published a book-length article by William Scott-Elliot in their journal Transactions. Initially titled, Atlantis: A Geographical, Historical, and Ethnological Sketch, it was immediately reissued as a book and retitled The Story of Atlantis. Relatively few people are aware that the psychics Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater provided many of the details that Scott-Elliot included in the book. In 1925, Scott-Elliot published an expanded version of the work as The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria. The Preface to the 1896 book attributed its contents to both advances in scientific understanding and the utilization of clairvoyance techniques to gain access to memories of the past—thus revealing what occurred in Atlantis and the earlier Lemuria. The book contains scattered references to scientific findings of the time that support its assertions.
Scott-Elliot began by revealing that our current fifth root race is the Great Aryan race and that we are of Teutonic stock. Later he calls the Aryan race the more “noble one.” With this assertion, we must take a brief but bizarre sidetrack.
In recent years it has become well known that Adolph Hitler and key leaders of the S.S. took an interest in the idea of a Great Aryan race and actually came to believe that Germany was destined to establish an idealized society based on his rather twisted vision of Atlantis. Hitler saw the “pure” Germanic peoples as the descendants of Atlantis. He ordered German archaeologists to work in the Yucatan at ruins as well as mounting a search for Atlantis in various locations. It is also known that Hitler dictated a follow-up book to Mein Kamph after he assumed power in Germany. The unpublished manuscript contains Hitler’s plan to conquer the world with the United States cited as the necessary final conquest. Scholars believe that the book was stored in a safe—and never published—because it not only contained Hitler’s step-by-step plans for war, but also his reasoning for the wars that were about to occur. Hitler asserted the German people had both the right and the destiny to rule the world because of their racial purity. He used the terms Teutonic and Aryan in descriptions of the master race, and linked the lineage of the Germanic Teutonic race to Atlantis. Scholars believe he was influenced by theosophical writings as well as a few other early writers. While some others had suggested that the superior Atlantean race was “White” well before Scott-Elliot used the term Aryan to describe the current root race, the idea that Atlanteans were white became more firmly entrenched with Scott-Elliot’s works. Before going into more detail it needs to be made clear that many of Edgar Cayce’s visions of Atlantis are quite different from the Atlantis described in theosophy. While these differences will become obvious in later chapters, one major—and significant—difference is that Cayce asserted that the Atlanteans were a “Red Race,” many of whom migrated to North America where they merged with Native American Tribes. Cayce specifically mentioned the Iroquois as a tribal group composed of many Atlantean descendants. Of course, Cayce’s timeframe for Atlantis also is at variance with that given in theosophical writings.
Like Blavatsky, Scott-Elliot claimed that four major catastrophic events took place over a vast time period resulting in the destruction of Atlantis. The first three took place 800,000, 200,000, and 80,000 years ago. (These dates are also very different from Cayce.) The final destruction took place in 9564 B.C. Scott-Elliot presented a map of the world at the time Atlantis was at its height, about one million years ago, as well as other maps showing the earth at various times after the destructions took place. He maintained that the fourth root race, the Atlantean, actually was comprised of seven sub-races. The details of these races are somewhat complicated and are not of real relevance to this book. However, most of the descriptions that Scott-Elliot provides are quite different from Cayce’s, so a few details will be summarized.
The first of the seven sub-races Scott-Elliot refers to as the Rmoahal. They had “dark faces” and were 10- to 12-feet tall. The second sub-race was the Tlavatil, a red-brown colored people who developed on a small island off Atlantis. The Toltec race came next followed by the Turanian race. The Original Semite race followed, developing in what is today the British Isles. They are described as a “turbulent, discontented” people always at war. The Akkadian race then developed just east of Atlantis. These people were at constant war with the Semites and were a major maritime people. The final sub-race was the Mongolians, who Scott-Elliot stated had no contact whatsoever with the mainland of Atlantis.
Scott-Elliot reveals that after a 100,000-year “Golden Age,” the people of Atlantis became selfish and malevolent and began engaging in sorcery. A battle resulted between the forces of the “White Emperor,” who ruled from the “City of Golden Gates,” and the followers of the “blackarts.” The White Emperor was driven from the city and took refuge in friendly Tlavatil lands. Eventually, everyone betrayed the White Emperor and the practice of sorcery became rampant over all earth, allowing a “Black Emperor” to take power. These events took place 850,000 years ago. After 50,000 more years of evil, a “retribution” occurred in the form of a terrifying cataclysm. Massive tidal waves swept over all the lands of Atlantis destroying the City of Golden Gates, sweeping nearly all the land clean, and killing everyone except a few survivors scattered in various places. This destruction took place 800,000 years ago.
On a small Toltec island, called Ruta, survivors soon began a new dynasty, which was, unfortunately, “addicted to the black craft.” At the same time, priests who survived the disaster elected a new “white king” to serve the “good law.” Thus, as revealed in his book, Scott-Elliot says that the never-ending battle between good and evil was again initiated and the subsequent destructions (200,000, 80,000, and 11,564 years ago) took place as “retributions.”
Scott-Elliot’s The Story of Atlantis also claims that 210,000 years ago, the “Occult Lodge” of Atlantis formed the first “Divine Dynasty of Egypt,” and began to teach the aboriginal peoples who already lived there. Just before 200,000 B.C., they erected the first two great pyramids at Giza as halls of initiation and a treasure house and shrine. The destruction that happened just after the pyramids were built submerged Egypt under water for a long time period. In addition, both of the later destructions (80,000 and 11,564 years ago) resulted in Egypt being inundated by water.
In addition, according to Scott-Elliot, Stonehenge was erected 100,000 years ago as a protest against the “over-decoration of the existing temples of Atlantis.” All of these assertions differ drastically from Cayce’s Atlantis.
It is interesting to note that Scott-Elliot’s descriptions of the City of Golden Gates generally fit Plato’s outline of the Center City. It had a central hill with a great palace surrounded by three concentric canals in the midst of a large rectangular plain. Flying ships made of wood and metal are also described with electric welding used for their construction. In the beginning the airships used mechanical power generated by the people onboard, but later they utilized an electrical power generated by devices similar to “which Keely in America used …” Using this electrical power, the airships traveled 100 miles per hour.
James Lewis Spence
Spence (1874-1955) was a respected Scottish mythologist who served as vice-president of the Scottish Anthropological and Folklore Society. He was fluent in numerous languages and studied hundreds of ancient texts from nearly everywhere around the world. His interest in the occult led him to publish the definitive Encyclopedia of the Occult in 1920. Spence took great interest in the legends of Central and South America and came to believe that traditions of the occult around the world were so similar that they had to have a single origin. Spence eventually published over 40 books, most of them on Atlantis and the occult. He concluded that Atlantis was the solution to this mystery and that the Americas were the key to understanding what happened to the Atlantis Empire. He published a series of books on Atlantis linking the lost land to the advanced civilizations found in the Americas. Strangely, Spence dropped all research on Atlantis after publishing The Occult Sciences in Atlantis in 1943 and he reportedly refused to discuss the topic again.
Wilshar S. Cerve
Cerve
