egabriel’s blog

Although in the next century scientists completely dismissed the idea of Lemuria, some strange events took place. In 1999 a research vessel in the Indian Ocean discovered evidence that a large island, the Kerguelen Plateau, was submerged about 20 million years ago by rising sea levels. Samples showed pollen and fragments of wood in a 90 million-year-old sediment. This might lead one to expect similarity of dinosaur fossil evidence and will help to understand the breakup of the Indian and Australian land masses.

Occult writers went much further than scientists hypothesizing about Lemuria. In 1880, one of them, Madam Blavatsky claimed that she had seen an ancient, pre-Atlantean Book. According to Blavatsky, Lemuria was occupied by mysterious humanoid species that were about seven foot tall, sexually hermaphroditic, egg-laying, mentally undeveloped and spiritually pure. The gods, aghast at the behavior of these mindless species, sank Lemuria into the ocean and created people endowed with intellect on Atlantis.

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Lost continent ”Lemuria. Did it really exist? For centuries people pinpointed the location of this lost land either in Indian or Pacific oceans. All accounts share a common belief that a continent existed in ancient times and sank beneath the ocean as a result of geological cataclysmic change. Current specialists think that although sunken continents do exist, there is no geological formation under the Indian or Pacific Oceans that corresponds to the hypothetical Lemuria. The name of this land was adopted by occult writers and some Tamil writers of India.

Where did the name Lemuria come from? Modern lemurs are only found in Madagascar, several surrounding islands and nowhere else. Nevertheless, archaeological evidence shows that other extinct lemurs used to inhabit the area from Pakistan to Malaysia. In the 19th century geologist were really puzzled by the presence of fossil lemurs in both Madagascar and India, but not in Africa nor the Middle East. That is why they proposed a theory that Madagascar and India had once been part of a larger continent, which they named “Lemuria” for its lemurs. Other scientists hypothesized that Lemuria had extended across parts of the Pacific oceans, explaining distributions of species across Asia and the Americas.

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So they did the unthinkable, which does not have the precedent in the ancient or modern history.  In 309 A.D. they crowned the unborn child who was still in uterus! The coronation of the unborn king was also the strangest one - the crown was put on mother’s belly. Therefore, the boy, who was given a name Shapur became a king even before he was born.  In the end Persian nobles miscalculated.

Although, Shapur II was completely controlled by nobles and his mother, as soon as he came of age he quickly assumed the power and became the absolute and very effective ruler.  He was a king for full seventy years till his death in 379. And this is considered the First Golden Era of Sassanid Empire.

In the beginning of the 4th century AD Persian Sassanid Kingdom was in bad shape. There was a chain of weak rulers that were losing big parts of the kingdom to Roman emperors.  Last one Hormizd II could not even control his nobles and was killed by Arab Bedouins  while hunting in 309.

The the situation got completely out of control. While Arabs continued to plunder Sassanid kingdom, Persian nobles killed the eldest son of Hormizd II. They did not stop there and blinded the second son and imprisoned the third son who managed to escape to Romans after years of imprisonment.  They wanted somebody that would completely control in future, so they stopped their choice on the unborn child!   One of Hormizd’s   wives was pregnant and she did not pose any threat to the nobles.

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Lord Rokeby refused to have a fire in his house even in the coldest weather. He grew an immense and bizarre looking beard, that was not in fashion at any times Thick beard stuck out under his arms and could be seen from behind. A couple of years later he built a swimming pool under glass which was heated only by the sun. There he spent most of the time, preferably alone.

In the end his neighbors and other locals became scared of him because his increased isolation gave birth to all kind of rumors. One of them was that Lord Rokeby became a cannibal and ate only raw meat. But, in fact he rarely ate meat at all and refused to see any doctors. He did not go to church either because he complained that sermons were boring and that he preferred to worship God at natural altar of the earth, sea and the sky.

He never married. On the extremely rare occasions when Matthew had to accept visitors he tried to get rid of them fast by entertaining them with lengthy boring poems. All his aristocratic relatives were ashamed of him, especially during his occasional visits to court. His presence usually gathered big crowds of people on the streets who thought that Matthew was an ambassador of Turkey - because of his unusual appearance.

In the 18th English nobleman Matthew Robinson suddenly became a big supporter of baths. He was born in the aristocratic family and later inherited a title of Lord Rokeby. Matthew was acting normal for the first part of his life but later changed his ways and became quite an eccentric. We don’t know what happened, it might well be midlife crisis. We just know when his eccentricity originated. When Matthew inherited big estate new Canterbury. That is when he became an extreme enthusiast about baths.

This passion was definitely very bizarre even for our modern times, so you might imagine how it looked like in the eighteenth century. Lord Rokeby daily went to the seashore to swim in salt water regardless of the weather. He spent so much time there that sometimes he even fainted and had to be rescued. Most of the times his servants had to come to the seashore to convince Matthew to return back home. Along the route to the beach he built drinking fountains and in the end of the road, right on the seashore he built a hut. His servants would follow Lord Rokeby in the carriage with full livery while he walked all the way to the hut. And if he noticed a person drinking from his fountain, he would give him a tip.

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For many years Conan Doyle was friends with the famous American escape artist and magician Harry Houdini. Unlike the famous writer, Houdini was an opponent of the Spiritualist movement. His contempt for Spiritualism even doubled in the 1920s when his mother died. He was touring America and Europe making public speeches against mediums.

Houdini made his goal to publicly expose Spiritualist mediums as frauds and presented many examples as proof that they employed trickery fooling gullible people. But for some reason Houdini’s efforts had an opposite effect on his friend Conan Doyle. The famous author became utterly convinced that Houdini himself possessed supernatural powers. Conan Doyle even wrote a book about it. No matter how hard Houdini tried, he could not dissuade Conan Doyle. Harry unsuccessfully tried his best convincing Conan Doyle that his feats were simply magic tricks. In the end two friends had a bitter quarrel in public. This even ended their friendship and they never spoke to each other again.

Great British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was one of the most successful writers in the beginning of the twentieth century. His most famous work - stories about detective Sherlock Holmes brought him fame and fortune. As we know, Sherlock was a hard core realist and intellectual who relied on the method of “deductive reasoning”. This helped him to solve any case of crime no matter how weird, bizarre or fantastic it looked.

Unfortunately Sherlock’s creator himself in the second half of his life did not follow the steps of his hero. Conan Doyle fell the victim to the Spiritualism. The reason for this were very tragic events in his family that affected and traumatized Doyle on the deep personal level. His beloved wife Louisa died in 1906. Some years later other started happening one after the other. Doyle lost one by one his son Kingsley, his brother Innes, his two brothers-in-law, and his two nephews. After World War I, because of these unfortunate and sad deaths, Conan Doyle sank into deep depression. So it happened that the only solace he found was Spiritualism and its alleged scientific proof of existence beyond the grave.

Pharaohs in ancient Egypt had three crowns: red, white and blue. Red and white eventually became a double crown symbolizing united kingdoms of Lower and Upper Egypt. During military campaigns, especially battles, pharaoh wore the blue crown. All of these crowns typically were adorned by a uraeus - stylized, upright form of an Egyptian spitting cobra, used as a symbol of sovereignty, royalty, deity, and divine authority.

For the last two hundred years archaeologists discovered a lot about ancient Egypt. But never, not even once, any pharaohs crown was found. We only know about them from various depictions and portraits of Egyptian rulers.

It is quite mysterious that in spite of so many searches no crown was discovered in tombs either. Of course, many tombs were robbed by grave diggers. Yet, Tutankhamun’s tomb, discovered intact. It contained many regal items but not a crown. Crowns were assumed to have magical properties. So it is possible that there were items a dead pharaoh could not take with him and therefore all crowns had to be passed along to his living successor.

In 1139 Pope Innocent II even put a ban on arbalest, but medieval crossbowmen still existed, and continued to kill knights. Mercenary troops of crossbowmen were in high demand those days because of their skills - they could shoot two bolts per minute easily. And the commanding officer of the crossbowmen corps was one of the highest and privileged person in any army.

Later development of a crossbow allowed to use it in the cavalry. But the times of gunpowder weapons already began. Musketeers replaced crossbowmen and proved to be deadly against cavalry of heavy armored knights. Muskets could neutralize even the most heavily armored cavalry forces. Their widespread use put an end to the rule of a crossbow and completely changed the face of warfare.