Excerpt from THE REAWAKENING OF MYTH by Boris Nad, coming soon on 10 December 2020 from PRAV Publishing:
“The history of peoples is made by the unwritten history of great travels and world travelers – a history that began long before Herodotus or Marco Polo, in the Neolithic or even earlier, in some fantastical age of mankind. Perhaps even at the dusk of the primordial Golden Age, with glaciation or flood, and with the first in a series of catastrophes faced by the human species.
Then followed eras of the migrations of peoples and races. If we believe Plato, then the Atlanteans were the first colonists in the world, and they came from the West. Others say that their ancestors were the Hyperboreans, who fled snow and ice in the Far North of the continent. Over the course of subsequent history, peoples would move from North to South and from East to West – and not otherwise. This constitutes their course through history – a path of aging, degeneration and, at times faster, at times slower, of inexorable decline. This is how great conquests began, those that encompass immense regions, entire continents, and this is how great wars start, like the one that raged under the walls of Ilium – or was this only a shadow of some mythical war waged in the far deeper past, during the mythical age of the Earth? Perhaps at the beginning of time, “in illo tempore.”
They did not rush towards unknown and exotic lands, but towards their lost homelands, towards mythical lands of the beginning, towards the riches of the Golden Age. Towards primordial, Edenic abundance. Towards Paradise Lost, such as the Biblical one, which we have not stopped searching for here on Earth even today.
One Islamic mystic, Suhrawardi, claimed that after death the soul returns to the homeland, for merciful Allah himself commanded this, and this would not be possible if he had not previously resided in it. This mythical homeland is to be found somewhere in the “spiritual East.” In order to find the strength for this, we must start from the spiritual West, the “Western wells of exile.”…
At any rate, there is no single land, island, or continent in the world that is a mere geographical certainty. The whole Earth is a sacred text, a holy book written in special signs – or at least this is what mystics and esotericists believe. The words of this text, it is thought, were written by God himself. Every journey is, in fact, a pilgrimage, for we are always walking on sacred ground. Every land and landscape, far and near, possesses hidden meaning and secret significance – spiritual, symbolic, eschatological, and even profoundly mystical. A landscape is at once both a physical and spiritual reality. This is the domain of a secret, mysterious science – mystical and sacred geography – whose knowledge, as happens, has been lost forever over the course of centuries or millennia…
Legend claims that somewhere, in the depths of the Earth, in dark caves and secret passages, there still lives a secret, mysterious people, one hidden from the sight of others, that this is known to only a few chosen ones on the surface, and that this knowledge is a strictly guarded secret. Or maybe it was until recently.
This secret kingdom is called Agartha. This legend is ancient and comes from remote prehistory. Agartha is spoken of in the legends of diverse peoples – white, red, and yellow – in both East and West.
Travelers who have set their minds to find it have whispered about it. Caravan merchants have told exhilarating tales of it in inns and on mountain trails, in deserts and in remote corners. It is known to Tibetan sages whose teachings nourish monks and lamas.
The common crowds, meanwhile, ridicule and laugh at such tales as the superstitions of the uneducated and gullible…
I don’t remember the exact moment when my search for Agartha began…I am going through my memories. Memory is unstable and deceptive. Where to begin the story of Agartha, the world disappeared underground? Why would this story arouse any interest in the reader? A story of a world that lies much further than 20,000 feet under the surface of the Earth? Somewhere, in its warm interior, like a hidden heart. I do not know if that heart is alive or if what we see are the shadows of Homer’s Hades. Some of them, they say, are as old as this world, or even older.
This book – although I hesitate to call it a book – is probably never going to be published, and certainly not during my lifetime. Maybe these notes are not destined to see the light of day. In fact, this is almost certain. In spite of this, I am trying to write down a story so incredible that it seems as if it were a fantasy of the imagination, a darkened mind, delirium, or drunkenness. But still, it is true. I dare to say that it is authentic, word for word, as far as my unreliable memory has not distorted it. Or perhaps it is a dream, a mirage similar to what travelers lost in the desert experience.
Immediately after my death – I am completely certain of this – unknown people will enter my apartment with expressionless and indifferent faces and meticulously remove any trace of my life on Earth. Some of them will be my old acquaintances. Let the reader – if there is one, and a reader who is not just looking for superficial entertainment – forget the names and years. I am writing these notes as I remember them. The reader should not waste their time with visiting archives and libraries to verify everything I claim here. The names here are false for reasons that will soon become clear. Only those who already know the secret of Agartha will understand them, and therein lies the paradox. This story is not for anyone but the reader who is predestined for its symbols. It will come to life only in their hands.“
– excerpted from Boris Nad, A Tale of Agartha, forthcoming in THE REAWAKENING OF MYTH
