Hermeticism

Today, I present two of Nina Rudnikova's works: "The Two Races" and "Atlantis". They were published in the 1936 issue of the Occultism & Yoga journal, which was dedicated to Atlantis.

"The Two Races" discusses the then-popular theories of human "races" that corresponded to different stages of human evolution. These theories were made famous through the work of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in her book The Secret Doctrine (1888), where she discussed the concept of the so-called "root races", some of which were believed to have resided on lost continents. Blavatsky's cosmology was later developed by William Scott-Elliot in "The Story of Atlantis" (1896) and "The Lost Lemuria" (1904) and by Annie Besant in "Man: Whence, How and Whither" (1913).

The second work, "Atlantis", is a short poem about Atlantis's rise and fall and its enduring legacy. May my translation of poetry not be judged too harshly.

Every culture embodies spiritual values in intellectual, artistic, and everyday aspects. Thus, a culture can only be built upon the affirmation of eternal spiritual principles, which must be systematically integrated into all aspects of human life and various planes of human consciousness. The distinct cultural construction of individual races and peoples lies in emphasizing and more vividly expressing a particular spiritual principle to which their racial or national psyche primarily resonates.

The currently dominant fifth race, the Aryan, collectively showcases the principle of Reason and its individual creative possibilities through its unique cultural expressions. "Everything by measure, number, and weight" is the motto of their intellectual understanding, while the principle of individualized initiative and the development of rationally conscious personalities form the foundation of their psyche.

The objective of the preceding, so-called Atlantean race was to individualize the psychic flow and its unique energies, known as emotions. The Atlantean race cultivated personal will as a center around which the life of human emotions revolved. As a result, the Atlanteans' primary instrument of recognition and creativity was emotion, and their relationship with the world was characterized by direct sensory perception of objective reality. The Atlantean "I" was self-identified with feeling rather than intellect, as it is for the Aryans. Consequently, the work of the Atlanteans focused on appealing to emotion, awakening its cognitive ability, and strengthening its activity rather than the critical and creative nature of an individualized intellectual world relationship. The language of Atlantean cultural construction used symbols to represent the spiritual life of the race rather than formulating and defining it.

Symbolism and the magic of symbols originated in Atlantis. Symbols, rather than formulas, are what the senses perceive, stirring them to cognitive and creative work. When perceived by the senses, a symbol etched in stone, preserved on papyrus, or painted on a wall urges the pursuit of the spiritual truth expressed in the image. The thinking of the Atlanteans was characterized by imagery, as an image represents an idea expressed through feeling. This is why the language of the remaining Atlantean peoples is so rich in imagery and symbolism. These symbols, not subject to individual intellectual processing, remain almost identical and unaltered across all remnants of Atlantean cultures.

They have passed on the creative and intellectual interpretation task to our race. To us, these symbols serve as a book for understanding the mind. To the Atlanteans, they were a collection of living magical formulas that awakened the psychic energy of emotion.

The culture of the peoples of Atlantis was founded on magic, which involved understanding the correspondences between psychic energy forces and utilizing them. In contrast, Aryan culture is built on ideological formulations or dogmas, with hidden intellectual influences at play. Atlantis ultimately perished due to the misuse of magic, much like the cultures of our race are now suffering from false ideologies and the distorted ideas they produce.

Atlantis fell because its inhabitants "blackened with sin" through abusing magic, leading to a spiritual impoverishment similar to that of our own race. In the cultures of our race, this spiritual impoverishment manifests as the transformation of great spiritual truths into religious and philosophical dogmas, where the essence is replaced by superficial interpretations that desecrate living formulas of the mind-idea.

We have brought down ideals from their lofty heights to adapt them to mundane life rather than adapting ourselves to them in the name of practicality. The Atlanteans also experienced spiritual impoverishment, forgetting that they were entrusted with the powers of psychic energy to fulfill the tasks of spiritualizing and individualizing emotions and creativity. Like us, they directed these mental forces towards achieving material comforts and benefits, personally and collectively.

Similar to ours, the cultures of Atlantis deteriorated into a civilization where Form overshadowed Spirit, cooperation devolved into competition, and the universal good was replaced by exploiting the weak by the strong.

As Atlantis's magical culture deteriorated into a magical-technical civilization, it became destructive due to the exploitation of nature's forces for narrow, self-serving, material purposes. This is similar to our own exploitation of natural resources through rationalistic-technical "achievements".

The more magically advanced individuals, such as Atlantean priests and magicians, began to extract the psychic energy of the masses to increase their power in the Subtle World and their authority on earth. This is comparable to modern-day figures who exploit people intellectually and materially for their own gain.

These Atlantean magicians became mighty psychic beings but were disconnected from the Spirit and thus lacked true intelligence. Their misuse of earthly energies led to a catastrophic event. Consequently, humanity is always responsible for the outcomes of its actions and cannot blame anyone else for its misfortunes.

As with most human endeavors, the inception is often more promising and brighter than the tragic divergence from spiritual origins into selfish material exploitation of nature and one another, leading to an ignoble end.

Let the demise of Atlantis serve as a warning to our race. We now face a crucial choice: either transform our consciousness by embracing spiritual ideals and building a widely accepted Universal Good on Earth or continue on the path of spiritual degeneration, which will ultimately lead to our destruction in a geological cataclysm caused by a disturbance in the planet's energy balance.

The sin of our race is not black magic but the creation of false ideas about the fundamental principles of the world, God, the cosmos, and humanity's purpose.

The sin of our race is the deliberate rejection of the absolute value of the Spirit and the denial of spiritual ideals, replacing them with complex rationalizations that justify our spiritual laziness, superficial perspectives, and convenient compromises.

The sin of our race lies in the materialization of the Spirit and the mechanization of life, born from the substitution of lofty ideals with the "practical" machinations of the mind.

The sin of our race in the birth of rationally mechanized creatures rather than the conscious, creative, and intelligent Personalities we were meant to be.

The sin of our race weighs heavier than that of the Atlanteans, for we were presented with a grand choice: to serve the Ideals and engage in ideological creativity across all aspects of life or to seek material power by forsaking the Spirit. Deliberately and steadfastly, we opted for the latter, directing the full might of our minds toward this end. Thus, all our creativity decayed into the dereliction of our spiritual purpose and self-immolation.

The intellectual offspring of the false doctrines, birthed from twisted thought-creation, have filled the earth's psychic atmosphere with malformed ideas and grotesque images. These insidious notions have had a ruinous effect on the essence of nature itself, for each thought bears an energetic charge capable of creation or disintegration. Dark thought-creation is more pernicious than the blackest magic, for it warps human nature, and its energy is more potent than the most cataclysmic of magical explosions. As such, the catastrophe that menaces our race is graver than the one that presaged the fall of Atlantis.

We have become accustomed to viewing Atlantis's demise as the obliteration of an entire race and its attendant cultures. Yet this is not the full story: while the sin-stained centers of its cultural edifices crumbled, the import of the Spirit that animated its construction was shattered, and its mission was bequeathed to our race as a profound inheritance.

We embraced its spiritual legacy, which endures within us - in our yearnings and creations. The initiatory Tradition of Atlantis, symbolizing the attainments of Wisdom, traversed from the temples of ancient Egypt (originally an Atlantean colony) through the Jews, Arabs, and Hellenes, and onward through Gnosticism to the present day.

Absorbing the refined jewels of our race's discerning creativity, this Tradition synthesized and completed itself in the form of Hermeticism. Atlantis has not been consigned to oblivion - it persists in the stone symbols of vanished lands, the arcane incantations of spells, and the songs and rituals of the shaman.

Atlantis has not vanished - it persists within the collective psyche of Asia's peoples, transmuted by the spiritual impact of our race, yet retaining the fundamental essence of Atlantis at its core.

Atlantis has not vanished - it endures in the legends and living symbolism of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Atlantis has not vanished - it survives, albeit in a degenerate form, within the ancient cults of Africa's peoples, the remnants of those who "blackened with sin" and, reverting to a feral state, returned to nature's embrace...

Atlantis has not vanished - it lies scattered throughout the islands of the Pacific Ocean.

Atlantis remains alive, and through myriad signs, it narrates tales of its past, replete with grandeur and Wisdom. Yet it also speaks of the lamentable decline that plagued the fringes of its culture following the demise of its principal spiritual centers.

Above all, Atlantis thrives in the legacy it has bequeathed to the watchful gaze, recognition, and vibrant thought-creativity of our race - in the language of its symbols, which bestows the key to understanding the laws and interconnections of earth's nature and the Cosmos at large.