Atlantis

(ətlăntĭs, ăt–), in Greek legend, large island in the western sea (the Atlantic Ocean). Plato, in his dialogues the Timaeus and the Critias, tells of the high civilization that flourished there before the island was destroyed by an earthquake. The legend persists, and societies for the discovery of Atlantis remain active. Plato described Atlantis as an ideal state, and the name is considered synonymous with UtopiaUtopia
[Gr.,=no place], title of a book by Sir Thomas More, published in Latin in 1516. The work pictures an ideal state where all is ordered for the best for humanity as a whole and where the evils of society, such as poverty and misery, have been eliminated.
..... Click the link for more information. . Francis Bacon called his account of the ideal state The New Atlantis.

Bibliography

See Z. Kukan, Atlantis in the Light of Modern Research (1984); C. Pellegrino, Unearthing Atlantis (1991); E. Zangger, The Flood from Heaven (1992).

Painting representing the submerged, lost city of Atlantis. Courtesy Fortean Picture Library.

Atlantis

(religion, spiritualism, and occult)

Many believe that Atlantis once existed as a huge island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Yet research done by Dr. W. Maurice Ewing, oceanographer and professor of geology at Columbia University, seemed to show that the floor of the Atlantic has never been above water. Ewing made the statement after an expedition aboard the Devin Moran in 1953. He said, “The rocks under every part of the ocean are completely different from those under the continents … The continents are distinct entities and the ocean floor was never above water.” Despite this, a few years later Dr. Rene Malaise of the Riks Museum in Stockholm, Sweden, and his colleague Dr. P. W. Kolbe, presented evidence to prove the sinking of the Atlantic Ridge. A core sample taken from a depth of 12,000 feet showed evidence—in the form of the tiny shells of diatoms; miniscule marine animals—that what was now the ocean floor had once been a fresh water lake above sea level. Certainly the Atlantic seabed is notoriously unstable. There are many recorded instances of islands appearing (e.g. Surt sey, just west of Iceland, in 1963) and disappearing (e.g. Sambrina, in the Azores, in 1811).

The debate continued and still continues. In 1963, Professor Georgly Lindberg of the former Soviet Union’s Zoological Institute of the Academy of Sciences, issued the statement, “The hypothesis that there is a North Atlantic continent presently submerged beneath 4,500 to 5,000 meters of water is confirmed by new findings.”

The classic work on Atlantis, Atlantis, the Antediluvian World, was published in 1882 by Ignatius Donnelly, a former Lieutenant-Governor of Minnesota, and revised and edited by Egerton Sykes in 1949. In this work, Atlantis is presented as having been a huge island continent where humanity rapidly developed from primitive life to sophisticated civilization. It was, in fact, the cradle of civilization as we know it today. The theory is that Atlantis was destroyed in three cataclysms, with the final one occurring about 10,000 BCE. Many Atlanteans escaped the destruction by fleeing in boats to the surrounding lands. It is said that this explains the many similarities found today in places geographically distant from one another: for example, the pyramids of Egypt and South America, with both peoples practicing mummification. Donnelly makes the point that the same folk traditions, arts, religious beliefs, sciences, personal habits and social customs can be found in cultures on both sides of the Atlantic.

About 600 BCE, an Athenian named Solon visited Egypt and spent a lot of time discussing the history of the region with priests and philosophers. The wise men claimed that there had once existed a great kingdom to the west of Egypt, beyond the Pillars of Hercules. They said it was “a land larger than Asia Minor and the whole of Libya—in other words, larger than the continent of Africa and the Middle East combined. Solon started to put all this information into verse form on his return to Athens, but died before completing it. Two hundred years later, Plato put Solon’s verse into narrative form. Two of these dialogues, Critias and Timæus, speak of a land that was far advanced as a civilization but which was destroyed by the forces of nature. Plato’s work sparked a great interest in this long-lost continent; an interest that still exists and even burgeons. Lewis Spence founded and for several years edited The Atlantis Quarterly, reporting on archaeological findings, occult studies, evidence, and folklore.

Plato identified the destruction of Atlantis as “the great deluge of all.” It certainly seems to explain many of the flood legends—for example, the Bible‘s Noah and his ark (Genesis 6-8), the earlier Chaldeo-Babylonian Gilgamish epic, the Arameans, various ancient Egyptian tales, the Satapatha Brahmana version in the Rig-Veda, and so on.

Evidence of the existence of this lost continent has been discovered in many places. None seems conclusive but, taken together, there seems a strong argument for the truth of the legend. German archaeologist Jurgen Spanuth found what he described as a “walled city” under 50 feet of water five miles off Heligoland in 1954. Gaston Jondet, an engineer, discovered a complete harbor, approximately 250 acres in size, off the mouth of the Nile River, during World War I. The French bathyscaphe Archimède reported seeing what seemed to be a flight of steps carved in the continental shelf off Puerto Rico. In 1968 a commercial pilot spotted from the air what appeared to be several underwater buildings near the Bahamas. This led to the discovery of the “Bimini Road,” some three quarters of a mile long and composed of huge stone blocks fitted together. In 1975, the Association for Research and Enlightenment (ARE) sponsored the Poseidia 75 expedition to investigate this find. The ARE had a special interest in it because they are dedicated to the study of Edgar Cayce’s teachings. Cayce mentioned Atlantis in a large number of his readings given between 1923 and 1944. He predicted that Atlantis would “rise again” in 1969.

Cayce was not the only psychic to connect with Atlantis. Judy Knight (Judith Darlene Hampton) claims that the entity she channels, “Ramtha,” lived thirty-five thousand years ago on the lost continent of Lemuria, a sort of Pacific Ocean equivalent to Atlantis. The well known and respected author Dion Fortune (Violet Mary Firth) believed that she had—and through regression exhibited memories of—a past life in Atlantis, where she was a priestess. Certain of the Theosophical information taken from the Akashic Records give details of Atlantis. Helena Blavatsky claimed that The Book of Dyzan was an Atlantean work that had somehow survived the destruction and found its way to Tibet. Philosopher Rudolf Steiner agreed with Blavatsky in believing that the Atlanteans were descendants of the earlier Lemurians. The journalist and automatist Ruth Montgomery has produced information about Atlantis through her automatic writing.

Sources:

Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna: The Secret Doctrine. London: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1888Cayce, Edgar: Edgar Cayce on Atlantis. New York: Paperback Library, 1968Donnelly, Ignatius: Atlantis, the Antediluvian World. New York: Gramercy, 1949Earll, Tony: Mu Revealed. New York: Paperback Library, 1970Scott-Elliot, W.: The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria. London: Theosophical Publishing House, 1968Steiger, Brad: Atlantis Rising. New York: Dell, 1973Stemman, Roy: The Supernatural: Atlantis and the Lost Lands. London: Aldus, 1975

Atlantis

(1) An expeditionary ship with sail and motor propulsion, belonging to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (USA). The Atlantis was built in 1932 in Norway. Its displacement is 575 tons, and its length is 48 m. It has two laboratories for physical, chemical, and biological research. The principal region of its operation is the North Atlantic and its adjacent seas.

(2) Atlantis-II, a scientific research ship belonging to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (USA). The Atlantis-II was built in 1962. It has a displacement of 2,110 tons, a length of 64 m, a beam of 13.4 m, and a speed of 13 knots (approximately 25 km per hour). It can sail without refueling for 8,000 miles (14,816 km). It has four scientific laboratories and is equipped for meteorological, oceanographic, geological, geophysical, and biological research. Since 1962, Atlantis-II has been used to conduct expeditions in the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific oceans, as well as in the Mediterranean and Red seas. Between 1964 and 1968, Atlantis-II completed a trip around the world.

Atlantis

submerged legendary island kingdom; never located. [Classical Folklore: Walsh Classical, 37]See: Disappearance

Atlantis

legendary island; inspired many Utopian myths. [Western Folklore: Misc.]See: Utopia

Atlantis

fabulous and prosperous island; legendarily in Atlantic Ocean. [Gk. Myth.: Leach, 89]See: Wonderland

Atlantis

(in ancient legend) a continent said to have sunk beneath the Atlantic Ocean west of the Straits of Gibraltar

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Words related to Atlantis

noun according to legend, an island in the Atlantic Ocean that Plato said was swallowed by an earthquake

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