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The Doctrine of the Four Ages

Although modern man until recently has viewed and celebrated the meaning of the history known to him as epitomizing progress and evolution, the truth as professed by traditional man is quite the opposite. In all the ancient testimonies of traditional humanity it is possible to find, in various forms, the idea of a regression or a fall: from originally higher states beings have stooped to states increasingly conditioned by human, mortal, and contingent elements. This involutive process allegedly began in a very distant past; the term that best characterizes it is the Eddie term ragna-rokkr, “the twilight of the gods.” In the traditional world this teaching was not expressed in a vague and generic form, but rather was articulated in the organic doctrine of the four ages, which can be found with a large degree of uniformity in different civilizations. According to Tradition, the actual sense of history and the genesis of what I have labeled, generally speaking, as the “modern world,” results from a process of gradual decadence through four cycles or “generations.”

The best known form of the doctrine of the four ages is that which was typical of the Greco-Roman tradition. Hesiodwrote about four eras symbolized by four metals (gold, silver, bronze, and iron), inserting between the last two a fifth era, the era of the “heroes,” which as we shall see, had only the meaning of a partial and special restoration of the primordial state.^[1] The Hindu tradition knows the same doctrine in the form of four cycles, called respectively, Satya Yuga (or Kṛta Yuga), Tretā Yuga, Dvāpara Yuga, and Kali Yuga (or Dark Age),^[2] together with the simile of the failing, during each of these, of one of the four hoofs or supports of the bull symbolizing dharma, or the traditional law. The Persian version of this myth is similar to the Hellenic version: the four ages are known and characterized by gold, silver, steel, and an “iron compound.” The Chaldean version articulated this same view in almost identical terms.

In particular, we can find a more recent simile of the chariot of the universe represented as a quadriga led by the supreme god; the quadriga is carried along a circular course by four horses representing the elements. The four ages were believed to correspond to the alternate predominance of each of these horses, which then leads the others according to the more or less luminous and rapid symbolic nature of the element that it represents.^[3] This view reappears, although in a special transposition, in the Hebrew tradition. In one of the prophetic writings^[4] mention is made of a very bright statue with the head made of gold, the chest and the arms of silver, the belly and the thighs of copper, the legs and the feet, of iron and tile. This statue’s four parts represent the four “kingdoms” that follow one another, beginning with the golden kingdom of the “king of kings” who has received “dominion, strength, power, and glory from the god of Heaven.” If Egypt knew the tradition mentioned by Eusebius concerning three distinct dynasties consisting respectively of gods, demigods, and manes, we can see in them the equivalent of the first three ages (golden, silver, and bronze). Likewise, the ancient Aztec traditions speak about five suns or solar cycles, the first four of which correspond to the elements and in which, as in the Eurasian traditions, one finds portrayed the catastrophes of fire, water (flood), and the struggles against giants characterizing the cycle of “heroes” that Hesiod added to the other four—in this we may recognize a variation of the same teaching, the memory of which may also be found more or less fragmentarily among other populations.

Upon examining the meaning of each of these periods, it is opportune to anticipate some general considerations, since the abovementioned view is in open contrast with the modern views concerning prehistory and the primordial world. To uphold with Tradition that in the beginning there were no animal-like cavemen, but rather “more-than-human” beings, and that in ancient prehistory there was no “civilization” but an “era of the gods”;^[5] this to many people—who in one way or another believe in the gospel of Darwinism—amounts to pure and simple “mythology.” Since I have not invented this mythology myself, however, critics still have to explain its existence, that is, the fact that according to the most ancient testimonies and writings there is no memory that may lend support to “evolutionism”; what is found in them instead is the opposite, in other words, the recurrent idea of a better, brighter, and superhuman (“divine”) past. These same testimonies also know very little about “animal origins”; constant mention is made rather of the original relationship between men and deities; and a memory is kept alive of a primordial state of immortality together with the idea that the law of death appeared at one particular moment, almost as an unnatural fact or as an anathema. In two characteristic testimonies, the cause of the “fall” was identified with the mixing of the “divine” race with the human race, which was regarded as inferior; in some texts that “sin” is compared to sodomy and to sexual mating with animals. On the one hand there is the biblical myth of the Ben Elohim, “the children of the gods,” who mated with the “daughters of men,” with the consequence that in the end, “all mortals led depraved lives on earth.”^[6] On the other hand there is the Platonic myth of the inhabitants of Atlantis, conceived as the descendants and disciples of the gods, who lost the divine element and eventually allowed their human nature to become predominant because of their repeated intermingling with human beings.^[7] Tradition, in more recent eras, developed a variety of myths referring to races as bearers of civilization and to the struggles between divine races and animal, cyclopic, or demonic races. They are the Aesir against the Elementarwesen; the Olympians and the heroes against giants and monsters of the darkness, the water, and the earth. They are the Aryan deva fighting against the asura, “the enemies of the divine heroes”; they are the Incas, the dominators who impose their solar laws on the aborigines who worshipped “Mother Earth”; they are the Tuatha dé Danaan, who, according to Irish legends overcame the dreadful race of the Fomors; and so on. On this basis it can be argued that even though the traditional teaching retains the memory of the existence of stocks that could even correspond to the animalistic and inferior types described in the theory of evolution (this was the substratum predating the civilizations created by superior races), evolutionism mistakenly considers these animal-like stocks to be absolutely primordial, while they are so only relatively.

Another mistake of evolutionism is to conceive of some forms of miscegenation that presuppose the emergence of other races that are superior either as civilizations and biological specimens or as products of “evolution.” These races had their own origins; because so much time has elapsed (as in the case of the “Hyperborean” and the “Atlantic” races) and because of geophysical factors, these races have left very few traces of their existence and what remains is difficult to spot by those who are merely seeking archaeological and paleontological traces accessible to profane research.

On the other hand, it is significant that populations that still live in the alleged original, primitive, and “innocent” state provide little comfort to the evolutionist hypothesis. These stocks, instead of evolving, tend to become extinguished, thereby demonstrating themselves to be the degenerate residues of cycles the vital potential of which has long since been exhausted; in other words, they are heterogeneous elements and remnants left behind by the mainstream of humanity. This was the case of the Neanderthal man, who in his extreme morphological brutishness closely resembles the “ape-man.” Neanderthal man mysteriously disappeared in a given period and the races that followed (Aurignacian man and especially Cro-Magnon man), and that represented a superior type (so much so that we can recognize in it the stock of several contemporary human races), cannot be considered further “evolutionary stages” of this vanished type. The same goes for the Grimaldi race, which also became extinct, and for the many “primitive” populations still in existence: they are not “evolving,” but rather becoming extinct. Their “becoming civilized” is not an “evolution” but almost always represents a sudden mutation that affects their vital possibilities. There are species that retain their characteristics even in conditions that are relatively different from their natural ones; other species in similar circumstances instead become extinct; otherwise what takes place is racial mixing with other elements in which no assimilation or real evolution occurs. The result of this interbreeding closely resembles the processes that follow Mendel’s laws concerning heredity: once it disappears in the phenotype, the primitive element survives in the form of a separated, latent heredity that is capable of cropping up in sporadic apparitions, even though it is always endowed with a character of heterogeneity in regard to the superior type.

Evolutionists believe they are “positively” sticking to the facts. They ignore that the facts per se are silent, and that if interpreted in different ways they can lend support to the most incredible hypotheses. It has happened, however, that someone, though fully informed of all the data that are adduced to prove the theory of evolution, has shown these data to support the opposite thesis, which in more than one respect corresponds to the traditional teaching. I am referring to the thesis according to which man is not alone in being far from a product of the “evolution” of animal species, but many animal species must be considered as the offshoots or as the “abortions” of a primordial impulse; only in the racially superior human species does this primordial impulse find its direct and adequate manifestation.^[8] There are also ancient myths about the struggle between divine races and monstrous entities or animal-like demons that allegedly took place before the advent of the human race (humanity at its earliest stage). These myths may refer to the struggle of the primordial human principle against its intrinsic animalistic potentialities, which were eventually isolated and left behind, so to speak, in the form of certain animal stocks. As far as the alleged “ancestors” of mankind (such as the anthropoid and the Ice Man) are concerned, they could represent the first casualties in the above-mentioned struggle or the best human elements that have been mixed together with or swept away by animal potentialities. If in totemism, which is found in inferior societies, the notion of the mythical collective ancestor of the clan is often confused with that of the demon of a given animal species, this appears to reflect the memory of a similar stage of promiscuity.

Although this is not the proper context to raise the issues related to anthropogenesis, which are to a certain degree of a transcendent nature, the absence of human fossils and the sole presence of animal fossils in remote prehistory may be interpreted to mean that primordial mankind (provided that we may call primordial “man” a type that would be very different from historical mankind) was the last form of life to undergo the process of materialization, which process endowed the earlier, animal-like human species with an organism capable of being.

We may recall here that in some traditions there is the memory of a primordial race characterized by “weak” or “soft bones.” For instance Lieh-tzu, when talking about the Hyperborean region in which the present cycle began, mentioned that the inhabitants of this region have “soft bones.” In more recent times, the fact that superior races that came from the North did not bury but cremated their dead, is just another factor that needs to be considered when facing the dilemma caused by the absence of pieces of bones.

Somebody may object: “There is no trace whatsoever of this fantastic mankind!” Besides being somewhat naive to think that superior beings could not have existed without leaving behind traces such as ruins, utensils, weapons, and so on, it must be noted that in relatively recent eras there are residues of cyclopic works, though not all of them are typical of a civilized society (the circle at Stonehenge; enormous stones put in a precarious and miraculous equilibrium; the pedra cansada in Peru; the colossus of Tiuhuanac and the like). The archaeologists are baffled as to what means were employed just to gather and transport the necessary material. Going back in time, not only should we not conveniently forget what has already been admitted or at least not excluded a priori (that is, the existence of ancient lost lands and also that some lands were formed in recent geological eras), but we should also wonder whether it is fair to exclude a priori that a race in direct spiritual contact with cosmic forces ever existed (as tradition claims to be the case in the origins) just because it did not work on materials such as stone or metal, like those races that no longer have the means to act in accord with the power of the elements and beings.

Rather, it seems to me that the “caveman” is itself a legend: it seems that “primitive” man did not employ caves (many of which betray a sacred orientation) as animal-like dwellings but as places of a cult that has remained in this form even in undoubtedly “civilized” eras (such as the Greek-Minoan cult of caves and the ceremonies and the initiatory retreats on Mount Ida); it is only natural to find therein only traces, as a natural protection of the site, which in other sites the combined work of time, men, and the elements did not leave behind for our contemporaries.

According to a very basic traditional idea, generally speaking, the state of knowledge and of civilization was the natural state, if not of mankind in general, at least of certain primordial elites; and knowledge was not constructed and acquired just as true kingship did not originate from below. Joseph de Maistre, after remarking that what Rousseau and his epigones assumed to be the “natural” state (in reference to savages) is only the last stage of brutishness of some stocks that have either been scattered or suffered the consequences of some primordial act of degradation that affected their deepest substance, correctly pointed out:

As far as the development of science is concerned, we are blinded by a gross misunderstanding; that is, to assume a judgmental attitude toward those times in which men saw effects in the causes, on the basis of times in which men with effort ascended from the effects to the causes; in which people only care about effects; in which it is said that it is useless to be concerned about causes; and in which people have forgotten what a cause really means.^[9]

In the beginning mankind not only possessed a science, but

A very different science, which originated from above and was therefore very dangerous. This explains why in the beginning science was always mysterious and confined to the temples, in which it eventually became extinct when the only thing this “flame” could do was to burn.^[10]

Thus, another science was slowly formed as a surrogate, namely, the merely human and empirical science of which our contemporaries are so proud and through which they have thought fit to judge everything that they consider to be civilization. This “science” merely represents the futile attempt to climb back up, through surrogates, from an unnatural and degenerated state (what is most sad is that it is no longer even perceived to be such) that did not characterize the origins at all.

In any event one must realize that these and similar indications will play a minimal role for those who are not determined to change their own frame of mind. Every epoch has its own “myth” through which it reflects a given collective climate. Today the aristocratic idea that mankind has higher origins, namely, a past of light and of spirit, has been replaced by the democratic idea of evolutionism, which derives the higher from the lower, man from animal, civilization from barbarism. This is not so much the “objective” result of a free and conscious scientific inquiry, but rather one of the many reflections that the advent of the modern world, characterized by inferior social and spiritual strata and by man without traditions, has necessarily produced on the intellectual and cultural plane. Thus we should not delude ourselves: some “positive” superstitions will always produce alibis to defend themselves. The acknowledgment of new horizons will be possible not through the discovery of new “findings,” but rather through a new attitude toward these findings. Any attempt to validate even from a scientific perspective what the traditional dogmatic point of view upholds will generate results only among those who are already spiritually well disposed to accept this kind of knowledge.

Footnotes

1. Hesiod, Works and Days, 5.109 ff.

2. The Laws of Manu, 1.81–83.

3. Dio Chrysostom, Orationes, 36.39.

4. Daniel 2:31–45.

5. Cicero, De legibus 2.11: “Antiquitas proxime accedit ad deos” (Ancient times came very close to the gods).

6. Gen. 6: 4–13.

7. Plato, Critias, 110c; 120d–e; 121a–b: “As long as the divine element in their nature survived, they obeyed the laws and loved the divine to which they were akin. But when the divine element in them became weakened by frequent admixture with mortal stock, and their human traits became predominant, they ceased to be able to carry their spiritual legacy with moderation.”

8. Douglas Dewar, The Transformist Illusion (1957).

9. J. de Maistre, Soires de St. Petersburg (Paris, 1924), 1.63.

10. Ibid., 1.82. One of the things de Maistre points out is that the ancient languages are more essential, organic, and logical than modern ones; they reveal a hidden formative, nonhuman principle, especially when the ancient or “primitive” languages obviously contain fragments of even older languages that have either been lost or fallen into disuse, an eventuality hinted at by Plato himself.