Samothrace Was Submerged by the Euxine

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Hellenic and Hellenistic Papers Series · 9 pages

A nine-page compilation from The Secret Doctrine, Vol. II, pages 3–5, and related passages, opened by an abstract and train of thoughts and closing with suggested reading from this series. The running head states the theme flatly: the old Samothrace is no more.

The claim of the title is chronological — that Samothrace was submerged by the waters of the Euxine well before the age of the Argonauts — and the compilation builds the case for what was lost. The island is described as famous for its Mysteries all over the world, and perhaps the oldest ever established in the present race, colonised by the Phoenicians and before them by the Pelasgians who came from the East. The drowning itself is presented as sudden, the Euxine having been regarded until that time as a lake rather than a sea. From there the argument turns to what the Mysteries there had preserved: the Samothracian and the oldest Egyptian temples are said to have been overshadowed by the Sacred Fires, whereas in the later Grecian temples the old rites became grossly profaned. The divine hierarchy of the Titans-Kabeiroi is then introduced as a measure of heaven, all of them emanating from Prometheus — identified here as the Indian hierophant who brought light to the world and endowed humanity with intellect and reason. The closing section states the consequence the compiler draws: that Christianity relegated the fires of spiritual consciousness to infernal gods.

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