Edgar Cayce's Atlantis. John Van Auken

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