entirely ruined her disposition with books

Leadbetter possesses little redeeming value. Born in 1854, educated at Oxford, entered the clergy of the Church of England in 1978. A keen interest in spiritualism led him to the doorstep of Theosophy in 1883.

In The Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky makes vague assertions of there being life on other planets, more like spirits, and they, in the form of spirits or angels, may have come down to aid the evolution of humanity. A proto-version of the ancient alien theory. It is all sourced out and tied together with the Bible, Kabbalists, science, and other occult matters.

The Martian seventh root race became Earth's third root race, Lemurians. They had to battle the second root race on Earth, which were beasts. Huge crocodile-like things and scaly birds. 'Savage reptilian creatures' they battled with. Humans at this tiem were gorilla-like, with egg-shaped heads, and standing between twenty-four and twenty-seven feet tall. And they were black. They were also cyclopes; this is something that Blavatsky claimed as well, with a central eye toward the top of the forehead. This eventually receded into the head, becoming the pineal gland, and the other two eyes slowly traveled their way across the brow. These beings from outer space taught much to the Lemurians so that they developed a mind of their own and an ego all theirs.

The best of these Lemurians would be chosen to go on and become Atlanteans. As Atlanteans, their skin color would change and the next root race would go about its evolutionary journey, along the way dabbling in black magic which would get them in hot water, and the rise of the Aryan race, the fifth root race. It is at the end of this root race that the seeds of the next one start to grow in America, California to be exact, in the twenty-eighth century. Blavatsky had spoken of America being the breeding ground for the sixth root race but did not specify California. How they came to settle in California is a bit of a mystery. Its proximity to the Pacific Ocean and the possibility of there arising from the Pacific a new continent could position California as a prime location for this new world. Whatever the case may be, it would stick in the literature that California was a chosen land, destined for future great things in the evolution of humanity. This would have major consequences for the future of Lemuria as well. At the end, Lemuria will rise again from its 'age-long sleep' and complete the spiritual evolution of the root races and of Earth.

This led to the slim work The Lost Lemuria (1904), which confounds in its stated goal of scholarly research. All he does is use the sources that Blavatsky already provided in The Secret Doctrine like Haeckel, Wallace, so no new ground is being trod there; the other set of research relies on the Akashic Records [note that these records have not been mentioned before], which were already coming from clairvoyant means like Leadbeater himself. Proving with the proof provided.

He does supply some additional fun details concerning Lemuria and Lemurians, such as that they began with giant gelatinous bodies and slowly evolved to have bone structures. And when they first were able to stand up on their own they could walk as well backward as forward, due to the shape of their heels and the third eye helping see them better. Also, the 'Chinese language' is the lone descenant of the Lemurian tongue. Venutians, beings from Venus, came here and showed the Lemurians how to cultivate grain. Lemuria existed many, many million years ago. Well over five million years ago and during the time of the 'age of the reptiles,' seemingly meaning dinosaurs.

Augustus Le Plongeon was a semi-professional archaeologist who teamed up with his spiritualist photographer wife Alice to travel to the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico to prove the Mayan civilization was the oldest on earth and the cradle of all the world's civilizations. Somewhat selective and flexible with the archaeologist record in Mexico, the couple saw patterns in the Mayan artifacts that would lead them to proving this Mayan cradle of civilization theory. Their findings caught the attention of Donnelly and Blavatsky, both of whom cited the Le Plongeons' research in their works. They forged ahead doing major excavations at Chicen Itza and Uxmal, the first to do so, and presented an alternative, metaphysical history of the New World.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Churchward's Mu is that it is Lemuria. Same location, dimensions, and descriptions, even cribbing Blavatsky's origin story of being taught a secret language while in India to be able to read Niven's tablets. What everyone else thinks is Lemuria to Churchward, it is Mu. He seemingly goes out of his way throughout multiple books to never mention or utter the name Lemuria. That does not mean it does not still play a part in Lemuria's saga. People saw the 'M' and 'U' in Lemuria, and Mu became synonymous with Lemuria and a vital part of the Lemurian myth, as Mu would be a part of Edgar Cayce's ancient mythmaking and of many in the New Age Movement. [Aside: Churchward is never mentioned when we get to Cayce, so we never learn the details of this] Though they borrowed Churchward's Mu name, that was about it. And they have brushed aside his in-depth analysis of Pacific Islander symbology and cultural studies.

Despite the lack of Lemuria, Churchward's Mu shared some key similarities with it, such as being the cradle of mankind, that the people from there would go on to colonize Earth, and that it was destroyed by volcanic activity....Mu was also a very paradisiacal place. So whatever Mu was, it shared a whole heck of a lot with Lemuria.

Of course, certain segments treated his views with derision and certain others accepted it as confirmation. [Note that this is is the beginning of a paragraph that immediately follows a direct quote from a source.]

One thing that Churchward pioneered in populating Mu/Lemuria with actual people with names. Prior to this, Lemuria was full of 'pudding sacks' or beings described but really given nothing to connect with. Churchward actually discusses some of the individuals from Mu, most significantly the Emperor/High Priest Ra-Mu, who materializes time from time as an ascended master that channels like Elizabeth Clare Prophet and Uriel summon to spread his wisdom to their followers.

For Shaver, the paranoia came first. Thoughts of being watched and followed crept inside of him. Next, the voices came. At first they only began to appear at work. Being broadcast via his welding gun. Something in the wiring got crossed that allowed him to overhear the conversations of all the plant workers: Richard's a Commie. Richard's gay. Richard. Richard. Richard. Day after day these voices assaulted the inside of his head.

While on stage, beyond preaching their pro-American, white nationalist rhetoric, they also came out in favor of celibacy and that you should not eat anything with a face nor consume alcohol or tobacco. And that there was hope in America, for a golden age was coming. That your true self is divine and can accomplish anything it wants in this world through the power of thought. And borrowing nearly verbatim from Theosophy the notion that Ascended Masters had all been ordinary but through reincarnation, they realized their ascension through spiritual realization, a la Phylos in A Dweller on Two Planets.

This was the beginning of the rise of the Reptoids. Which might not have too much bearing on the Lemurian story, other than tales of being abducted by Lemurians and taken underground, or Shaver's deros doing similar things [note, he throws around the word 'dero' about fifteen times before he actually defines it], or Bernard's remnants of Lemurians flying UFOS around having already been established. [We have heard nothing of Bernard so far.] And who's to say that the Ultraterrestrial beings from another dimension, plane, or parallel universe, theorized by the lacks of John Keel, Jacques Vallee, and Mac Tonnies [again, none of these people have been mentioned before] are not the same as the Mt. Shasta Lemurian sightings or the earlier tales of fairies and other mythical beings.

The Lemurian Fellowship arose from a collaboration between Robert Stelle and Howard John Zitko. They combined to turn the Fellowship into a mail-order citizenship-building school built around the concept that Lemuria was the first great civilization, followed by Atlantis, with America poised to be the next one. A new type of citizen was needed to inhabit and lead this new great civilization. Everything is new: "A New Race is emerging in America. A New Civilization is being born. A new kind of human being is being created for a new kind of world.' Not just a New Age being born, it is a whole New Earth--where you need to get on board to gain citizenship in this "New Race of Christ-honoring, divinity-conscious' America. Lemuria is going to rise out of the Pacific and when it does, it will fulfill biblical prophecy, and the United States of America will ascend to the status of Lemuria and Atlantis, with Americans transforming into Lemurians and Atlanteans.

Seventy-eight thousand years ago on the continent of Mu/Lemuria, a select few outstanding individuals organized the first human society when they realized there was a better way to live. They acquired an understanding of universal law, taking baby steps towards social harmony through teaching those who chose to live cooperatively in abeyance [yes, abeyance!!!] with God's laws. This Lemurian society, the Mukulian Empire, grew in to the ideal land, but over time as it grew and grew the proletariat increased their power, while the citizen philosopher-kings sharnk because so few sought out citizen training; this led to Lemuria's downfall. Then, it sank.

It all owes a heavy debt to Oliver's (or Phylos') A Dweller on Two Planets, offering a modern spin with new thrills--although not all so new, seeing as Oliver's family sued the Ballards' Saint Germain Foundation for plagarizing parts of A Dweller on Two Planets. But the lawsuit was thrown out because the judge agreed with the argument that, since Oliver never claimed to have been the author but only the transcriber, writing down whatever Phylos told him to, he was left with no right to the copyright.