The finding of one of James Churchward's Mu books gave the band its name and their obsession with this fabled lost continent. Anglo-American explorer, James Churchward, who later termed himself 'Colonel' was a close friend of Auguste and Alice Le Plongeon. This French doctor and his wife had propounded the theory of the sunken lost civilization of Atlantis in the later part of the 19th when all manner of occult and theosophical speculation was rife.

Although they had done legitimately useful work in discovering and photographing ancient Mayan cities that had been lost in the jungles of Central America, the Le Plongeons' theories were based on fanciful and widely inaccurate translations of Mayan texts alongside all manner of pseudo-historical and scientific hokum. They had a Queen Moo who ruled over the ancient Mayan civilization and the couple went on to construct an ever more elaborate 'history' for Atlantis and created a sub-culture of 'occult' writing that continues to this day.

It seems that Churchward wanted an ancient civilization of his own, and using Le Plongeon's doubtful methodology set about 'discovering' one. His findings were set down in the five main volumes of the Mu series published during the 1920s and 30s.

According to author Churchward - Lemuria or Mu - was about 5,000 miles long and 3,000 miles wide, a beautiful tropical paradise like the Garden of Eden.

1. The Lost Continent of MU
2. The Children of MU
3. The Sacred Symbols of MU
4. The Cosmic Forces of MU
5. The Second Book of the Cosmic Forces of MU

The basic premise is that by studying various ancient texts Churchward had discovered the existence of a long lost continent with an advanced civilization that 60,000 years ago had sunk below the Pacific Ocean after a cataclysmic earthquake. There were 64 million people who died in the sinking, and that it dated back over 50,000 years. The Hawaiian Islands and the Pacific Islands are the remaining mountain peaks of the lost continent.

Precise detailed maps of the lost continent of Mu and Atlantis were found on stone tablets from Pre-Inca Ica, Peru, by Dr. Javier Cabrera, engraved in stone and photographed by Robbert Charroux. United Nations diplomat Farida Iskoviet, assistant to United Nations President Adam Malik, came to Maui in 1972 and researched Lemurian ruins and history and concluded that they were real. One of Hawaii's leading authorities on Lemurian research was Sgt. Williard Wannall from Army Intelligence in Oahu. He reported that ruins of a submerged Lemurian city was between Maui and Oahu. It was a Top Secret project in Naval Intelligence in 1972.

Volume #1 -- The Lost Continent of Mu -- set out Churchward's theory utilizing a "vast knowledge of science, ancient art and history, mythology and the occult" to recreate the splendor and doom of this hidden antediluvian world. The Garden of Eden was not in Asia but on a now sunken continent in the Pacific Ocean. The Biblical story of Creation came first not from the peoples of the Nile or the Euphrates Valley but from this now-submerged continent, Mu - the Motherland of Man.

Volume #2 in the series is The Children of Mu -The strange, true story of the pioneers of Mu. According to the back cover, "Sixty-three million people lived on the now lost continent of Mu over 200,000 years ago. . The children of Mu became the most influential people on earth...America was one of the first colonies of Mu...Mu had an incredibly sophisticated government, flowering of culture and scientific technology." Much of the Lemurian civilization lived in homes with transparent roofs. They were free from stress and disease lived to be hundreds of years old, developing their E.S.P. abilities through nearly 40,000 years of societal practice and experimentation. With that many centuries of evolution, the Lemurians gained their reputation or telepathy, astral travel and teleportation - making land vehicles unnecessary. They were primarily socially a vegetarian, agricultural, outdoor, organic culture that worked in harmony with nature and the land, having little use for scientific technology.

During that time, they had to build their shelter, make their own clothing, gather their own food, make their own tools, and provide for each other without getting into any argument or projecting any negativity toward each other.

Volume #3 in this series is The Sacred Symbols of Mu, "the strange, true story of the occult origins of ancient and modern religions." The book says that "all religions have a common origin in the Sacred Inspired Writings of Mu. Evidence of this original religion dates back 170,000 years ago. Osiris (who lived 20,000 BC) and Jesus taught identically the same religion. Both learned from this ancient book. Moses condensed the forty-two questions of the Osirian religion into the Ten Commandments. The Lord's Prayer is to be found in The Sacred Inspired Writings of Mu. Jesus condensed the text to suit the languages of his day. And the Last Words of Jesus on the cross were in the language of Mu -- unknown in Palestine!"

Volume #4 is The Cosmic Forces of Mu and Churchward mocks the sacred cows of modern science and reveals that biological evolution is a myth, that there is no such thing as atomic force, that all disease can be conquered by using appropriately colored light rays, that the Earth's temperatures and seasons have become inalterably fixed in their present state and that the earth cannot be hurled off into space or drawn into the sun.

Volume #5, Second Book of the Cosmic Forces of Mu, and Churchward continues to draw conclusions from the ancient documents and lore of Mu to present some startling revisionist theories about the age of the Earth, the nature of mountains and volcanic processes, and the Ice Age and Flood.