Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre published Mission de l'Inde in 1886, describing Agarttha, a hidden kingdom governed by synarchy, sacred and secular authority fused under a Sovereign Pontiff. He then withdrew the book, humiliated, Joscelyn Godwin notes, by an unflattering roman à clef by a former lover; it reached the public only after his death in 1909. Ferdinand Ossendowski's bestselling 1922 Beasts, Men, and Gods reported Mongolian legends of the Lord of the World in underground Agartthi; skeptics accused him of lifting Saint-Yves. René Guénon defended both in The Lord of the World.
Agartha merged with the older Tibetan Shambhala until the two became interchangeable in Western occultism, then kept absorbing: Telos, the Smoky God's giants, Theosophy's underground masters. Synarchy escaped too, influencing Steiner's threefold order and, far from Saint-Yves's tolerant vision, certain quasi-fascist movements. A withdrawn book became the constitution of a continent that never was.
The claim: the underground kingdom was always a delivery system for the political theory, Saint-Yves wanted Europe governed by united sacred-secular hierarchy, and hiding the blueprint inside an Asian fairy kingdom let a dangerous proposal travel as fantasy. Verdict: Saint-Yves's synarchy is explicit in the text, and its later career, respectable and sinister alike, shows the payload worked. The tunnels were camouflage. Every utopia is a government paper in costume.
If Agartha was withdrawn by its own author, what exactly were the believers believing?