Churchward is most notable for proposing the existence of a lost continent, called "Mu," in the Pacific Ocean.
Churchward was born in Bridestow, Okehampton, Devon at Stone House to Henry and Matilda (née Gould) Churchward. James had four brothers and four sisters. In November 1854, his father Henry died and the family moved in with Matilda's parents in the hamlet of Kigbear, near Okehampton. Census records indicate the family moved to London when James was 18, after his maternal grandfather George Gould died. His younger brother Albert Churchward (1852–1925) became a Masonic author.
Churchward went out to Southeast Asia, becoming a tea planter in Sri Lanka. He immigrated to the US in the 1890s. In Churchward's biography, entitled My Friend Churchey and His Sunken Continent, he was said to have discussed "Mu" with Augustus Le Plongeon and his wife in the 1890s.
in the United States, Churchward patented NCV (nickel, chrome, vanadium) steel, which was used to manufacture armor plating to protect ships during World War I. He also developed other steel alloys. After a patent-infringement settlement in 1914, Churchward retired to his 7+ acre estate on Lake Wononskopomuc in Lakeville, Connecticut, to think more about questions he had from his Pacific travels. At the age of 75, he published The Lost Continent of Mu: Motherland of Man (1926). He claimed this proved the existence of a lost continent, called Mu, in the Pacific Ocean.
According to Churchward, Mu "extended from somewhere north of Hawaii to the south as far as the Fijis and Easter Island." He claimed Mu was the site of the Garden of Eden and the home of 64,000,000 inhabitants – known as the Naacals. Its civilisation, which flourished 50,000 years before Churchward's day, was technologically more advanced than his own. He said the ancient civilisations of India, Babylon, Persia, Egypt, and the Mayas were the decayed remnants of Mu's colonies.
Churchward claimed to have gained his knowledge of this lost land after befriending an Indian priest, who taught him to read an ancient dead language (spoken by only three people in all of India). The priest disclosed the existence of several ancient tablets, written by the Naacals. He allowed Churchward to see these records after initial reluctance. His knowledge remained incomplete, as the available tablets were mere fragments of a larger text. Churchward claimed to have found verification and further information in the records of other ancient peoples.
His writings attempt to describe the civilisation of Mu, its history, inhabitants, and influence on subsequent history and civilisations.
Churchward claimed that the ancient Egyptian sun-god Ra originated with the Mu; he claimed that "Rah" was the word which the Naacals used for "sun", as well as for their god and rulers.
Works
- Fishing Among the 1,000 Islands of the St. Lawrence (1894)
- A Big Game and Fishing Guide to Northeastern Maine (1897)
Books about Mu
- The Lost Continent of Mu, the Motherland of Men (1926)
- The Children of Mu (1931)
- The Sacred Symbols of Mu (1933)
- Cosmic Forces of Mu (1934)
- Second Book of Cosmic Forces of Mu (1935)
Posthumous publications
- The Books of the Golden Age (written in 1927 but first published 1997)
- Copies of Stone Tablets Found by William Niven at Santiago Ahuizoctla Near Mexico City, a booklet of "thirty-some" pages, written in 1927 but first published in 2014 where it was included in the book The Stone Tablets of Mu by James Churchward's great-grandson Jack Churchward
.
Between 1924 and 1925, world traveler, inventor, geologist, archeologist, metallurgical chemist, and researcher James Churchward delivered more than two dozen lectures over WNYC. A former colonel in the British Army, Churchward gave talks based on decades of research that focused on what he called, 'the motherland of man,' the lost continent of Mu.
According to Churchward, some 25,000 years before the common era Mu had been a Pacific Ocean mirror to Atlantis, with its northern reach just beyond Hawaii and the southern boundary between Easter Island and Fiji. Before its destruction from a volcanic explosion, Mu was home to as many as 64,000,000 people whose culture and inventions, he argued, far surpassed those of the modern era.[1]
Churchward began his quest to prove the existence of Mu in 1868 as a young English officer on famine relief duty in India. There, he befriended a high priest at a temple school monastery who revealed to him ancient tablets written in Naacal, a language known only to a dwindling few. The priest reportedly taught Churchward how to read this language and the tablets which described the lost continent of Mu. So began Churchward's lifelong project to corroborate the tablets.
In his WNYC talks, Churchward discussed his discoveries and findings of Mu as well as lecturing on his travels through the Himalayas and India. Covered too are various natural phenomena such as electricity, lightning, earthquakes, and volcanoes. Heading to the fringes of scientific and anthropologic inquiry Churchward outlined his firm belief that the sun is actually a cool body and that man was civilized before he became a savage.
Churchward's radio lectures received some national notice through the syndicated newspaper outlet Universal Service. They published a piece on Churchward's November 12, 1924 WNYC lecture that ran in Nebraska's Grand Island Daily Independent. Headlined, "New Location Given to Garden of Eden," the article outlined the colonel's talk "The Motherland of Man," where he declared that years of research had led him to conclude that Eden was indeed in the Pacific but had been submerged by volcanic activity. The same story appeared in Louisiana's Shreveport Times.[2] In April 1925, The Hartford Courant's radio columnist made note of an upcoming Churchward talk on 'the great magnetic cataclysm,' that it said, promises "very surprising facts and finding as substantiation for extremely unorthodox explanation of the glacial period."
Not long afterward Churchward's research and conclusions were detailed in the book The Lost Continent of Mu: Motherland of Man, published in 1926. This work was followed by The Children of Mu, The Sacred Symbols of Mu, and two volumes on The Cosmic Forces of Mu.
Col. Churchward, Author, Dies at 86," The New York Times, January 5, 1936, pg. N10.
Links
https://www.my-mu.com/index.html
