They Would Be Gods - 23 - Plato and the Legend of Atlantis

THEY WOULD BE GODS: OUR PAST RECONSIDERED, OUR FUTURE FOREWARNED

PART III: LEGENDS

by Anthony Forwood (2011)

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23: Plato and the Legend of Atlantis

Plato lived from about 428 to 347 BC and was a student of the mystery schools in both Greece and Egypt, where he was able to learn many of the most secret of the ancient mysteries. He spent thirteen years in Egypt, and this is probably where he learned about Atlantis, although he specifically credits his ancestor Solon as the source of what he narrates about this lost land and civilization. Solon was also a student of the mystery schools, and had been instructed in ancient history by the Egyptian priests when he visited there in 590 BC. If Plato didn’t learn about Atlantis first-hand during his stay in Egypt but already knew of it through Solon, then he would probably have taken the time to personally verify the truth of it while in that land.

Plato is believed by many to be the singular source for any historical record of Atlantis, and refers to it only briefly in two of his writings, the Timaeus and Critius. The supposed fact that no other historical mention of Atlantis is to be found, except in reference to what Plato originally wrote, is considered by many to suggest that Atlantis was just an allegorical myth and did not actually exist. This doesn’t take into consideration anything other than historical records from the more prominent cultures of the past, all of which arose long after Atlantis’ demise. Many less prominent cultures, however, retain ancient legends that speak of a similar lost civilization to that of Atlantis.

Plato himself writes that the tale of Atlantis is not fictitious, but a true history. In fact, he stresses that it is a true history several times within his writings. In the Timaeus, he records the tale in dialogue form, and has Socrates stating: “…while the fact that it is no fictitious tale, but a true history, is surely a great point.” Elsewhere he states that it is “strange, yet perfectly true.” Critias, another student of Socrates who Plato has made the narrator of the tale in the Dialogues, stresses in these works no less than three different times that the legend he’s relating is true.

Contrary to the belief that Plato was the singular source of information on Atlantis, in The History of Atlantis, author Lewis Spence, who was a fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute and the vice president of the Scottish Anthropological and Folklore Society, tells us that Diodorus Siculus, a historian who lived during the time of Julius Caesar, provides almost as much information on Atlantis as Plato did, in his Historical Library. This was a general history of the world as known in Diodorus’ time, collected during his travels throughout Europe and Asia. Other writers in ancient times have also provided information that supports the truth of Plato’s story of Atlantis, including Strabo (54 BC), Theopompus of Chios (4 BC), Pomponius Mela (80 AD), Plutarch, Proclus, Arnobius (4 AD), and Marcellus. In fact, the idea that Atlantis may have actually existed was seriously considered as a real possibility by a great many learned men right up until the latter half of the nineteenth century, when scientific orthodoxy came into domination and forced the entire issue off limits.

In the Timaeus, Plato states that Solon (630 – 560 BC) was told by the Egyptian priests of Sais about a great island in the Atlantic Ocean that lay beyond the Pillars of Hercules. They told him that Greece (where Solon was from) was but a young civilization in comparison to the history of man, and that “many have been the destructions of mankind, and many shall be.” They go on to state that the greatest of these destructions occur by fire and by water, and over long intervals of time the heavenly bodies cause these events. These Egyptian priests claimed that their own civilization had existed longer than any other then existing, and that they had preserved in their temples written records of “anything noble or great or otherwise notable” that has occurred in any place known to them.

All of this is very important to consider. Plato is telling us that civilizations have been destroyed by cosmic events many times over long intervals of time, and that the Egyptians had records of these events that went back far into the past. These records may have been a reference to the contents of the Hall of Records that’s believed to exist in an underground chamber beneath the Sphinx. Note that the priests of Sais are implying that their knowledge of Atlantis comes from a larger body of knowledge that extends back at least to the time of Atlantis, but probably much further. Such a continuous historical record spanning so many ages would obviously require a safe location for its long preservation, and at the time of Atlantis’ demise, Egypt would have made a good choice due to its warm and dry climate.

The priests explained to Solon that because of Egypt’s being unaffected by earthquakes or rainfall, their records have been preserved from the natural disasters that have destroyed many other past civilizations, along with all records of their existence. This was over twelve hundred years before the earthquake that destroyed Cairo in 840 AD, and at that time the Great Pyramid may have been at least partially operational with one of its functions being to neutralize earthquake activity by releasing excess Earth energies.

Plato states that Atlantis existed nine thousand years before his own time, which puts it at about 9,500 BC. At that time, he says there was a great flood. This places the destruction of Atlantis at the end of the last ice age period, when a great deal of flooding would certainly have occurred in many parts of the world. It should be noted that there is no indication that Plato or anyone else from his time knew about the last ice age, and yet his claims regarding Atlantis and the time of its ultimate destruction fits remarkably well within the last geological period that would have been able to cause such destruction.

After Plato’s death, the editor of his works, Crantor, either went to Egypt himself or sent inquiries there regarding the legend of Atlantis, and by some accounts was only able to learn that the records of this lost civilization could still be found inscribed ‘on pillars’. These pillars were at the temple of the goddess Neith, which was destroyed during the Christian Crusades. Although Crantor’s commentaries on Plato’s dialogues were lost with the fall of the Roman Empire, Proclus, a philosopher of the fourth century AD who had access to them, states that Crantor had gone to Egypt and had been shown the pillar with its hieroglyphs, and found that what was written on it to be just as Plato had described in his Dialogues. Whatever the case, what was revealed to Crantor in his investigation was enough for him to believe that Plato was stating what he believed to be true.

From Plato’s description, Atlantis was supposed to have existed beyond the Mediterranean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, an island continent that was as large as North Africa and Asia Minor combined. Beyond this continent lay another continent, which bounded the ocean (the Atlantic). This latter continent could only be the Americas. The Egyptian priests stressed that Atlantis was a continent, and that the Mediterranean Sea was but a bay in comparison to the ocean in which the continent of Atlantis once lay.

The Atlantean race was said to have been created much in the same way that the Bible, and more specifically the Sumerian texts, describe the creation of humans: through the mating of a god (the Greek god Neptune/Poseidon) with a mortal woman. These gods were also said to have reigned over this land for centuries at a time, again showing similarities to what is recorded in both the Bible and the Sumerian texts. According to Plato, the genetics of the Atlantean people became too diluted with the mortal half, and they began to behave in a debased manner that led to rampant corruption. The Atlanteans began to war against other lands and to take slaves, with only the city of Athens being able to withstand their onslaughts. The activities of the Atlanteans angered the gods, who are said to have finally destroyed this once-great civilization.

The continent of Atlantis was reported by Plato to be destroyed virtually overnight by earthquakes and flooding, which caused it to sink into the ocean. The area in which it once resided was reported by the Egyptian priests to be no more than shallow watery shoals at the time that they told Solon the legend of Atlantis. This happens to match the area of the Azores in the present day, as well as other parts of the Atlantic further south, off the western coast of Africa. These regions are in line with a chain of islands that run from the Azores down to Cape Verde, and include Madeira Island and the Canary Islands. This chain may have at one time been the eastern coastal regions of a now sunken continent.

It’s interesting to note that geographers knew of the existence of the Azores as early as 1345, when they were mentioned in a book by a Spanish friar and several of the islands names were given, and about forty years later an atlas in Venice depicted these islands, and yet these islands weren’t officially discovered until as late as 1439. How did geographers know about them over one hundred years in advance to discovering them? According to John Michael Greer in his book, Atlantis: Ancient Legacy, Hidden Prophecy, our modern outlook on our ancestor’s understanding of our world was not as ignorant of such things as we’ve been led to believe, and it’s only our modern-day scientists and scholars who wish to see modern man as so much more advanced than we were in the past and who wish to promote the myth of progress that leads us to believing these falsehoods. Greer points out that contrary to what we’re commonly led to believe, educated men in Mediaeval times knew full well that the Earth was a sphere and not flat, and this fact was included in the standard school textbooks of the time. So, in spite of what we think our ancestors did or didn’t know, they were far more aware of certain facts that we’ve since denied them credit for. This explains much of our confusion about how such discrepancies about past knowledge often arise, and it’s very likely that a great deal more of such distortions have been made in the same manner and for the same reasons.

In The History of Atlantis, Lewis Spence points out that early sea navigators avoided the region of the Sargasso Sea, located in the western Atlantic Ocean, because of the thick beds of seaweed in that region, which extend over an area of five million square miles. Spence suggests that this seaweed is growing where vegetated land once existed, pointing out that the same species of seaweed grows in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California where land is known to have once existed.

According to Herodotus, the inhabitants of western North Africa living near Mt. Atlas were known as Atlantes, and this is certainly a significant piece of evidence that the Atlantean continent actually existed as Plato claimed, and that a number of its people eventually emigrated to the African continent.

Spence also points out that geologists have no contest with the suggestion that an Atlantean continent once existed between Europe and the Americas, and the only question they have is to when it existed. The bed of the Atlantic Ocean is very alive with geological activity, particularly in the eastern regions. Down the middle of the Atlantic from north to south runs the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which rises an incredible nine thousand feet above the bed of the ocean. This is the boundary where two oceanic plates converge. At one time, 200 million years ago, the Atlantic Ocean didn’t exist at all, and the continental plates that surround it today, with the Americas to the west and Africa and Europe to the east, were connected, forming a super-continent that’s known as ‘Pangea’. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge began as a crack in the Earth’s mantle, which over the intervening time has continually widened and separated the eastern and western landmasses through continual sub-oceanic volcanism. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is the most seismically active division between any of the tectonic plates that comprise Earth’s crust. Could it be that the Atlantean continent once existed as part of Pangea, but sank or was swallowed up by massive tectonic shifting when the Atlantic Ocean was still widening? The area where Atlantis is most likely to have existed is now a very deep section of the Atlantic that has never been explored.

According to Plato, the Atlanteans were seafarers, and had a vast navy, and so it would be very likely that many of its people were able to survive the destruction of Atlantis by escaping on ships and riding out the storm. These survivors would have been scattered far and wide, both east and west of the Atlantic, and were probably the bringers of civilization to the various cultures that are still found throughout the Pacific and the Americas, and who are remembered in their legends as godly beings who came from over the sea. We see several similarities between the far separated cultures of Egypt and the pre-Columbian Americas that are beyond coincidence, including the building of pyramids, the art of embalming, legends of cataclysmic flood events, and the development of the 365-day calendar, to name a few.

In The History of Atlantis, Lewis Spence points out that Plato wrote that, at about the time of the destruction of Atlantis, a race of men “marched in wanton insolence upon all Europe and Asia together, issuing yonder from the Atlantic Ocean.” In looking for anthropological evidence of this, he found that at about 10,000 BC there arrived in Spain and Southern France – apparently out of nowhere – a race of men known as the Azilian-Tardenoisian, who appear to have been associated with a maritime existence. Remnants of these people have been found in Britain as well, but the earliest phase of this culture is found in North Africa and South-Western Europe. These Azilians were the forerunners of the Neolithic race, and introduced into Europe an entirely new way of life with new styles of art and new religious beliefs. Their art style was already highly developed and was unlike any other of the time period in how it reflected the beauty of form and realistic representation. Were these the race of Atlantean men that Plato spoke of?

Spence hypothesizes that the continent of Atlantis underwent a number of major cataclysms over a period spanning thousands of years, and that in the process this once-great civilization fell into greater and greater decline, until at the time spoken of by Plato, the final vestiges of this land mass sank into the ocean, and a large number of its remaining people emigrated eastward. The Azilians, according to Spence, were the last emigration of Atlanteans who escaped the final destruction of their continent.

To further support this hypothesis, Spence points out that there is more remarkable evidence that an even earlier emigration took place. At about 25,000 BC, 15,000 years before the Azilian race arrived, at about the time the last ice age was just beginning to recede, Cro-Magnon man arrived on the scene in Western Europe, seemingly out of nowhere and already highly evolved with his bigger brain, quickly wiping out the much less evolved Neanderthal race. Remarkably, this Cro-Magnon race, also known as the Aurignacian race, appear to have been from the start even more highly advanced in art and industry than the later Azilians, flourishing in Europe for fifteen thousand years until the Azilian race came along to displace them. The Aurignacians were the Paleolithic Greeks, according to certain authorities. Their greatest period, interestingly, was known as the Magdalenian period. Aurignacian art was superior to even that of the Egyptians and Babylonians in many ways, and seems to have arisen already in its advanced state along with the people who created it. They were the first race to sculpt in bone, and were magnificent artisans of this substance. Plato’s claim that elephants abounded in Atlantis, and that ivory was used extensively in the decoration of the temple in the Atlantean city of Poseidon, offer support to the possibility that the Aurignacians originated from there, and would account for their having developed such artistic skills with bone.

Spence also points out that the Aurignacian race was indigenous to the Canary Islands (the Guanche people), a fact which is supported by a number of authorities. This leaves us to wonder how they could have come to be there on those Atlantic islands, so far from any mainland, when Cro-Magnon man is not supposed to have been a sea-faring race by any means. Did they find themselves deserted there in the aftermath of Atlantis’ destruction?

Along with their advanced artistic skills, this Aurignacian race who arrived in Western Europe out of nowhere seem to have arrived with an already developed organizational structure to their society, with distinctions between the many trades and professions of their people. Where could such an advanced race have stemmed from, if not from a civilization such as Atlantis? These early humans with their advanced skills had to have come from somewhere, and there is simply nowhere else but Atlantis that we can possibly attribute them to.

Even the manner in which the Aurignacians dealt with their dead shows signs of being the originating source for later cultures, most specifically that of the Egyptians. The Aurignacians, according to Spence, believed that the soul resided in a person’s bones, and that they could be reborn if their physical body was preserved – or at least the bones. They would paint the bones of the dead in red ochre, symbolizing the life force of blood, and they were the first of the human race to worship their dead ancestors and to bury them in the earliest form of graves or tombs, which shows not only a respect for their ancestors, but also a concern that they not be disturbed. There is no indication of any progressive development of such early practices, and like their art and their organized cultural structure, these rites seem to have arrived with the Aurignacians already intact. Only later did other cultures such as the Egyptians follow and expand on these practices and the beliefs from which they arose. It has also been recorded by the sixteenth century friar, Alonzo de Espinosa, that there existed a caste of embalmers in the Canary Islands who were outcasts. They placed the more distinguished of their dead in sarcophagi, which very much resemble those of ancient Egypt. Mummification was practiced in the Americas as well, and carbon dating of certain of these latter mummies show that they are 8,000 years old, predating the Egyptian practice by 2,600 years. Was it mere coincidence that this practice developed independently in these various isolated places? There are so many connections between the Egyptian and American cultures that they’ve continued to baffle mainstream anthropologists, some of who have unsuccessfully tried to show that the Egyptians visited the Americas at some point in the far past. Wouldn’t it be more reasonable to surmise that these similar customs and coincidences all stem from a singular source such as Atlantis?

Spence points out that witchcraft may also have been practiced by the Atlanteans, since we find similarities between the ancient practice in both Mexico and Europe, including the traditional pointed hats and flying broomsticks that are now most familiar in children’s fairy tales. The queen of the witches in ancient Mexico, Tlazolteotl, is depicted wearing this type of hat and riding a broom, just as are the witches of Mediaeval Europe. Could this be any more than coincidence? The original purpose of the pointed hat worn by both witches and sorcerers had to do with human energies, and helped to increase mental and psychic abilities. It was a simple psychotronic device, which are discussed more fully in later parts of this book.

The practice of deforming the skull, as was mentioned in a previous chapter discussing the Maya, can only be found in those parts of the world where it seems that the emigrating Atlanteans had an influence. Aside from the various ancient cultures in the Americas, this practice can be found in European locations such as Normandy, Gascony, Limousin, and Brittany. It can also be found to have been practiced by the Aurignacians, the modern-day natives of Biscay, and by the Indians of the Antilles. It’s also widely practiced by the Basques of present day, who we will see further on had other possible connections to the Atlanteans.

Spence suggests that Cro-Magnon appeared in Europe as the first of several emigrating waves of Atlanteans who were escaping the Atlantean continent when it was experiencing a series of cataclysms at the end of the last ice age. The Azilian race appeared in Western Europe when a second wave of immigration took place fifteen thousand years later, arriving in the same region of Europe as the first Cro-Magnon race had. Although both of these races came along with already advanced and quite similar cultural aspects, the latter Azilian race shows signs of degradation of that culture, as though they had both come from a place that had suffered setbacks in its cultural greatness between the time of the first wave and the second wave of emigration to the European continent.

The Basques from northern Spain and southern France, whose cultural origins remain a mystery, speak a language that’s unlike any other in Europe, but has strong similarities to some aboriginal forms of speech in the Americas. Could these aborigines have derived from a race with Atlantean origins as well? Similarities between Aurignacian skulls from Europe and prehistoric skulls found in different parts of the South American margins lend further support to Spence’s hypothesis.

Further support of the Atlanteans emigrating both east and west of a lost Atlantic continent can be found most distinctly in the pyramid structures that are found both in Egypt and in the Americas. The early cultures of South and Central America who inhabited them attest that they did not build these structures, or they state that they built them under the direction of their gods. Other evidence that the Atlanteans emigrated both east and west is revealed by the fact that maize or corn is not indigenous to either Egypt or the Americas, but was somehow introduced fully domesticated to both sides of the planet with no known source of origination.

It’s interesting to note that several thousand years after the final destruction of Atlantis, our own recognized civilizations first began to develop in ancient Mesopotamia. That there is a connection between an older prehistoric civilization and our own first known civilizations, which is supported by all of the other evidence that we’ve considered so far, is further supported by the legend of Atlantis, which comes from no less a respected and believable source than Plato, who himself makes claims to its truth more than once.

We have seen from Spence’s The History of Atlantis that the early Cro-Magnons, the Aurignacian race, arrived in Western Europe at about 25,000 BC virtually out of nowhere with their advanced biological and cultural development already in place. Later races of Cro-Magnon, such as the Azilians and the later Basques, arose mysteriously in the same region with already developed and very similar cultural styles as well, fifteen thousand years later. The Cro-Magnon race seems to have wiped out the Neanderthal race rather quickly, and this is an interesting point because of its parallels with the interpretation we’ve given within this text of the events and issues surrounding genetic lineages and the biblical Flood. The Cro-Magnon race was genetically superior to Neanderthal, had just arrived as the survivors of its race after a great cataclysm related to flooding, and quickly eliminated a ‘savage’ race while roaming the new land of their habitation. This follows the same basic events that are described in the Bible. This is not to say that these Aurignacians of Western Europe were actually the Israelites. They obviously were not. However, they follow a very similar pattern of having gone through a global upheaval, and if we take the hypothesis that Cro-Magnon was somehow descended from the Adamic race that was created by the gods (which Plato seems to say the later Atlanteans were), and that Neanderthal man was an inferior genetic creation – perhaps an earlier attempt at creating a worker-being – then it makes sense that, aside from the story of the Israelites wiping out the various tribes of these Neanderthals or some other humanoid species in other regions, other Cro-Magnon tribes were doing the same in Western Europe.

Plato tells us that the king of the Atlantean gods, who he equates with the Greek god Zeus, became disenchanted with the race of Atlanteans, and resolved to punish them for their growing depravity. This parallels the biblical accounting leading up to the Flood and the reasons for it. Other similarities can be found within the Egyptian legends, where it’s told that the god Tem destroyed mankind with a deluge of water because of his wickedness. In Hindu mythology, the god Vishnu floods the Earth because “all creatures had offended him”. Many other legends from disparate places and cultures on both sides of the Atlantic tell a very similar story of the gods destroying mankind in a deluge. Could there be a historical grain of truth to such similar legends?

The ancient Greeks believed that the gods and Titans originated from somewhere in the west, while the ancient cultures of the Americas believed that their gods came from the east. The bull was an important religious symbol in Atlantis, according to Plato, and we find that it was also religiously important to both the Aurignacian and Azilian races who emigrated to Europe about 25,000 and 10,000 years ago, respectively, as well as to the early races in the Americas. The bull also came to be very important in both Grecian and Egyptian religions, as well as in India. It should be pointed out that these latter were the major originating points of the ancient mystery schools as well, and this suggests a singular originating source for the secret knowledge that these schools came into possession of.

Even the ancient legends of the British Isles reveal evidence that the continent of Atlantis once existed, and befell a cataclysmic event that destroyed it. These legends speak of a triad of destructive events that occurred far in the past. The first was a flooding that wiped out most of mankind, the second was a splitting of the Earth that consumed most of mankind, and the third was a scorching heat that wiped out most of the life on Earth that then existed. In the epics of King Arthur, there is an isle called Avalon, which was said to lay in the western part of the ocean, where it was invisible to all but a few. Avalon is also known as the ‘Isle of Apples’, and this may bear a connection to the biblical Garden of Eden. There is also the mythical land Lyonesse, which supposedly sank into the waters of the English Channel about a thousand years ago. British folklore is filled with tales of terrible giants and ogres in ancient times, and the Irish legends speak of Fomorians, the ‘People of the Under Sea’, who were of immense stature, and who waged war upon the gods. The Titans of Greek mythology were also of great stature and warred against the gods. Were the Fomorians and the Titans the same people, or of the same descent, and were they the giants of biblical times? The Celtic legend of the land of Ys is still another legend of a great land that sank into the sea because of the people’s wickedness. The connections go on and on.

The ancient Druids were of unknown origin, and aside from their presence in the British Isles, they’ve also been found to have existed in Spain and on the Canary Islands. Did they perhaps originate from the Atlantean continent? The Druids, it should be noted, believed that there was a land called Elysium in the west. The Druidic religion involved human sacrifice, and immolated captives for divination purposes. We see too that this custom of human sacrifice was practiced among certain South American cultures that claimed that their gods came from across the seas. The custom of human sacrifice was also practiced during biblical times among the peoples that the Israelites set out to exterminate, and even Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his son to appease his god, but was saved from doing so when that god saw his willingness to do as that god commanded. Was human sacrifice one of the wicked perversions that had made the gods decide to destroy mankind?

The fact that Atlantis has been relegated to the status of a mere myth, receiving no real credibility in mainstream history, and therefore being given little attention by students of history and the sciences, may be purposeful. Like many other areas of scientific investigation that unfairly face the opposition of ridicule if they’re seriously considered, the reality of the existence of the continent and culture that was Atlantis has also been subtly flagged as an off-limits area for historical and scientific investigation. But this pattern of ridiculing certain areas of investigation, after a while, inadvertently begins to reveal an attempt to purposely hide certain truths. It should be realized that the city of Troy, depicted in Homer’s Iliad, was believed to be no more than a myth until only a hundred years ago, when one otherwise insignificant man who believed in its reality – Heinrich Schliemann – set out on his own to prove to the world that it actually existed, and eventually located the site of this ancient civilization, bringing it out of the realm of myth and into the light of true history. Could Atlantis be found to be just as real, if only we were to give it as much merit for investigation as we now do with the city of Troy?

It should be mentioned that Edgar Cayce was renowned during his life for his ability to go into trance and produce accurate information on matters of concern or interest to his many clients and followers, most of which was meticulously recorded during these trance sessions. One particular topic he produced information on regarded the civilization of Atlantis, which he stated dated back as far as 200,000 BC and had eventually gone through three separate periods of destruction. This is similar to what legends from the British Isles tell us. According to Cayce, these destructive periods occurred at around 50,000 BC, 25,000 BC, and 10,000 BC. This is very interesting, because it matches what Spence points out regarding the arrival of the Aurignacians and the later Azilians in Europe. Recent research has shown that the Earth’s temperature during the last ice age has risen and fallen a number of times, causing periods of warmer and colder climates over many thousands of years. Interestingly, the last warm period prior to the end of the ice age, from 9,600 BC to 6,200 BC, matches perfectly with the time-line for the Atlantean’s final migration. Prior to this, between 12,700 BC and 12,400 BC the Earth’s temperature soared dramatically for the first time since the ice age first started, causing the ice sheets to retreat by hundreds of miles and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet to collapse into the ocean, raising the ocean’s levels significantly and causing massive flooding worldwide. This period would have caused great upheavals that would surely have affected any civilizations then in existence. This period ended with another cooling period, and then between 11,800 BC and 10,800 BC another warm period came about, again causing the glaciers to retreat. Another cold period after this ended after 1,200 years, culminating in the final warm period when Atlantis was said to finally meet its end. At this point, temperatures rose as much as fifteen degrees Fahrenheit in less than a single decade, melting virtually all of the ice sheets except those in Greenland and Antarctica. During this period, the Sahara was an immense grassland teeming with wildlife, while many other parts of the world were being deluged with floodwaters. It makes a great deal of sense, then, that the emigrating Atlantean survivors would choose North Africa as the place to settle, and traversing the Sahara from the west to arrive in Egypt wouldn’t have been at all difficult or unlikely. Traces have been found of a Saharan culture from this time period, known as the Pastoralists, who had certain customs and styles of dress that were very similar to those of the later Egyptians.

Greer points out in Atlantis: Ancient Legacy, Hidden Prophecy that two vast areas that currently lie under ocean water were once dry land that was inhabited by humans. One of these, which has been named Sundaland, was twice the size of India and reached from Indochina almost all the way to New Guinea, and comprised the single largest tropical rain forest in the world during the ice age. The other area lies beneath the North Sea off the eastern coast of Britain, reaching from the British Isles to Scandinavia and as far north as the Shetland Islands. This area was dry land in 10,000 BC, at which time it was inhabited by humans who are believed to have been fairly advanced and may have been the legendary Hyperboreans. Although neither of these areas are where Atlantis was located, they reveal that the Earth was very different geographically prior to the end of the ice age, and that vast areas of land that might otherwise reveal secrets about our past are now buried under ocean waters and have yet to be rediscovered, and may never be.

That Atlantis is said to have suffered earthquakes prior to flooding is explained by Greer as being due to the sheer weight of the glacial ice sheets – up to two miles thick – bearing down on the Earth’s crust, while at the same time there is a lessening of weight on the oceanic plates, causing extreme stresses along fault lines between the Earth’s tectonic plates. In the relatively rapid melting periods during the end of the ice age, the shift in weight as the melting ice went from glaciers to ocean waters caused huge stresses that resulted in earthquakes at plate boundaries. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is a huge plate boundary, and has been volcanically active for thousands of years.

Cayce stated that the Atlanteans had an advanced technology based on crystals, had mastered all sources of energy, including atomic energy, and had flying technology. In one reading he did, he describes a six-sided stone contained within a building that had a domed roof that could be rolled back to expose the stone to the sun and activate the stone’s properties, which radiated an energy that permitted arial flight. He also spoke about the Atlanteans receiving communications “from on high” through crystals.

According to Cayce, the Atlantean people were divided into two castes, one being the ruling class of advanced humans, and the other consisting of the laboring class of a more primitive line of humans. The population was also divided into two religious sects, one based on spirituality and the other based on self-worship and the pursuit of power. The spiritual sect sought to raise up the lower caste and bring them to full intelligence, while the other sect only wished to use this lower caste as beasts of burden.

Cayce states that most of the population of Atlantis had some forewarning of the coming destruction of their land, and escaped to both the east and west. He also claimed that the Atlanteans brought this destruction on themselves due to the misuse of their technologies. This fits uniformly with the various legends from around the world regarding the gods who once walked the Earth and brought civilization to man. It also fits with what’s taking place in our global society today, and we may be about to face the destruction of our own civilization due to our own indiscriminate use of dangerous and destructive technologies, or perhaps such a fate is unavoidably near despite our recklessness, and will come from other quarters.

The idea that the Atlanteans were so technologically advanced has led to many imaginative propositions over the years that border on science fiction, and this has only done damage to the image of Atlantis as having been a real civilization. However, considering what is revealed in the ancient texts of Sumer and in the Vedas of ancient India, where the ancient gods are described as having such unbelievable technologies, it may not really be so far-fetched to think of the early Atlanteans in a similar way. In fact, should all of these various ancient legends about gods with superior abilities happen to be describing the very same entities, as our scientists are slowly finding to be more and more likely to be the case, then this only solidifies the truth of what these legends claim, and such incredible technologies did in fact exist long ago, and Atlantis itself once existed as claimed. We should not, however, expect these technologies to be as refined as our own are today, nor even similar in their appearance, functionality, or application, nor as proliferate as our own are to be found. They may in all likelihood have been quite different to our own and would probably be quite unrecognizable when compared to what we think of as technology from our modern viewpoint. There are certain forces or energies that exist, that although not known about by most people, or are known about but given little credit, technologies exist that operate through them. These same energies may have been known about by the Atlanteans and incorporated into Atlantean technologies. One of these, used in the art of dowsing, involves the use of energies that our modern science refuses to even acknowledge as real, and yet they’ve been shown to exist time and time again in a manner that objective science cannot deny as valid proof. We’ll discuss some of this proof in more detail in later parts of this book, but it should be made clear at this point that knowledge of certain sciences has always been valued by the mystery schools and their later offshoots, while at the same time the members of these schools have often been the most vociferous public deniers of this knowledge. In fact, most of the founders of the scientific revolution, perhaps only coincidental to being high-ranking members of secret societies such as the Freemasons, were heavily indoctrinated in occultism and practiced all forms of occult science and magic with the belief that there was definitely something to it. Surely they didn’t doubt that the ancients might have had certain technological knowledge that has since been relegated to the wild imaginings about more distant times. Perhaps they knew, more than we even suspect, that certain occult knowledge had real power, and they wished to hide this fact from the rest of the world while they took advantage of it for themselves.

As we’ve seen, there is a great deal of evidence to support the fact that Atlantis actually existed as a thriving civilization until its final demise around 9,600 BC, and was not just a fanciful tale that Plato introduced to his students for whatever purpose. In fact, all of the relevant evidence that has been brought forth by researchers over the years and centuries would fill many volumes. However, it would require an entire rewrite of the history of the human race if the legend of Atlantis were to become accepted as fact, and many of our sciences would need to be reconsidered. I’ve only touched on a very small part of that evidence, but I strongly encourage readers to further investigate this area for themselves in order to grasp the overwhelming number of connections the ancient Atlantean civilization has with our own history and origins.

Although there appears to be certain truths underlying the whole Atlantis mystery, a great deal of fabrication has also been created and promoted, much of it by certain secret societies that were thriving at the time that this more questionable information was introduced to the public. The most influential of these groups on popular beliefs about Atlantis was the Theosophical Society, led by Madame Helena P. Blavatsky. Other groups who have used the Atlantis legend in their writings and beliefs include the Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis (the Rosicrucians) founded by H. Spencer Lewis, and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, led by none other than the infamous Aleister Crowley. Although these groups have done much to throw the Atlantis legend into doubt by adding details that seem incredibly fantastic and unlikely, this may have been a purposeful ploy, in order to throw off the more rational-minded seekers of truth while attracting the more gullible followers of their organizations. This is an apparently common method for the early mystery schools and the later secret societies to employ in preserving – while at the same time hiding – the truths that underlie their doctrines, and it would make any truth about an Atlantean continent and civilization hard to separate from the purposeful distortions that have been added, so that only those who held the truth knew what it was. In this manner, only those who hold the truth might effectively use it to their advantage over the rest of us. The reasons for doing so become clearer when we consider the fact that what happened to the Atlantean civilization was a recurring event that is expected to repeat itself again and again, and for those who understand that knowledge is power, this gives them a reason for acquiring and preserving certain knowledge while withholding it from the rest of mankind. Those who are fully aware of and prepared for a coming cataclysm will more likely survive, and any preserved knowledge they have in their possession will give them that much of an advantage over any other survivors.

If Atlantis actually did exist, as this author is of a greater mind to believe, then we can begin to comprehend that civilizations have risen and fallen for far longer than our history books dictate, and that at times, in past ages, they may have reached levels of science and technology that are comparable to and possibly even surpass our own in many respects. If it’s true that Atlantis once existed and flourished as a prehistoric civilization, whether or not it attained the level of advancement that some would like to believe, then how can we so quickly claim that much of what we believe about our origins is absolute fact, and brush off all the unexplained mysteries and anomalies that stand in stark contrast to those beliefs? As I’ve said, history would need to be completely rewritten and science rethought, and this would be fought against tooth and nail by those ‘experts’ who have built their careers on the perspective that has perhaps been purposely erected to support a falsehood and to hide certain deeper truths. It’s not entirely their fault, however, but the fact that they’ve been indoctrinated with a potentially false history and science without re-examining the evidence with each generation of their field, and instead take the shortcut of accepting blindly what those before them have claimed as true, has led them almost hypnotically into supporting and even fighting for the falsehoods that have been manufactured by a secret group who are only able to operate as long as the remainder of us wear blinders and don’t question anything of any significance too deeply.