation of Tsongkhapa, the founder of the Gelug tradition. Dorjiev went on several missions to the Russian Imperial Court, but was never able to secure any help. He was able, however, to convince the Czar to build a Kalachakra Temple in St. Petersburg.
The first public ceremony in the temple took place in 1913. It was a ritual for the long-life of the Romanov Dynasty on its 300th anniversary. According to Albert Grünwedel, the German explorer of Central Asia, in Der Weg nach Shambhala (The Way to Shambhala) (1915), Dorjiev spoke of the Romanov Dynasty as the descendants of the rulers of Shambhala.
[For more detail, see: Russian and Japanese Involvement with Pre-Communist Tibet: The Role of the Shambhala Legend.]
Mongolia, Japan, and Shambhala
The next political exploitation of the Shambhala legend occurred in Mongolia. Baron von Ungern-Sternberg, a German who lived in Russia, was an avid anti-Bolshevik. During the Civil War that followed the Russian Revolution of 1917, he fought in Siberia with the White Russian (Czarist) forces. With Japanese support, he successfully invaded Outer Mongolia in 1920 to free it from the Chinese. Notorious for his cruelty, Ungern slaughtered thousands of Chinese, collaborator Mongols, Russian Bolsheviks, and Jews, earning himself the nickname “Mad Baron.” Ungern believed that all Jews were Bolsheviks.
Sukhe Batur established the Mongolian Communist Provisional Government in Buryatia and led a Mongol army against Ungern. He rallied his troops by telling them that by fighting to free Mongolia from oppression, they would be reborn in the army of Shambhala. With the help of the Soviet Red Army, Sukhe Batur took Urga (Ulaan Baatar), the Mongolian capital, in late 1921. The People’s Republic of Mongolia was founded in 1924.
After the Japanese takeover of Inner Mongolia in 1937, Japan too exploited the Shambhala legend for political gain. To try to win the allegiance of the Mongols, it spread the propaganda that Japan was Shambhala.
[For more detail, see: Exploitation of the Shambhala Legend for Control of Mongolia.]
Ossendowski and Agharti In the 1922 book Beasts, Men and Gods, Ferdinand Ossendowski (1876–1945), a Polish scientist who spent most of his life in Russia, wrote of his recent travels in Outer Mongolia during the campaigns of Baron von Ungern-Sternberg. Ossendowski related that several Mongol lamas had told him of Agharti, an underground kingdom beneath Mongolia, ruled by the King of the World. In the future, when materialism will ruin the world, a terrible war will break out. At that time, the people of Agharti will come to the surface and help end the violence. Ossendowski reported that he convinced Ungern of his story and that, subsequently, Ungern twice sent missions to seek Agharti, led by Prince Poulzig. The missions were unsuccessful and the Prince never returned from the second expedition.
Kamil Gizycky was a Polish army engineer who also fought against the Bolsheviks in Siberia and then joined Ungern’s forces in Mongolia. He made no mention of Agharti in his account of the events of the time, Poprzez Urjanchej i Mongolie (Across Urankhai and Mongolia) (1929). Interestingly, he did relate that Ossendowski helped the Mad Baron by offering him the formula for making poison gas.
Although the Kalachakra texts never described Shambhala as an underground kingdom, Ossendowski’s report clearly parallels the Kalachakra account of the Kalki ruler of Shambhala coming to the aid of the world to end an apocalyptic war. The appearance here of Agharti, however, is noteworthy. The name does not appear in either the Kalachakra literature or the works of Madame Blavatsky.
The first appearance of Agarthi (Agharta, Asgartha, Agarthi, Agardhi) was in the French novel Les Fils de Dieu (The Sons of God), written in 1873 by Louis Jacolliot. Another French author, Joseph-Alexandre Saint-Yves d’Alveidre, popularized the Agharti legend in his 1886 novel Mission de l’Inde en Europe (Mission of India in Europe). There, he described it as an underground kingdom with a university that is a repository of secret knowledge. Originally located at Ayodhya India, it was moved to a secret location beneath the Himalayas 1800 years before the Common Era. Its king, a “mahatma,” guards its secrets and has not revealed them, since they would enable Antichrist forces to build powerful weapons. Once the evil forces have been destroyed, the mahatmas will reveal their secrets for the benefit of mankind.
Saint-Yves d’Alveidre may have in fact borrowed several elements of his story from the Kalachakra discussion of Shambhala. The number 1800 appears repeatedly as a motif in the Kalachakra literature and the classical texts do report that the leaders of Shambhala did possess the knowledge for building weapons to defeat the invader forces. Nevertheless, the two Frenchmen clearly wrote works of fiction.
In Ossendowski und die Wahrheit (Ossendowski and the Truth) (1925), the Swedish explorer of Tibet, Sven Hedin, dismissed Ossendowski’s claims of hearing of Agharti from Mongolian lamas. He wrote that the Polish scientist had taken the myth of Agharti from Saint-Yves d’Alveidre and molded it to his story in order to appeal to a German reading public familiar to a certain degree with the Occult. Hedin acknowledged, however, that Tibet and the Dalai Lama were the protectors of secret knowledge.
An additional explanation, however, could be that Ossendowski used the Agharti myth to gain Ungern’s favor. Ungern would undoubtedly have identified the materialistic Antichrist forces, which Agharti would help to defeat, as the Bolsheviks, against whom he was fighting. Since Sukhe Batur was rallying his troops with the promise of Shambhala, Ungern could similarly use the Agharti story for his own gain. If this were the case, we could trace from here the version of the Shambhala legend that described Shambhala in an unfavorable light.
Roerich, Shambhala, and Agni Yoga Nikolai Roerich (1874 – 1947), a Russian painter and ardent student of Theosophy, had been on the building committee for the St. Petersburg Kalachakra Temple and had designed its stained glass windows. His wife, Helena, was the translator of Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine into Russian. Between 1925 and 1928, he led an expedition from India, through Tibet, to Outer Mongolia and the Altai Mountain region in Siberia, north of East Turkistan. The purported aim was to study plants, ethnology, and languages, and to paint. His primary purpose, however, was to find Shambhala.
According to several accounts, Roerich’s mission was to return to Shambhala a chintamani (wish-granting gem) entrusted to him by the League of Nations. His group claimed to have located Shambhala in the Altai region. Even nowadays, Roerich’s followers continue his conviction that the Altai Mountains are a great spiritual center, connected in some way with Shambhala.
Roerich’s search for Shambhala was perhaps partly inspired by Grünwedel’s Der Weg nach Shambhala, which contained a translation of The Guidebook to Shambhala (Tib. Sham-bha-la’i lam-yig), written in the mid-eighteenth century by the Third Panchen Lama (1738-1780). The Panchen Lama, however, explained that the physical journey to Shambhala could only take one so far. To reach the fabled land, one needed to perform an enormous amount of spiritual practices. In other words, the journey to Shambhala was actually an inner quest. This explanation, however, did not seem to deter intrepid adventurers such as the Roerichs from trying to reach Shambhala by merely trekking there.
In 1929, the Roerichs created Agni Yoga, incorporating the Theosophical teachings as its basis. Perhaps they also followed Blavatsky’s model of translating Buddhist terminology with images and terms that were more familiar from Hinduism and the Occult. The Roerichs, after all, asserted that Shambhala was the source of all Indian teachings. They also called its rulers “the Lords of Fire who will fight the Lords of Darkness.”
Agni is the Sanskrit word for fire – specifically, the sacred purificatory fire of the Vedas. Accordingly, Roerich explained that the masters of Shambhala harness its powers for purification. Practitioners of Agni Yoga choose Buddha, Jesus, or Muhammad as a guide for spiritual practice. Concentrating on their chosen guides, they pray for peace while performing simple visualizations of the purification of obstacles.
In Buddhist tantra practice, meditators conclude intensive retreats with so-called “fire pujas.” In these rituals, they offer several grains and butter into a fire to purge and pacify any obstacles that might arise from mistakes made during their meditation. In the flames, they visualize the fire-deity Agni, a figure clearly borrowed from Hinduism. Roerich may have witnessed such pujas either at the Kalachakra Temple in St. Petersburg or during his travels in the Mongol regions and derived his idea of Agni Yoga from it.
Thus, the primary association that Roerich made for Shambhala was as a place of peace. In Shambhala: In Search of a New Era (1930), Roerich described Shambhala as a holy city north of India. Its ruler reveals the teachings of Maitreya Buddha for universal peace. Each tradition describes Shambhala according to its own understanding and thus the legend of the Holy Grail, for example, is a version of the Shambhala story. Constantine the Great, Chinggis Khan (Genghis Khan), and Prester John are among those who have received messages of teachings from “the Mysterious Spiritual Abode and Brotherhood in the heart of Asia.”
Roerich even coined the term “Shambhala Warriors,” later adopted in the 1980s by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, a Tibetan Incarnate Lama of the Karma Kagyu and Nyingma lineages who adapted and expressed Buddhist ideas in a modern American vernacular. Trungpa wrote, however, that his idea of the Shambhala warrior had nothing to do with the Kalachakra teachings or with Shambhala itself. It was a metaphor for someone striving for self-improvement for the benefit of others. Roerich, on the other hand, used the term for “the Brothers of Humanity,” who will bring world peace from Shambhala. The concept of “Kalachakra for World Peace,” associated with the Kalachakra initiations given by His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama in the West since 1981, is probably also a legacy of Roerich’s ideas.
After returning from Asia, Roerich traveled to New York where, in 1929, he was instrumental in promulgating the Roerich Pact, an international treaty for the protection of world cultural monuments. The banner of peace Roerich proposed had three circles, which, he explained, are found in all spiritual traditions, including that of the “Rigden Jyelpos,” the Kings of Shambhala. Nothing like this, however, is found in the Kalachakra texts. Numerous countries around the world signed the pact, including the United Sates in 1935. The symbol of three circles was later adopted as an insignia worn on armbands by physically disabled persons indicating their need for gentle treatment.
In Shambhala: In Search of a New Era, Roerich also hinted at a similarity between Shambhala and Thule, the hidden land at the North Pole, which, as we shall see below, inspired the Germans in their quest for a secret land. He also mentioned the association of Shambhala with the underground city of Agharti (Agarthi), reached through tunnels under the Himalayas. Its inhabitants will emerge at the “time of purification.” In her Collected Letters (1935 – 1936), Helena Roerich pointed out that Saint-Yves d’Alveidre had mistakenly identified Shambhala with Agharti, but they are not the same place.
Jocelyn Godwin, in Arktos, The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism and Nazi Survival (1993), identified agni power with vril. Vril is the psychokinetic power protected by the inhabitants of Thule, which the Nazis tried to obtain for helping to strengthen their Aryan superrace. Roerich, however, never made this association.
[See: The Nazi Connection with Shambhala and Tibet.]
Steiner, Anthroposophy, and Shambhala As a counterpoint to Blavatsky and Roerich’s presentations of Shambhala as a benevolent land that will help establish world peace, alternative versions emphasized the apocalyptic aspect of the legend. They associated Shambhala primarily with the destructive forces of regeneration that will do away with old outmoded ways of thinking and will establish a new world order of peace. Thus, the destructive force of Shambhala is ultimately benevolent. These versions also had their roots in Theosophy.
In 1884, Dr. Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden founded the German Theosophical Society. After an initial failure, Annie Besant invited Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), an Austrian spiritualist, to reestablish it in 1902. Steiner left the society in 1909 primarily because he could not agree with Besant and C. W. Leadbetter’s declaration of the sixteen-year-old Krishnamurti as the messiah. In a series of lectures given in Berlin and Munich in 1910 and 1911, Steiner taught what some have labeled “a Christianized version of Theosophy.” Steiner, however, claimed that his teachings derived from his clairvoyant reading of “the akashic records,” not from Theosophy.
Akasha is the Sanskrit word for space, and these occult records purportedly contain all the wisdom of mankind. The Kalachakra texts refer to the fully purified subtlest level of mental activity that is the basis for a Buddha’s omniscient awareness as “the space vajra pervasive with space.” They do not present it, however, as a record of all knowledge that can be tapped by psychic means.
According to Steiner, Christ the true prophet will reveal the Land of Shamballa (Shambhala) with his Second Coming. Shambhala, which disappeared long ago, is the seat of Maitreya. In a lecture entitled “Maitreya – Christ oder Antichrist (Maitreya – Christ or Antichrist),” Steiner explained that “whatever will come from the lips of Maitreya will come through the power of Christ.”
Steiner emphasized the conflict between good and evil, as personified by Lucifer and Ahriman. Blavatsky had already differentiated Lucifer from Satan. According to The Secret Doctrine, Lucifer is the “Light-Bearer,” the “Astral Light” within each of our minds that is both our tempter and liberator from pure animalism. It serves to both create and destroy, and manifests in sexual passion. Although Lucifer can uplift humanity to a higher plane, the Latin scholastics had transformed him into the purely evil Satan.
Blavatsky also wrote about the Zoroastrian dualism and struggle between Ahura Mazda and Ahriman, as the forces of light and darkness. Steiner, however, went a step further than Blavatsky and transformed the dualism into an antagonism between Lucifer and Ahriman. In Occult Science, An Outline, Steiner characterized Lucifer as a being of light, the bridge between Man and God, bringing us closer to Christ. The “Children of Lucifer,” then, are all those who strive for knowledge and wisdom. Ahriman, in contrast, leads mankind downward to its lower, material, carnal, animalistic nature.
Steiner called himself a Luciferian and, by his logic, Maitreya is the Antichrist. Since people have perverted Christ’s actual teachings, Maitreya, as the Antichrist, will come from Shambhala and purge the world of their blemish and teach the true message of Christ. In 1913, Steiner’s followers founded the Anthroposophical Society, although Steiner himself did not join until he reestablished it in 1923.
According to The Kalachakra Tantra, Raudrachakrin, the twenty-fifth Kalki ruler of Shambhala, will defeat the non-Indic invaders who will try to conquer the world. These invaders will follow the teachings of a line of eight prophets: Adam, Abraham, Noah, Moses, Jesus, Mani, Muhammad, and Mahdi. Historical analysis suggests that the model for these invaders were the late tenth-century Ismaili Shiite forces of Multan (present-day Pakistan), an ally of the Egyptian Fatimid Empire. The Fatimids, with their Mahdi messiah, sought to conquer the Islamic world before the predicted apocalypse and the end of the world five hundred years after Muhammad. People throughout the region lived in great fear of an invasion, including the Buddhist-Hindu-Muslim region of Afghanistan where the Kalachakra historical teachings likely developed. The predicted conflict and defeat of the invaders, however, was a spiritual metaphor for the internal battle against fear and ignorance. It presented an effective method for the terrorized people at that time to overcome their strongly felt anxieties.
[See: The Kalachakra Presentation of the Prophets of the Non-Indic Invaders.]
Steiner was probably unaware of the historical context and metaphoric meaning of the Shambhala legend. Thus, he and several others in the following decades took Shambhala as the seat of spiritual power from which the reform of Christianity will arise. Steiner’s emphasis on Maitreya and Shambhala as the real sources of Christian reform in the future probably also reflects his dismay at the Theosophist promotion of Krishnamurti as the new savior.
[See: Holy Wars in Buddhism and Islam: The Myth of Shambhala.]
The Kalachakra texts do not even mention the teachings of Christianity. However, they do indicate methods for Hindus and Muslims to find alternative meanings of doctrines in their own religions that would allow them to form a united spiritual front with Buddhists to face the terrors of an invasion. They even point out teachings that Buddha gave which parallel some of the Hindu and Muslim assertions. If followers of those religions were interested, they could use their own beliefs as stepping-stones for reaching the Buddhist path. Nevertheless, the Kalachakra texts do not assert that the Buddhist teachings contain the true meanings of Hinduism or Islam. Nor do they in any way assert that Shambhala will be the source of reform that will bring people back to the true doctrines of the founders of those two religions, let alone back to the pure teachings of Christ.
[See: Religious Conversion in Shambhala.]
Alice Bailey and the “Shambhala Force” The British Theosophist Alice Bailey (1880-1949) was a medium who claimed to channel and receive occult letters from a Tibetan master. After losing her battle with Annie Besant for leadership of the Theosophical movement, she founded the Lucifer Trust in 1920 in the United States. Originally calling her trust the Tibetan Lodge, she changed its name once more in 1922 to the Lucis Trust. Her lectures and writings spawned the New Age movement. She called the New Age both the Aquarian Age and the Age of Maitreya.
In Initiations, Human and Solar (1922), Letters on Occult Meditation (1922), A Treatise on Cosmic Fire (1925), and A Treatise on White Magic (1934), Bailey wrote extensively about “the Shambhalla Force.” Reminiscent of Roerich, she took Shambhala to be “the seat of Cosmic Fire,” which is a force for purification. Rather than conceiving of this force as benevolent agni, however, she followed Steiner’s lead and associated it with Lucifer. Thus, she spoke of it as a source of destructive power to eject degenerate forms of teachings and to establish a pure New Age.
The Shambhala Force, Bailey explained, is the highly volatile energy of self-will. In itself, it is extremely destructive and can be the source of “Evil.” When seen as the Divine Will, however, initiates can harness it for the ultimate “Good.” A “Hierarchy” in Shambhala, headed by Maitreya, protects the Force and, at the proper time, will initiate the ripe into “the Mysteries of the Ages,” “the Plan.” One wonders if her ideas inspired the Star Wars vision of “the Force,” as a power that can be harnessed for good or evil, and which is guarded by a brotherhood of Jedi Warriors.
Like Steiner, Bailey adapted the concept not only of Lucifer, but also of the Antichrist, and this time associated it with the Shambhala Force. Borrowing Theosophical concepts, she said that the Shambhala Force had made its presence known twice before in history. The first time was during the Lemurian Age, heralding the individualization of mankind. The second was “during the Atlantean days of struggle between the Lords of Light and the Lords of Material Form, the Dark Forces.” Nowadays, she continued – referring to the period between the two World Wars – it is manifesting as the force to destroy what is undesirable and obstructive in present world forms of government, religion, and society.
Doreal and the Brotherhood of the White Temple Bailey’s teachings spawned several further occult movements that associated Shambhala with even more esoteric ideas. One example is the Brotherhood of the White Temple, founded in 1930 by the American spiritualist Morris Doreal (1902-1963). In Maitreya, Lord of the World, Doreal wrote that Shamballa (Shambhala) is the Great White Temple of Tibet, located 75 miles beneath the Himalayas. Its entrance is underground, with space around it bent into a warp that leads into another universe. He described Shambhala as having two halves. The southern half is the section where adepts and great gurus live. The northern half is the land where the avatar or world teacher Maitreya lives. In the future, Maitreya will come with the warriors of Shambhala, who are the “light bearers of the Aquarian Age,” to conquer the dark forces of evil in the world.
Doreal’s main work was The Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean, which he claimed to have recovered from beneath the Great Pyramid in Egypt and to have translated from the Atlantean language. He also claimed to have received secret initiations from Tibetan monks.
Haushofer, the Thule Society, and Nazi Germany After the Second World War, Bailey accounted for the Nazi policies by asserting that Hitler had appropriated the Shambhala Force and as a “tool of the Dark Forces,” had misused it to fight the "Energy of Light."
Similar to Bailey’s claims of the connection between Hitler and the Shambhala Force, several postwar studies on Nazism and the Occult have asserted that the Nazis sent expeditions to Tibet to seek the help of the forces of Shambhala and Agharti to carry out their Master Plan. Bailey, however, only mentioned Shambhala in this connection and said nothing about Agharti. These accounts, on the other hand, purport that the masters of Shambhala refused to assist the Nazi expeditions, but the adepts of Agharti agreed and returned with them to Germany. Moreover, they attribute the Nazi search for occult support in Tibet to the beliefs of Karl Haushofer and the Thule Society. Haushofer was the founder of the Vril Society in association with the Thule Society and was a major influence on Hitler’s occult thinking. The Thule and Vril Societies combined beliefs from various sources. Let us trace some of these beliefs briefly, in chronological order, before we examine these postwar studies.
The Ancient Greeks wrote not only of the sunken island of Atlantis, but also of Hyperborea, a northern land whose people migrated south before ice destroyed it. The late seventeenth-century Swedish author Olaf Rudbeck located it at the North Pole and several other accounts related that before its destruction, it broke into the islands of Thule and Ultima Thule.
The British astronomer Sir Edmund Halley, also in the late seventeenth century, forwarded the theory that the earth is hollow. The French novelist Jules Verne popularized the idea in Voyage to the Center of the Earth (1864). In 1871, the British novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton, in The Coming Race, described a superior race, the Vril-ya, who lived beneath the earth and planned to conquer the world with vril, a psychokinetic energy. In Les Fils de Dieu (The Sons of God) (1873), the French author Louis Jacolliot linked vril with the subterranean people of Thule. The Indian freedom advocate, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, in The Arctic Home of the Vedas (1903), identified the southern migration of the Thuleans with the origin of the Aryan race. In 1908, the American author Willis George Emerson published the novel The Smokey God, or A Voyage to the Inner World, which described the journey of a Norwegian sailor through an opening at the North Pole to a hidden world inside the Earth.
The Thule Society was founded in 1910 by Felix Niedner, the German translator of the Old Norse Eddas. It identified the Germanic people as the Aryan race, the descendants from Thule, and sought its transformation into a superrace through harnessing the power of vril. As part of its emblem, it took the swastika, a traditional symbol for Thor, the Norse God of Thunder. In doing so, the Thule Society followed the precedent of Guido von List who, in the late nineteenth century, had made the swastika an emblem for the neo-Pagan movement in Germany.
Together with Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels and Phillip Stauff, von List had been prominent in founding the Ariosophy movement, popular before and during the First World War. Ariosophy blended the concept of races from Theosophy with German nationalism to assert the superiority of the Aryan race as a rationale for Germany to conquer the global colonial empires of the British and the French as the rightful ruler of the inferior races. The Thule Society embraced the Ariosophy beliefs. It must be pointed out, however, that the Theosophical movement never intended its teachings on races as a justification for asserting the superiority of one race over another, or the destined right of one race to rule the others.
When Rudolf Freiherr von Sebottendorf established a Munich branch of the Thule Society in 1918, he added anti-Semitism and the sanctioned use of assassination to the Society’s creeds. He had picked up these elements during his years in Turkey and his acquaintance there with the Order of Assassins. This secret order traced back to the Nazari sect of Ismaili Islam, against whom the Crusaders had fought.
Later in 1918, after the Bavarian Communist Revolution, anti-Communism also joined the Thule Society’s set of aims. In 1919, the Munich Thule Society gave rise to the German Workers Party. Hitler joined it that same year and, becoming its head in 1920, renamed it the Nazi Party and adopted the swastika for its flag.
Karl Haushofer was a German military advisor to Japan after the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. He was extremely impressed by Japanese culture, studied the language, and later became instrumental in forging the alliance between Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. He also learned Sanskrit and purportedly studied for a year in Tibet. He founded the Vril Society in Berlin in 1918, which in addition to the Thule Society creeds, also advocated searching for vril among supernatural beings beneath the earth. The most likely location would be in Tibet, which he saw as the homeland of the Aryan migrants from Thule.
Haushofer also developed Geopolitics, according to which a race gains power by expanding its living space (Germ. Lebensraum) through the conquest of its neighboring lands. In the early 1920s, Haushofer headed the Institute for Geopolitics in Munich and, starting in 1923, began to teach Hitler his views. Haushofer was instrumental in convincing Hitler to establish the Ahnenerbe (Bureau for the Study of Ancestral Heritage) in 1935. Its main charge was to locate the origins of the Aryan race, especially in Central Asia. In 1937, Himmler incorporated this bureau into the SS (Germ. Schutzstaffel, Protection Squad).
In 1938-1939, the Ahnenerbe sponsored the Third Expedition of Ernst Schäffer to Tibet. During its brief stay, the anthropologist Bruno Beger measured the skulls of numerous Tibetans and concluded that they were an intermediary race between the Aryans and Mongolians and could serve as a link for the German-Japanese alliance.
[For more detail, see: The Nazi Connection with Shambhala and Tibet.]
The Nazi Search for Shambhala and Agharti According to Pauwels, Bergier, and Frére A number of scholars have questioned the accuracy of the postwar studies on Nazism and the Occult. Whether or not they accurately represent Nazi thought during the Third Reich, still they represent a further popularized distortion of the Shambhala legend. Let us examine two slightly different versions from among them.
According to the version found in Le Matin des Magiciens (The Morning of the Magicians) (1962) by the French researchers Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier and in Nazisme et Sociétés Secrètes (Nazism and Secret Societies) (1974) by Jean-Claude Frére, Haushofer believed that two groups of Aryans migrated south from Hyperborea-Thule. One went to Atlantis, where they intermarried with the Lemurians who had also migrated there. Recall that Blavatsky had associated the Lemurians with Atlantis and Shambhala, and Bailey had associated both the Lemurians and Atlanteans with the Shambhala Force. The descendents of these impure Aryans turned to black magic and conquest. The other branch of Aryans migrated south, passing through North America and northern Eurasia, eventually reaching the Gobi Desert. There, they founded Agharti, the myth of which had become popular through the writings of Saint-Yves d’Alveidre.
According to Frére, the Thule Society equated Agharti with its cognate Asgaard, the home of the gods in Norse mythology. Others assert, less convincingly, that Agharti is cognate with Ariana, an Old Persian name known by the ancient Greeks for the region extending from Eastern Iran through Afghanistan to Uzbekistan – the homeland of the Aryans.
After a world cataclysm, Agharti sank beneath the earth. This accords with Ossendowski’s account. The Aryans then split into two groups. One went south and founded a secret center of learning beneath the Himalayas, also called Agharti. There, they preserved the teachings of virtue and of vril. The other Aryan group tried to return to Hyperborea-Thule, but founded instead Shambhala, a city of violence, evil, and materialism. Agharti was the holder of the right-hand path and positive vril, while Shambhala was the keeper of the degenerate left-hand path and negative energy.
The division of right-hand and left-hand paths had appeared already in Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine. There, she wrote that at the time of the Atlanteans, humanity branched into right- and left-hand paths of knowledge, which became the germs of white and black magic. She did not associate the two paths, however, with Agharti and Shambhala. In fact, she did not mention Agharti at all in her writings. The terms right- and left-hand paths derive from a division within Hindu tantra. Early Western writers often characterized left-hand tantra as a degenerate form and misidentified it with Tibetan Buddhism and its teachings of anuttarayoga tantra.
According to Pauwels and Bergier, the Thule Society sought to contact and make a pact with Shambhala, but only Agharti agreed to offer help. By 1926, the French authors explained, there were already colonies of Hindus and Tibetans in Munich and Berlin, called the Society of Green Men, in astral connection with the Green Dragon Society in Japan. Membership in the latter society required ritual Japanese suicide (Jap. hara-kiri, seppuku) if one lost one’s honor. Haushofer had purportedly joined the society during his early years in Japan. The leader of the Society of Green Men was a Tibetan monk, known as “the man with green gloves,” who supposedly visited Hitler frequently and held the keys of Agharti. Expeditions to Tibet followed annually, from 1926 to 1943. When the Russians entered Berlin at the end of the war, they found nearly a thousand corpses of soldiers of the Himalayan race, dressed in Nazi uniforms but without identification papers, who had committed suicide. Haushofer himself committed hara-kiri before he could be tried at Nürenberg in 1946.
The Nazi Search for Shambhala and Agharti According to Ravenscroft A slightly different account of the Nazi search for Shambhala and Agharti appeared in The Spear of Destiny (1973) by the British researcher Trevor Ravenscroft. According to this version, the Thule Society believed that two sections of Aryans turned to worship of two evil forces. Their turning to evil brought about the decline of Atlantis and, subsequently, the two groups established cave communities in mountains submerged beneath the Atlantic Ocean near Iceland. The legend of Thule arose from them. One group of Aryans followed the Luciferic Oracle, called Agarthi (Agharti), and practiced the left-hand path. The other group followed the Ahrimanic Oracle, called Schamballah (Shambhala), and practiced the right-hand path. Note that Ravenscroft reported the reverse of Pauwels, Bergier, and Frére’s assertions that Agharti followed the right-hand path and Shambhala the left.
Ravenscroft went on to explain that according to the “Secret Doctrine” – alluding to Blavatsky’s book by the same name – which appeared in Tibet ten thousand years ago, Lucifer and Ahriman are the two forces of Evil, the two great adversaries of human evolution. Lucifer leads people to set themselves up as gods and is associated with the lust for power. Following Lucifer can lead to egotism, false pride, and the misuse of magic powers. Ahriman strives to establish a purely material realm on the earth and uses the perverse sexual craving of people in black magic rites.
Recall that although Blavatsky had written about Lucifer and Ahriman, she did not make the two a pair and did not associate either of the two with Shambhala or Agharti. Moreover, Blavatsky explained that although Latin scholastics had transformed Lucifer into a purely evil Satan, Lucifer had the power both to destroy and to create. He represented the light-bearing presence in everyone’s minds that could uplift people from animalism and bring about a positive transformation to a higher plane of existence.
It was Steiner who had emphasized Lucifer and Ahriman as representing the two poles of destructive power. However, Steiner described Lucifer as the ultimately benevolent destructive force for regeneration and Ahriman as purely malevolent. Moreover, Steiner associated Lucifer with Shambhala, not Agharti and, in fact, like Blavatsky and Bailey, did not mention Agharti at all. In addition, none of the three occult authors described Shambhala as located underground. Only the Roerichs had associated Shambhala with the underground city of Agharti, but had clarified that the two were different and never asserted that Shambhala was underground.
Ravenscroft, like Pauwels, Bergier, and Frére, also asserted that through the initiative of Haushofer and other Thule Society members, exploratory teams were sent to Tibet annually from 1926 to 1942 to establish contact with underground cave communities. They were supposed to convince the masters there to enlist the aid of Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers to further the Nazi cause, especially for creating an Aryan superrace. The adepts of Shambhala refused to help. As followers of the Ahrimanic Oracle, they were concerned only with furthering materialism. Moreover, Shambhala had already affiliated itself with certain lodges in Britain and the United States. This was perhaps a reference to Doreal, whose Brotherhood of the White Temple in America was the first major occult movement to assert Shambhala as an underground city. Moreover, this account also fits well with Haushofer’s disdain for Western materialistic science, which he called “Jewish-Marxist-Liberal Science,” in favor of “Nordic-Nationalistic Science.”
Ravenscroft continued that the masters of Agharti agreed to help the Nazi cause and, from 1929, groups of Tibetans came to Germany, where they became known as the Society of Green Men. Joined by members of the Green Dragon Society of Japan, they set up occult schools in Berlin and elsewhere. Note that Pauwels and Bergier asserted that colonies of not only Tibetans, but also Hindus were present in Berlin and Munich from 1926, not 1929.
Himmler was attracted to these groups of Tibetan-Agharti adepts and, from their influence, established the Ahnenerbe in 1935. Recall that Himmler did not establish the Ahnenerbe, but rather incorporated it into the SS in 1937.
A Theory to Explain the Anti-Shambhala Sentiment and Pro-Agharti Bias of the German Occult Movements It is difficult to ascertain whether Haushofer and the Thule Society actually asserted any of the above points, which mix occult descriptions of Shambhala with both Ossendowski’s depiction of Agharti and the legends of Thule and vril. It is also difficult to ascertain whether Haushofer tried and succeeded in influencing Hitler and official Nazi institutions, such as the Ahnenerbe, to send expeditions to Tibet to secure aid from the two supposedly subterranean lands – or even if the Thule Society itself sent such expeditions. The only mission to Tibet officially sanctioned by the Ahnenerbe – the Third Tibetan Expedition (1938-1939) of Ernst Schäffer – clearly had a different, though equally occult agenda. Its primary purpose was to measure the skulls of Tibetans to determine if they were the source of the Aryans and an intermediary race between the Aryans and the Japanese.
Aside from certain factual inaccuracies and contradictions between the above two accounts of Haushofer and the Thule Society’s beliefs, two points of agreement seem significant. Firstly, Steiner and Bailey associated with Shambhala the regenerative power to destroy outmoded orders and to establish new reformed ones. They represented this ultimately benevolent power with Lucifer. Haushofer and the Thule Society, on the other hand, purportedly associated Lucifer and this benevolent power with Agharti. For them, Shambhala became a land of purely malevolent destructive power, represented by Ahriman and unbridled materialism. Secondly, although the Thule Society and the Nazis first sought the help of Shambhala, representing the evil path of materialism, they were refused. Instead, they received the support of Agharti, representing the ultimately positive path of destruction of the weak and creation of the Master Race as the next step forward in human evolution.
Let us leave aside, for the moment, the question of whether the Thule Society and the Ahnenerbe actually sent missions to Tibet seeking aid from Shambhala and Agharti. However, let us assume, also for the moment, that Haushofer actually did combine the legends of Shambhala and Agharti with the Thule Society’s beliefs and that the resulting melange did represent the Nazi occult position. If this were the case, then a possible theory to explain the claim that Shambhala rejected the Nazi’s approach, while Agharti accepted it would be as follows.
Through Dorjiev, Shambhala was associated with Russia and later also with Communism, while through Ossendowski, Agharti was associated with the anti-Communist anti-Semitic forces of the German Baron von Ungern-Sternberg. Since the Bavarian Communist Revolution of 1918, the Thule Society and Hitler were avidly anti-Communist. Before this, they were both already anti-Semitic. Thus, in their eyes, Shambhala was a dark, negative force that supported purely materialistic “Jewish-Marxist-Liberal Science.” With his anti-Communist bias, Hitler signed the Anti-Commintern Pact with Japan in November 1936, in which both countries declared their mutual hostility toward the spread of international Communism. Both agreed that they would not sign any political treaties with the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, to avoid a European war on two fronts, Hitler signed the Nazi-Soviet Pact with Stalin in August 1939. He broke this pact, however, in June 1941, when the Nazi forces invaded the Soviet Union.
An occult explanation and justification of Hitler’s about-face might have been through an allegory. Shambhala (the Soviet Union, Communism, and the Jews) was basically evil (acknowledged by the Anti-Commintern Pact). Nevertheless, Hitler first sought an alliance with it (the Soviet-Nazi Pact). Shambhala refused (Hitler placed the blame on the Soviet Union for why he broke the pact). Hitler then turned to and received support from Agharti. (Ungern, an earlier anti-Semitic anti-Bolshevik German, had also sought help from Agharti, but had failed to locate the fabled land. Thus, Ungern had failed in his mission. Since Hitler’s expeditions had found Agharti-Asgaard and received its help, the Nazis would surely succeed.)
Supporting Evidence for the Theory The following facts would support the above theory explaining the German Occult depiction of Shambhala as a land of malevolent forces. In Der Weg nach Shambhala (The Way to Shambhala) (1915), the German explorer of Central Asia, Albert Grünwedel, reported that Dorjiev had identified the Romanov Dynasty as the descendants of the rulers of Shambhala.
In Sturm über Asien (Storm over Asia) (1924), the German spy Wilhelm Filchner connected the Soviet drive to take over Central Asia with the Romanov interest in Tibet from the beginning of the century. In 1926, the Roerichs delivered soil purportedly from the mahatmas of Tibet to Soviet Foreign Minister Chicherin to place on Lenin’s grave. Helena Roerich referred to both Marx and Lenin as mahatmas and claimed that emissaries of the Himalayan mahatmas had even met with Marx in England and Lenin in Switzerland. The mahatmas supported the Communist ideals of universal brotherhood.
In “Aus den letzten Jahrzehnten des Lamaismus in Russland (Concerning the Last Decades of Lamaism in Russia)” (1926), the German scholar W. A. Unkrig cited Filchner’s book and repeated Grünwedel’s report concerning Dorjiev, the Romanovs, and Shambhala. He also reported the ceremony at the Buddhist temple in Saint Petersburg to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the Romanov Empire. Warning against the influence of this temple and an alliance of the Soviet Union, Mongolia, and Tibet, Unkrig ended his article with the Latin quote, “Domine, libera nos a Tartaris (God save us from the Tartars).” This fit in well with Haushofer’s Geopolitics and his recommendation for Germany to conquer living space in Central Asia, the homeland of the Aryan race.
Already in 1910, Steiner was lecturing in Berlin and Munich about Shambhala as the seat of Maitreya, the Antichrist who will rid the world of perverted spiritual teachings. Tiere, Menschen und Götter (Beasts, Men, and Gods), the popular German translation of Ossendowski’s book, appeared in 1923. It introduced Agharti as a source of power that Baron von Ungern-Sternberg sought for support in his battle against the Mongolian Communist leader Sukhe Batur, who was rallying his troops with stories of Shambhala. Recall that the Thule Society identified Agharti with Asgaard, the home of the Aryan Norse gods.
During the first half of the 1920s, a so-called “occult war” took place among the Occult Societies and Secret Lodges in Germany. In 1925, Steiner was murdered and many suspected that the Thule Society had ordered his assassination. In later years, Hitler continued the persecution of Anthroposophists, Theosophists, Freemasons, and Rosicrucians. Various scholars ascribe this policy to Hitler’s wish to eliminate any occult rivals to his rule. Steiner, for example, had commissioned the German translation of Bulwer-Lytton’s novel on vril, The Coming Race, under the more explicit German title Vril, oder eine Menschheit der Zukunft (Vril, or the Race of the Future). Moreover, since Steiner and Anthroposophy spoke of Shambhala as the land of the future messiah and benevolence, it makes sense that the Thule Society and Hitler would describe it in the opposite manner, as a land of malevolence.
Between 1929 and 1935, five books by the French adventurer Alexandra David-Neel appeared in German translation, such as Heilige und Hexen (Mystiques et Magiciens du Thibet, With Mystics and Magicians in Tibet). David-Neel had spent many years studying and traveling in Tibet and she reported that adepts there had extraphysical powers that allowed them to defy gravity and run at superhuman speed. Consequently, fantasy about Tibet as the land of mysterious magical powers grew wildly.
In 1936, Theodor Illion, a German explorer who traveled in Tibet in the early 1930s, published Rätselhaftes Tibet (In Secret Tibet) under the pseudonym Theodor Burang. In it, he too described supernatural powers that Tibetan adepts possessed. In his second book, Finsternis über Tibet (Darkness over Tibet) (1937), he described his being led to an underground city in the “Valley of Mystery,” where an “Occult Fraternity” channeled spiritual energy to gain power. Its ruler was the sorcerer Prince Mani Rimpotsche. Although this “Prince of Light” pretended to be a benevolent ruler, he actually was the head of a malevolent cult, a “Prince of Darkness.” Illion never mentioned Shambhala, but his popular works would also have added weight to the Nazi occult assertion of Shambhala as a land of malevolent magic.
Evidence Countering the Assertion of Official Nazi Support of the German Occult Beliefs about Shambhala Let us suppose that the Nazi occult movement, as represented by the Thule Society, used the Shambhala-Agharti allegory to justify Hitler’s changing policy toward the Soviet Union. Still, it seems highly unlikely that official Nazi institutions, such as the Ahnenerbe, had Shambhala and Agharti on their agendas, even on their hidden agendas. Let us examine the evidence that would support that conclusion.
Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933. In the same year, Sebottendorf, the founder of the Munich branch of the Thule Society, published Bevor Hitler kamBefore Hitler Came), in which he outlined Hitler’s debt to “Thulism.” Hitler quickly banned the book and forced Sebottendorf to retire. Although Hitler clearly advocated the Thule Society’s beliefs, he disavowed any connection with established occult movements. He did not want to leave open the possibility for rivalry to come from any quarter.
Haushofer and the Thule Society, however, were not the only behind-the-scenes influences on the Ahnenerbe. Sven Hedin, the Swedish explorer of Tibet and favorite of the Nazis, also played a significant role. Between 1922 and 1944, he wrote several popular books in German on his travels in Tibet, such as Tsangpo Lamas Wallfahrt (The Pilgrimage of the Tsangpo Lamas) (1922). Several others were translated into German from English, such as My Life as an Explorer (1926) (Germ. Mein Leben als Entdecker, 1928) and A Conquest of Tibet (1934) (Germ. Eroberungszüge in Tibet, 1941). Moreover, in Ossendowski und die Wahrheit (Ossendowski and the Truth) (1925), Hedin debunked Ossendowski’s claim that Mongolian lamas had told him about Agharti. In it, he exposed Agharti as a fantasy appropriated from Saint-Yves d’Alveidre’s 1886 novel.
Frederick Hielscher, whom Hitler authorized to establish the Ahnenerbe in 1935, was a friend of Sven Hedin. Moreover, Hitler invited Hedin to give the opening address at the 1936 Berlin Olympics and in 1937, Hedin published Germany and World Peace. From 1939 to 1943, Hedin made several diplomatic missions to Germany and continued his pro-Nazi publishing activities. The clearest evidence of his influence on the Ahnenerbe is the fact that, in 1943, its Tibet Institut (Tibet Institute) was renamed the Sven Hedin Institut für Innerasien und Expeditionen (Sven Hedin Institute for Inner Asia and Expeditions).
Haushofer was indeed instrumental in starting the Ahnenerbe and in its agenda being based on many of the Thule Society’s beliefs. Nevertheless, because of Hedin, it is unlikely that the Ahnenerbe sought and received support from Agharti in Tibet. Hedin acknowledged that Tibet was a repository of ancient hidden knowledge, but did not attribute occult significance to it. Nor did he associate this knowledge with Shambhala or Agharti.
Moreover, it seems highly improbable that groups of Tibetans were present in Berlin and Munich from 1926 or 1929, under the auspices of the Thule Society. If that were the case, then since the Ahnenerbe unofficially was associated with the Thule Society, there would have been no need for it to send an expedition to Tibet to measure the skulls of Tibetans. They could have made these measurements in Germany. Thus, the assertion that the Thule Society sponsored annual journeys to Tibet from 1926 to 1942 also seems highly questionable.
The Kalmyk Connection The report by Pauwels and Berger that at the end of the war, the Russians found in Berlin a large number of corpses of soldiers of the Himalayan race, dressed in Nazi uniforms, who had committed suicide, also needs scrutiny. The unspoken implication is that the Russians found the corpses of the Tibetan-Agharti adepts who were assisting the Nazi cause and that, like Haushofer, they committed ritual suicide.
Firstly, hara-kiri was a Japanese samurai custom, which many Japanese soldiers in the Second World War enacted to avoid capture. Followers of Tibetan Buddhism, however, consider suicide an extremely negative act with dire consequences in future lives. It is never justifiable. The report inappropriately attributes Japanese customs to Tibetans. Secondly, any soldiers of Himalayan origin found in Nazi uniform would most likely have been Kalmyk Mongols, not Tibetans. Further, the Kalmyks’ fighting in the German army does not prove their support of Nazi ideology or the support of it by their Tibetan Buddhist beliefs. Let us examine the historical facts, supplementing them with information gained from interviews with Kalmyks living in Munich Germany who had participated in many of the events described below.
The Kalmyk Mongols are practitioners of the Tibetan form of Buddhism and have a long history of association with Germans. A large group of them migrated west from the Dzungaria region of East Turkistan between 1609 and 1632. They settled in Russia along the lower Volga, where it empties into the Caspian Sea. There, they continued their nomadic herder way of life.
In 1763, Czarina Catherine II the Great invited almost thirty thousand Germans to settle in the Volga region to the north of the Kalmyks. She wanted them to farm the fertile land and secure it against the “Tartars.” She tried to force Christianity and agriculture on the Kalmyks, causing many to flee back to Dzungaria in 1771. Eventually, however, those who remained in Russia were accepted, especially since they were excellent soldiers. During the Napoleanic Wars (1812-1815), for example, the Russian Army had a Kalmyk regiment. Over the next century, Kalmyk soldiers were prominent in divisions throughout the Czarist Army.
Although the life styles and customs of the agrarian Volga Germans and nomadic Kalmyk herdsmen differed greatly, the neighbors gradually came to respect each other. The Germans, in fact, took interest in the Kalmyks. As early as 1804, Benjamin Bergmann published a four volume work on their language and religion, entitled Nomadische Streifereien unter der Kalmüken in den Jahren 1802 und 1804 (Nomadic Migrations among the Kalmyks in the Year 1802 and 1804). Sven Hedin passed through Kalmykia on one of his early expeditions to Dzungaria and expressed great admiration for its people.
After the Communist Revolution in 1917, many Kalmyks remained loyal to the Czarist forces and continued to fight on the White Russian side, especially under Generals Vrangel and Deniken. Before the Red Army broke through to the Crimean Peninsula at the end of 1920, about twenty Kalmyk families fled across the Black Sea with Vrangel and relocated in Warsaw Poland and Prague Czechoslovakia. A much larger number left with Deniken, with the majority settling in Belgrade Serbia and smaller numbers in Sofia Bulgaria and in Paris and Lyon France. The Kalmyk refugees in Belgrade built a Buddhist temple there in 1929. The Communists severely punished the Kalmyks who remained behind, beheading ten thousand.
In 1931, Stalin collectivized the Kalmyks, closed the Buddhist monasteries, and burned the religious texts. He deported to Siberia all herdsmen owning more than five hundred sheep and all monks. Partially due to Stalin’s collectivization policies, a great famine struck from 1932 to 1933. Approximately sixty thousand Kalmyks died.
After Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in September 1941, Goebbels invited to Berlin several prominent Kalmyks from Belgrade, Paris, and Prague to help with a propaganda campaign. The Nazis wished to win the Kalmyks to the German side against the Russians and never sent any of those under their rule to concentration camps. Thus, Goebbels organized this nucleus into a committee to free the Kalmyks from the Communist regime. In this connection, he helped them print a Kalmyk language newspaper and used them to broadcast radio news in Kalmyk directed toward Kalmykia.
When the Nazi Sixteenth Panzer Division under Field Marshal Mannstein took Kalmykia early in 1942, three members of this committee accompanied them. A number of Belgrade Kalmyks also participated in the invasion, having joined the German army after the Nazi occupation of Serbia in April 1941. The people of Kalmykia greeted the German army with butter and milk, the traditional offering to welcome guests, as liberators from Stalin’s oppressive rule. The Germans said they would dismantle the collectives and would divide and privatize the land. They allowed the Kalmyks to practice Buddhism once more. In response, the Kalmyks exhumed the religious texts they had buried for safekeeping and built a makeshift temporary temple. In November and December 1942, however, the Red Army retook Kalmykia and destroyed everything the people had rebuilt.
The German troops invited the Kalmyks to retreat and continue the fight with them. About five thousand joined the Nazi military, forming the Kalmykian Voluntary Cavalry Corps. Only a few woman and children accompanied them. The Kalmyk troops fought with the Nazi army behind the lines, especially around the Azov Sea. The majority of the Kalmyk population, however, remained in Kalmykia. In December 1943, Stalin declared them all German collaborators and deported the lot to Siberia. They returned only during the Khruschev era, between 1957 and 1960.
In the early autumn of 1944, in the face of the imminent Russian invasion of Serbia, many Belgrade Kalmyks fled to Munich Germany to avoid Communist persecution. A learned Buddhist teacher and several monks accompanied them. At the end of 1944, the Kalmyk cavalry troops that survived in Russia, together with their families, retreated with the German army. About two thousand went to Selesia Poland and fifteen hundred to Zagreb Croatia, where they were reorganized to fight against the partisans.
Thus, although a number of Kalmyks were in Germany and Nazi-held territory in the final months of the war, only a few were in the Berlin area, still engaged in propaganda work. The Kalmyk soldiers in Nazi uniform were in Poland and Croatia, not in Germany. Although several Kalmyk monks performed Tibetan Buddhist rituals in the Kalmyk barracks and homes in Nazi-held territory, they prayed for peace and the welfare of all beings. No Tibetans were among them and they did not conduct “occult” ceremonies for a Nazi victory, as some postwar occult accounts report.
After the war, the Kalmyks left in Western European countries were intered in displaced persons camps in Austria and Germany, especially in the Munich area. Released in 1951, they settled first in Munich. Later that year, the Anna Tolstoy Foundation resettled the majority of them in New Jersey, USA. Tito handed those left in Serbia over to the Soviets, who promptly deported them to Siberia.
Postwar Assertions of Shambhala and Flying Saucers Occult interpretations of other Nazi activities, associating them with Shambhala, also appeared after the war. For example, a 1939 German expedition to Antarctica, led by Captain Alfred Ritscher, mapped one-fifth of the continent, claimed it for Germany, and named it Neu-Schwabenland. Further Nazi expeditions to Antarctica and naval activity in the South Atlantic continued until the end of the war.
In the late 1950s, separately from this, Henrique Jose de Souza, the president of the Brazilian Theosophical Society at that time, proposed a new hollow earth theory. Inside the earth lies Agharti, with its capital Shambhala, as the source of flying saucers that emerge to the surface through tunnels at the North and South Poles. Accordingly, the Brazilian Theosophical Society built as its headquarters in São Lourenço, Minas Gerais, a Greek-style temple dedicated to Agharti. De Souza’s student, O. C. Hugenin, popularized his mentor’s theory in From the Subterranean World to the Sky: Flying Saucers (1957). R. W. Bernard, in his 1964 book The Hollow Earth, had the flying saucers from Shambhala in Agharti under the Earth come out through secret tunnels under the Himalayas in Tibet.
Based on the Nazi Antarctic expeditions and the above accounts, the German Occultist Ernst Zündel wrote several books in the 1970s, including UFO’s: Nazi Secret Weapons?, claiming that the Nazis had a secret base in an area of warm water lakes they had found in Antarctica. There they hid their secret weapon, UFOs. Zündel is also infamous as the most outspoken proponent of the view that the Holocaust never happened.
The association of flying saucers with Shambhala derives from the account of the allegorical future apocalyptic war found The Stainless Light commentary to The Abbreviated Kalachakra Tantra. In this account, Raudrachakrin, the twenty-fifth Kalki ruler of Shambhala, will come from his land mounted on a stone horse with the power of the wind and defeat Mahdi, the leader of the non-Indic hordes. Although Raudrachakrin represents the deep awareness of voidness with the subtlest level of mental activity and the stone horse represents the subtlest level of energy-wind on which this awareness rides, some have interpreted the image as a flying saucer coming from Shambhala.
Concluding Remarks The Kalachakra account of Shambhala has sparked the imaginations of many foreign political figures and occult authors. Distorting the original legend and interpolating ideas of fancy, they have incorporated the myth into their writings to serve their own agendas. It is an injustice to Buddhism to attribute these distortions to the original intent of the Kalachakra teachings. Continuing research will disentangle more of the truth.
FDR, The Gobi, and Climate Change
The expedition was funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and organized through the help of then Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace (later, vice president with FDR), a student of Roerich. One of the purposes was to gather samples of drought-resistant grasses for the Great Plains areas.
Scientists and other specialists at USDA were initially ecstatic about planning the expedition since the Gobi Desert at the time was one of the last unexplored places in the world.
When they found out, however, that a Russian familiar with the Gobi Desert was leading the expedition instead of one of them, they expressed xenophobic resistance in complaining. But it was President Roosevelt himself who proposed the expedition as he believed that trees at one time grew in the Gobi Desert and that when the trees were cut down, the climate changed. If trees could be grown there again, he thought, it would correct the climate.
But for the Roerichs and Wallace, the expedition also meant the possibility of finding Shambhala. Wallace would later be scandalized when he ran for president by an ultraconservative journalist who published some of Wallace’s personal letters to Roerich, dubbing them “The Guru Letters.” What the journalist missed was the secret file President Roosevelt kept of his correspondence with Roerich’s wife, Helena.
Roerich’s Shambhala Nicholas Roerich chronicled their Asian travels in a number of works, including Altai-Himalaya: A Travel Diary, Heart of Asia, and Shambhala.
“Shambhala itself is the Holy Place, where the earthly world links with the highest states of consciousness,” he explains in Heart of Asia.
“In the East they know that there exists two Shambhalas – an earthly and an invisible one.”
Gurdjieff's Gobi
The Death of Soloviev
G.I. Gurdjieff
Gurdjieff certainly did travel to Tibet and speaks about his experiences there. See Voices in the Dark.
Gurdjieff realized that elements of this teaching over time had dispersed northward into Babylon, the Hindu Kush, Tibet, Siberia and the Gobi desert. He set out on a second journey to re-collect them.
(This piece is an excerpt from Gurdjieff's Meetings With Remarkable Men.)
Soon after our sojourn at the chief monastery of the Sarmoung Brotherhood, Soloviev joined the group of persons I have already mentioned, the Seekers of Truth, the required guarantees being furnished by me. He became a full member of this group and from then on, thanks to his persistent and conscientious efforts, he not only worked for the attainment of his individual perfection but at the same time took a serious part in all our general activities and in the various expeditions for special purposes.
During one of these expeditions, in the year 1898, he died from the bite of a wild camel in the Gobi Desert. I will describe the occurrence in as much detail as possible, because not only was the death of Soloviev very strange, but our method of crossing the desert was unprecedented and in itself highly instructive.
I shall begin the description from the time when, having travelled with great difficulty from Tashkent up the course of the river Sharakshan and over several mountain passes, we arrived at F, a very small place on the edge of the Gobi Desert.
We decided before beginning our proposed crossing of the desert to rest at this village for several weeks. And while staying there we, sometimes as a group, sometimes individually, met various local inhabitants, who in answer to our questions told us all sorts of beliefs connected with the Gobi Desert.
What we chiefly heard in these conversations was that, under the sands of the present-day desert, villages and even entire cities lay buried, and that these sands also covered many treasures and other riches of the ancient peoples who had inhabited this once flourishing region. It was said that information about the location of these riches was known to certain men living in the neighbouring villages and was handed down from father to son under vows of secrecy. The violation of these vows, as many had already learned, entailed a punishment whose severity depended upon the importance of the secret betrayed.
Repeated mention was made of a certain region of the Gobi Desert where, it seemed, it was definitely known to many that a great city lay buried; and in this connection there were a number of suspicious indications, not contradictory to each other, which seriously interested many of us, particularly Professor Skridlov, the archaeologist, who was among the members of our expedition.
After long discussions among ourselves we decided to plan our crossing of the Gobi Desert so as to pass through that region where, according to the many indications just mentioned, the city buried beneath the sands should be. There we intended to carry out some exploratory excavations under the direction of old Professor Skridlov, who was a great specialist in this field. And in accordance with this plan we mapped out our route.
Although this region was not near any of the more or less known routes across the Gobi Desert, not only did we all, holding to our already long-established principle never to follow the beaten track, treat lightly all the difficulties before us, but there even arose in each of us a feeling somewhat like elation. When this feeling subsided, we set ourselves to work out the details of our plan, and then all the extreme difficulties of our project became apparent, and to such an extent that the question actually arose whether it were possible to carry it out at all.
The trouble was that this journey, by the route we had planned, would be very long and impossible to accomplish by ordinary means. The greatest difficulty lay in providing ourselves with sufficient water and provisions, as even by the most modest calculations the quantity would have to be so great that to carry such a burden ourselves was in no way feasible. At the same time, it was out of the question to use pack-animals for this purpose, as we could not count on a single blade of grass or drop of water on the way. We could not even be sure of passing a small oasis on our route.
In spite of all this we did not give up our plan, but, having pondered over the question, we decided by common agreement that we should not undertake anything for the time being but that for one month each of us should concentrate all his thought on finding some way out of this hopeless situation; and each was to be provided with the means of doing whatever he pleased and going wherever he wished.
Professor Skridlov, as our senior member and the most respected among us, was entrusted with the direction of this affair, and, among other things, he was in charge of our common treasury. When everyone had received from him a certain sum of money, some left the village, while others settled down there, each according to his plan.
The meeting place which had been fixed was a small village lying on the edge of the sands from which we intended to begin our crossing. A month later we assembled at this appointed place and under the direction of Professor Skridlov set up a camp; and then each made his report on what he had found out. The order of the reports was decided by lot.
The first three to report were, first, Karpenko, the mining engineer, then Dr. Sari-Ogli, and thirdly, Yelov, the philologist. These reports were of such an intense interest on account of their new and original thoughts, and even for the way in which they were expressed, that they deeply engraved themselves on my memory, and I can even now reproduce them almost word for word.
Karpenko began his report as follows:
'Although I well know that none of you like the ways of the European scientists, who, instead of coming straight to the point usually spin out a long rigmarole going back almost to Adam, nevertheless, in the present case, in view of the seriousness of the question, I consider it necessary before telling you my conclusions to put before you the reflections and deductions which led me to what I shall propose today.'
He continued:
'The Gobi is a desert whose sands, according to the assertions of science, are of very recent formation. Concerning their origin there exist two suppositions: either they are the sands of a former sea-bed, or they drifted down, blown by winds from the rocky heights in the Tian-Shan, Hindu Kush and Himalayan ranges, and from mountains which once lay to the north of this desert but which no longer exist, having been worn away by winds for centuries.
"And so, bearing in mind that we must first of all make sure of providing enough food for the entire length of our journey across the desert, both for ourselves and any animals we may find necessary to have with us, I took into consideration both of these suppositions and tried to think whether the sand itself might in some way be made use of for this purpose."
I deliberated thus:
"If this desert is a former sea-bed, then the sands must surely contain strata or zones consisting of various shells, and, as shells are formed by organisms, consequently they must be organic matter. Therefore, we have only to find some means of converting this matter so that it can be digested and in this way provide the energy required for life.
"But if the sands of this desert are drift sands, that is to say, if they are of rocky origin, then again, it has been proved beyond any doubt that the soil of most of the great cases of Turkestan and also of the regions adjacent to this desert is of purely vegetable origin and consists of organic substances deposited there from higher altitudes. So we can conclude that, in the course of centuries, such organic substances must have drifted into the general mass of sands of this desert and become mixed with it. I further reflected that according to the law of gravity all substances or elements always group themselves according to their weight; therefore, here in the desert, the organic substances deposited, being much lighter than sand of rocky origin, must also have gradually grouped themselves in special layers or zones.
"Having come to this theoretical conclusion, I organized a small expedition into the desert to verify it in practice, and after travelling three days began to carry out my investigations. I soon found in certain places layers which, although barely distinguishable from the general mass of the sands, were nevertheless even on superficial examination clearly of a different origin. By microscopic examination and chemical analysis of the separate parts of this mixture of substances, I found out that it consisted of the dead bodies of small organisms and various tissues of the vegetable world. Having loaded all the seven camels I had at my disposal with this peculiar sand, I returned here, and with Professor Skridlov's permission purchased a number of different animals and set to work experimenting on them.
"I bought two camels, two yaks, two horses, two mules, two asses, ten sheep, ten goats, ten dogs and ten Keriskis cats, and keeping them hungry, that is to say, giving them a very limited quantity of food, only just enough to sustain life; I began little by little introducing into their food this sand which I had prepared in various ways. For the first few days of my experiments, none of the animals would eat any of these mixtures. But when I begin to prepare this sand in an entirely new way, after only a week's trial the sheep and goats suddenly began to eat it with great pleasure.
"I then concentrated all my attention on these animals. In two days I completely convinced myself that the sheep and goats had already hegun to prefer this mixture to all other kinds of food. It was composed of seven and a half parts of sand, two parts of ground mutton and one-half part of ordinary salt. At the beginning, all the animals undergoing my experiments, including the sheep and goats, had daily lost from a half to two and a half per cent of their total weight, but, from the day when the sheep and goats began to eat this mixture, they not only stopped losing weight but began gaining from one to three ounces daily. Thanks to these experiments, I personally have no doubt whatever that this sand could be used for feeding goats and sheep, provided it be mixed with the necessary quantity of their own meat. I can therefore propose to you today the following:
"To overcome the chief difficulty of our trip across the desert we must buy several hundred sheep and goats, and gradually, as the need arises, kill them and use their meat both for food for ourselves and for preparing the aforesaid mixture as food for the remaining animals. We need not fear any lack of the required sand, as all the data in my possession convince me that in certain places it can always be found.
"Now, as regards water, in order to provide ourselves with a sufficient supply, we must obtain a large quantity of sheep's or goats' bladders or stomach--twice as many as there are animals--and making them into khourdjeens fill them with water and load each sheep or goat with two khourdjeens.
"I have already verified that a sheep can carry this quantity of water with ease and without any harm to itself. In addition, experiment and calculation have shown me that this quantity of water will suffice for our own needs and also for the animals provided we exercise a little economy in the use of it during the first two or three days. After this we will be able, with the water carried by the sheep we have killed, to satisfy ourselves and the remaining sheep in full."
When Karpenko had finished, the second report was made by Dr. Sari-Ogli. I had met and made friends with Dr. Sari-Ogli five years before. Although by origin a Persian, from Eastern Persia, be had been educated in France. Perhaps I shall at some time write a detailed account of him, as he was a most distinguished and highly remarkable man.
Dr. Sari-Ogli spoke approximately as follows:
"After hearing the report of the mining engineer Karpenko, I shall say "Pass" as regards the first part of my report, because I consider that nothing better than his proposals can be found. However, coming to the second part of my report, which concerns the task I set myself of finding a means of overcoming the difficulties of movement in the desert during sand-storms, I wish to tell you my thoughts and the results of my experiments. The conclusions I arrived at and the experimental data I obtained complement very well, in my opinion, the proposals of Karpenko, and I shall therefore submit them to you.
"In these deserts, one has very often to pass through winds and storms, during which movement sometimes becomes quite impossible both for man and beast, since the wind lifts quantities of sand up into the air and, whirling it along, deposits mountains of it where only a moment before there were hollows.
"And so I reflected that any progress would be impeded by the whirlwinds of sand. My next thought was that sand, because of its weight, cannot rise very high and that probably there was a limit beyond which not a single grain could rise. Deliberating in this way, I decided to find out about this hypothetical limit.
"For this purpose, I ordered here in the village a specially high, folding step-ladder, and with two camels and a driver set off into the desert. After one day's journey I was preparing to camp for the night, when a wind suddenly rose, and within an hour the storm had become so violent that it was impossible to remain stationary and even to breathe owing to the sand in the air.
"With great difficulty we began to set up the ladder I had brought, and somehow, even making use of the camels, we steadied it as best we could and I climbed up. Can you imagine my astonishment when, at a height of no more than twenty-five feet, I found not a grain of sand in the air?
"My ladder was some sixty feet in length; I had not climbed up a third of its height before I emerged from that hell. There above was a beautiful starry and moonlit sky, silence and a stillness such as is rarely found even at home in Eastern Persia. Below, there still reigned something unimaginable; I had the impression of standing on some high cliff on a sea-coast overlooking the most terrible storm and upheaval.
"While I stood up there on the ladder admiring the beautifu1 night, the storm began to abate and after half an hour I descended. But below a calamity awaited me. Although now the wind was only half as strong, the man who had accompanied me was still walking, as is customary in these storms, along the crests of the dunes away from the wind, leading after him only one camel; the other, he told me, had broken loose soon after I had mounted the ladder, and had gone off he knew not where.
"When it began to grow light, we set out to search for the second camel and very soon saw its hoofs sticking out of a dune not far from the place where the ladder had stood. We did not try to dig the camel out, as it was obviously dead and buried quite deep in the sand. We immediately set off on the return journey, eating our food as we went so as not to lose time, and by evening we reached our village.
"The next day I ordered several pairs of stilts of different heights, getting them in different places to avoid suspicion, and, taking with me one camel loaded with provisions and a few necessities, I again set out into the desert, where I began practicing walking on stilts--first on low ones, and then gradually on higher and higher ones. To walk over the sands on stilts was not so difficult once I had fastened to them the iron soles I had devised, and which I had ordered, again out of caution, in different places from the stilts.
"During the time I spent in the desert to practice walking on stilts, I went through two more storms. One of them, to be sure was mild, but, even so,it would have been unthinkable to move and orient oneself in it by ordinary means; but with the aid of my stilts I walked around over the sands during both of these storms, in any desired direction, as though I were in my own room. At first it was somewhat difficult not to stumble, because very often and particularly, as I have already said, during storms, there are ups and downs in the dunes. But fortunately, as I soon discovered, the upper surface of the sand-filled atmosphere has irregularities of contour exactly corresponding to the irregularities of the sands, so that walking on stilts is considerably facilitated by the fact that one can clearly see by the contours of the sand-filled atmosphere where one dune ends and another begins.
"In any case," concluded Dr. Sari-Ogli, "it has been shown that the sand-filled atmosphere has a definite and not very high limit, and that the contours of its upper surface always correspond to the contours of the desert itself; and one must admit that it is absolutely necessary to make use of this discovery in the journey we have ahead of us."
The third to report was Yelov, the philologist, who, with the peculiar, expressive manner of speech characteristic of him, addressed us as follows:
"If you will allow me, gentlemen, I will say the same thing as our esteemed Aesculapius concerning the first half of his report, namely, "I pass", but I pass also concerning everything in general which I had thought out and wiseacred about during the past month.
"What I had wished to communicate to you today is simply child's play in comparison with the ideas presented by the mining engineer, Karpenko, and my friend the doctor--as irreplaceable in respect of his origin as of his possession of a diploma.
"However, just now while the two previous speakers were making their proposals some new ideas arose in me, which you may perhaps find admissible and effective for our journey. They are as follows:
"According to the proposal of the doctor, we are all going to practice walking on stilts of different heights, but the stilts to be used on the journey itself, one pair of which each of us must take with him, will be not less than twenty feet long. Further, if we follow the proposal of Karpenko, we shall probably have a great many sheep and goats. Now I think that when our stilts are not in use, instead of carrying them ourselves, we can very easily arrange for them to be carried by the sheep and goats. As you all know, a flock of sheep is in the habit of following the first sheep, or as it is called, the leader, and therefore it will only be necessary to direct and guide those sheep harnessed to the first pair of stilts, and the rest are bound to follow in a long line, one after the other.
"In this way, apart from the advantage of not having to carry our own stilts, we can also arrange that our sheep should carry us as well. Between stilts twenty feet long placed parallel, we can easily put seven rows of sheep, three in a row, that is, twenty-one sheep in all, and for this number of sheep, the weight of one man is a trifle. We need only harness the sheep to the stilts in such a way as to leave an empty place in the centre about five and a half feet long and three feet wide, which can be used to fix up a very comfortable couch. Then each of us, instead of toiling and sweating under the weight of his own stilts, can loll about like Moukhtar Pasha in his harem or ride like a rich parasite in his private carriage through the allees of the Bois de Boulogn. Crossing the desert in such conditions, we can even, during this time, learn almost all the languages we shall need in our expeditions."
After the first two reports and this finale from Yelov, there was obviously no further need for other proposals. We were all so astounded at what we had heard that all of a sudden it seemed to us that the difficulties of crossing the Gobi had been intentionally exaggerated, and even the impossibility of it suggested expressly for the traveller.
And so, accepting these proposals, we all of us agreed, without any discussion, to conceal from the local inhabitants, for the time being, our impending departure into the desert--that world of hunger, death and uncertainty. Accordingly, we planned to pass off Professor Skridlov as a daring Russian merchant, who had come to this region on some wild commercial venture. He had come, supposedly, to buy up sheep to send to Russia, sheep being very dear there, whereas here they could be bought much more cheaply; and he intended at the same time to export strong, long, thin poles to the factories in Russia, where they would be made into frames for stretching calico. In Russia, such hard wood is unobtainable and the frames made of the wood there soon wear out, owing to the constant movement in the machines, so that poles of this quality would bring a high price. For these reasons, the daring merchant wished to embark on this risky commercial enterprise.
Having decided this, we all became high-spirited and spoke of the journey ahead of us as though it were no more than crossing the Place de la Concorde in Paris.
The next day we moved to the bank of the river, near the place where it disappears into the fathomless depths of the sand, and there we pitched the tents brought from Russia, which we still had with us. Although the site of our new camp was not at all far from the village, nevertheless no one lived in that place, and it was not probable that it would enter anyone's head to come there, to the very gates of that arid hell. Some of us, passing ourselves off as clerks and other servants of the eccentric Russian merchant, Ivanov, made the rounds of the bazaars in the vicinity and began buying up thin poles of various lengths, and also sheep and goats and soon we had a whole flock in our camp.
We then began intensive practice at walking on stilts, first on low ones, and then gradually on higher ones.
One fine morning twelve days later, our extraordinary cortege moved off into the wastes of the sands, amid the bleating of sheep and goats, the barking of dogs, and the whinnies and brays of the horses and asees we had purchased in case of need.
The cortege soon spread out into a long procession of litters, like the grandiose processions of ancient kings. Long rang out our jovial songs and the shouting back and forth to each other from our improvised litters, which followed each other some distance apart. Of course, as always, the remarks coming from Yelov produced roars of laughter.
Although we went through two terrible sandstorms, we arrived several days later almost at the heart of the desert, without any fatigue and fully satisfied with everything--even with having learned the language we needed. We were approaching the spot which was the principal goal of our expedition
Everything would probably have ended as we had planned, if it had not been for the accident to Soloviev.
We had been travelling mostly at night, making use of the abilities of our comrade, the experienced astronomer Dashtamirov, to orient ourselves by the stars.
One day we made a halt at dawn to eat and also to feed our sheep.
It was still very early. The sun had only just begun to grow hot. We were just sitting down to our freshly prepared mutton and rice, when on the horizon there suddenly appeared a herd of camels. We at once guessed that they must be wild ones.
Soloviev, a passionate hunter and a dead shot, immediately seized his rifle and ran in the direction where the silhouettes of the camels could be seen; and we, laughing at Soloviev's passion for hunting, settled down to the hot food, excellently prepared in these unprecedented conditions. I say unprecedented because in the midst of these sands, and so deep in the interior, it is usually considered impossible to build a fire, as there is sometimes not even saksaul (1) to be found for hundreds of miles. But we built fires at least twice a day to cook our meals and prepare coffee or tea, and not only ordinary tea, but also Tibetan tea, brewed in the stock from the bones of the slaughtered sheep. For this luxury we were indebted to the device of Pogossian, who had the idea of making saddles of special wooden sticks for loading the sheep with the bladders of water; so now, as we killed the sheep, there was quite enough wood left over every day for the fires.
An hour and a half had passed since Soloviev had gone after the camels. We were already preparing to continue our journey, and there was still no sign of him. We waited a further half-hour. Well knowing the punctiliousness of Soloviev, who never kept anyone waiting, and fearing some mishap, all but two of us took our guns and set off to search for him. Soon we again perceived the silhouettes of the camels in the distance and went towards them. As we came near, the camels, evidently sensing our approach, fled to the south, but we kept on going.
Four hours had passed since Soloviev had gone. Suddenly one of us noticed a man lying several hundred paces away, and when we came up we recognized Soloviev, who was already dead. His neck had been bitten half through. All of us were overwhelmed with heart-rending grief, for we had all loved this exceptionally good man.
Making a litter of our guns, we carried Soloviev's body back to the camp. The same day, headed by Skridlov, who performed the duty of priest, we buried Soloviev with great solemnity in the heart of the desert, and immediately left that for us accursed place.
Although we had already done much towards the discovery of the legendary city which we had expected to find on our journey, we nevertheless changed all our plans and decided to leave the desert as soon as possible. So we struck out more to the west and in four days arrived at the Keriyan oasis, where normal country begins. From Keriya we continued further, but now without Soloviev, dear to us all.
Peace to thy soul, honest and ever loyal friend of all friends!
1. A tree or tree-like shrub that grows in the sand.
G.I. Gurdjieff
Gurdjieff certainly did travel to Tibet and speaks about his experiences there. See Voices in the Dark.
Gurdjieff realized that elements of this teaching over time had dispersed northward into Babylon, the Hindu Kush, Tibet, Siberia and the Gobi desert. He set out on a second journey to re-collect them.
(This piece is an excerpt from Gurdjieff's Meetings With Remarkable Men.)
Soon after our sojourn at the chief monastery of the Sarmoung Brotherhood, Soloviev joined the group of persons I have already mentioned, the Seekers of Truth, the required guarantees being furnished by me. He became a full member of this group and from then on, thanks to his persistent and conscientious efforts, he not only worked for the attainment of his individual perfection but at the same time took a serious part in all our general activities and in the various expeditions for special purposes.
During one of these expeditions, in the year 1898, he died from the bite of a wild camel in the Gobi Desert. I will describe the occurrence in as much detail as possible, because not only was the death of Soloviev very strange, but our method of crossing the desert was unprecedented and in itself highly instructive.
I shall begin the description from the time when, having travelled with great difficulty from Tashkent up the course of the river Sharakshan and over several mountain passes, we arrived at F, a very small place on the edge of the Gobi Desert.
We decided before beginning our proposed crossing of the desert to rest at this village for several weeks. And while staying there we, sometimes as a group, sometimes individually, met various local inhabitants, who in answer to our questions told us all sorts of beliefs connected with the Gobi Desert.
What we chiefly heard in these conversations was that, under the sands of the present-day desert, villages and even entire cities lay buried, and that these sands also covered many treasures and other riches of the ancient peoples who had inhabited this once flourishing region. It was said that information about the location of these riches was known to certain men living in the neighbouring villages and was handed down from father to son under vows of secrecy. The violation of these vows, as many had already learned, entailed a punishment whose severity depended upon the importance of the secret betrayed.
Repeated mention was made of a certain region of the Gobi Desert where, it seemed, it was definitely known to many that a great city lay buried; and in this connection there were a number of suspicious indications, not contradictory to each other, which seriously interested many of us, particularly Professor Skridlov, the archaeologist, who was among the members of our expedition.
After long discussions among ourselves we decided to plan our crossing of the Gobi Desert so as to pass through that region where, according to the many indications just mentioned, the city buried beneath the sands should be. There we intended to carry out some exploratory excavations under the direction of old Professor Skridlov, who was a great specialist in this field. And in accordance with this plan we mapped out our route.
Although this region was not near any of the more or less known routes across the Gobi Desert, not only did we all, holding to our already long-established principle never to follow the beaten track, treat lightly all the difficulties before us, but there even arose in each of us a feeling somewhat like elation. When this feeling subsided, we set ourselves to work out the details of our plan, and then all the extreme difficulties of our project became apparent, and to such an extent that the question actually arose whether it were possible to carry it out at all.
The trouble was that this journey, by the route we had planned, would be very long and impossible to accomplish by ordinary means. The greatest difficulty lay in providing ourselves with sufficient water and provisions, as even by the most modest calculations the quantity would have to be so great that to carry such a burden ourselves was in no way feasible. At the same time, it was out of the question to use pack-animals for this purpose, as we could not count on a single blade of grass or drop of water on the way. We could not even be sure of passing a small oasis on our route.
In spite of all this we did not give up our plan, but, having pondered over the question, we decided by common agreement that we should not undertake anything for the time being but that for one month each of us should concentrate all his thought on finding some way out of this hopeless situation; and each was to be provided with the means of doing whatever he pleased and going wherever he wished.
Professor Skridlov, as our senior member and the most respected among us, was entrusted with the direction of this affair, and, among other things, he was in charge of our common treasury. When everyone had received from him a certain sum of money, some left the village, while others settled down there, each according to his plan.
The meeting place which had been fixed was a small village lying on the edge of the sands from which we intended to begin our crossing. A month later we assembled at this appointed place and under the direction of Professor Skridlov set up a camp; and then each made his report on what he had found out. The order of the reports was decided by lot.
The first three to report were, first, Karpenko, the mining engineer, then Dr. Sari-Ogli, and thirdly, Yelov, the philologist. These reports were of such an intense interest on account of their new and original thoughts, and even for the way in which they were expressed, that they deeply engraved themselves on my memory, and I can even now reproduce them almost word for word.
Karpenko began his report as follows:
'Although I well know that none of you like the ways of the European scientists, who, instead of coming straight to the point usually spin out a long rigmarole going back almost to Adam, nevertheless, in the present case, in view of the seriousness of the question, I consider it necessary before telling you my conclusions to put before you the reflections and deductions which led me to what I shall propose today.'
He continued:
'The Gobi is a desert whose sands, according to the assertions of science, are of very recent formation. Concerning their origin there exist two suppositions: either they are the sands of a former sea-bed, or they drifted down, blown by winds from the rocky heights in the Tian-Shan, Hindu Kush and Himalayan ranges, and from mountains which once lay to the north of this desert but which no longer exist, having been worn away by winds for centuries.
"And so, bearing in mind that we must first of all make sure of providing enough food for the entire length of our journey across the desert, both for ourselves and any animals we may find necessary to have with us, I took into consideration both of these suppositions and tried to think whether the sand itself might in some way be made use of for this purpose."
I deliberated thus:
"If this desert is a former sea-bed, then the sands must surely contain strata or zones consisting of various shells, and, as shells are formed by organisms, consequently they must be organic matter. Therefore, we have only to find some means of converting this matter so that it can be digested and in this way provide the energy required for life.
"But if the sands of this desert are drift sands, that is to say, if they are of rocky origin, then again, it has been proved beyond any doubt that the soil of most of the great cases of Turkestan and also of the regions adjacent to this desert is of purely vegetable origin and consists of organic substances deposited there from higher altitudes. So we can conclude that, in the course of centuries, such organic substances must have drifted into the general mass of sands of this desert and become mixed with it. I further reflected that according to the law of gravity all substances or elements always group themselves according to their weight; therefore, here in the desert, the organic substances deposited, being much lighter than sand of rocky origin, must also have gradually grouped themselves in special layers or zones.
"Having come to this theoretical conclusion, I organized a small expedition into the desert to verify it in practice, and after travelling three days began to carry out my investigations. I soon found in certain places layers which, although barely distinguishable from the general mass of the sands, were nevertheless even on superficial examination clearly of a different origin. By microscopic examination and chemical analysis of the separate parts of this mixture of substances, I found out that it consisted of the dead bodies of small organisms and various tissues of the vegetable world. Having loaded all the seven camels I had at my disposal with this peculiar sand, I returned here, and with Professor Skridlov's permission purchased a number of different animals and set to work experimenting on them.
"I bought two camels, two yaks, two horses, two mules, two asses, ten sheep, ten goats, ten dogs and ten Keriskis cats, and keeping them hungry, that is to say, giving them a very limited quantity of food, only just enough to sustain life; I began little by little introducing into their food this sand which I had prepared in various ways. For the first few days of my experiments, none of the animals would eat any of these mixtures. But when I begin to prepare this sand in an entirely new way, after only a week's trial the sheep and goats suddenly began to eat it with great pleasure.
"I then concentrated all my attention on these animals. In two days I completely convinced myself that the sheep and goats had already hegun to prefer this mixture to all other kinds of food. It was composed of seven and a half parts of sand, two parts of ground mutton and one-half part of ordinary salt. At the beginning, all the animals undergoing my experiments, including the sheep and goats, had daily lost from a half to two and a half per cent of their total weight, but, from the day when the sheep and goats began to eat this mixture, they not only stopped losing weight but began gaining from one to three ounces daily. Thanks to these experiments, I personally have no doubt whatever that this sand could be used for feeding goats and sheep, provided it be mixed with the necessary quantity of their own meat. I can therefore propose to you today the following:
"To overcome the chief difficulty of our trip across the desert we must buy several hundred sheep and goats, and gradually, as the need arises, kill them and use their meat both for food for ourselves and for preparing the aforesaid mixture as food for the remaining animals. We need not fear any lack of the required sand, as all the data in my possession convince me that in certain places it can always be found.
"Now, as regards water, in order to provide ourselves with a sufficient supply, we must obtain a large quantity of sheep's or goats' bladders or stomach--twice as many as there are animals--and making them into khourdjeens fill them with water and load each sheep or goat with two khourdjeens.
"I have already verified that a sheep can carry this quantity of water with ease and without any harm to itself. In addition, experiment and calculation have shown me that this quantity of water will suffice for our own needs and also for the animals provided we exercise a little economy in the use of it during the first two or three days. After this we will be able, with the water carried by the sheep we have killed, to satisfy ourselves and the remaining sheep in full."
When Karpenko had finished, the second report was made by Dr. Sari-Ogli. I had met and made friends with Dr. Sari-Ogli five years before. Although by origin a Persian, from Eastern Persia, be had been educated in France. Perhaps I shall at some time write a detailed account of him, as he was a most distinguished and highly remarkable man.
Dr. Sari-Ogli spoke approximately as follows:
"After hearing the report of the mining engineer Karpenko, I shall say "Pass" as regards the first part of my report, because I consider that nothing better than his proposals can be found. However, coming to the second part of my report, which concerns the task I set myself of finding a means of overcoming the difficulties of movement in the desert during sand-storms, I wish to tell you my thoughts and the results of my experiments. The conclusions I arrived at and the experimental data I obtained complement very well, in my opinion, the proposals of Karpenko, and I shall therefore submit them to you.
"In these deserts, one has very often to pass through winds and storms, during which movement sometimes becomes quite impossible both for man and beast, since the wind lifts quantities of sand up into the air and, whirling it along, deposits mountains of it where only a moment before there were hollows.
"And so I reflected that any progress would be impeded by the whirlwinds of sand. My next thought was that sand, because of its weight, cannot rise very high and that probably there was a limit beyond which not a single grain could rise. Deliberating in this way, I decided to find out about this hypothetical limit.
"For this purpose, I ordered here in the village a specially high, folding step-ladder, and with two camels and a driver set off into the desert. After one day's journey I was preparing to camp for the night, when a wind suddenly rose, and within an hour the storm had become so violent that it was impossible to remain stationary and even to breathe owing to the sand in the air.
"With great difficulty we began to set up the ladder I had brought, and somehow, even making use of the camels, we steadied it as best we could and I climbed up. Can you imagine my astonishment when, at a height of no more than twenty-five feet, I found not a grain of sand in the air?
"My ladder was some sixty feet in length; I had not climbed up a third of its height before I emerged from that hell. There above was a beautiful starry and moonlit sky, silence and a stillness such as is rarely found even at home in Eastern Persia. Below, there still reigned something unimaginable; I had the impression of standing on some high cliff on a sea-coast overlooking the most terrible storm and upheaval.
"While I stood up there on the ladder admiring the beautifu1 night, the storm began to abate and after half an hour I descended. But below a calamity awaited me. Although now the wind was only half as strong, the man who had accompanied me was still walking, as is customary in these storms, along the crests of the dunes away from the wind, leading after him only one camel; the other, he told me, had broken loose soon after I had mounted the ladder, and had gone off he knew not where.
"When it began to grow light, we set out to search for the second camel and very soon saw its hoofs sticking out of a dune not far from the place where the ladder had stood. We did not try to dig the camel out, as it was obviously dead and buried quite deep in the sand. We immediately set off on the return journey, eating our food as we went so as not to lose time, and by evening we reached our village.
"The next day I ordered several pairs of stilts of different heights, getting them in different places to avoid suspicion, and, taking with me one camel loaded with provisions and a few necessities, I again set out into the desert, where I began practicing walking on stilts--first on low ones, and then gradually on higher and higher ones. To walk over the sands on stilts was not so difficult once I had fastened to them the iron soles I had devised, and which I had ordered, again out of caution, in different places from the stilts.
"During the time I spent in the desert to practice walking on stilts, I went through two more storms. One of them, to be sure was mild, but, even so,it would have been unthinkable to move and orient oneself in it by ordinary means; but with the aid of my stilts I walked around over the sands during both of these storms, in any desired direction, as though I were in my own room. At first it was somewhat difficult not to stumble, because very often and particularly, as I have already said, during storms, there are ups and downs in the dunes. But fortunately, as I soon discovered, the upper surface of the sand-filled atmosphere has irregularities of contour exactly corresponding to the irregularities of the sands, so that walking on stilts is considerably facilitated by the fact that one can clearly see by the contours of the sand-filled atmosphere where one dune ends and another begins.
"In any case," concluded Dr. Sari-Ogli, "it has been shown that the sand-filled atmosphere has a definite and not very high limit, and that the contours of its upper surface always correspond to the contours of the desert itself; and one must admit that it is absolutely necessary to make use of this discovery in the journey we have ahead of us."
The third to report was Yelov, the philologist, who, with the peculiar, expressive manner of speech characteristic of him, addressed us as follows:
"If you will allow me, gentlemen, I will say the same thing as our esteemed Aesculapius concerning the first half of his report, namely, "I pass", but I pass also concerning everything in general which I had thought out and wiseacred about during the past month.
"What I had wished to communicate to you today is simply child's play in comparison with the ideas presented by the mining engineer, Karpenko, and my friend the doctor--as irreplaceable in respect of his origin as of his possession of a diploma.
"However, just now while the two previous speakers were making their proposals some new ideas arose in me, which you may perhaps find admissible and effective for our journey. They are as follows:
"According to the proposal of the doctor, we are all going to practice walking on stilts of different heights, but the stilts to be used on the journey itself, one pair of which each of us must take with him, will be not less than twenty feet long. Further, if we follow the proposal of Karpenko, we shall probably have a great many sheep and goats. Now I think that when our stilts are not in use, instead of carrying them ourselves, we can very easily arrange for them to be carried by the sheep and goats. As you all know, a flock of sheep is in the habit of following the first sheep, or as it is called, the leader, and therefore it will only be necessary to direct and guide those sheep harnessed to the first pair of stilts, and the rest are bound to follow in a long line, one after the other.
"In this way, apart from the advantage of not having to carry our own stilts, we can also arrange that our sheep should carry us as well. Between stilts twenty feet long placed parallel, we can easily put seven rows of sheep, three in a row, that is, twenty-one sheep in all, and for this number of sheep, the weight of one man is a trifle. We need only harness the sheep to the stilts in such a way as to leave an empty place in the centre about five and a half feet long and three feet wide, which can be used to fix up a very comfortable couch. Then each of us, instead of toiling and sweating under the weight of his own stilts, can loll about like Moukhtar Pasha in his harem or ride like a rich parasite in his private carriage through the allees of the Bois de Boulogn. Crossing the desert in such conditions, we can even, during this time, learn almost all the languages we shall need in our expeditions."
After the first two reports and this finale from Yelov, there was obviously no further need for other proposals. We were all so astounded at what we had heard that all of a sudden it seemed to us that the difficulties of crossing the Gobi had been intentionally exaggerated, and even the impossibility of it suggested expressly for the traveller.
And so, accepting these proposals, we all of us agreed, without any discussion, to conceal from the local inhabitants, for the time being, our impending departure into the desert--that world of hunger, death and uncertainty. Accordingly, we planned to pass off Professor Skridlov as a daring Russian merchant, who had come to this region on some wild commercial venture. He had come, supposedly, to buy up sheep to send to Russia, sheep being very dear there, whereas here they could be bought much more cheaply; and he intended at the same time to export strong, long, thin poles to the factories in Russia, where they would be made into frames for stretching calico. In Russia, such hard wood is unobtainable and the frames made of the wood there soon wear out, owing to the constant movement in the machines, so that poles of this quality would bring a high price. For these reasons, the daring merchant wished to embark on this risky commercial enterprise.
Having decided this, we all became high-spirited and spoke of the journey ahead of us as though it were no more than crossing the Place de la Concorde in Paris.
The next day we moved to the bank of the river, near the place where it disappears into the fathomless depths of the sand, and there we pitched the tents brought from Russia, which we still had with us. Although the site of our new camp was not at all far from the village, nevertheless no one lived in that place, and it was not probable that it would enter anyone's head to come there, to the very gates of that arid hell. Some of us, passing ourselves off as clerks and other servants of the eccentric Russian merchant, Ivanov, made the rounds of the bazaars in the vicinity and began buying up thin poles of various lengths, and also sheep and goats and soon we had a whole flock in our camp.
We then began intensive practice at walking on stilts, first on low ones, and then gradually on higher ones.
One fine morning twelve days later, our extraordinary cortege moved off into the wastes of the sands, amid the bleating of sheep and goats, the barking of dogs, and the whinnies and brays of the horses and asees we had purchased in case of need.
The cortege soon spread out into a long procession of litters, like the grandiose processions of ancient kings. Long rang out our jovial songs and the shouting back and forth to each other from our improvised litters, which followed each other some distance apart. Of course, as always, the remarks coming from Yelov produced roars of laughter.
Although we went through two terrible sandstorms, we arrived several days later almost at the heart of the desert, without any fatigue and fully satisfied with everything--even with having learned the language we needed. We were approaching the spot which was the principal goal of our expedition
Everything would probably have ended as we had planned, if it had not been for the accident to Soloviev.
We had been travelling mostly at night, making use of the abilities of our comrade, the experienced astronomer Dashtamirov, to orient ourselves by the stars.
One day we made a halt at dawn to eat and also to feed our sheep.
It was still very early. The sun had only just begun to grow hot. We were just sitting down to our freshly prepared mutton and rice, when on the horizon there suddenly appeared a herd of camels. We at once guessed that they must be wild ones.
Soloviev, a passionate hunter and a dead shot, immediately seized his rifle and ran in the direction where the silhouettes of the camels could be seen; and we, laughing at Soloviev's passion for hunting, settled down to the hot food, excellently prepared in these unprecedented conditions. I say unprecedented because in the midst of these sands, and so deep in the interior, it is usually considered impossible to build a fire, as there is sometimes not even saksaul (1) to be found for hundreds of miles. But we built fires at least twice a day to cook our meals and prepare coffee or tea, and not only ordinary tea, but also Tibetan tea, brewed in the stock from the bones of the slaughtered sheep. For this luxury we were indebted to the device of Pogossian, who had the idea of making saddles of special wooden sticks for loading the sheep with the bladders of water; so now, as we killed the sheep, there was quite enough wood left over every day for the fires.
An hour and a half had passed since Soloviev had gone after the camels. We were already preparing to continue our journey, and there was still no sign of him. We waited a further half-hour. Well knowing the punctiliousness of Soloviev, who never kept anyone waiting, and fearing some mishap, all but two of us took our guns and set off to search for him. Soon we again perceived the silhouettes of the camels in the distance and went towards them. As we came near, the camels, evidently sensing our approach, fled to the south, but we kept on going.
Four hours had passed since Soloviev had gone. Suddenly one of us noticed a man lying several hundred paces away, and when we came up we recognized Soloviev, who was already dead. His neck had been bitten half through. All of us were overwhelmed with heart-rending grief, for we had all loved this exceptionally good man.
Making a litter of our guns, we carried Soloviev's body back to the camp. The same day, headed by Skridlov, who performed the duty of priest, we buried Soloviev with great solemnity in the heart of the desert, and immediately left that for us accursed place.
Although we had already done much towards the discovery of the legendary city which we had expected to find on our journey, we nevertheless changed all our plans and decided to leave the desert as soon as possible. So we struck out more to the west and in four days arrived at the Keriyan oasis, where normal country begins. From Keriya we continued further, but now without Soloviev, dear to us all.
Peace to thy soul, honest and ever loyal friend of all friends!
1. A tree or tree-like shrub that grows in the sand.
Chapman
Real-Life Model for Indiana Jones,
Roy Chapman Andrews
In contrast to Barchenko and Roerich, American Roy Chapman Andrews had no obvious interest in the occult and paranormal.41 Of course, given his curiosity about natural mysteries, he must have harboured a little about supernatural ones. Born in Wisconsin in 1884, Andrews evidenced an early lust for knowledge and adventure. By World War I, he had acquired a degree from Columbia University, membership in the exclusive Explorer’s Club and employment at the American Museum of Natural History (MNH).
His early explorations took him to China, which doubtless accounted for a new assignment that came his way in 1918. He travelled as a “naturalist” but he was really an officer of the US Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) assigned to the American Legation in Beijing.42 Befitting a good spy, Andrews was subsequently very mum about what he did there, but he made at least two “reconnaissance” trips into turbulent Mongolia, visiting its capital of Urga (where Baron Ungern would soon take charge) and venturing into Siberia where the Russian Civil War raged.43 Andrews subsequently compiled a map of the “Southern Boundary Region of Asiatic Russia” which found its way to the US Army’s Military Intelligence Division (MID).44 In his travels, did Andrews hear the same whispers of Agharti/Shambhala that reached the ears of Ossendowski, Roerich, and Barchenko?
Andrews left the Navy in the spring of 1919, but no sooner did he return to the States that he offered his services to the Army’s MID. His former boss in Beijing, US Naval Attaché Commander I.V. Gillis, vouched for Andrews as someone “who in case of emergency could be depended upon to do work with required skill and nerve,” and a colleague at the Museum of Natural History assured MID that Andrews was the “only American who is at all familiar with Mongolian.”45
Between 1922 and 1930, Andrews led five expeditions into the Gobi Desert and adjoining regions of Mongolia. All were sponsored by the MNH and made notable fossil discoveries, including the first dinosaur eggs. However, the original goal of the explorations was not animal fossils, but evidence of early man. Andrew’s boss at the Museum, Henry Fairfield Osborn, was convinced that the origins of the human race lay somewhere in Eastern or Central Asia. Some of his theories echoed those of the Theosophists, or so thought the Theosophists.46
From our perspective, the most interesting of Andrews’ forays was the one that commenced in early 1925 and took him and his companions deep into western Mongolia. The “mapmaking” team consisted of a US Army officer, Lt. Fred Butler, and a British officer, Lt. H.O. Robinson, detached from His Majesty’s Legation in Beijing.47 Butler’s later report also went to MID.48
Andrews might have gleaned information about Roerich’s activities from another explorer then roaming the wastes of Central Asia, Ossendowski’s nemesis, Sven Hedin. The Swede told Andrews that his expedition was a “reconnaissance” of a projected Lufthansa air route across Central Asia to Beijing, but it may have been something more.49In any case, Andrews dutifully reported his conversation with Hedin to MID.
In the end, Shambhala remained hidden, or so it seems. Roerich and Andrews went on to live out full lives and pass on, respectively, in 1947 and 1960. Barchenko, Bokii and the brethren of ETB were not so fortunate. All perished in the purges of the late 1930, condemned for crimes they did not – or did – commit.
Roy Chapman Andrews
In contrast to Barchenko and Roerich, American Roy Chapman Andrews had no obvious interest in the occult and paranormal.41 Of course, given his curiosity about natural mysteries, he must have harboured a little about supernatural ones. Born in Wisconsin in 1884, Andrews evidenced an early lust for knowledge and adventure. By World War I, he had acquired a degree from Columbia University, membership in the exclusive Explorer’s Club and employment at the American Museum of Natural History (MNH).
His early explorations took him to China, which doubtless accounted for a new assignment that came his way in 1918. He travelled as a “naturalist” but he was really an officer of the US Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) assigned to the American Legation in Beijing.42 Befitting a good spy, Andrews was subsequently very mum about what he did there, but he made at least two “reconnaissance” trips into turbulent Mongolia, visiting its capital of Urga (where Baron Ungern would soon take charge) and venturing into Siberia where the Russian Civil War raged.43 Andrews subsequently compiled a map of the “Southern Boundary Region of Asiatic Russia” which found its way to the US Army’s Military Intelligence Division (MID).44 In his travels, did Andrews hear the same whispers of Agharti/Shambhala that reached the ears of Ossendowski, Roerich, and Barchenko?
Andrews left the Navy in the spring of 1919, but no sooner did he return to the States that he offered his services to the Army’s MID. His former boss in Beijing, US Naval Attaché Commander I.V. Gillis, vouched for Andrews as someone “who in case of emergency could be depended upon to do work with required skill and nerve,” and a colleague at the Museum of Natural History assured MID that Andrews was the “only American who is at all familiar with Mongolian.”45
Between 1922 and 1930, Andrews led five expeditions into the Gobi Desert and adjoining regions of Mongolia. All were sponsored by the MNH and made notable fossil discoveries, including the first dinosaur eggs. However, the original goal of the explorations was not animal fossils, but evidence of early man. Andrew’s boss at the Museum, Henry Fairfield Osborn, was convinced that the origins of the human race lay somewhere in Eastern or Central Asia. Some of his theories echoed those of the Theosophists, or so thought the Theosophists.46
From our perspective, the most interesting of Andrews’ forays was the one that commenced in early 1925 and took him and his companions deep into western Mongolia. The “mapmaking” team consisted of a US Army officer, Lt. Fred Butler, and a British officer, Lt. H.O. Robinson, detached from His Majesty’s Legation in Beijing.47 Butler’s later report also went to MID.48
Andrews might have gleaned information about Roerich’s activities from another explorer then roaming the wastes of Central Asia, Ossendowski’s nemesis, Sven Hedin. The Swede told Andrews that his expedition was a “reconnaissance” of a projected Lufthansa air route across Central Asia to Beijing, but it may have been something more.49In any case, Andrews dutifully reported his conversation with Hedin to MID.
In the end, Shambhala remained hidden, or so it seems. Roerich and Andrews went on to live out full lives and pass on, respectively, in 1947 and 1960. Barchenko, Bokii and the brethren of ETB were not so fortunate. All perished in the purges of the late 1930, condemned for crimes they did not – or did – commit.
