The Lost World of Agharti- the Mystery of Vril Power

by Alec MacLellan

  But we must come to these believers and their opinions all in good time. First, I think we should look more closely at the details contained in Bulwer Lytton’s unique ‘novel’.

  In essence, The Coming Race is about a society of advanced beings who live in tunnels and caverns beneath the surface of the earth, possessing an intelligence and powers far in advance of humanity. It is their ultimate objective to emerge from this underworld and take control of the rest of the planet.

  The storyteller is an unnamed man who, though described as being a ‘native of the United States of America’, has an appearance and background that make it hard to imagine him being anyone but the youthful Bulwer Lytton himself. In an unspecified year early in the 1800s, the young man comes to England and is taken on a conducted tour of some mines, and there learns of a legend that one of the tunnels leads to a mysterious subterranean world. (It is my belief, incidentally, that although these mines are not named, they are in fact in the West Riding of Yorkshire, a district where Bulwer Lytton lived for a period of time. And, as I mentioned earlier in this book, a tunnel ultimately linked to Agharti is believed by some to run from below the old mines in Wharfedale, Yorkshire; this may be regarded as another factor in the argument for the factual background of the book. Bulwer Lytton himself excuses the anonymity with which he cloaks the locality thus: ‘The reader will understand, ere he close this narrative, my reason for concealing all clue to the district of which I write, and will perhaps thank me for refraining from any description that may tend to its discovery.’)

  The narrator becomes so intrigued with this legend that he spends several weeks exploring the mines until, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, he discovers a tunnel which leads to the underworld. His progress is made possible by a ‘diffused, atmospheric light, not like that from fire, but soft and silvery, as from a northern star’. In a huge cavern he discovers a settlement built on a mixture of Oriental and Egyptian lines, and encounters a man dressed in a tunic with a dazzling tiara on his head and carrying in his hand a little rod of bright metal like polished steel. But it is the man’s face that fascinates our narrator:

  It was the face of a man, but yet of a type of man distinct from our known extant races. The nearest approach to it in outline and expression is the face of the sculptured sphinx – so regular in its calm, intellectual beauty … I felt that this manlike image was endowed with forces inimical to man.

  It transpires that this impressive yet benevolent figure is Aph-Lin, a leading member of the subterranean people, who are known as the Vril-ya. It is he and his beautiful daughter, Zee, who conduct the storyteller through the mysteries of their world, having first subconsciously given him the ability to understand their language. Once, though, he has told them of his life on the surface world, they pledge him to secrecy, as the reader has already learned in the extract from the book quoted earlier. During this conversation, he becomes acquainted with the extraordinary power which gives the race their name. An understanding of it becomes a driving obsession with him throughout the rest of the book.

  The narrator of The Coming Race learns from his hosts that their remote ancestors had ‘once tenanted a world above the surface of that in which they dwelt’. They had been forced to seek refuge below ground as a result of ‘many violent revolutions of nature’ which had caused great landmasses to be destroyed or submerged. The story goes on:

  A band of the ill-fated race, thus invaded by the Flood, had, during the march of the waters, taken refuge in caverns and, wandering through these hollows, they lost sight of the upper world for ever … In the bowels of the earth even now, I was informed as a positive fact, might be discovered the remnants of human habitation – habitation not in huts and caverns, but in vast cities whose ruins attest the civilisation of races which flourished before the age of Noah.

  For some time the Vril-ya had struggled desperately to reestablish their civilization and culture, finally achieving this by ‘the gradual discovery of the latent powers stored in the all-permeating fluid which they denominate Vril’. Our narrator continues:

  According to the account I received from Zee, who, as an erudite professor in the College of Sages, had studied such matters more diligently than any other member of my host’s family, this fluid is capable of being raised and disciplined into the mightiest agency over all forms of matter, animate or inanimate. It can destroy like the flash of lightning; yet, differently applied, it can replenish or invigorate life, heal, and preserve, and on it they chiefly rely for the cure of disease, or rather for enabling the physical organisation to reestablish the due equilibrium of its natural powers, and thereby to cure itself. By this agency they rend their way through the most solid substances, and open valleys for culture through the rocks of their subterranean wilderness. From it they extract the light which supplies their lamps, finding it steadier, softer, and healthier than the other inflammable materials they had formerly used.

  But the effects of the alleged discovery of the means to direct the more terrible force of Vril were chiefly remarkable in their influence upon social polity. As these effects became familiarly known and skilfully administered, war between the Vril discoverers ceased, for they brought the art of destruction to such perfection as to annul all superiority in numbers, discipline, or military skill. The fire lodged in the hollow of a rod directed by the hand of a child could shatter the strongest fortress, or cleave its burning way from the van to the rear of an embattled host. If army met army, and both had command of this agency, it could be but to the annihilation of each. The age of war was therefore gone, but with the cessation of war other effects bearing upon the social state soon became apparent. Man was so completely at the mercy of man, each whom he encountered being able, if so willing, to slay him on the instant, that all notions of government by force gradually vanished from political systems and forms of law.

  From Zee, the narrator learns that the subterranean people are governed by a single supreme magistrate called the Tur: ‘he held his office nominally for life, but he could seldom be induced to retain it after the first approach of old age.’ Any disputes arising amongst the male and female members of the Vril-ya – the males being known as Ana and the females Gyei – would be referred to the Council of Sages, to which Zee herself belonged. Both sexes were considered equal and shared in all arts and vocations, although – said Zee – ‘the Gyei are usually superior to the A na in physical strength (an important element in the consideration and maintenance of female rights). They attain to loftier stature, and amid their rounder proportion are embedded sinews and muscles as hardy as those of the other sex.’ Marriages apparently only lasted three years, at the end of which the couples were free to choose new partners!

  When our storyteller asks his guide how it is possible for life to be sustained below ground without the energy of the sun:

  She did but conjecture that sufficient allowance had not been made by our philosophers for the extreme porousness of the interior earth – the vastness of its cavities and irregularities, which served to create free currents of air and frequent winds – and for the various modes in which heat is evaporated and thrown off. She did allow, however, that there was a depth at which the heat was deemed to be intolerable to such organised life as was known to the experience of the Vril-ya. She said also, that since the Vril light had superseded all other light-giving bodies, the colours of flower and foliage had become more brilliant, and vegetation had acquired larger growth.

  The Vril-ya themselves, said Zee, reinvigorated their bodies by taking regular baths charged with Vril. ‘They consider that this fluid, sparingly used, is a great sustainer of life,’ she says. ‘But used in excess, when in the normal state of health, rather tends to reaction and exhausted vitality. For nearly all their disease, however, they resort to it as the chief assistant to nature in throwing off the complaint.’ (In an interesting footnote to this paragraph, the ‘author’ – and it could be Bulwer Lytton himself speaking – says: ‘I once tried the effect of
a Vril bath. It was very similar in its invigorating powers to that of the baths at Gastein, the virtue of which are ascribed by many physicians to electricity; but though similar, the effect of the Vril bath was more lasting.’)

  The lives of the subterranean people are constantly peaceful, and they need use little physical effort, Zee explains. ‘In all service,’ she says, ‘we make great use of automaton figures, which are so ingenious, and so pliant to the operations of Vril, that they actually seem gifted with reason.’ And on seeing one of these robots, the young narrator is forced to admit that: ‘It was scarcely possible to distinguish the figures I beheld, apparently guiding or superintending the rapid movements of vast engines, from human forms endowed with thought.’

  The young woman also tells her attentive listener that there are communities of the Vril-ya spread at great distances apart below ground, all linked by tunnels and caverns through which they can travel. ‘I heard my father say that, according to the last report, there were a million and a half communities,’ she says. ‘All the tribes of Vril-ya are in constant communication with each other. Our hardy life as children also makes us take cheerfully to travel and adventure.’

  A little later in the narrative, after the storyteller has become settled with the underground people, he is given two startling demonstrations of Vril Power – firstly in the shape of the Vril Staff carried by the inhabitants, and secondly as the means of motivating ‘Flying Wings’ which enable the Vril-ya to travel easily about their domain.

  The narrator tell us that although he often saw people carrying the small, shining rods, he himself was never allowed to handle one ‘for fear of some terrible accident occasioned by my ignorance of its use’. He then goes on to describe the Vril Staff in detail:

  It is hollow, and has in the handle several stops, keys, or springs, by which its force can be altered, modified, or directed – so that by one process it destroys, by another it heals – by one it can rend the rock, by another disperse the vapour – by one it affects bodies, by another it can exercise a certain influence over minds. It is usually carried in the convenient size of a walking staff, but it has slides by which it can be lengthened or shortened at will. When used for special purposes, the upper part rests in the hollow of the palm with the fore and middle fingers protruded.

  I was assured, however, that its power was not equal in all, but proportioned to the amount of certain Vril properties in the wearer, in affinity, or rapport, with the purposes to be effected. Some were more potent to destroy, others to heal; much also depended on the calm and steadiness of volition in the manipulator. They assert that the full exercise of Vril Power can only be acquired by constitutional temperament – i.e. by hereditarily transmitted organisation – and that a female infant of four years old belonging to the Vril-ya races can accomplish feats with the wand placed for the first time in her hand, which a life spent in its practice would not enable the strongest and most skilled mechanician, born out of the pale of the Vril-ya to achieve.

  All these wands are not equally complicated; those entrusted to the children are much simpler than those borne by sages of either sex, and constructed with a view to the special object in which the children are employed; which as I have before said, is among the youngest children the most destructive. In the wands of wives and mothers the correlative destroying force is usually abstracted, the healing power fully charged. I wish I could say more in detail of this singular conductor of the Vril fluid, but its machinery is as exquisite as its effects are marvellous.

  The young man watches in amazement when Zee demonstrates the power of her metal rod. ‘I saw her,’ he says, ‘merely by a certain play of her Vril Staff – she herself standing at a distance – put into movement large and weighty substances. She seemed to endow them with intelligence, and to make them comprehend and obey her command.’

  Again, here, it is possible to draw an immediate parallel between fiction and fact. For that description of Zee’s powers of being able to move objects at a distance apparently by the power of her mind, exactly describes Bulwer Lytton’s own acknowledged powers of telekinesis!

  Our narrator’s second surprise comes when he sees some of the Vril-ya flying through the air on wings. These, he observes, can be taken on and off at will and are very large, reaching down to the wearer’s knees. He goes on:

  They are fastened round the shoulders with light but strong springs of steel; and, when expanded, the arms slide through loops for that purpose, forming, as it were, a stout, central membrane. As the arms are raised, a tubular lining beneath the vest or tunic becomes, by mechanical contrivance, inflated with air, increased or diminished at will by the movement of the arms, and serving to buoy the whole form as on bladders. The wings and the balloon-like apparatus are highly charged with Vril; and when the body is thus wafted upward, it seems to become singularly lightened of its weight.

  I found it easy enough to soar from the ground; indeed when the wings were spread it was scarcely possible not to soar, but then came the difficulty and the danger. I utterly failed in the power to use and direct the pinions, though I am considered among my own race unusually alert and ready in bodily exercises, and am a very practised swimmer. I could only make the most confused and blundering efforts at flight. I was the servant of the wings; the wings were not my servants – they were beyond my control; and when by a violent strain of muscle, and, I must fairly own, in that abnormal strength which is given by excessive fright, I curbed their gyrations and brought them near to the body, it seemed as if I lost the sustaining power stored in them and the connecting bladders, as when air is let out of a balloon, and found myself precipitated again to earth; saved, indeed, by some spasmodic flutterings, from being dashed to pieces, but not saved from the bruises and the stun of a heavy fall.

  I would, however, have persevered in my attempts, but for the advice or the commands of the scientific Zee, who had benevolently accompanied my flutterings, and indeed, on the last occasion, flying just under me, received my form as it fell on her own expanded wings, and preserved me from breaking my head on the roof of the pyramid from which we had ascended.

  Once more, in a description of the Vril-ya themselves flying, there is a remarkable similarity between their appearance and that strange aerial phenomenon which Nicholas Roerich reported in the desert of Ulan-Davan. Could it have been a member of the subterranean race flying rather than a vulture – a bird unknown in those parts?

  Although our narrator is deeply saddened by his failure to fly, the episode has awakened another emotion in him. A desire to return home. As he tells us: ‘I now pined to escape to the upper world, but I racked my brains in vain for any means to effect it. I was never permitted to wander forth alone, so that I could not even visit the spot on which I had alighted to see if it were possible to re-ascend the mine.’

  As he tries to find some practical solution to this dilemma, he also formalizes his opinions on the true nature of the Vril-ya:

  I arrived at the conclusion that this people – though originally not only of our human race, but, as it seems to me clear by the roots of their language, descended from the same ancestors as the great Aryan family, from which in varied streams has flowed the dominant civilisation of the world; and having, according to their myths and their history passed through phases of society familiar to ourselves – had yet now developed into a distinct species with which it was impossible that any community in the upper world could amalgamate. And that if they ever emerged from these nether recesses into the light of day, they would, according to their own traditional persuasions of their ultimate destiny, destroy and replace our existent varieties of man.

  Having arrived at this chilling verdict on the intentions of the Vril-ya, it comes as something of a surprise when our narrator is offered a chance of escape by a most unexpected person – none other than his host’s daughter and Council member, Zee. She has apparently grown fond of the young man, but aware that any union between them is impossible, and sensing his de
sire to return home, she offers her assistance. A few days later during the rest hours she leads him back to the tunnel shaft, and he successfully climbs to the surface – only to find that he ultimately emerges from a quite different tunnel to that which he entered! (Here, yet again, Bulwer Lytton runs true to the legend of a worldwide network of tunnels linked with the subterranean world.)

  With a grateful prayer for his deliverance, the young narrator concludes his story:

  The more I think of a people calmly developing, in regions excluded from our sight and deemed uninhabitable by our sages, powers surpassing our most disciplined modes of force, and virtues to which our life, social and political, becomes antagonistic in proportion as our civilisation advances – the more devoutly I pray that ages may yet elapse before there emerge into the sunlight our inevitable destroyers. Being, however, frankly told by my physician that I am afflicted by a complaint which, though it gives little pain and no perceptible notice of its encroachments, may at any moment be fatal, I have thought it my duty to my fellow-men to place on record these forewarnings of The Coming Race.

  This last paragraph of a book which I consider an impressive and compelling work – written more in the form of a treatise than a novel and containing a wealth of detail which I have only been able to hint at here – this paragraph has proved to be uncannily prophetic on two counts.

  Firstly, Bulwer Lytton, who we know was already under medical supervision, died less than three years after completing the book.

  And, secondly, a leader was indeed to emerge who not only believed in the actual existence of the Vril-ya, but set out to establish a very similar kind of society to that which Bulwer Lytton had described.