Re: The Island of Mu.

Michael Rogero Brown (michaelb@hobbie.bocaraton.ibm.com)
Wed, 11 Jan 1995 18:36:49 GMT

Anshuman Pandey (apandey@u.washington.edu) wrote:

: I ran across a few books, namely the "The Island of Mu," "The Children
: of Mu," and "Symbols of Mu." I forget the authour's name, but he claims
: that he's found a lost island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean between
: Oceania and South America.

: In the preface to his books, he mentions that he learned this information
: from a Hindu priest who kept hidden the secret tablets of the Naacals,
: which detailed the history of this island of Mu.

: I was curious to know if any of you have come across these books, and
: what your opinion of them are?

I have the set of books. They are nonsense.

The Lost Continent of Mu is a sort of recent 'Atlantis in the Pacific' if
you will. De Camp's book _Lost Continents_ (which someone mentioned in a
post) explains it's 'history' better then I will here.

Basically the idea of Mu started when an Catholic monk attempted to translated
the only remaining Mayan books back in the 16th century. He thought they
were written in a phonetic alphabet (ie the symbols are for sounds, much like
English, Spanish, French, et al) rather then every symbol was a word or
concept. He got help from a native and started to work on the "translation".
He came up with some garbled mess about a catastrophe overcoming some land
called "Mu". The translation is wrong as I believe the book he translated was
an astronomy text.

In comes 'Colonel' Churchward, the author of the above books. He claimed to
find some tablets and proceded to translate them. Thus formed the basis for
his first book, _The Lost Continent of Mu_, which was followed by another
4-5 more with titles like _Cosmic Powers of Mu_, _Children of Mu_, etc.

Various 'occult' groups, like Madam Blavatsky's Theosophist have appropriated
the legend of Mu into their own occult believes, along with ideas of other
lost lands like Atlantis, Lemure, Hyberborea, et al.

If you want to find these books, you'll probably find them in the occult/new
age section of used bookstores, which is were they belong, as opposed to the
science section. :)

Unlike Atlantis, which is a legend that has been around for several thousand
years (when did Plato write his stuff???), the "legend" of Mu is only a couple
of hundred years old.

--

----------All Opinions Expressed are MINE, not IBM's--------------

Michael Rogero Brown       (uK Development System Administrator)  

IBM (uK Development)         TEL/TIE   (407) 443-6400   

Boca Raton, FL               Internet:  mikal@bocaraton.ibm.com



If you think I speak for IBM, then I've got some swamp land^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H

real estate to sell you.