Author Description

The posthumous work of Saint-Yves d'Alveydre entitled "Mission de l'Inde", published in 1910, contains the description of a mysterious initiatory center indicated with the name of Agarttha; among the readers of that book, many probably thought that it was just a wholly imaginary tale, a kind of fiction with no real foundation. In fact, if we want to take everything literally, we find improbabilities which, at least for those who adhere to outward appearances, could justify such a judgment; and Saint-Yves had certainly had good reasons for not publishing that long-ago written work himself and never really completed. On the other hand, before then, no mention had been made in Europe of either the Agarttha or its leader, the Brahmatma, if not by a writer of little seriousness, Louis Jacolliot, whose authority certainly cannot be referred to; for our part, we think that he really intended to talk about those things during his stay in India, but to then manipulate them, like everything else, in his eminently imaginative way. However, in 1924 a new and unexpected event took place: the book Bètes, Hommes et Dieux, in which Ferdinand Ossendowski recounts his adventures during a laborious journey made between 1920 and 1921 through Central Asia, contains, especially in last part, tales almost identical to those of Saint-Yves; and the many comments that accompanied this book offer us, we believe, the opportunity to finally break the silence on the Agartha question. Skeptical or malevolent spirits did not fail, of course, to accuse Ossendowski of having simply plagiarized Saint-Yves, pointing out all the concordant passages of the two works; and in fact there are several that present, even in detail, truly surprising similarities. First of all we find, which might have seemed unlikely even in Saint-Yves, the affirmation of the existence of an underground world, the ramifications of which would extend everywhere, under continents and even under the oceans, and by means of which