In the first part of our series, we introduced our readers to a strange hypothesis produced by a vast esoteric tradition. We discussed the theories of the Cycle of the Ages, Arctic Origin, and Atlantis. In Part II, we will not be looking North or West—or even South for that matter— but below.
It is worth emphasizing a crucial element of this cosmological view that we have been retracing: that the civilizational and geographic pole shifts were also spiritual shifts. According to many of these thinkers, the changes in the cycles also shifted the spiritual pole of mankind. This holistic relationship between the geographic/racial and the spiritual is central to the worldview of this loose intellectual confederation of perennialists, traditionalists, theosophists, and esoteric Catholics. The question then becomes: if mankind’s spiritual pole/navel/center was originally to the north (Arctic/Hyperborea), and then shifted to the West (Atlantis), then where is it now?
As Joscelyn Godwin writes in Arktos:
The displacement of the world’s spiritual center from the Arctic, which up to now has been one of our constant themes, implies that it has moved to somewhere else. Miguel Serrano thought that it had gone to Antarctica, an idea that we will examine in due course. Others have suggested a location in Central Asia or South America. Wherever it is, the spiritual center is now hidden from the profane, though it remains “polar” in the operative sense of directing the world’s development and the destiny of humanity.
In many of these esoteric traditions, the world’s new spiritual center, is located in Central Asia, or below central Asia. The position of this center is described as either somewhere in the Gobi desert or the Himalayas, or accessible below through underground caverns. This would be the third pole shift, as Blavatsky writes:
Two names seem to pop up in reference to this proposed spiritual navel: Agartha and Shambhala. When spoken of together, they are frequently juxtaposed as existing in opposition to one another.
From The Morning of the Magicians:
According to the legend with which Haushofer no doubt became acquainted in 1905, and the version which Rene Guenon gave of it in his Le Roi du Monde, after the cataclysm of Gobi the lords and masters of this great center of civilization, the All-Knowing, the sons of Intelligences from Beyond, took up their abode in a vast underground encampment under the Himalayas. There, in the heart of these caves, they divided into two groups, one following the “Right Hand Way,” and the other the “Left Hand Way.” The first of these had its center at Agarthi, a place of meditation, a hidden city of Goodness, a temple of non-participation in the things of this world. The second went to Schamballah [sic], a city of violence and power whose forces command the elements and the masses of humanity, and hasten the arrival of the human race at the “turning-point of time.” The Wise Men, leader of the people of the world, would be able to conclude a pact with Schamballah, which would be sealed with solemn oaths and sacrifices.