Category Archives: References to James’ work

These posts deal with what other authors have written about James’ works.

Dedication of “The Children of Mu” Part 2

Part 1 with the complete dedication is here.
Another article about Captain E.A Salisbury
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Captain Edward A. Salisbury (1875-1962)

Captain Edward A. Salisbury (1875-1962)


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In Our Motherland of Mu Where 60,000 Years Ago Many Strange Things Happened
After disaster came to a continent more wonderful than the lost Atlantis, Friends ate one another.

Captioned picture(s):
Captain Edward A. Salisbury, explorer and ethnologist, who has devoted twelve years to a study of the evidence indicating the existence of the great continent of Mu 50,000 years ago, in the center of what is now the Pacific Ocean. The map shows its probable extent and that of the more generally known “Lost Continent” of Atlantis of which the ancient Greeks had many traditions. The map also shows the location of the great interoceanic canal built by the Muans into a sea that is now the watershed of the Amazon River. The great upheaval that lifted the Andes Mountains lifted the canal and both its ends are far above sea level.

It is quite passé to talk about the Lost Atlantis. Its mythical fields have been beaten barren with the feet of poets, writers of imaginative fiction and a few scientists of the Oliver Lodge variety. So, for the second time, it is sunk and in its place rises a land, a little more substantial, known to us Uighurs as Mu, the Motherland of Man.

“Mu.” Doesn’t the word arouse some deep-seated brain cell in the subconscious to a faint hurrah of patriotism? It should. We Uighurs are Mu-ans for 60,000 years or so – one of the ten tribes, in fact – and we more atavistic ones should have an exclusive impulse, at a mention of her name, to bow to Ra-Mu, the emperor.

Where is Mu, our motherland, anyhow? Capt. Edward A. Salisbury, famous explorer and ethnologist, who is stopping by the Commonwealth hotel for several weeks, can explain it all. He is soon to depart for Burma to search the clay libraries for some more sidelights on its prehistoric culture.

Mu, the cradle of life, was a vast continent until 12,000 years ago, when her last segment gave the Pacific Ocean more floor space, lying roughly between the Hawaiian Islands and the Fiji Islands on the south, Japan on the west and the Easter Islands, off the coast of South America, on the east. The continent measured 5,000 miles east and west and 3,000 miles north and south.

The continent was a vast plain, most of it over gas strata, just as Texas and California are over gas belts today. Captain Salisbury begs, however, that Texans and Californians be not afraid, because it sometimes takes and aeon or two for the gas to become volcanic.

Seventy-five thousand years ago Mu was a highly civilized nation of 65 million inhabitants. Through its sloping plains ran seven great rivers. At the mouth of each stood a great city. So it was the land of seven rivers and seven cities, Captain Salisbury pauses.

“There we have, perhaps, the mystic seven of all religions,” he says.

“There, perhaps, the first 7-headed hydra was reared in a temple. Those hydras stand today as guardians of Cambodian gates.

An Advanced Civilization

The Mu-ans give us a heritage, if at all, to be proud of. One is perfectly justified in waving a flag in every atavistic dream pertaining to Mu. This plainland was more highly civilized than Atlantis. Its people had great mills. They wore silk and fine linen. Like the Egyptians, they tossed thunderbolts from their fingers tips. The circumlocutions of modern science were unknown. They treated illness by thought and vibration.

Such inane conversations as this could never have been conducted on the streets of any Mu-anese city:
“Well, how on earth are you? I haven’t seen you for ages. Where have you been keeping yourself?”

A Mu-an would have known. He had developed mental telepathy. Thought transference was an accomplishment of every ordinary educated citizen.

“Don’t be surprised at that,” said Captain Salisbury. There are still cannibal tribes in the South Seas who see you before you arrive and can tell you what you did at the last place. They have no telephones or runners, either. They are telepathic.”

From the continent of Mu colonists went out through the world. Colonization began about 75,000 years ago. There were ten tribes of Mu-ans – The Uighurs, from which we spring; the Tamils, the Negro tribe, and others. The Uighurs went westward, as Uighurs, if such we are, have been doing it ever since. They went into Europe, into England, and founded the basis of the tribes of which we learn from Caesar. The Cro-Magnon man, the Piltdown man, all of those interesting, baldheaded, grinning friends of the European museums of prehistoric life were the children of the Uighurs.

The Tamils, who lived in the south of Mu, jumped across the straits formed by their coast and the coast of South Africa; jumped over the Andes. In the center of South America was a vast inland sea. The Amazon is all that is left of this great Tamil resort.

A Canal Now High in Air

“And now,” said Captain Salisbury, squinting his blue eyes significantly and taking a deep drag from his cigar, “we understand that broad, mysterious ditch cut across the Andes, a ditch man-made, beginning in air, ending in air. Science for many years was baffled by it. That was a canal from the Pacific Ocean into the South American inland sea.”

It is erroneous, of course, to say that the Tamils dug that ditch in the Andes. There really were no Andes. They had not been lifted. A vast cataclysm did that later. Andes and the canal were elevated at the same time.

From South America the Tamils crossed into Africa, where they still may be found. Every one of the tribes of Mu sent out shoots. … the brown men, the yellow men, red men found their places in the world. The continent of Mu was overpopulated and Ra-Mu, the emperor, the Mussolini, commanded the nation to expand.

They were a simple-hearted, God-fearing people, these Muans. Their surviving literature – if indeed, it is theirs and not the writing of some Chinese Edgar Rice Burroughs – tells us they knew not war nor strife. They were at peace with themselves and with their faraway and only neighbors, the doomed inhabitants of Atlantis, mythical or not, as you please.

Down in Titanic Cataclysms

And, then, 15,000 years ago, the eastern half of Mu was shaken by great earthquakes. Tidal waves swept over the land. Volcanoes burst forth. The eastern half sank, leaving a few wretched Mu-ans lodged on the foothills of barren, fireswept, volcanic islands.

“They were without vegetation, fish, food of any kind,” the captain explained. “They were forced to eat the weaker members of the group. They lived upon these weaker ones until vegetation sprang up, until fish killed or driven away by the great upheavals, returned to those ocean waters. And so we have cannibalism. At first a necessity, it became a religious custom, a surviving justification, even after vegetation and fish returned.

“These cannibal tribes of the South Sea Islands carried this religious custom later through South America and into Africa. We find it on both continents. But it began with the destruction of the Eastern half of Mu.

“Three thousand years passed. The 30 million people left on the mainland readjusted their civilization. Many of them were insane with the disaster. Commerce was shattered. And just about the time the remainder of Mu was restored to calm, industry and sanity, a thunder shook the earth and the last of Mu sank into the Pacific. In the same cataclysm Atlantis perished. The mountains of the earth reared their heads and the surface of the earth took the general appearance we know.

Whence came this strange legend? Or, if a scientific fact, whence came the data? Captain Salisbury gives a rational explanation.

Fifty years ago James Churchward, an English ethnologist, then in military service, was sent to India to lend relief in a famine. He administered his merciful work from a Naacal temple, Naacal priests assisting. They were silent, peaceful men with a great capacity for gratitude. And when the work was done, the oldest priest removed from a vault two clay tablets and said to Churchward:

“These tablets are of Mu, the language of Mu, which we alone understand.
And the priest translated them. They were Mu-anese history. But they began unrelated and ended unrelated. One of them was broken. Churchward repaired it. This gave the priest confidence. At first reluctant to reveal all, he at length gave Churchward the use of all fifty. They described the continent of Mu, some of its history, its science, its colonizations. But they did not tell all. Those tablets, Churchward explained in a privately circulated volume, are more than 50,000 years old.

More From Yucatan Tablets

Churchward thenceforward gave his life to the search for data pertaining to Mu. Captain Salisbury said Churchward was the only living man who knew the language of Mu but would not, for some unstated reason, permit the disclosure of the alphabet until his death.

From legends, ideagraphs, and customs of South Sea Islands and Mexico, Churchward learned much. Captain Salisbury has given twelve years of exploration to the service of Churchward already.

“We learned of the destruction of Mu from tablets in Yucatan,” he said.

“The history-old legend of the destruction of the earth by water no doubt had its origin in Mu.

“From art symbols used by South Sea cannibals, we substantiated our theory of their relation to the lost continent.”

The crest of Ra-Mu, the emperor, appears in many cannibalistic designs. It consists of the Greek cross, set within a circle. Around this circle are the eight rays of the sun and the rays are bound by another circle, the symbol of the universe.

Captain Salisbury is lecturing in neighboring colleges and universities, with Kansas City as his headquarters. When he departs for Burma, he intends to take with him a group of college men.

Continued with Samuel Hubbard next

Dedication of “The Children of Mu” Part 1

The 1931 Children of Mu by James Churchward Dedication:

This work is dedicated to three great friends
CAPTAIN EDWARD A. SALISBURY (part 1 & part 2)
Los Angeles, California
SAMUEL HUBBARD (part 3)
Oakland, California
AND
WILLIAM NIVEN (part 4)
Houston, Texas
whose brotherly love and assistance have enabled me to complete this work in its present detailed form.

Who were these three great friends and what impact did they have on James’ work?

Captain Edward A. Salisbury (1875-1962)

Captain Edward A. Salisbury (1875-1962)


No less than the New York Times describes Captain Salisbury as a British explorer and film director. One of his films was entitled, “Ra-Mu” and was released in February 1929.

Contained in James’ scrapbooks are the following articles concerning Captain Salisbury:

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Glamour of Man’s Origin Is Told by Denver Visitor
June 2, 1929
Captain Edward Salisbury Is Noted Scientist and Soldier

Capt. Edward A. Salisbury, who has traveled hundreds of thousands of miles and has delved into the farthest nooks and corners of the world, arrived in Denver yesterday to spend his first vacation in 30 years in the Colorado mountains.
Captain Salisbury, soldier, scientist, author, gazed wistfully out of a 12th floor window of the Cosmopolitan Hotel and remarked that he could hardly believe he was in Denver. He had not been here since the day he was married, 30 years ago, in the Brown Palace Hotel. His wife has been dead for 20 years.

Tho he is vacationing, he cannot help talking about his work – collaborating with other scientists in the collection and analysis of prehistoric writings and tablets that throw light on the origin of man.

For years he has been closely associated with Col. James Churchward, leading British scientist who is credited with discovery of the first and only records of Mu, the “Motherland of Man,” a former continent in the Pacific.

“Colonel Churchward is now rather old and feeble,” he said. His greatest discoveries were made about 50 years ago, but not until the last two or three years have scientists appreciated their value.

Learns of Tablets

“It was 50 years ago when he was traveling in India and learned that at a temple of Nacal priests, 130 miles northeast of Calcutta, there were some old clay tablets that might throw some light on the origin of man.

“The priests would not let him see the tablets. Finally they showed him a broken one. He mended it for them so expertly that they let him study the others. One kindly priest became his friend and taught him the Nacal language and the language of Mu. Colonel Churchward is today the only white man who understands this language.

“After years of study, Colonel Churchward established as fact that the continent of Mu existed in what is now about the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Its northern limit was just north of Hawaii. Its southern limit was north of Australia and New Zealand. All that remains of it are the many groups of South Sea Islands. Mu had 65,000,000 inhabitants. That was from 75,000 to 100,000 years ago.

“Records discovered by Colonel Churchward and others working with him together with facts established by geologists have proved that Mu was partially destroyed 15,000 years ago, and the destruction was completed 3,000 years later. The continent was underlaid with gas belts, some of which exploded into volcanic action, while others just collapsed.”

Strange Canal

Captain Salisbury talked in this connection about the strange canal, 15,000 feet above sea level in the Andes Mountains of Ecuador, South America. Running from east to west, only a small part of this canal remains. It is 60 feet wide and now only six to eight feet deep.

“This canal was always supposed to have some prehistoric significance, but it was my friend, Churchward, who discovered from old stone and clay tablets the real meaning,” he explained. “Before the cataclysm of 15,000 years ago in the Pacific, that was a sea-level canal, running across a lowlands from what is the west coast of South America to a great inland sea, that is now the valley of the Amazon River. It was by the canal that the negro race originally migrated from the continent of Mu, across South America to the Atlantic, across straits to the continent of Atlantis, and thence to Africa.”

Captain Salisbury would talk but little of his own work, which has been collaboration with Churchward and a score of other scientists.

Is Given Palace

He did admit that he is just returned from a six-years exploration tour of the tropical islands, visiting almost every island in the South Pacific. He and 13 other scientists, British and American, made the trip together. After a summer and autumn in Colorado for a vacation, he will start again on a similar trip – this time into Burma and Tibet, looking for more old clay and stone tablets that may be uncovered where Nacal temples have been.

One of his most interesting experiences on the last trip was a visit to Ras Taffari, prince regent of Abyssinia, who took a deep liking to the captain and presented him with a palace and 50 slaves for his use whenever he is in that country.

“But for the next three months I want to forget all that,” he said. “I want to go back to Breckenridge, and Meeker and Gunnison, and up in high altitudes, and I want to fish and just be lazy.”

to be continued

The Cosmic Diagram of the Land of Mu Part 4

In parts one and two, we examined what James Churchward wrote about the Cosmogonic/Cosmic Diagrams in his books, then in part three, we looked at the same symbol and interpretation as postulated by Augustus Le Plongeon in his 1896, Queen Moo and the Egyptian Sphinx. In this part, we examine the second half of the footnote from Lifting the Veil on the Lost Continent of Mu Motherland of Men that references the ‘Cosmogonic Diagram of Mu.’

Dr. Albert Churchward (1852-1925)

Dr. Albert Churchward (1852-1925)


Albert Churchward was James’ younger brother, was an author of books on Freemasonry and an accomplished surgeon. In the 1910 Signs and Symbols of Primordial Man, being an explanation of the Evolution of Religious Doctrines from the Eschatology of the Ancient Egyptians, Albert also has the symbol sometimes called the Cosmic Diagram, as well as Cosmogonic Diagrams from Egypt and Assyria.

Beginning on page 22:

We would call your attention to these photos, one from Egypt, one from Assyria and one from Mexico, identically the same and identical with our P.Z. jewels. The full explanations of these signs must be apparent to all R.A.C.’s.

The division here in twelve parts, the twelve signs of the Zodiac, twelve tribes of Israel, twelve gates of heaven mentioned in Revelation, and twelve entrances or portals to be passed through in the Great Pyramid, before finally reaching the highest degree, and twelve Apostles in the Christian doctrines, and the twelve original and perfect points in Masonry.

The twelve divisions of the Tuat, the original, were the twelve signs of the Zodiac, worked out by the Astro-Egyptian mythologists during their Mythos; then they converted their mythology into Eschatology, which must have taken many years. We find they had, so to speak, “ dug out ” the Underworld, and had, by divine inspiration or the study of the laws of the celestial bodies, come to the conclusion that after the death of this perishable body, the soul, which is imperishable, had to travel through many dangers and difficulties before it could join or be received again by its Divine Creator. This the Egyptians depicted most graphically, and the records are still extant in the book of “That which is in the Underworld,” which they have divided into

Signs and Symbols of Primordial Man Figure 10 page 23

Signs and Symbols of Primordial Man
Figure 10 page 23

twelve divisions : “The Tuat and the Twelve Hours of the Night,” which is hewn in stone in the Great Pyramid of Gizeh. In the Christian doctrine the twelve gates of heaven were taken from this. Here, in the Pyramid, the old Theopneustics taught the initiate step by step and degree after degree what the soul had to encounter and pass through before it could arrive and pass Amenta and receive the Crown of Glory in the presence of its

Signs and Symbols of Primordial Man Figure 12, page 25

Signs and Symbols of Primordial Man
Figure 12, page 25

Divine Author, thus teaching him the life he must lead here on earth, and the sacrifices he must make—“ to do unto others as he would they should do unto him ” in his earthly corporate body that he might receive the Crown of Illumination in his spiritual. All these ceremonies were illustrated and carried out in a dramatic form, more especially to impress upon the initiate the seriousness of the subject; and “ each portion of the Tuat,” and “each hour of the night” constituted a so-called “degree” or gate or door to pass. That all this was worked out at an early period – pre-Dynastic – we have ample proof in the fact that we find Khepera is represented as a Hawk – the Spirit – issuing from

Signs and Symbols of Primordial Man Figure 11 page 24

Signs and Symbols of Primordial Man
Figure 11 page 24

a mummy. This would denote that they had worked out a part at least of their Eschatology. In our opinion the Great Pyramid of Gizeh was built as soon as this was completed. We know that many Egyptologists do not agree that these earlier people had any ideas or beliefs at this remote period of “life and spirit hereafter” but we must insist upon the fact, that it must have been so, because here is the proof – “The spirit issuing from the mummy.” This alone is conclusive.