they consider to be fundamental errors. The highly skeptical archaeologist Stephen Williams wrote in his 1991 textbook, Fantastic Archaeology, that he “cannot help but feel a special kinship with this remarkable man.” Explaining the popularity of Donnelly’s book, Williams wrote, “First, it is a well-written and convincing tale explaining the past in forthright manner and with just enough specific evidence to make it very plausible. Second, the author quickly, and without boring the reader, establishes that he has done his homework … It is all pretty convincing.”
Donnelly carefully presented myths and legends from Native American tribes, pottery and artifacts found in the Americas, the advanced civilizations in Central and South America, the sudden rise of the Egyptian civilization—all as evidence of the destruction of an advanced civilization lying between the Americas and the “Old World.” Donnelly came to believe that the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a long, massive underwater mountain range running nearly the entire length of the Atlantic, had once been Atlantis and that the Azores were the highest mountain peaks of the massive island. His second book, Ragnarok, was less popular, but it detailed what Donnelly felt was substantial geological evidence showing that the Mid-Atlantic Ridge had been above the sea level in ancient times.
Theosophical Speculations on Atlantis
As Edgar Evans Cayce (Edgar Cayce’s youngest son) and his coauthors related in Mysteries of Atlantis Revisited (1988), the Atlantis speculations of Donnelly and the early explorers of the New World were based on first-hand observations, scholarship, and science. Beginning in the 1800s, however, a completely unique set of Atlantis ideas emerged from a tradition of obtaining occult—or hidden—knowledge through clairvoyance. The most influential of these came from a system of philosophy and teachings known as theosophy.
The word theosophy is derived from a combination of two Greek words, theos (god) and sophia (wisdom). The roots of the organization stretch back to a secret society begun in the 1400s and later formally established in London in 1510. The American Theosophical Society officially began in 1875 after Helena Petrovna Blavatsky met Henry Steele Olcott in America. The spiritualist movement was then at its height, and attempts to contact the dead and higher powers through séances were commonplace. The tenets of theosophy are beyond the scope of this book, but they contain some parallels to—and substantial differences from—the ideas expressed in the Cayce readings.
Theosophy and Blavatsky’s Atlantis
Madame Blavatsky, as she is typically called, was born in Russia in 1831. Her family was related to Russian royalty and at age 17 she married a government official who was in his early 40s. The marriage lasted only three months and she subsequently began a series of travels that led her to Tibet, Egypt, India, Mexico, Canada, and America. During her childhood she was tormented with what is described as “spirit possession,” but she displayed several remarkable abilities and an obsessive interest in ancient cultures. At the age of 42, she came to New York City, where she quickly married a young Russian immigrant. Although Madame Blavatsky never divorced her second husband, she became deeply enmeshed in a relationship with Henry Olcott that began from the moment she met him in 1875. In 1877 her first book, Isis Unveiled, was published and sold out within a week, running through the modest initial printing of 2000 copies. Shortly thereafter, Blavatsky and Olcott traveled to India, where they hoped to contact certain “Masters” who Blavatsky believed had been sending her psychic messages. After six years in India, the couple relocated to England, where legal problems ensued. Olcott soon returned to India, but Blavatsky moved around Europe, eventually moving back to London.
Blavatsky’s Atlantis speculations are primarily described in The Secret Doctrine, first published in 1888. Much of the material in the book is attributed to her translation of a Tibetan manuscript called the Stanzas of Dzyan. In The Secret Doctrine Blavatsky reveals that seven “Root Races” are destined to evolve on earth during the “fourth round” of seven cycles. Each of the root races supposedly has a separate continent, however this is a puzzling point since the word continent to theosophists denotes not separate bodies of land, but rather means all the dry landmass on the earth during the appearance of each root race.
Like Plato, Blavatsky wrote that civilizations are periodically destroyed by cataclysms that result in changes in the earth’s surface, but she added that each new root race springs forth from the destruction. The various root races overlap each other in terms of both timeframe and the land they occupied to such a degree that attempts to distinguish one race’s development from another quickly becomes fraught with confusion.
The first continent and the first root race began near the North Pole. Blavatsky wrote that this area was not actually destroyed, and four years before The Secret Doctrine was published, suggested that the earth was hollow and that an opening at the pole was somehow related to the emergence of the first root race. This race, according to Blavatsky, was the first entry of spirit into physical matter. The destruction of the first root race occurred when Northern Asia was cut off from the North Pole and waters first divided the region from Asia. A shift in the earth’s axis is given as the cause of the change.
The second root race she called Hyperborean and it also emerged near the North Pole extending into Greenland, Scandinavia, and parts of Asia. It too was destroyed by a shift in the earth’s axis, but she related that nearly all people of the second root race died during the destruction.
The third root race was called Lemuria and it began some 18 million years ago in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Lemuria was said to incorporate most of Asia extending around South Africa into the North Atlantic and Europe. According to Blavatsky, the major remains of Lemuria today are Australia, the islands of the Pacific, and portions of California. But because Lemuria also included the islands in the Atlantic and the European coast, it is often referred to as Lemuro-Atlantis, creating even more confusion.
The development of the fourth root race (Atlantis) greatly overlapped with the Lemurians, and Blavatsky related that a major destruction of Lemuria occurred 4.25 million years ago, “at the midpoint of the fourth root race and very end of the third.” The last major islands of Lemuria supposedly sank over a 150,000-year period—from 850,000-700,000 years ago.
The Atlantean root race (the fourth) began in “the Atlantic portion of Lemuria,” around 8 million years ago. The focal point of the emerging new race occurred in the center of the Atlantic. Eventually, that land became known as mainland Atlantis. Blavatsky related that Atlantis was once a large continent but it was gradually broken into seven “peninsulas and islands.” As Atlantis began sinking, many people migrated to the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe, and the British Isles. Before the final destruction of Atlantis, which is related in Theosophical literature to have been in 9564 B.C., there was one remaining island. Called Poseidonis, it was located in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge at the Azores, and was about the size of Ireland. Interestingly referred to by Blavatsky as “Plato’s little island,” it was destroyed by earthquakes and tidal waves.
According to Blavatsky, the fifth root race (the current one) developed in the Americas starting some four to five million years ago, overlapping the Atlantean period during the entire period. There were early migrations of these people to central Asia. A future cataclysm is predicted to occur that will destroy most of Europe and affect the Americas, ushering in the sixth root race, which will also center in America. A seventh root race will eventually develop on the ancient lands of Lemuria and Atlantis, which will rise from the seas when the sixth race is destroyed.
It should be noted that Cayce also used the term “root race” a few times in his readings. However, Cayce’s depiction of root race is very different from that in theosophy.
Theosophy and W. Scott-Elliot’s Atlantis
