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Atlantis and the Cycles of Time: Prophecies, Traditions, and Occult Revelations
A comprehensive study of the major occult writings on Atlantis
• Fully examines the many occult teachings on Atlantis, including those from G. I. Gurdjieff, Madame Blavatsky, Julius Evola, Edgar Cayce, Fabre d’Olivet, and Dion Fortune
• Shows how these writings correlate with the concept of cyclical history, such as the Mayan calendar and 2012, the Age of Aquarius, and the four Yugas
• By a renowned scholar, author, editor, and translator of more than 30 books
Atlantis has held a perennial place in the collective imagination of humanity from ancient Greece onward. Many of the great minds of the occult and esoteric world wrote at length on their theories of Atlantis--about its high culture, its possible location, its ultimate demise, and their predictions of a return to Atlantean enlightenment or the downfall of modern society.
Beginning with a review of the rationalist writings on Atlantis--those that use geographic and geologic data to validate their theories--renowned scholar Joscelyn Godwin then analyzes and compares writings on Atlantis from many of the great occultists and esotericists of the 19th and 20th centuries, including Fabre d’Olivet, G. I. Gurdjieff, Guido von List, Julius Evola, Edgar Cayce, Dion Fortune, and René Guénon, whose writings often stem from deeper, metaphysical sources, such as sacred texts, prophecy, or paranormal communication. Seeking to unravel and explain the histories and interpretations of Atlantis and its kindred myths of Lemuria and Mu, the author shows how these different views go hand-in-hand with the concept of cyclical history, such as the Vedic system of the four Yugas, the Mayan calendar with its 2012 end-date, the theosophical system of root races, and the precession of the equinoxes. Venturing broader and deeper than any other book on Atlantis, this study also covers reincarnation, human evolution or devolution, the origins of race, and catastrophe theory.
• Fully examines the many occult teachings on Atlantis, including those from G. I. Gurdjieff, Madame Blavatsky, Julius Evola, Edgar Cayce, Fabre d’Olivet, and Dion Fortune
• Shows how these writings correlate with the concept of cyclical history, such as the Mayan calendar and 2012, the Age of Aquarius, and the four Yugas
• By a renowned scholar, author, editor, and translator of more than 30 books
Atlantis has held a perennial place in the collective imagination of humanity from ancient Greece onward. Many of the great minds of the occult and esoteric world wrote at length on their theories of Atlantis--about its high culture, its possible location, its ultimate demise, and their predictions of a return to Atlantean enlightenment or the downfall of modern society.
Beginning with a review of the rationalist writings on Atlantis--those that use geographic and geologic data to validate their theories--renowned scholar Joscelyn Godwin then analyzes and compares writings on Atlantis from many of the great occultists and esotericists of the 19th and 20th centuries, including Fabre d’Olivet, G. I. Gurdjieff, Guido von List, Julius Evola, Edgar Cayce, Dion Fortune, and René Guénon, whose writings often stem from deeper, metaphysical sources, such as sacred texts, prophecy, or paranormal communication. Seeking to unravel and explain the histories and interpretations of Atlantis and its kindred myths of Lemuria and Mu, the author shows how these different views go hand-in-hand with the concept of cyclical history, such as the Vedic system of the four Yugas, the Mayan calendar with its 2012 end-date, the theosophical system of root races, and the precession of the equinoxes. Venturing broader and deeper than any other book on Atlantis, this study also covers reincarnation, human evolution or devolution, the origins of race, and catastrophe theory.
448 pages, Paperback
First published November 18, 2010
19 people are currently reading
217 people want to read
About the author
Joscelyn Godwin
70 books78 followersComposer, musicologist and translator, known for his work on ancient music, paganism and music in the occult.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
August 13, 2019
Joscelyn Godwin is a composer, musicologist, and translator. He obtained his Ph.D. degree from Cornell University in 1969 and retired from teaching at Colgate University in 2016. He has also studied Vedanta, Mahayana Buddhism, Neoplatonism, and Theosophy, and is the author or co-author of fifteen books on a variety of topics, including hermetism, music, Nazism, theosophy, paganism, the Western mystery traditions, and Atlantis.
Atlantis and the Cycles of Time is a comprehensive survey of Atlantology in relation to the French, German, and British esoteric traditions; Blavatskian and later Theosophy; Traditionalism; channeling; the theory of the Four Ages; the precession of the equinoxes; and occultism.
The notion of Atlantis originated with Plato, based on a reputed Egyptian source, but in the 19th and 20th centuries it became the central preoccupation of a spate of quasi-mystical movements ranging greatly in quality and cogency, the overt concerns of which might be summarized as “mythological history.” Although the details of most if not all of these traditions are quite frankly absurd, a fact recognized by Godwin, and appear to be the product of an overactive imagination, Godwin identifies recurrent themes and patterns in the literature which actually reflect or even anticipate significant spiritual, philosophical, and even scientific truths. Some of these include: the date of the advent of Neolithic or Holocene epoch of human history, associated with the end of the last ice age, corresponding to the Age of Leo, circa 10,537 BCE[1] (previously 36,437 BCE, a date associated with the appearance of modern man); the central significance of climate change and changes in sea level, and the melting of the polar ice caps, associated with increasing solar radiation and global warming; the past habitability of the Arctic and Sahara regions, which were once covered with rain forest; the archaic origin of the Sphinx and human civilization (popularized by Graham Hancock); the symbol of the squaring of the circle; the doctrine of correspondences; the gnostic or metaphysical perennial philosophy or primordial tradition or theology ("Ur-religion"); the vital significance of our own time in relation to the risk of collapse, even near extinction, followed by the advent of a new kind of humanity (cf. W.B. Yeats, "The Great Year of the Ancients"); the significance of the snake or serpent or serpent power (kundalini or, according to Gurdjieff, "kundabuffer"); the reality of psychic powers; the doctrine of the Great White Brotherhood and the Secret Chiefs (described under a wide variety of names); Egypt as the archaic spiritual fountainhead of the West; the spiritual significance of science and technology; the reality of extraterrestrials and UFOs (e.g., the flying “chariots” (vimanas) of ancient India, etc.); the limitations and even pernicious character of rationalism and scientism; the historical and biological significance of “catastrophism,” continental drift, and “earth changes”; the inadequacy of philosophical materialism; biological and cultural degeneration; reincarnation; karma; the significance of the symbol of the solar disk; active imagination (cf. Jung); the gnostic significance of Lucifer or Satan as the true messiah (cf. the Yazidi explanation of the disobedience of Iblis, the Muslim Satan); the daimon or “inner voice” (cf. Socrates); the spiritual significance of androgyny; the essential divinity of man; the spiritual significance of matriarchy and patriarchy; sexual yoga; dark matter; solar power; socialism; social and political brainwashing; the Black Brothers or Black Brotherhood of the “Left-Hand Path”; the imminent advent of the Age of Aquarius, circa 2424 CE, associated with the Buddhist Kalachakra; the destructive potential of nuclear energy; that the moon is a fragment of the earth; time dilation and temporal relativity; the gnostic conception of a cosmic bureaucracy; the orbit of the sun around the galactic centre, and the spiritual significance of the galactic centre itself (located at 29 Sagittarius); earthbound spirits or devas or a superior terrestrial race of Great Ones or Elder Gods, etc.; the significance of the Will (Godwin refers briefly to Aleister Crowley’s religion of Thelema, the Greek word for “will”); the evils of industrialism, commercialism, business, competition, and money; genetic and sexual manipulation of humanity by alien beings; the paradisiacal potential of the earth (cf. the Buddhist doctrine of the pure land); earth energies, ley lines, and power places; the quantum “act of observation”; Swedenborg’s vision of apocalypse in 1757 CE; and the accurate Puranic estimate of the speed of light (2 x 18^2 times the speed of the sun). Godwin quotes Subhash Kak to the effect that “This speed of light must be considered the most astonishing ‘blind hit’ in the history of science!”[2] The Puranas also include elaborate descriptions of UFOs, so perhaps the "hit" is not as "blind" as Kak implies.
Godwin also notes the remarkable 2160-year correspondence between the three Punic wars and the three world wars (the third yet to come, but imminent),[3] the significance of the year 1927, and the imminence of one world government.
Far from disparaging this eclectic esoteric hotchpotch, Godwin intimates that he agrees substantively with Peter Miles when he concludes that “it does not appear to me that the writings and the book as a whole [referring specifically to The Book of Truth by one Randall-Stevens, but equally applicable to the rest] can adequately be accounted for as the product of what is commonly termed the subconscious mind, as understood by psychologists. A more tenable hypothesis is that the work is that of a[n] … Intelligence coming from beyond and using the writer as a medium.” Godwin marks the connection between such channelled material and the results of UFO and Ouija board communications, which are strikingly similar, and often far more intelligent and witty than their mediums,[4] and also points out, like Jacque Vallée, Michio Kaku, and an increasing number of scientists today that the UFO phenomenon is a real physical phenomenon, which does not necessarily imply that the experiences associated with them, especially under hypnotic regression, have any inherent veracity at all (see especially UFOs, by Leslie Kean).
Jacques Vallée has similarly noted the connection between the UFO phenomenon and human spirituality and religion. Vallée, Karla Turner, and others have also noted the internal contradictions of the UFO messages and their propensity to lie, or mix truth with falsehood, as well as their spiritual propensity. Similarly Godwin writes, “Someone or something, whether internal or external to the channel, was making a deliberate effort to put across a certain version of prehistory, and one can only wonder why,” a question that Jacques Vallée also asks and to which he proposes a tentative answer. Godwin even approaches Vallée’s notion that the universe is organized associatively, like a computer program rather than linearly, which Godwin relates to the occult concept of the egregore, “a wandering influence that takes on a pseudopersonality and may be nourished by attention, belief, and sacrifice," and which would explain the phenomenon of synchronicity.
Josceyn Godwin reviews in Atlantis and the Cycles of Time a diverse mélange of a complex interconnected set of popular modern folk tales and traditions that culminated between the two world wars, and remarkably documents that, despite the obvious naiveté of its authors and the outright absurdity of its form, in almost all cases, they draw on timeless perennial themes that also anticipate in meaningful and significant ways the challenges of our own time, threatened by corruption, war, violence, crime, nuclear annihilation, and the imminent threats of economic collapse and climate change/global warming, suggesting that these prophecies, traditions, and occult revelations may be more meaningful and relevant to us than at first appears.
Notes
1. A quick tabulation of over fifty dates corresponding to the disappearance of "Atlantis," associated with climate change, rising sea levels, and other earth changes, in Godwin, gives an average date of 10,820 BCE, which differs from the advent of the Age of Leo, using the archetypal 2160-year cycle, by less than three hundred years. Interestingly, if we take 10,820 BCE as the true date, and extrapolate forward using the currently accepted precessional rate of 50.27 arc seconds per year, we arrive at 2070 as the date of the advent of the Age of Aquarius. This is close to the 2060 CE date preferred by Dane Rudhyar, which is also an extremely significant date in the context of climate change. The period from 2070 to 2424 is 354 years, almost exactly one solar cycle of 360 years. The accepted date for the Neolithic is 10,050 BCE and for the Holocene, 9700 BCE, but these are only approximations. Personally I am inclined to believe that we are currently at the cusp of a significant transitional period, beginning circa 2060, leading up to the advent of the Age of Aquarius proper in 2424, based on Dr. Alex Berzin's solution of the 1800-year Kalachakra cycle and the official ayanamsa of the Government of India, as the most authoritative fiducials.
2. See Subhash Kak, "The Speed of Light and Puranic Cosmology," https://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/9804020.... Kak says that the Puranic nunber is "close" to 186,000 miles per second. The exact number is 186,282.397. Kak is an award-winning Indian American professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Louisiana State University.
3. The astrological doctrine associated with the precession of the equinoxes is that each astrological age represents the same developmental process over the course of thirty degrees within a larger twelvefold process represented by the signs of the zodiac. Thus, history repeats itself at intervals of about 2,160 and 25,920 years (see Godwin, p. 311). The best modern calculation gives an interval of 2,148 years, but such a difference amounts to only 12 years, and the result works out the same in the end due to the years of highest deviation, 2182 (see below). Especially for those who believe that the coming of the "reign of Saturn" occurred in the late 19th or early 20th centuries, the coincidental timing of the First and Second Punic Wars (264-241 and 218-201 BCE) and the First and Second World Wars (1914-1918 and 1939-1945) must be especially significant. Not only is the distance between them almost exactly the same (23 and 25 years respectively), but the intervals are very close to a precessional age: 2157 years (end point to midpoint) and 2160 years (start point to midpoint) respectively. Since the Third Punic War spanned 149 to 146 BCE, one would expect World War III to break out imminently. Incidentally, the average value of all possible (20) intervals between these six dates, including the midpoint, is 2159.45. Since the highest possible deviation is 2182, World War III must break out by 2036 ((2160 - 146) + (2182 - 2160)) for the pattern to complete itself, unfortunately. 2182 is still very accurate, representing a difference of only +1% (+1.6% if we accept an interval of 2148 years).
4. The Ouija board once told me that Aleister Crowley had been reborn as a goat in China, the humour of which only a keen student of Crowley will appreciate; made a personal prediction that was subsequently fulfilled several years later; and dictated to me a 109-word poem, in a remarkable manner, written in a strange medieval lilt, when I was only 16, the style and substance of which is entirely beyond the literary and intellectual scope of myself or the girl with whom I was operating the planchette, including the repetition of an archaic English word "eek" or "eke" (meaning "also" or "and," circa 1200 CE), and an explicit chapter and verse reference to The Book of Enoch which I found, decades later, and which makes perfect sense in context (I had never even heard of The Book of Enoch at that time, nor would I for years afterward), so I have personal experience of the sort of phenomena that Godwin is describing.
Atlantis and the Cycles of Time is a comprehensive survey of Atlantology in relation to the French, German, and British esoteric traditions; Blavatskian and later Theosophy; Traditionalism; channeling; the theory of the Four Ages; the precession of the equinoxes; and occultism.
The notion of Atlantis originated with Plato, based on a reputed Egyptian source, but in the 19th and 20th centuries it became the central preoccupation of a spate of quasi-mystical movements ranging greatly in quality and cogency, the overt concerns of which might be summarized as “mythological history.” Although the details of most if not all of these traditions are quite frankly absurd, a fact recognized by Godwin, and appear to be the product of an overactive imagination, Godwin identifies recurrent themes and patterns in the literature which actually reflect or even anticipate significant spiritual, philosophical, and even scientific truths. Some of these include: the date of the advent of Neolithic or Holocene epoch of human history, associated with the end of the last ice age, corresponding to the Age of Leo, circa 10,537 BCE[1] (previously 36,437 BCE, a date associated with the appearance of modern man); the central significance of climate change and changes in sea level, and the melting of the polar ice caps, associated with increasing solar radiation and global warming; the past habitability of the Arctic and Sahara regions, which were once covered with rain forest; the archaic origin of the Sphinx and human civilization (popularized by Graham Hancock); the symbol of the squaring of the circle; the doctrine of correspondences; the gnostic or metaphysical perennial philosophy or primordial tradition or theology ("Ur-religion"); the vital significance of our own time in relation to the risk of collapse, even near extinction, followed by the advent of a new kind of humanity (cf. W.B. Yeats, "The Great Year of the Ancients"); the significance of the snake or serpent or serpent power (kundalini or, according to Gurdjieff, "kundabuffer"); the reality of psychic powers; the doctrine of the Great White Brotherhood and the Secret Chiefs (described under a wide variety of names); Egypt as the archaic spiritual fountainhead of the West; the spiritual significance of science and technology; the reality of extraterrestrials and UFOs (e.g., the flying “chariots” (vimanas) of ancient India, etc.); the limitations and even pernicious character of rationalism and scientism; the historical and biological significance of “catastrophism,” continental drift, and “earth changes”; the inadequacy of philosophical materialism; biological and cultural degeneration; reincarnation; karma; the significance of the symbol of the solar disk; active imagination (cf. Jung); the gnostic significance of Lucifer or Satan as the true messiah (cf. the Yazidi explanation of the disobedience of Iblis, the Muslim Satan); the daimon or “inner voice” (cf. Socrates); the spiritual significance of androgyny; the essential divinity of man; the spiritual significance of matriarchy and patriarchy; sexual yoga; dark matter; solar power; socialism; social and political brainwashing; the Black Brothers or Black Brotherhood of the “Left-Hand Path”; the imminent advent of the Age of Aquarius, circa 2424 CE, associated with the Buddhist Kalachakra; the destructive potential of nuclear energy; that the moon is a fragment of the earth; time dilation and temporal relativity; the gnostic conception of a cosmic bureaucracy; the orbit of the sun around the galactic centre, and the spiritual significance of the galactic centre itself (located at 29 Sagittarius); earthbound spirits or devas or a superior terrestrial race of Great Ones or Elder Gods, etc.; the significance of the Will (Godwin refers briefly to Aleister Crowley’s religion of Thelema, the Greek word for “will”); the evils of industrialism, commercialism, business, competition, and money; genetic and sexual manipulation of humanity by alien beings; the paradisiacal potential of the earth (cf. the Buddhist doctrine of the pure land); earth energies, ley lines, and power places; the quantum “act of observation”; Swedenborg’s vision of apocalypse in 1757 CE; and the accurate Puranic estimate of the speed of light (2 x 18^2 times the speed of the sun). Godwin quotes Subhash Kak to the effect that “This speed of light must be considered the most astonishing ‘blind hit’ in the history of science!”[2] The Puranas also include elaborate descriptions of UFOs, so perhaps the "hit" is not as "blind" as Kak implies.
Godwin also notes the remarkable 2160-year correspondence between the three Punic wars and the three world wars (the third yet to come, but imminent),[3] the significance of the year 1927, and the imminence of one world government.
Far from disparaging this eclectic esoteric hotchpotch, Godwin intimates that he agrees substantively with Peter Miles when he concludes that “it does not appear to me that the writings and the book as a whole [referring specifically to The Book of Truth by one Randall-Stevens, but equally applicable to the rest] can adequately be accounted for as the product of what is commonly termed the subconscious mind, as understood by psychologists. A more tenable hypothesis is that the work is that of a[n] … Intelligence coming from beyond and using the writer as a medium.” Godwin marks the connection between such channelled material and the results of UFO and Ouija board communications, which are strikingly similar, and often far more intelligent and witty than their mediums,[4] and also points out, like Jacque Vallée, Michio Kaku, and an increasing number of scientists today that the UFO phenomenon is a real physical phenomenon, which does not necessarily imply that the experiences associated with them, especially under hypnotic regression, have any inherent veracity at all (see especially UFOs, by Leslie Kean).
Jacques Vallée has similarly noted the connection between the UFO phenomenon and human spirituality and religion. Vallée, Karla Turner, and others have also noted the internal contradictions of the UFO messages and their propensity to lie, or mix truth with falsehood, as well as their spiritual propensity. Similarly Godwin writes, “Someone or something, whether internal or external to the channel, was making a deliberate effort to put across a certain version of prehistory, and one can only wonder why,” a question that Jacques Vallée also asks and to which he proposes a tentative answer. Godwin even approaches Vallée’s notion that the universe is organized associatively, like a computer program rather than linearly, which Godwin relates to the occult concept of the egregore, “a wandering influence that takes on a pseudopersonality and may be nourished by attention, belief, and sacrifice," and which would explain the phenomenon of synchronicity.
Josceyn Godwin reviews in Atlantis and the Cycles of Time a diverse mélange of a complex interconnected set of popular modern folk tales and traditions that culminated between the two world wars, and remarkably documents that, despite the obvious naiveté of its authors and the outright absurdity of its form, in almost all cases, they draw on timeless perennial themes that also anticipate in meaningful and significant ways the challenges of our own time, threatened by corruption, war, violence, crime, nuclear annihilation, and the imminent threats of economic collapse and climate change/global warming, suggesting that these prophecies, traditions, and occult revelations may be more meaningful and relevant to us than at first appears.
Notes
1. A quick tabulation of over fifty dates corresponding to the disappearance of "Atlantis," associated with climate change, rising sea levels, and other earth changes, in Godwin, gives an average date of 10,820 BCE, which differs from the advent of the Age of Leo, using the archetypal 2160-year cycle, by less than three hundred years. Interestingly, if we take 10,820 BCE as the true date, and extrapolate forward using the currently accepted precessional rate of 50.27 arc seconds per year, we arrive at 2070 as the date of the advent of the Age of Aquarius. This is close to the 2060 CE date preferred by Dane Rudhyar, which is also an extremely significant date in the context of climate change. The period from 2070 to 2424 is 354 years, almost exactly one solar cycle of 360 years. The accepted date for the Neolithic is 10,050 BCE and for the Holocene, 9700 BCE, but these are only approximations. Personally I am inclined to believe that we are currently at the cusp of a significant transitional period, beginning circa 2060, leading up to the advent of the Age of Aquarius proper in 2424, based on Dr. Alex Berzin's solution of the 1800-year Kalachakra cycle and the official ayanamsa of the Government of India, as the most authoritative fiducials.
2. See Subhash Kak, "The Speed of Light and Puranic Cosmology," https://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/9804020.... Kak says that the Puranic nunber is "close" to 186,000 miles per second. The exact number is 186,282.397. Kak is an award-winning Indian American professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Louisiana State University.
3. The astrological doctrine associated with the precession of the equinoxes is that each astrological age represents the same developmental process over the course of thirty degrees within a larger twelvefold process represented by the signs of the zodiac. Thus, history repeats itself at intervals of about 2,160 and 25,920 years (see Godwin, p. 311). The best modern calculation gives an interval of 2,148 years, but such a difference amounts to only 12 years, and the result works out the same in the end due to the years of highest deviation, 2182 (see below). Especially for those who believe that the coming of the "reign of Saturn" occurred in the late 19th or early 20th centuries, the coincidental timing of the First and Second Punic Wars (264-241 and 218-201 BCE) and the First and Second World Wars (1914-1918 and 1939-1945) must be especially significant. Not only is the distance between them almost exactly the same (23 and 25 years respectively), but the intervals are very close to a precessional age: 2157 years (end point to midpoint) and 2160 years (start point to midpoint) respectively. Since the Third Punic War spanned 149 to 146 BCE, one would expect World War III to break out imminently. Incidentally, the average value of all possible (20) intervals between these six dates, including the midpoint, is 2159.45. Since the highest possible deviation is 2182, World War III must break out by 2036 ((2160 - 146) + (2182 - 2160)) for the pattern to complete itself, unfortunately. 2182 is still very accurate, representing a difference of only +1% (+1.6% if we accept an interval of 2148 years).
4. The Ouija board once told me that Aleister Crowley had been reborn as a goat in China, the humour of which only a keen student of Crowley will appreciate; made a personal prediction that was subsequently fulfilled several years later; and dictated to me a 109-word poem, in a remarkable manner, written in a strange medieval lilt, when I was only 16, the style and substance of which is entirely beyond the literary and intellectual scope of myself or the girl with whom I was operating the planchette, including the repetition of an archaic English word "eek" or "eke" (meaning "also" or "and," circa 1200 CE), and an explicit chapter and verse reference to The Book of Enoch which I found, decades later, and which makes perfect sense in context (I had never even heard of The Book of Enoch at that time, nor would I for years afterward), so I have personal experience of the sort of phenomena that Godwin is describing.
March 18, 2022
Great book by Joscelyn Godwin, with his usual erudition. At times it is hard for him to disguise his admiration—in fact, the source of his interest—for all things esoteric; the more weird it is, the better he likes it.
It is staggering, though, how short the chapters on Guénon and Gurdjieff are, especially in light of the fact that (1) Godwin is a decan of the Perennialist world (Guénon is not a Perennialist, but a Traditionalist; however, Perennialism and Traditionalism in the English-speaking world are almost synonyms, as Godwin himself clarified once) and (2) that after the chapter on Guénon and Gurdjieff we have pages upon pages of New Age Atlantists who barely make an appearance, if they appear at all, in the two regrettably short chapters on the theories of the cycles of times.
Still, a very good read. Of all weirdos out there, Joscelyn Godwin is the most level-headed; maybe, because of that, he is the most interesting.
January 26, 2017
This is packaged as standard New Age literature, complete with associated publisher ('Inner Traditions'), but the book isn't what one might expect. It is in fact a very insightful and engaging look at various pseudo historical and esoteric traditions around Atlantis. An unexpected gem and a genuinely good critical engagement of the topic.
August 12, 2022
This book offers countless theories, descriptions, and perspectives on Atlantis. The chapters break down the viewpoints by region and traditions, and then later chapters provide more understanding to the cycles and time of humanity. It was an interesting read to learn more about Atlantis, as well as the spiritual connections humanity has had in the last few hundred years.
October 2, 2013
A FANTASTIC book on Atlantis: not about 'where it was' or 'IF it existed',but what impacts it had on the rest of civilization! Of everything I had ever wanted to know (and read) about Atlantis, I now think- "What the Hell have you done to us!!" ;) A MUST READ!!
March 21, 2022
This isn't really a book on Atlantis as he claims. The author writes on numerous thinkers, some he's critical of, and others he makes no comment, causing confusion in the reader. It makes me wonder; why would someone bother with all this research? I think the purpose is to overwhelm you with a lot of information, debunk a bunch of it, and to discourage you from looking into any of these theories. He has truth & fiction blended together, so it's hard to tell them apart. This book is misleading.
This book gives a selective overview of numerous sectarian movements & elite personalities of Europe & Russia in the late 19th and early 20th century, with Atlantis being only a tiny component of their works. The term "Atlantis" is defined too broadly here, basically to mean alternatives to Darwinism. It's a bit dishonest to lump these systems under "Atlantis" as you'd then also need to put much of Enoch, Indian, "Gnostic", and Mormon systems under the "Atlantis" umbrella as well, since all of these systems have writers talking about overall decline rather than Darwinian evolution. Certain "Jewish" or "Christian" writers (labels like these can be tricky) have also written on these topics, such as saying that pre-flood, the plants were far better & that procreation happened through mind only. That's definitely not something you hear from any orthodox Christian today, so I'd lump it into root race philosophy as well.
This is an academic survey largely covering the 17th to early 20th centuries (according to status quo history, the bulk of which I believe is forgery & lies), and is more just giving short descriptions of various people (a few pages each). The book covers too broad of a scope in my view (while also leaving out key names), as this is like trying to give a survey of European history in a 1 volume book. The author does state numerous times that they are trying to summarize something that can't really be summarized, so the question is, why did you summarize it? If something really can't be summarized well, just state that and give a reference to comprehensive works.
The book discusses root races, earth axis shift, hyperborea, giants, Nazis, millions of years of history, theosophy & various offshoots, Rosicrucianism & its offshoots, and numerous other people & groups. It's a bit overwhelming, as each group or author could be studied in depth. There is so much overlap with other groups of the era (e.g. Wandervogel in Germany) that I wonder if this book should more have focused on all alternative elite views of the time period. The book would quickly become too long, wish large sections on alchemy, magic, and socialist utopian experiments. Workers & peasants played very little part in any of this nonsense, so it would be good to point out that this was all a middle & upper class thing.
I would more enjoy seeing an encyclopedia of anti-Darwinian philosophies, so any writer in the world who has ever written specifically on higher early races declining to our modern selves. Encyclopedias are useful for people who are new to these concepts, so if someone had never heard of Enoch for example, they'd know where to start.
Even better would be an expansion into other elite alternatives, so you could talk of socialist experiments, communism, occult, treasure hunting, museum collecting, and on and on. A lot of this happened in a short time period, and today we're living with the results. Groups like Theosophy have disappeared, but concepts like organic foods, yoga pants, books on Gnosticism, and museums have stuck around. I'd really like to see a 100% takedown of the elites by looking into everything they do and how it's nearly all a con.
This book gives a selective overview of numerous sectarian movements & elite personalities of Europe & Russia in the late 19th and early 20th century, with Atlantis being only a tiny component of their works. The term "Atlantis" is defined too broadly here, basically to mean alternatives to Darwinism. It's a bit dishonest to lump these systems under "Atlantis" as you'd then also need to put much of Enoch, Indian, "Gnostic", and Mormon systems under the "Atlantis" umbrella as well, since all of these systems have writers talking about overall decline rather than Darwinian evolution. Certain "Jewish" or "Christian" writers (labels like these can be tricky) have also written on these topics, such as saying that pre-flood, the plants were far better & that procreation happened through mind only. That's definitely not something you hear from any orthodox Christian today, so I'd lump it into root race philosophy as well.
This is an academic survey largely covering the 17th to early 20th centuries (according to status quo history, the bulk of which I believe is forgery & lies), and is more just giving short descriptions of various people (a few pages each). The book covers too broad of a scope in my view (while also leaving out key names), as this is like trying to give a survey of European history in a 1 volume book. The author does state numerous times that they are trying to summarize something that can't really be summarized, so the question is, why did you summarize it? If something really can't be summarized well, just state that and give a reference to comprehensive works.
The book discusses root races, earth axis shift, hyperborea, giants, Nazis, millions of years of history, theosophy & various offshoots, Rosicrucianism & its offshoots, and numerous other people & groups. It's a bit overwhelming, as each group or author could be studied in depth. There is so much overlap with other groups of the era (e.g. Wandervogel in Germany) that I wonder if this book should more have focused on all alternative elite views of the time period. The book would quickly become too long, wish large sections on alchemy, magic, and socialist utopian experiments. Workers & peasants played very little part in any of this nonsense, so it would be good to point out that this was all a middle & upper class thing.
I would more enjoy seeing an encyclopedia of anti-Darwinian philosophies, so any writer in the world who has ever written specifically on higher early races declining to our modern selves. Encyclopedias are useful for people who are new to these concepts, so if someone had never heard of Enoch for example, they'd know where to start.
Even better would be an expansion into other elite alternatives, so you could talk of socialist experiments, communism, occult, treasure hunting, museum collecting, and on and on. A lot of this happened in a short time period, and today we're living with the results. Groups like Theosophy have disappeared, but concepts like organic foods, yoga pants, books on Gnosticism, and museums have stuck around. I'd really like to see a 100% takedown of the elites by looking into everything they do and how it's nearly all a con.
November 21, 2016
A very good book on the Atlantis myth and its motley crew of promoters. In the last two chapters the book takes a turn in a new direction that seems forced and out of place. Instead I would have liked the sections where Godwin analyses and puts the theories and subjects in context to be expanded and more in depth. He does a great job but you get the feeling he rushes through them in order to cram more material between the covers.
October 23, 2019
This was at times a drudgery, but wow. this is an examination of Atlantis theories from PLato to the Nazis to the French To Theosophy to Gurdjieff.
there is a lot of that stuff. and its all crazy.
there is a lot of that stuff. and its all crazy.
February 15, 2023
Excellent book resource for creative writing about Atlantis. Excellent bibliography and research thesis.
December 1, 2015
Godwin clearly has a brass ass, an iron will, and featherweight eyelids.
That's the only way he could make his way through so much poorly written material--stuff to make anyone else's eyes glaze over--and pull it into a (most) intelligible, (mostly) coherent knowledge.
Godwin's is a musicologist, but is probably better known for his writings on esoteric traditions. His Theosophical Enlightenment is still the place to start for understanding Theosophy, its origins and ramifications.
This book continues plowing some of the same ground, though with a different focus. He is concerned with myths of Atlantis. Unlike almost everyone else who writes on the subject, he is not interested in either debunking them or offering his own, but rather in trying to understand them: where they arose, how the various interpretations fit together and changed over time, and the kinds of evidence adduced to support the existence of Atlantis. (The book is actually a close kin of histories of science, noting that there are different ways of knowing, different ways of gathering evidence.)
The book starts out very well, and the introduction is helpful in orienting the reader and giving a sense of Godwin's purpose: above and beyond an interest in Atlantis, he is further interested in how the myth of an ancient civilization then becomes wrapped up in theories of history--cyclical theories about time, in which civilization advances, retreats, then advances again, on various timescales. He is clear in dividing the different style of interpretations: irrationalists--rationalists (the bulk of the book: so-called because they use believe in the necessity of evidence, even if the particular kinds of evidence that they use, including channeling, is not widely accepted--and traditionalists, who come to their theories by reading ancient texts, sometimes esoterically,
After the first part, though, the book becomes something of a slog. Its not quite as hard to understand as his Theosophical Enlightenment--there he too closely followed the narrative techniques of the people about whom he wrote--but for structural reasons. Rather than developing his ideas chronologically, Godwin first divides the chapters by the kinds of interpreters, then by nationality. This division makes it hard to follow the development of ideas, and Godwin is forced to connect concepts that are separated by hundreds of pages.
The book also starts to wander. It is clear that Godwin is enthralled by Theosophical ideas--Theosophists and their various intellectual offspring form the bulk of this book--and the follows those ideas to places quite distant from Atlantis and theories of history. That's why this book seems so much like a sequel to his earlier Theosophical Enlightenment.
I didn't always agree with his interpretations or his choices either--this is a ground-clearing book. He hews closely to Nicholas Goodrick-Clarkes' Occult Roots of Nazism, which has taken some well-deserved criticism since its publication 25 years before Godwin. I also wonder what would have happened had he integrated African-American occultism into the story. I'm not sure of its 19th century connections to Atlantis, but certainly some forms of so-called "Afro-Futurism" engaged with the topic, which would have been interesting to contrast with the Aryan history Godwin kept bumping into.
The idea of cycles of history are only lightly invoked in the main part of the book, until the final two chapters when they are suddenly front and center, reinterpreting a lot of what came before, and extending into even more distant realms: the Hindu calendar, for example.
Perhaps not a book to sit down and read through, but a good resource.
April 4, 2014
Overall, this book presents a thoroughly researched overview on a subject that has merely been dismissed by earlier historians. One can only hope that this book will ignite others to contribute on this subject matter in more depth, but until that time Godwin has provided a notable first step in that direction. Though this book remains a solid historical contribution there is one element that was a little disappointing. In writing his chapter on ‘German Atlantology’ Godwin only utilized a few original German sources and relied heavily on English translations; however, given that this book was meant to be an overall history of Atlantis and not a concentrated study on Arisosophy this minor oversight seems excusable.
What this book does manage to convey is that the concept of Atlantis has become an important theme in occult movements in literature; however, the intrigue of such a place transcends these fringe movements spilling over into mainstream culture. This intrigue is exemplified even in modernity as evidenced through such movies as Disney’s animated film Atlantis: The Lost Empire (the key role’s voice having been played by Michael J. Fox) and then there is a television show that takes place on an island that has mystical properties in the popular series ‘LOST’. It seems that there is something about Atlantis and the archetype of a mysterious island that will never go out of style in any generation and Godwin has been the first to produce a historical study on the subject- we can only hope that others will soon follow![partly derived from the RESEARCH JOURNAL OF GERMAN ANTIQUITY, 2.2 ]
What this book does manage to convey is that the concept of Atlantis has become an important theme in occult movements in literature; however, the intrigue of such a place transcends these fringe movements spilling over into mainstream culture. This intrigue is exemplified even in modernity as evidenced through such movies as Disney’s animated film Atlantis: The Lost Empire (the key role’s voice having been played by Michael J. Fox) and then there is a television show that takes place on an island that has mystical properties in the popular series ‘LOST’. It seems that there is something about Atlantis and the archetype of a mysterious island that will never go out of style in any generation and Godwin has been the first to produce a historical study on the subject- we can only hope that others will soon follow![partly derived from the RESEARCH JOURNAL OF GERMAN ANTIQUITY, 2.2 ]
July 26, 2014
Boring and ill-balanced. The author presents the powerful ideas of Guenon and Evola next to those of very flawed thinkers and lunatics, with no meaningful indications of how superior the ideas of the former two authors are compared to the others featured here. Worth flipping through in the store or at the library.
Get Guenon's Traditional Forms and Cosmic Cycles instead.
Get Guenon's Traditional Forms and Cosmic Cycles instead.
August 11, 2013
An "ok" book. Nothing earth shattering. The author provides summaries of the works of other authors who discuss Atlantis. No new hypotheses or conclusions are reached. Interesting if you haven't read too much about Atlantis, repetitive if you have.
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