Another article from James Churchward’s scrapbooks…
Tracing the First Love Story Back to Ancient Mexico
And Revealing the Curious Symbols Which the Natives Used in Recording the Biblical Legend of Adam and Eve in New-Old North America
Newspaper Feature Service 1931
This is an amazing tale. So amazing is it, in fact, that if original raconteur had not packed it with logic and sincerity it could hardly be retold. To believe it calls for a revision of our conception of things as they were, even to the point of placing the habitat of Adam and Eve in the Valley of Mexico or on some vast lost continent, long sunk in the Pacific Ocean!
Who ever heard of such a thing? The scoffers have not, certainly. But William Niven, who discovered two prehistoric nations in Mexico, the first in 1891 and the second in 1911, has heard of it to his delight. For it was Mr. Niven who turned up a curious tablet in Mexican ruins – ruins older than the Biblical story of the creation. He found it in the clay pits of the Valley of Mexico twelve years ago. After finding it, and scrutinizing it carefully, he submitted it to one learned society after another, but all of the experts of these societies confessed the same thing – that they could make no sense of the symbols.
In despair, only a few weeks ago, Niven sent it to Colonel James Churchward of London, distinguished traveler, explorer and archaeologist, and member of the Royal Society. Colonel Churchward has spent fifty years of his life delving far into antiquity, a great part of this time in learning the most ancient languages of man in India and Thibet.
Colonel Churchward was delighted to be entrusted with the task of deciphering what was so closely related to a literary work of his on a continent which he holds has been submerged in the Pacific – and he was greatly gratified to find himself wholly familiar with the symbols used. These symbols were in use many thousands of years before the time of Moses.
Says Colonel Churchward:
“Correctly interpreted, and links up with the legends interwoven not only with the Christian religion but with every other, this picture-writing gives the scientific explanation of the origin of woman as the better half of man.
“All credit for the discovery of the tablet itself must be given to William Niven, whose treasure hunt in the Valley of Mexico has served to throw back the date of the first human civilization far into the Tertiary Era. America has not yet begun to realize the importance of Niven’s archaeological findings, which included nearly 3,000 written tablets, many of which I have deciphered.
“But consider this. The tablets were found in Mexico, and it was in a very old temple in India that I was taught to read the oldest writing in the world. And I will confess that it was not an easy task! But here is the interpretation.
“First of all, observe the square at the bottom of the picture. In every ancient writing, the square is a symbol of the earth – and by no means because the ancients believed the world to be either square or flat. They didn’t. They used the square in this way to emphasize the importance of the four cardinal points – north, south, east, and west. The symbol, as a part of any ancient writing, indicates that the events recorded took place on earth, and not in Heaven.
“Now look at the obviously human head of the figure. The eyes being closed, as if in sleep, signify a state of unconsciousness – perhaps death. In older writings, a sightless eye means both sleep and death – to the ancients these two were one, and it may well be that they were closer to the truth than we are today, with all our scientific knowledge! Notice, then that the eyes are closed, but that out from the head are thrust two symbols like slender wings.
“Have you ever heard of the phrase, ‘thoughts have wings.’
“Poets have used it since poetry began, and poets, too, are often perilously near the truth.
“The sleeping figure is thinking winged thoughts. But, you say, does one think, while asleep? I answer you – what is a dream, but thoughts set free? That his thoughts are of cosmic significance is indicated by two small circles below the wings.
About the circle much nonsense has been written, but it simply means ‘infinity.’ Something which has no beginning, no end. It is a very old symbol, used to represent three things, which after all, are one – Infinity, the Deity, and the Universe. It is never used in ancient writings in any other sense than this. But there is on word, no phrase, in any living language, that can adequately translate the full meaning of the empty perfect circle.
“So our dreaming figure unfurls his thoughts for cosmic purposes, and what happens? Something is born! Something which in turn give birth to other things. Look at those egg-shaped figures below the head – they are ovals, not circles. The oval is always a symbol of that which leads to birth. One cosmic egg is shown emerging from the other. But observe that the upper egg also exhibits thought-forces in the shape of wings, aspiring upwards to receive the cosmic message of the dreaming man above. And that down from these wings run two off-shoots, as it were, to nourish and protect the smaller eggs that are being born from the Great Mother. Could anything be plainer?
“Now notice the curious, scissor-shaped symbol, just above the square of earth. Its points reach down to the lowest level of the square, as if enclosing it in an embrace, all the activities of life. Nothing, declares that symbol, can occur on earth – nothing productive, that is – except through the action of the law expressed in this story of the birth of woman.
“Now let us look at the story of the creation of woman, in the book of Genesis:
“And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and he slept; and He took one of his ribs … and the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, made He a woman, and brought her unto man. And Adam called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.”
“Among the Polynesian Islands of the Pacific is found a universal and very ancient legend stating that:
“Taaroa made man out of red earth Araca, and breathed into his nostrils. He made woman from man’s bones and called her Ivi.” (Pronounced Ee-vee.)
“The Polynesian race has proved to be of such unbelievable antiquity that its origin can only be explained by accepting the hypothesis of a great lost continent, of which their islands are the remains. The family resemblance between the syllables of the first woman’s name in our own familiar story and in the Polynesian version is only one of a long chain of coincidences which, to the unprejudiced mind, can only prove the hypothesis.
“Modern research has revealed that the Book of Genesis was taken from a copy of a translation made by Moses from the Inspired Sacred Writings of the Motherland of Mu. Many versions of the same story are found in the sacred books of Chaldea, India, Egypt, and Greece – all obviously springing from one original source. Identically the same legend turns up in Polynesia, having been handed down for untold generations.
“Then came Niven’s tablets – another link in the chain, proving that the Garden of Eden is no myth, but a scientific fact. It covered, however, a somewhat larger area than the fundamentalists would have us believe, and it provided the scenic background for the drama we are unfolding.
“The story has taken on many amusing forms, the most amusing, to my mind, being the Greek. It is as good an example of the distortion of truth by dressing up facts with frills and flounces, powdering their noses, and rouging their lips, as I have found. Read this, a translation coming from Plato, sent to me by a professor of the Athens Historical and Archeaological Society.
“Human beings were originally created with the man and woman combined into one body, each body having four arms and four legs. The bodies were round, and they rolled over and over, using the arms and legs to propel them. By and by they began to treat the gods badly; they stopped their sacrifices and even threatened to roll up Mount Olympus and overthrow the gods. One god said, “Let us kill them all.” But another said, “No, I have a better idea. We will cut them in half. Then they will only have two arms and two legs; they won’t be round, and they won’t be able to roll about. Being multiplied by two, they will offer twice as many sacrifices, and what is most important – each half will be so busy looking for the other half that they will not have time to bother us.”
That tale certainly doesn’t coincide with the Adam and Eve story which we have been taught to believe, by the authority of the Book of Genesis in the Bible. Here is Colonel Churchward’s comment on it:
“How’s that for a fairy story? But it tells – only not half so clearly – exactly the same acts as the picture in the Niven tablet. Here – minus the frills and powder – is the story:
“Once, long ago, the earth was peopled by a race of divine beings, complete and perfect in every way. There was no sex. Man included in himself not only his positive attributes, but also those negative, receptive and altogether charming facilities belonging to woman.
“That man very soon became bored with this state of things is not at all surprising. He was so thoroughly, utterly bored that he went to sleep, and refused to wake up and go on with his job, which was, as you may read in Genesis, to make the earth a profitable, going concern, paying fruity dividends at regular intervals.
“But while he slept, he sent out, as the result of his boredom, what the modern psychologists would call a ‘wish-fulfillment-desire’ or something of the sort; those slender, cosmic wings on either side of his head.
“In other words, man prayed. And the creator, as always, heard his prayer and answered it. When the alarm clock rang, Man awoke.
“‘Another day,’ he grumbled, poking his nose into the nice warm pillow. ‘I won’t wake up. What’s the use?’
“But he opened half and eye to see what sort of day it was, and in the pale, clear light of dawn he saw – Eve. He sat up feeling a little weak.
“‘I have lost something!’ he said, clutching his throat – not his side, as has been stated so frequently by those who know nothing of the matter.
“So, discovered in America, and set out in such simple language that any child can read it, runs the true story of the origin of woman – in other words, the first love story!”
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