Agartha: Exploring the Legends of a Hidden Subterranean World
For some reason, we’ve long been obsessed with the idea of lost cities and advanced hidden civilizations. A classic example of this is the ongoing hunt for Agartha, a legendary city supposedly hidden beneath the Earth’s surface. Often linked with the Hollow Earth theory, Agartha is described as a hidden realm inhabited by advanced beings possessing profound wisdom. It has close ties to ancient Buddhist mythology, and everyone from 19th-century occultists to Nazis and new-age hippies has searched for it. No one has found it. Does Agartha exist? Probably not, but the stories surrounding those who claim it does are fascinating.
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The Hunt for Agartha: Origins and Ancient Legends
The legend of Agartha has deep ties to ancient myths and fascinating esoteric traditions. Multiple cultures across the globe have embraced the idea of worlds beneath the Earth. Ancient Greek mythology frequently refers to the underworld of Hades, while Hindu texts mention Patala, a subterranean realm inhabited by serpent-like horrors known as Nagas. Even some Christians have been known to believe that Hell is literally a place beneath their feet.
As for Agartha itself, it began to gain prominence in the 19th century thanks to the rise of the Hollow Earth theory. This theory suggested that the Earth was either completely hollow or at least contained vast interior spaces that hid advanced civilizations. Early proponents of this idea, such as John Cleves Symmes Jr. and Cyrus Teed, suggested that entrances to these inner worlds could be found at the poles.
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A major influence on the modern legend of Agartha came from Theosophy, a spiritual movement founded by Helena Blavatsky in the late 19th century. Blavatsky’s writings often mentioned mystical cities beneath the Earth’s surface, describing them as centers of ancient wisdom and spiritual power. She and her followers, such as William Scott-Elliot, elaborated on these ideas, portraying Agartha as a utopian society guided by enlightened beings.
Key Accounts and Historical Figures
Unsurprisingly, there’s no solid proof that Agartha exists (because it doesn’t). Nearly all the information we have on it comes from various explorers and mystics who claimed that they either went there themselves or had met someone who had.
One of the earliest published mentions of Agartha as a subterranean realm appeared in Louis Jacolliot’s 1873 book Les Fils du Dieu (The Sons of Gods). In this book, the Frenchman claimed that his Brahmin friends of Chandernagore, India, had told him the story of “Asgartha.” According to them, this was an ancient city that had been destroyed almost 5,000 years ago, just before the Kali Yuga (the fourth, shortest, and worst of the Yugas in Hinduism’s Yuga cycle).
It was quite a while until Agartha captured the attention of Europeans again. In 1910, the French occultist Gerard Encausse edited and re-published an 1886 account by the famous 19th-century French occultist Alexandre Saint-Yves d’Alverdre. In Mission, de l’Inde en Europe, Saint-Yves claimed to have learned of Agartha while learning Sanskrit from someone called Haji Sharif.
This time referred to as Agartha, it was a strange and ancient place where the original language of mankind was said to be preserved. In his book, Saint-Yves claimed to have received telepathic communications from those who still lived there and reckoned he had even visited via astral projection.
Saint-Yves wrote that Agartha was a utopian society ruled over by advanced beings with profound spiritual and scientific knowledge. According to Saint-Yves, Agartha was a place of harmony and enlightenment, contrasting starkly with the surface world’s chaos and conflict.
While Jacolliot had believed Agartha to be long gone, Saint-Yves strongly believed (or claimed to believe) that it still existed. He reckoned it was as strong as ever and had moved underground at the beginning of the Kali Yuga.
A little later, a Polish writer and adventurer called Ferdinand Ossendowski entered the discussion with his 1922 book, Beasts, Men, and Gods. In this book, he recounts his travels across Mongolia and his encounters with lamas who spoke of a hidden kingdom called Agartha.
According to them, Agartha was a massive underground network ruled by the “king of the world,” a man with immense wisdom and power. Following WWI, German occultist groups, inspired by writers like Ossendowski, took an interest in Agartha and began searching for it.
