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From Plato to the Americas–Atlantis Discovered?

Brasseur de Bourbourg held that Atlantis was an extension of America, which stretched from Central America and Mexico, far into the Atlantic, the Canaries, Madeiras and Azores being the only remnants, which were not submerged.

Lewis Spence (1920) The Encyclopedia of the Occult

Speculations and debate on Plato’s Atlantis commenced the moment he first related the tale. As others retold the intriguing story, again and again, virtually everyone who was educated in ancient Greece became aware of it. The story was especially controversial because the Greeks’ knowledge of world history and geography was very limited and mostly inaccurate. This fact led to two distinct positions on the authenticity of the story—a situation that persists to this day.

Aristotle, Plato’s influential student, believed that the Atlantis story was fictional, but Aristotle also stated that Troy was completely fictional. Crantor, the first commentator on Plato, visited Sais around 280 B.C. and confirmed that the story was completely accurate. The Greek biographer Plutarch also wrote that the story was true. While the ancients debated the reality of Atlantis without the ability to assess the vast range of information that was available from various cultures, modern researchers have been able to examine nearly every ancient text for clues about Atlantis. Modern scholars have made extensive studies of ancient records and have concluded that there are literally hundreds of hints about Atlantis and other significant details from Plato’s story that can be found in numerous texts and records.

One of the very best sources for these ancient records is the meticulous research presented by Andrew Collins in his 436-page book, Gateway to Atlantis. Collins found that the existence of Atlantis was “openly debated during the third century A.D. among the philosophers in the Platonic Academy attached to … Alexandria.” Collins also discovered many references to ancient voyages that seemed to have been made to the Americas and unknown islands even before Plato lived. A few of these will be summarized here.

In 425 B.C. a Carthaginian named Hanno made a voyage down the Atlantic coast of Africa with 60 ships. Hanno reported that a temple of Poseidon was found on an island off the coast of Africa. Around 8 B.C. the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus wrote about mysterious islands called the Atlantides and mentioned that one of the sons (Atlas) of a Titan god ruled those islands. Siculus wrote of islands located well into the Atlantic Ocean, mentioning one “large and fruitful island” located “many” days sail from Africa. Siculus also chronicled an incident in which Phoenician mariners were pushed across the ocean by a storm and after many days landed on the “large, fruitful island.” Another Greek historian, Hellanicus, wrote about the Atlantides in a work he titled Atlantis, sometime around 400 B.C. Plutarch also mentioned the accidental discovery of islands across the Atlantic around 80 B.C. There are many other similar references in ancient texts and readers are referred to Collins’ book.

Despite consistent reports of strange islands lying well into the Atlantic Ocean, the people of the ancient world found the idea of Atlantis without definitive support. From the time of Plato to the 1500s, speculation on Atlantis was limited and was eclipsed by more important issues. The rise of Christianity, the fall of the Roman Empire, the struggles in Europe, plagues, and the ensuing dark ages plunged the world into a knowledge vacuum that persisted for centuries until the Renaissance. Then, with the “discovery” of the Americas, the idea that Atlantis might really have existed became an intriguing topic because many people believed Atlantis had been discovered!

The Americas and Atlantis

When Christopher Columbus returned to Spain in March of 1493 after his first voyage to the Americas, his news of a “New World” was electrifying. Yet Columbus had only visited the Bahamas, Cuba, and Hispaniola on this first trip. It wasn’t until his third voyage in 1498 that he made landfall in South America. He didn’t reach Central America until his fourth and final voyage in 1502. Although others (such as the Norse) had visited North America far earlier, this “new” landmass was only first widely reported in Europe by John Cabot in 1497. After the civilizations in Central and South America were conquered and the mound builder culture in North America was discovered, a new problem arose. Who were these natives that occupied this strange new world and where did they come from?

Plato’s story of Atlantis suddenly seemed to provide the solution. For example in the 1570s, the famous London-born astrologer and mathematician, Dr. John Dee, informed Queen Elizabeth I that the Americas had been Atlantis.

After Columbus’ discovery, rumors began spreading that he had taken several ancient maps with him. The maps showed large islands far into the Atlantic. The Bennicasa Map of 1482, for example, is one that many researchers believe Columbus used. This map depicts an island called Antilia to the far southwest of Gibraltar. Antilia was named by early Carthaginian explorers who claimed that it was a large island in the western Atlantic, but it has gone by several names and spelling variations. According to Andrew Collins, a 1367 chart depicted Antilia near the Azores, in the mid-Atlantic. But the island on the map is far too large to be the Azores and later maps placed Antilia much further to the southwest. Early Spanish explorers identified the West Indies as Antilia, and the similarity of the name to Atlantis has long been obvious to many people. The islands of the Caribbean, consisting of over 7,000 small and large islands including Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, and Hispaniola, comprise the West Indies. But the most convincing link between that region and Atlantis was made during the exploration and excavations of the Maya and Aztec civilizations.

Excited by tales of travel in the Yucatan that were being widely published, in the 1860s a French monk, Charles Étinne Brasseur de Bourbourg, went to Guatemala. Brasseur soon discovered the Popol Vuh, a sacred history of the Mayan people, and subsequently published the first translation of it. Brasseur also came into possession of a native document called the Troano Codex, which had been removed from Central America by Cortez. As he translated the Troano Codex, Brasseur was stunned to learn that a cataclysm had taken place in Central America in 9937 B.C. Later in Mexico City, Brasseur found another native document, the Chimalpopoca Codex, which described a series of four natural disasters that took place in the region around 10,500 B.C. From his translation of the text, Brasseur surmised that the disasters were related to a shift in the earth’s axis. Because of the similarity of these events to Plato’s story of Atlantis, Brasseur reasoned that the people of the New World were descendants of survivors of Atlantis, and the advanced cultures of the Americas were remnants of Plato’s lost Atlantis. Brasseur’s Atlantis speculations were aided by a partnership with Augustus LePlongeon, who also traveled throughout the Yucatan.

Another Frenchman, Desiré Charnay, became obsessed with excavating Mexican and Yucatan ruins after arriving there in the late 1860s. Charnay found massive basalt statues at Tula that looked almost otherworldly. Reasoning they were from Atlantis, he called the huge figures “Atlantean,” a term that is used to describe them even today. Charnay then visited Palenque where he became intrigued by the story of Votan, allegedly a bearded white man who came to the area after a disaster destroyed his island homeland to the east. Votan, it was said, began the Maya civilization. Today, most scholars believe that the legends of the Maya god Votan (also called Kukulcan), the Aztec and Toltec god Quetzalcóatal, and the Incas’ Viracocha (also called Thunupa) are all variations of the same story. These legends parallel some Native American tribal lore of their ancestors coming from the east after fleeing a disastrous flood that hit their island.

“Atlantean” figures at Tula, Mexico. Photo—Greg Little, 1979.

In Gateway to Atlantis, Collins traced the story of Votan back to Cuba, which he asserts was the main island of Atlantis. Collins also noted that Votan traveled up the Yucatan coastline and when he reached the first large river, turned inland. He then established a major city, which has long been thought to be Palenque. In a 2004 interview on the video documentary The Yucatan Hall of Records, Collins said he now believes that the river Votan traveled was the Usumacinta and that the present day Mayan ruins at Piedras Negras, Guatemala, may well mark the place where his city was established. As stated in Chapter 1, Piedras Negras is believed to be the site where one of the Atlantean Halls of Records was hidden.

Ignatius Donnelly’s Atlantis

In his two books, Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (1882) and Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel (1883), Ignatius Donnelly forever linked the Mid-Atlantic and the Americas to Atlantis. Donnelly was educated as a lawyer and, from 1863-1869 served in the U.S. House of Representatives for Minnesota. When he lost the 1870 reelection, he became a newspaper editor and was later elected to the state legislature. Between 1878 and 1880, Donnelly completed the Atlantis manuscript, working from notes and information he gathered from the Library of Congress. It was an immediate best-seller and became the definitive book on the subject.

Donnelly’s book was widely praised and even skeptical archaeologists admit that his research was scholarly despite containing what 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

In 1896, the London Lodge of the Theosophical Society 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 was the pen name of Harvey Spencer Lewis, founder of the Rosicrucian order of California. Cerve reportedly provided a synopsis from ancient Chinese manuscripts that were brought to California in his 1931 book, Lemuria. The book contains some references to Atlantis and a map showing Atlantis in the Mid-Atlantic.

Edgerton Sykes

Sykes (1894-1983) was a member of both the British diplomatic service and the Royal Geographic Society. He published two journals, New World Antiquity and Atlantis, for several decades and amassed a vast library of books, periodicals, and short articles on Atlantis published in nearly every world language. Sykes came to believe that the Americas were related to Atlantis and even focused on the idea that Cuba was Atlantis just before his death. Sykes collection of books and other materials was acquired by the Edgar Cayce Foundation and are housed at the Association For Research and Enlightenment Library in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Phylos

In the summer of 1883, a teenager named Frederich Spencer Oliver was helping survey a mining claim near Mt. Shasta for his father. His task was to pound wooden stakes into the ground, number them, and then make a written note on the number and location of each stake. As he worked through the day he realized that his writing hand was trembling. Inexplicably, he grabbed the pencil and pad he was using, and to his astonishment, found that his hand began writing seemingly as if by its own free will. As the tale goes, over the next three years Oliver completed an amazing story that was published in 1894 under the title, A Dweller on Two Planets. The book is supposedly a historical account of Atlantis told to Oliver through automatic writing by the Tibetan master Phylos. Phylos’ story was based on recollections he (Phylos) had of past lives on Atlantis.

The book reads, at times, like a daily journal relating tedious, mundane details. At other times, the book is mystifying. It goes into depth about the Atlantean government (even occasionally quoting labor laws) and describes various portions of Atlantis. One of Phylos’ past lives was given as occurring in 11,160 B.C. According to Phylos, the ancient Atlanteans established colonies in North and South America, Eastern Europe, and portions of Asia and Africa. Phylos mentioned that souls have “sojourns,” but in a curious section, he flatly refused to answer the question of whether life existed on other planets, although he added that we would eventually know the answer.

Phylos’ Atlanteans used electricity and had both airships and submarines. The airships were called vailx and were of varying sizes. Curiously, the electricity on Atlantis was said to be created by capturing the motions of the tides.

The location of Atlantis, was from the West Indies to Gibraltar—a single landmass basically encompassing the current Atlantic Ocean. Phylos claimed that Atlantis went through three days and nights of natural disasters before a final blow ended the continent’s existence. After a brief tremble, the entire island continent sank “like a stone” to a depth of about one mile. He also reported that a 1300-foot-high wall of water was created by the disaster. This massive tsunami destroyed almost everything as it circled the world.

Some aspects related in the book have similarities to Cayce’s Atlantis. For example, the ideas that souls are able to travel in the astral plane and communicate with physical beings have parallels in the Cayce readings. Phylos, like Cayce, also maintained that a record of each individual’s earthly existence was imprinted on the astral plane and that the souls of Atlanteans were now incarnating in America. Phylos is particularly relevant to the Cayce story since in 1933 (reading 282-5) the sleeping Cayce was asked, “Is the book ‘A Dweller on Two Planets’ by Phylos the Tibetan based on truth …?” Cayce replied, “As viewed by an entity separated from the whole, yes. As TRUTH, that may be implied by one that looks only to the Lamb, to the Son as a leader, no. Choose thou.”

Countless others have formulated both scholarly and expeditionbased theories of Atlantis and in recent years, a virtual avalanche of new Atlantis speculations have been made. In a later chapter, these will be summarized along with research that has been done on Cayce’s specific statements on the lost land. But this chapter has sought to provide a background of the early scientific speculations on Atlantis as well as summarize the psychic information that various people have presented. As we show in the next chapters, Cayce’s visions of Atlantis are fully in line with the story Plato related but have major differences with other psychically derived material.