{"id":1066,"date":"2017-10-27T00:11:45","date_gmt":"2017-10-27T07:11:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/?p=1066"},"modified":"2017-10-27T16:35:55","modified_gmt":"2017-10-27T23:35:55","slug":"sinking-atlantis-part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/lateraltruth\/2017\/10\/27\/sinking-atlantis-part-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Sinking Atlantis: Part 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Previously on Sinking Atlantis: The origin of Atlantis<\/a>, in a couple of Plato\u2019s dialogues. The origin of Mu<\/a>, in a terrible 19th<\/sup> century mistranslation of a Mayan codex. The origin of Lemuria, in an abandoned 19th<\/sup> century scientific hypothesis.<\/p>\n

Late in the 19th<\/sup> century, in tandem with notables like Ignatius Donnelly and Augustus le Plongeon, a superstar appeared on the Atlantean stage: the founder of Theosophy and all-around colourful character, Madame Helena Blavatsky<\/a> (1831-1891). I cannot, in one short article, do full justice to the weirdness, brilliance, and badness<\/em> that was Madame Blavatsky.<\/p>\n

She was a Russian adventuress who drifted around Europe for her first forty years \"\"<\/a>\u2013 piano teacher, circus bareback rider, wife to three vanished husbands, spirit medium when the spiritualist movement became fashionable and lucrative, etc.\u00a0 She claimed, however, to have spent much of that time in the mystic places of the east, studying with mysterious occult masters; she also claimed to be a virgin.\u00a0 To cut a very long story short, she invented Theosophy, gathered a cult around her, and became a powerful demigoddess in her own right. In a sense, she also reinvented Atlantis.<\/p>\n

Up to this point, enthusiasts about Atlantis (and Mu and Lemuria) had treated the issue essentially as an exciting puzzle in history or archaeology.\u00a0 The general vision of these lost continents could be called down to earth<\/em>. \u00a0They were seen as ancient civilizations, powerful, populous, and \"\"<\/a>glittering, but essentially idealized versions of ancient Egypt, Greece, Mesopotamia, or latterly the Maya. A few isolated predecessors had written mystically of Atlantis, but it was Madame Blavatsky, popularizer and plagiarist, who was chiefly responsible for relocating the lost continent in the realms of the occult.<\/p>\n

Like many founders of New Religious Movements, Blavatsky wrote her own scriptures\u2014though she claimed to be transcribing and translating, rather than composing. Her masterwork The Secret Doctrine<\/em><\/a> (1888) was, she said, the distillation of the immemorial Stanzas of Dzyan<\/em>, which had been written down by Atlantean mages in the ancient sacerdotal language Senzar, and reverently preserved in secret \u201crock libraries\u201d in Tibet.<\/p>\n

The knowledge was communicated to her in dreams by her mysterious Masters of the Ancient Wisdom<\/a>, pseudonymed Morya<\/a> and Koot Hoomi<\/a>\u2014gurus who were esoterically adept enough to transcend their physical bodies, but physical enough to write letters<\/a> to Madame\u2019s followers. Somehow, nobody ever met them in the body except perhaps Madame (though Morya once appeared<\/a> to Madame\u2019s sidekick, Colonel Olcott, as an astral projection), and their letters were in Madame\u2019s handwriting. Nobody had ever heard of Senzar, either, and spoilsports over the years recognized Madame\u2019s sources in translations of Buddhist and Hindu texts, plus a large dollop of Ignatius Donnelly. This did not stop Theosophy from spawning a vast occult subculture with many, many branches.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The wisdom vouchsafed to Madame was no less than the entire history of the cosmos, including the esoteric evolution of humankind on Earth. This involved a sequence of six \u201cRoot Races,\u201d starting on an Earth that was mostly water, with one small continent at the north pole. Through the aeons, each root race occupied whatever continent was currently above water until some variety of geological cataclysm destroyed it and brought a new and usually larger one to the surface. Here is the tl-dr version of Mankind\u2019s theosophical ancestry:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n