The idea appears in Madame Blavatsky’s book The Secret Doctrine (1888), claimed to be extracted from The Book of Dyzan written in Senzar (a hitherto and still unknown language) by her astral guides, the “Masters,” with Blavatsky acting as an intermediary or medium and translator. The second volume of this work is in effect the spirits’ version of a theory of evolution, a sort of reply to Charles Darwin. Humankind is descended from spiritual beings on another planet, the Moon, gradually taking physical form through a succession of root races. The present phase in this development, human history, is just one step in the spirits’ evolution through a series of rebirths moving from planet to planet. We, the human race at the end of the twentieth century, are now in the dark age (Kala Yuga) of the Fifth Root Race, which started when Krishna was killed by an arrow on February 16, 3102 B.C.E.
Each root race there are seven of which only five have so far appeared has seven subraces, each of which has seven branches. The first, located somewhere near the North Pole, was of fire-mist beings ethereal and invisible. The second, located in northern Asia, was of beings with astral bodies that approached visibility, propagating by some sort of fission process that evolved to sexual reproduction after going through a hermaphrodite stage. The third was in Lemuria, a continent or large island in the Indian Ocean, so-called because it provided an explanation of the geographic distribution of lemurs, forming a sort of land bridge between the African and Indian continents at that time. The Lemurians were apelike giants with corporeal bodies that were slowly developing into an approximately modem human form. Lemuria disappeared into the ocean in some cataclysm after the fourth subrace had migrated to Atlantis to begin the fourth root race. The fifth, the Aryans, the present civilization, came from the fifth subrace of the Atlanteans. The sixth root race is slowly emerging from the sixth subrace of the Aryans, in southern California, where the climate most suited the theosophical ideal of paradise, to take up its home on Lemuria, risen once again, this time from the Pacific! While this happens, the American continent will sink. The seventh root race is predicted to develop from the seventh subrace of the sixth root race. When it in turn falls, the Earth cycle will have ended and the next cycle will start on Mercury.