nized as the sun. They thus
developed a sort of sun worship, for the practice of which they
repaired to the hill tops. There they built great circles of upright
monoliths. These were intended to be symbolical of the sun's yearly
course, but they were also used for astronomical purposes--being
placed so that, to one standing at the high altar, the sun would rise
at the winter solstice behind one of these monoliths, at the vernal
equinox behind another, and so on throughout the year. Astronomical
observations of a still more complex character connected with the
more distant constellations were also helped by these stone circles.

We have already seen under the head of emigrations how a later
sub-race--the Akkadians--in the erection of Stonehenge, reverted to
this primitive building of monoliths.

Endowed though the Tlavatli were with somewhat greater capacity for
intellectual development than the previous sub-race, their cult was
still of a very primitive type.

With the wider diffusion of knowledge in the days of the Toltecs, and
more especially with the establishment later on of an initiated
priesthood and an Adept emperor, increased opportunities were offered
to the people for the attainment of a truer conception of the divine.
The few who were ready to take full advantage of the teaching offered,
after having been tried and tested, were doubtless admitted into the
ranks of the priesthood which then constituted an immense occult
fraternity. With these, however, who had so outstripped the mass of
humanity, as to be ready to begin the progress of the occult path, we
are not here concerned, the religions practised by the inhabitants of
Atlantis generally being the subject of our investigation.

The power to rise to philosophic heights of thought was of course
wanting to the masses of those days, as it is similarly wanting to the
great majority of the inhabitants of the world to-day. The nearest
approach which the most gifted teacher could make in attempting to
convey any idea of the nameless and all-pervading essence of the
Kosmos was necessarily imparted in the form of symbols, and the sun
naturally enough was the first symbol adopted. As in our own days too
the more cultivated and spiritually minded would see through the
symbol, and might sometimes rise on the wings of devotion to the
Father of our spirits, that

"Motive and centre of our soul's desire,
Object and refuge of our journey's end"

while the