Hollow Earth

I said in my last post I wouldn’t give much thought to this idea but I can’t help it. For one, some of my kids think it’s a cool idea. For another, I am a sucker for rabbit holes.

The central thesis here is that the earth is more or less hollow/habitable and is also the “promised land” of BoM lore. It can be reached through the Earth’s poles or maybe through some deep-sea access points or mountain caves. I’m no expert on HE but I do know the idea was a popular fantasy for much of human history across many different cultures. It’s a very ancient idea and like the notion of a great flood, it was an assumed fact for millennia across various unconnected cultures.

Virtually every major civilization and indigenous culture has myths that describe an underworld, hidden subterranean realms, or advanced beings living beneath the Earth. Today most people take that to mean ancient thinkers were superstitious morons. Maybe, but then how did they all reach the same general conclusion? I do personally find that compelling.

I also know there is a curious verse in the D&C 88 that reads:

103 And another trump shall sound, which is the fifth trump, which is the fifth angel who committeth the everlasting gospel—flying through the midst of heaven, unto all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people;

104 And this shall be the sound of his trump, saying to all people, both in heaven and in earth, and that are under the earth—for every ear shall hear it, and every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess, while they hear the sound of the trump, saying: Fear God, and give glory to him who sitteth upon the throne, forever and ever; for the hour of his judgment is come.

“People” are, by very definition, mortal and currently living persons so I don’t think we can say this refers to the spirits of the dead, and yet this verse addresses people not only “in earth” but also “under the earth”. So maybe it’s some group of cave dwellers? Or maybe it’s the Lehites biding their time as HE inhabitants.

Before I get too far into this, let me say upfront I am presenting this about as seriously as my last post. I don’t know that the idea has much life to it, but it’s fun enough and intriguing enough to warrant some thought from me.

And before you get all hot about the prevailing narrative about the earth’s core being a huge ball of lava I’ll just point out that very recently there are claims of vast oceans near the center of the earth and an inner earth structure far different than what science has long thought:

True, none of this backs up the idea of a HE, but the point is, these people have no clue. The earth’s core might as well be deep space because we’ve never even gotten close to it and any theory surrounding it has huge assumptions built into it just like Relativity. The deepest hole ever made is 40k feet. Great, only another 1,230,000 feet to to hit the earth’s core. Sorry, science! You’ve left us too much room to play with this new theory.

CGPT helped me come up w a decent summary of where the Jaredite travels work and don’t work in the HE idea as compared to space.

Textual Description	Hollow Earth Theory	Space Travel Theory
“Great deep” (Ether 2:25)	✅ Underground seas or tunnels	✅ Interstellar space as the “deep”
“Tight like unto a dish” (Ether 6:7)	✅ Necessary for underground water travel	✅ Essential for space travel
“Furious wind” driving them forward (Ether 6:5)	❌ No strong winds in Hollow Earth	✅ Solar or cosmic winds as propulsion
“Buried in the depths of the sea” (Ether 6:6)	✅ Underground water surges or tunnels	✅ Entering planetary atmospheres
“Mountain waves” dashing upon them (Ether 6:6)	❌ Uncommon in subterranean waters	✅ Gravitational waves or cosmic turbulence
“Light continually” (Ether 6:10)	✅ Hollow Earth has no natural sunlight	✅ Space has no natural light
“No monster of the sea could break them” (Ether 6:10)	✅ Underground seas could have large sea creatures	❌ Space is empty, so no sea creatures exist
“Promised Land” description	❌ No mention of an enclosed world	✅ Fits better with a habitable exoplanet or Earth
“Hole in the top and bottom” for air (Ether 2:20)	✅ Could regulate air in underground caverns	❌ Doesn’t work in space without decompression

I think the “furious wind” and “mountain waves” aren’t too hard to reconcile b/c you could argue that happened on the surface oceans before they go down in the “great deep” and re-emerge in some deep underground sea. That means I see only 1 significant ❌ in that HE list, which is that there is no indication of the promised land being an enclosed world within another world (that I can think of).

I also went through the Nephite journey w CGPT and it came up w a nice theory. Essentially the Lehites long journey to Bountiful is a subterranean descent on foot, or at least part of it was and the sea they came upon, Irreantum, is a deep-earth sea where they build a boat and from which they set sail. This isn’t too hard to imagine since the Nephite journey takes 8 years — a crazy amount of time that over moderate terrain could get you 60,000 miles of travel unless you spend long periods not traveling at all, even with 1 rest day per week. Assuming extended stops for hunting, bad weather, health issues, etc you could drop that to 30,000 miles on the low side.

If it’s true that they set sail from the fertile Yemen coast, that journey could be done in 6 months (give or take) so I don’t know what they were doing with the rest of their time. Even if they walked all the way to Shanghai they could have made it there in less than a year if they went straight through.

Again, none of that proves a HE promised land, but it does show there was plenty of time for some long term spelunking.

And there is that “cavity of a rock” in which Nephi and bros. hid from Laban and encountered an angel. Hmm….

And remember our good friend Thomas Marsh:

Let thy feet be shod also, for thou art chosen, and thy path lieth among the mountains, and among many nations.

And by thy word many high ones shall be brought low, and by thy word many low ones shall be exalted.

Ok so no mention of him going “into” or “under” mountains but he does go “among” mountains and maybe finds a path down. And then he exalts some “low ones” like maybe some HE Lehites hanging out deep in the earth?

Eh…that’s a stretch, I know.

If Bill were still around I think he would dismiss this idea and I am pretty confident WJT won’t care for it either. We’ll see if someone else steps in to give it some life or if the idea grows on its own. I am admittedly grasping. Space has left me high and dry and it seems like lately every way I turn I am being forced out of the clouds, so to speak…forced to reframe my theories in the world as we know it today. We’re back to North America as the promised land??? Gag me!

I don’t like it but it is beginning to feel inevitable. What I hate most about it is not just that it’s a lot less fun, it’s that I have just as hard a time making sense of it as I do the space or HE idea. It just doesn’t work that well with the BoM tales imo, but sooner or later I will probably have to go back to it and give it an honest try.