The "Book of Dyzan"

A second "spot-check," made of one of the more spectacular "ancient UFO reports," has produced some fascinating results. It is the "UFO legend" offered by Mr. Frank Edwards in his Flying Saucers -- Serious Business (1966). In his opening chapter entitled "What Goes On Here?" Edwards, from a source not mentioned, gives us the following awesome account :

A chronicle of ancient India known as the Book of Dzyan is in a class by itself, not only because of its age, but because of a surprising account therein. The Book is a compilation of legends passed down through the ages before men were able to write, and finally gathered by the ancient scholars who preserved them for us.

They tell of a small group of beings who came to Earth many thousands of years ago in a metal craft which first went AROUND Earth several times before landing. "These beings," says the Book, "lived to themselves and were revered by the humans among whom they had settled. But eventually differences arose among them and they divided their numbers, several of the men and women and some children settling in another city, where they were promptly installed as rulers by the awe-stricken populace."

The legend continues:

Separation did not bring peace to these people and finally their anger reached a point where the ruler of the original city took with him a small number of his warriors and they rose into the air in a huge shining metal vessel. While they were many leagues from the city of their enemies they launched a great shining lance that rode on a beam of light. It burst apart in the city of their enemies with a great ball of flame that shot up to the heavens, almost to the stars. All those in the city were horribly burned and even those who were not in the city -- but nearby -- were burned also. Those who looked upon the lance and the ball of fire were blinded forever afterward. Those who entered the city on foot became ill and died. Even the dust of the city was poisoned, as were the rivers that flowed through it. Men dared not go near it, and gradually crumbled into dust and was forgotten by men.

When the leader saw what he had done to his own people he retired to his palace and refused to see anyone. Then he gathered about him those of his warriors who remained, and their wives and their children, and they entered into their vessels and rose one by one into the sky and sailed away. Nor did they return."

This would seem to be an account of an attempt by some extra-terrestrial group to establish a colony on Earth in the distant past. Like so many colonizing attempts by man, it appears to have ended in dissension and conflict. The most interesting portion of the story is the description of the great "lance that traveled on a beam of light," which bears a surprising resemblance to a modern rocket and its jet of flame. The effect of this so-called "lance" brings to mind a rather detailed picture of a nuclear blast and its catastrophic sequels. If this is a mental concoction of some primitive writer it is at least remarkable. If it is a reasonably accurate piece of factual reporting, then it is even more remarkable. Since it is unverifiable, we must at this late date classify it as "interesting, but unproved."

This most impressive, goosepimply account of extra-terrestrial colonists who once waged nuclear war on our planet and then left has only one thing wrong with it -- it is completely spurious.

To begin with, the so-called Book of Dzyan is not, as Edwards writes, "a compilation of legends passed down through the ages . and gathered by scholars who preserved them for us." The "Book or Stanzas of Dzyan" made their very first appearance in 1886 in the famous book The Secret Doctrine, written by the high priestess of Esoteric Theosophy, Madame Helene Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891). The stanzas are the basis of her preposterous Atlantean "Theory of Cosmic Evolution." An unauthorized biographer declares that: "the mysterious 'Dzyan manuscript' like the 'Senzar' language they were written in, seem wholly to have originated in Madame Blavatsky's imagination." (Roberts, 1931).

Madame Blavatsky's own account, and those of her disciples, or the origin and meaning of the "Dzyan Stanzas" quickly show that they were concocted for an "occult" audience with a very low threshold of mental resistance.

That the "Stanzas of Dzyan" exist only in Madame Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine, or in commentaries written by her disciples is clearly stated in the foreword of the only separate edition of the "Stanzas" published by the London Theosophical Society in 1908 :

For the information of readers into whose hands these Stanzas may now fall, it is desirable to give some brief account of their source, on the authority of the Occultist Madame Blavatsky who translated and introduced them to the world of modern thought. The following particulars are derived from Madame Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine and Voice of The Silence; which Madame Blavatsky tells us form a part of the same series of long-concealed manuscript treasures in which the Stanzas of Dzyan belong.

Book of Dzyan is not in the possession of any European library, and was never heard of by European scholarship: nevertheless it exists and lies hidden, even from the enterprising war correspondent, in one of the mysterious rock libraries that the spurs of the Himalayas may yet contain. (emphasis--SR).

In her own inimitable style Madame Blavatsky adds: "In the Tsaydam, in the solitary passes of the Kuen-Lun, along the Altyn-Tag" [this "Tibetan" word sounds German: "Alten-Tag" or "olden days"--SR] whose soil no European foot has trod, there exists a certain hamlet lost in a deep gorge. It is a small cluster of houses, a hamlet rather than a monastery, with a poor temple on it, and only one old Lama, a hermit, living near to watch it. Pilgrims say that the subterranean galleries and halls under it contain a collection of books . . . too large to find room even in the British Museum" (Introduction to The Secret Doctrine, Madame Blavatsky).

The preface of the London Theosophical Society's edition of the "Stanzas" explains more about them:

The Stanzas of Dzyan... are written in a language unknown to philology, if indeed the word "written" is applicable to ideographs of which they largely consist, and this associated with the use of a colour system of symbology.

They are given throughout, in their modern translated version, as it would be worse than useless to make the subject still more difficult by introducing the archaic phraseology of the original with its puzzling style and words. The terms used were non-translatable into English, are Tibetan and Sanskrit, and... will frequently be a stumbling block unless reference is made to The Secret Doctrine where the commentaries on the text will generally be found to supply the meaning (London Theosophical Society, 1908).

A thorough search of the Stanzas in Madame Blavatsky's books and those of her commentators has failed to divulge the enthralling "legend from the Book of Dzyan" quoted by Edwards. Now since the Stanzas exists only in The Secret Doctrine, and they, in turn, exist only "in the imagination of Madame Blavatsky," then the question arises: Where did the additional long account of "extra-terrestrial colonists"-- come from? It seems that Edwards had "been had" by one of his sources, and has innocently passed on to his readers a fabrication superimposed on a gigantic hoax concocted by Madame Blavatsky.