caves

63:3.3These early An­don­ites evinced a very marked clan­nish spirit; they hunted in groups and never strayed very far from the home­site. They seemed to re­al­ize that they were an iso­lated and unique group of liv­ing be­ings and should there­fore avoid be­com­ing sep­a­rated. This feel­ing of in­ti­mate kin­ship was un­doubt­edly due to the en­hanced mind min­istry of the ad­ju­tant spir­its.

63:3.4An­don and Fonta la­bored in­ces­santly for the nur­ture and up­lift of the clan. They lived to the age of forty-two, when both were killed at the time of an earth­quake by the falling of an over­hang­ing rock. Five of their chil­dren and eleven grand­chil­dren per­ished with them, and al­most a score of their de­scen­dants suf­fered se­ri­ous in­juries.

63:3.5Upon the death of his par­ents, Son­tad, de­spite a se­ri­ously in­jured foot, im­me­di­ately as­sumed the lead­er­ship of the clan and was ably as­sisted by his wife, his el­dest sis­ter. Their first task was to roll up stones to ef­fec­tively en­tomb their dead par­ents, broth­ers, sis­ters, and chil­dren. Un­due sig­nif­i­cance should not at­tach to this act of burial. Their ideas of sur­vival af­ter death were very vague and in­def­i­nite, be­ing largely de­rived from their fan­tas­tic and var­ie­gated dream life.

63:6.3The An­don­ites early de­vel­oped a fear of the el­e­ments—thun­der, light­ning, rain, snow, hail, and ice. But hunger was the con­stantly re­cur­ring urge of these early days, and since they largely sub­sisted on an­i­mals, they even­tu­ally evolved a form of an­i­mal wor­ship. To An­don, the larger food an­i­mals were sym­bols of cre­ative might and sus­tain­ing power. From time to time it be­came the cus­tom to des­ig­nate var­i­ous of these larger an­i­mals as ob­jects of wor­ship. Dur­ing the vogue of a par­tic­u­lar an­i­mal, crude out­lines of it would be drawn on the walls of the caves, and later on, as con­tin­ued prog­ress was made in the arts, such an an­i­mal god was en­graved on var­i­ous or­na­ments.

85:1.5Hill wor­ship fol­lowed stone wor­ship, and the first hills to be ven­er­ated were large stone for­ma­tions. It pres­ently be­came the cus­tom to be­lieve that the gods in­hab­ited the moun­tains, so that high el­e­va­tions of land were wor­shiped for this ad­di­tional rea­son. As time passed, cer­tain moun­tains were as­so­ci­ated with cer­tain gods and there­fore be­came holy. The ig­no­rant and su­per­sti­tious abo­rig­ines be­lieved that caves led to the un­der­world, with its evil spir­its and demons, in con­trast with the moun­tains, which were iden­ti­fied with the later evolv­ing con­cepts of good spir­its and de­i­ties.

157:3.1Early Tues­day morn­ing Je­sus and the twelve apos­tles left Ma­g­a­dan Park for Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi, the cap­i­tal of the Tetrarch Philip’s do­main. Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi was sit­u­ated in a re­gion of won­drous beauty. It nes­tled in a charm­ing val­ley be­tween scenic hills where the Jor­dan poured forth from an un­der­ground cave. The heights of Mount Her­mon were in full view to the north, while from the hills just to the south a mag­nif­i­cent view was had of the up­per Jor­dan and the Sea of Gal­i­lee.

98:5.4The ad­her­ents of this cult wor­shiped in caves and other se­cret places, chant­ing hymns, mum­bling magic, eat­ing the flesh of the sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mals, and drink­ing the blood. Three times a day they wor­shiped, with spe­cial weekly cer­e­mo­ni­als on the day of the sun-god and with the most elab­o­rate ob­ser­vance of all on the an­nual fes­ti­val of Mithras, De­cem­ber twenty-fifth. It was be­lieved that the par­tak­ing of the sacra­ment en­sured eter­nal life, the im­me­di­ate pass­ing, af­ter death, to the bo­som of Mithras, there to tarry in bliss un­til the judg­ment day. On the judg­ment day the Mith­raic keys of heaven would un­lock the gates of Par­a­dise for the re­cep­tion of the faith­ful; where­upon all the un­bap­tized of the liv­ing and the dead would be an­ni­hi­lated upon the re­turn of Mithras to earth. It was taught that, when a man died, he went be­fore Mithras for judg­ment, and that at the end of the world Mithras would sum­mon all the dead from their graves to face the last judg­ment. The wicked would be de­stroyed by fire, and the righ­teous would reign with Mithras for­ever.

98:6.3Dur­ing the third cen­tury af­ter Christ, Mith­raic and Chris­tian churches were very sim­i­lar both in ap­pear­ance and in the char­ac­ter of their rit­ual. A ma­jor­ity of such places of wor­ship were un­der­ground, and both con­tained al­tars whose back­grounds var­i­ously de­picted the suf­fer­ings of the sav­ior who had brought sal­va­tion to a sin-cursed hu­man race.

80:9.4The Nordics con­tin­ued the trade in am­ber from the Baltic coast, build­ing up a great com­merce with the broad­heads of the Danube val­ley via the Bren­ner Pass. This ex­tended con­tact with the Danu­bians led these north­ern­ers into mother wor­ship, and for sev­eral thou­sands of years cre­ma­tion of the dead was al­most uni­ver­sal through­out Scan­di­navia. This ex­plains why re­mains of the ear­lier white races, al­though buried all over Eu­rope, are not to be found—only their ashes in stone and clay urns. These white men also built dwellings; they never lived in caves. And again this ex­plains why there are so few ev­i­dences of the white man’s early cul­ture, al­though the pre­ced­ing Cro-Magnon type is well pre­served where it has been se­curely sealed up in caves and grot­toes. As it were, one day in north­ern Eu­rope there is a prim­i­tive cul­ture of the ret­ro­gress­ing Danu­bians and the blue man and the next that of a sud­denly ap­pear­ing and vastly su­pe­rior white man.

61:6.4Hu­man be­ings were not pres­ent in the West­ern Hemi­sphere un­til near the close of the ice age. But dur­ing the in­ter­glacial epochs they passed west­ward around the Med­i­ter­ra­nean and soon over­ran the con­ti­nent of Eu­rope. In the caves of west­ern Eu­rope may be found hu­man bones min­gled with the re­mains of both tropic and arc­tic an­i­mals, tes­ti­fy­ing that man lived in these re­gions through­out the later epochs of the ad­vanc­ing and re­treat­ing glaciers.

80:3.6The blue men were hunters, fish­ers, and food gath­er­ers; they were ex­pert boat­builders. They made stone axes, cut down trees, erected log huts, partly be­low ground and roofed with hides. And there are peo­ples who still build sim­i­lar huts in Siberia. The south­ern Cro-Magnons gen­er­ally lived in caves and grot­toes.