Agartha (sometimes Agartta, Agharti, Agarath, Agarta, Agharta, or Agarttha) is a legendary kingdom that is said to be located on the inner surface of the Earth.[1] It is sometimes related to the belief in a hollow Earth[2] and is a popular subject in esotericism.
The first published mention of 'Agartha' appears to have been by Louis Jacolliot in his book Les Fils du Dieu (1873), in which he claimed that Brahmin friends of his in Chandernagore had told him the story of 'Asgartha', an ancient city that had been destroyed about 5,000 years ago, shortly before the beginning of the Kali Yuga.[3]
The legend of Agartha remained mostly obscure in Europe until Gérard Encausse edited and re-published a detailed 1886 account by the nineteenth-century French occultist Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre (1842–1909), Mission de l'Inde en Europe,[4] in 1910. Saint-Yves had been learning Sanskrit from a person called Haji Sharif, who told him about a mysterious place called 'Agarttha', where he said that the original language of mankind was preserved. In Mission de l'Inde en Europe Saint-Yves said that he had visited Agarttha through astral projection, and gave a detailed description of its marvels. Unlike Jacolliot, Saint-Yves claimed that Agarttha was still in existence underground, having moved there at the beginning of Kali Yuga.
After World War I, German occultist groups such as the Thule Society took an interest in Agartha.[5]
In his 1922 book, Beasts, Men and Gods, the Polish explorer Ferdynand Ossendowski relates a story which was imparted to him concerning a subterranean kingdom existing inside the Earth. This kingdom is known to a fictional Buddhist society as Agharti.[6]
See main article: Shambhala. Agartha is frequently associated or confused with Shambhala which figures prominently in Vajrayana Buddhism and Tibetan Kalachakra teachings and revived in the West by Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society. Theosophists in particular regard Agarthi as a vast complex of caves underneath Tibet inhabited by demi-gods, called asuras. Helena and Nicholas, whose teachings closely parallel theosophy, see Shambhala's existence as both spiritual and physical.[7]