Dear reader, my name is Luis Miguel Goitizolo. In this page I present an article inspired in my book The Wheel of Time - A Study in the Doctrine
of Cosmic Cycles and in other, similar interests.

'Paradise Found'

One of the most recurring notions among the religious traditions of the world is, without doubt, that of an original paradise where man lived in perfect harmony and bliss with God and all other living beings in the beginning, a notion that is usually complemented with the religious belief that man will live again in the same or a similar Paradise once the current evil state of things has ended.

In addition to this, I have found both notions to be connected with the presence of a religion of a ‘cosmic’ character in all ancient traditions.

So if we want to abide by the adage that ‘to know about the future we need first to know the past’, then we may paradoxically need to find first what a cosmic religion should be like in the face of an upcoming New, Golden Age as expected by many people in the world - among whom I count myself. And it is simply by analogy that in order to do so we will be relying on the traces left by the auroral civilizations, as those societies were, in fact, living their respective "golden ages" in the image of the last great Golden Age which started, according to my own calculations, some 52,000 years ago in what is now the Arctic region, and which lasted approximately 21,000 years.

Note that we are talking about the first Age of the current human cycle, which as a whole has continued through the vicissitudes of its successive Silver, Bronze and Iron ages to our days, and which there is every reason to believe is about to conclude now. But before you frown in disbelief at this, you may go to my thread here for the rationales on it, including the notion of a Hyperborean civilization located in the North Polar region, the seat of the primordial tradition, where this entire cycle is supposed to have started. Or if you prefer a monumental and, in my opinion, definitive work on this matter, you may consult Paradise Found by William F. Warren (1885) here.

A symbolic representation of the Hyperborean civilization in the North Pole,

with Mount Meru as the world axis going through the center of the Earth

according to the ancient Hindus. Believed to be the original center

and prototype of all posterior paradises as evoked by the

different world traditions, it was the place where the

primordial Golden Age would have elapsed
(From Paradise Found by William F. Warren
in http://sacred-texts.com)

You will find more on William F. Warren's extraordinary book in the second part of this article. At the risk of deviating from our target, however, let me tell you now that not only was his work fascinating, but it was also so conclusively convincing about the real Paradise location, unlike all other studies and theories to ever have been offered with regard to it, that it should have certainly deserved to be greatly welcomed by all kinds of readers. Unfortunately, it went mostly unnoticed to the general public - and if anything, received with utmost coldness by his colleagues and other specialists.

Or was it? I believe jealousy and envy stemming from professional rivalry played the main role in the apparent disinterest the book generally suffered, when not simple ignorance of what a real work of investigation should provide: a serious, comprehensive and plausible theory that can answer every conceivable question about the matter studied - as Mr Warren's book did.

However, we cannot stay on this for longer now; we need to go on with our quest.

So let me elaborate a bit more on the notion of cyclic, descending ages as it is essential to understand the real nature of history - and the extent of the ignorance of "official science" about it.

According to the Greek eighteen-century BC poet Hesiod, who actually was writing about more local and contingent ages than the above-mentioned four, and about cycles already concluded in his time (which, by the way, exemplifies the way shorter cycles will always accurately reflect the longer ones):

"... they [Men] lived like gods without sorrow of heart, remote and free from toil and grief: miserable age rested not on them; but with legs and arms never failing they made merry with feasting beyond the reach of all evils. When they died, it was as though they were overcome with sleep, and they had all good things; for the fruitful earth unforced bare them fruit abundantly and without stint. They dwelt in ease and peace upon their lands with many good things, rich in flocks and loved by the blessed gods."
Works and Days (109-126)

Now Hesiod is called a deteriorationist, as against the scholars' view of continuous progress of humanity along history. And according to these scholars, his belief, and all other deteriorationist beliefs, in successive, descending ages, would have originated in the primitive peoples’ longing for a natural life, a longing which coupled with considerations about the recurrence and regularity of the disasters that afflict the world, plus speculations inspired in such quaternary cycles as the four yearly seasons, four phases of the Moon, four stages in the life of man, and so on, would have crystallized in the “myth” of the Four Ages of Mankind brought to light by him. (Actually Hesiod added a fifth age, that of "the Heroes," to them, and inserted it between the second, Silver, and third, or Bronze, ages, probably inspired in the great heroes of the Iliad.)

As to the place of origin itself, and of all the other deteriorationist doctrines, some are inclined to believe it was India, considering the manifest identity between the four ages of the Greek tradition and the descending cycle of four yugasof the Hindustan tradition (see here my thread on the Hindu doctrine of cosmic cycles).

The Arcadian or Pastoral State (1834) by Thomas Cole
Seen as a lost, Edenic for of life, Arcadia was a
mountainous Greek region dating to antiquity
whose inhabitants were often regarded as
having continued to live after the
manner of the Golden Age
(photo: Wikipedia)

In this connection, however, we would still need to determine if this is also the origin of the many other myths in which the notion of four ages is equally prominent, such as the Maya and Inca and many other traditions; and even of all other “myths of return” where - irrespective of the number of ages - there stands out the universal, most ancient belief in the “fall” of man, a tradition that evokes the decline and alienation of mankind from a golden, paradisiacal condition to one of total degradation – usually ending in a catastrophic deluge – a most familiar and characteristic version of which can be read in the first pages of the Bible, from the “fall” of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from Paradise to the events that led to the Flood.

Curiously enough, all the multiple coincidences in the ancients' view of history seem to have gone unnoticed to the majority of the Western scholars - not to mention the layman, the common man of our time. So it comes as no surprise that the notion of four descending ages, or for that matter of any number of them, may sound unintelligible and absurd to the latter; and not out of sheer ignorance, for he is sure to have read those biblical passages, but because he has from his childhood been instilled the idea, exactly opposite, of a sustained progress of mankind throughout history - and also because it has always been opposed and fought by the Western Church.

For example Origen (185 - 254 AC), the patriarch of Alexandria, a man of deeply-rooted Gnosticism, wrote in Against Celso:

"We do not refer the flood or the burning of the world to the planetary cycles or periods, but we declare that their cause is the widespread prevalence of evil and its eradication by a deluge or conflagration."

Actually, Origen assumed that the worlds follow one another in time just like an equal number of schools in which decadent beings are reeducated, a process which would have started with the "fall" of man, which was then followed by the material world.

And Saint Augustine, in turn, in the 12th book of his City of God, questioned the doctrine of cycles based on the futility of an eternal wheel of creations and the absurdity of an endless death of the Logos.

At this point, you may ask, why am I stressing this notion of descending ages in connection with a likely cosmic religion? Quite simply, because this notion, like the related notion of higher and lower planets of the ancients' tradition, was consubstantial to their religion - and I am trying to substantiate my view that to the extent that a cosmic religion follows the characteristics of the primordial tradition, it will eventually be on a par with the task of easing our entrance into the upcoming New Age.

(More on the conception of Four Ages of Mankind here.)

This topic will be continued in next posts.

Thank you,

Luis Miguel Goitizolo

A Message from The Author

Dear Friend,

Ever since I was a youth I was fascinated by Oriental wisdom and particularly by the Hindu doctrines. However, it was not until a few years ago that I undertook the task of studying the ancient doctrine of cosmic cycles from different perspectives, though mainly using the most relevant sacred texts from all around the world. In time, I felt the urge to write a book about my studies in that matter in my mother tongue, Spanish, which I titled "La rueda del tiempo" (in English, "The Wheel of Time"). It is excerpts of that book and other original articles dealing with similar topics that I will start publishing as of today through this medium.

More recently, after some years as a networker promoting a variety of programs, I decided to translate my book into English, a task that was successfully completed a few months ago. And over the past few weeks and months I have been publishing excerpts of this translation, as well as other original articles in English that also deal with similar topics, on various online media of the United States and other countries.

Thank You,

Luis Miguel Goitizolo
Lima - Perú

miguelgoitizolo@gmail.com

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