Edgar Cayce's Atlantis. John Van Auken

tainted by Baal and sinking into darkness and despair.

       Beasts, Councils, and Nature—Cause of the First Destruction

      According to Cayce’s reading of the Akashic Records, in the ancient times of Atlantis, the planet was overrun by gigantic animals that made it nearly impossible for the growing human population to survive. Of course, the huge animals Cayce mentioned were not the dinosaurs, because they were long gone by the time that human souls began entering the earth. As we have seen, Cayce said that human souls began entering about 10.5 million years ago, with a second wave entering around 10 million years ago. Atlantis, which Cayce said began about 210,000 years ago, was the period when a third wave of souls entered earth’s realms.

      With these dates in mind, we are obviously dealing with the large beasts that survived the end of the dinosaur age and those that evolved long after the dinosaurs. During this period the planet was home to sabertoothed cats, giant ground sloth, giant short-faced bear, dire wolves, mastodons, mammoths, and the like. According to current archaeological timetables, these animals became completely extinct about 11,000 years ago. Their extinction was so abrupt that some frozen mammoth carcasses have been found with grass still in their mouths, indicating that they died so quickly that they didn’t even have time to swallow! Mainstream archaeology now attributes the disappearance of these large animals to some sort of disastrous environmental event combined with efficient hunting techniques. But Cayce asserted that the huge animals threatening human populations were destroyed far earlier—around 50,000 B.C. The readings do not state that the animals were made extinct at that early date, but those threatening the human populations were killed. Interestingly, Australia is the one area where it has been found that the dangerous large animals there (carnivorous kangaroos, 25 ft. lizards, and giant snakes) became extinct suddenly around 50,000 B.C. Again, scientists are at a loss to explain the reason, but believe that environmental change is the most likely cause.

       Russian Mammoth—Actual specimen of a mammoth discovered frozen in the Siberian tundra with food in its mouth, on display at Leningrad Museum in the 1920s. The chapter in the textbook describing the frozen mammoths states, “It is clear that the Asiatic continent must have extended at one time much farther towards the pole than it does today.” Mammoths are genetically similar to Indian elephants and not much larger than African elephants. Source—Wonders of the Past (1923).

      From the Akashic Records Cayce gave a strange explanation for the abrupt changes that led to the quick death of the animals. He said that when God, or what he called the Creative Forces and the Universal Consciousness, became aware that the Sons of God (remember, their gender qualities are united, male and female in one soul) wanted to experience this world, God prepared the planet to accommodate incarnating human souls.

      Before you get uncomfortable with a God that would kill animals to make room for humans, you have to keep in mind that according to Cayce’s readings, there is no real death, only a change from matter to energy, or from form to formlessness. The animals, and all their glory, remain alive in the infinite, never-ending mind of God. They are no longer manifesting physically in matter on this planet, but they live. Many humans, after experiencing matter, may now prefer life in the infinite, formless spirit to that in the flesh of matter.

      Before God acted to prepare the earth, Cayce’s readings tell that human souls met in a council to discuss how they, the humans, might rid the earth of these dangerous animals. You recall that the Atlanteans had actually turned their life-giving ray into a death ray to use against these animals. But a better method was necessary if the planet was to become a human planet.