Conflict broke out between those who followed the law of one and the sons of Belial (a.k.a. those of Belial), the latter a movement centered on religious skepticism, materialism, hedonism, and selfish pursuits. Cayce’s readings were usually rendered in a garbled, sometimes nearly incomprehensible prose which at times confounded even his sons, who tried in subsequent writings to explain what their father—or The Source — actually meant. Here is how Hugh Lynn Cayce, writing in 1935, deciphered the account of the dispute:
Very early in Atlantean history, two factions arose that were deeply split over the issue of how to treat these souls that had become so entangled in matter. … The sons of the law of one were those who believed the soul was a gift from God and strove to keep the race pure, free from animal characteristics and appendages. They wanted to aid those deeply entangled in the physical world and help them regain their positions as creatures of God. The sons of Belial were those without standard or morality and believed in gratification of the senses without respect to others. They looked down on these entangled souls as “things” to be treated as slaves or machines.
Evidently, though, it was not this conflict that led to the first destruction of Atlantis around 50,700 B.C.E. The precipitating event was an attempt to protect the civilized world—which had now spread beyond that continent and into regions such as Egypt and India—against marauding giant land animals, sea serpents, and flying creatures. These monsters destroyed land and crops and menaced human beings, making life unbearable to those who were trying to conduct business. It is not wholly clear what these animals were supposed to be. Some readings make them sound like dinosaurs, others monstrous thought creations. In any event, a gathering of nations was held in Egypt—one country where the bestial hordes had yet to penetrate—where those attending discussed ways to slaughter the beasts into extinction via some sort of “death ray.”
In a fashion less than clear, the ultimate consequence—apparently triggered in part by the misuse of the advanced Atlantean weapons technology in the anti-monster war—the earth’s axis shifted. Much—albeit by no means all—of Atlantis was broken up, and the climates of the world’s various regions changed so radically that the monsters died out. Many human beings fell victim to the cataclysm, too, and many Atlanteans fled to other islands and nations. A number survived on the continent, now reduced to a series of five islands, to rebuild and resume social and technological development over the next 22,000 years. Through Atlantis’ history, the entity Amilius continued to reincarnate and, under different names, push his (or her; some incarnations were as a woman) countrymen in positive, productive directions while seeking to frustrate the nefarious schemes of those of Belial.
In 28,000 B.C.E. the second and final destruction of Atlantis took place, this time as a direct result of technology disastrously misapplied. The Atlanteans had developed some sort of enormous crystalline “power station” fueled by a “firestone.” After it was “unintentionally turned too high,” according to The Source, it ignited a shattering explosion, sparking massive volcanic activity and generating a tidal wave that swept across much of the world, to be remembered in legends of the Great Flood. The climate was altered again, possibly because of a polar shift.
Was the once-great Mayan civilization actually built by Atlanteans? (iStock)
Two of Atlantis’ remaining five islands vanished beneath the water, leaving only Poseidia, Aryan, and Og. Many Atlanteans fled or migrated elsewhere, to serve the Law of One as religious leaders. Some went to Egypt, others to the Yucatan and Peru and to what would be the states of Nevada and Colorado. The Atlanteans had long since taken on more or less the appearance and height of human beings as we know them today. The Source described the average lost continental as “five feet ten inches [about two meters], weighing a hundred and sixty pounds; color as of gold that is burnished; yet keen of eye, gray in color. Hair as golden as the body. In activity alert, keen, piercing in vision, and of influence on those that approached.”
Meanwhile, on the surviving Atlantis islands the dispute between the two factions went on, with one dominating for a period, then another. Laborers and the poor also battled for recognition and a rightful place, further roiling the already unstable social and political situation. Then, by around 11,000 B.C.E., authorities concluded that the remaining islands were also destined eventually to fall apart. Over the next thousand years, until the final disaster occurred, migrations sent Atlanteans around the globe, including into the interior of North America, where they would be remembered as the Mound Builders. In a November 12, 1933, reading, The Source reported:
Then, with the leavings of the civilization in Atlantis (in Poseidia, more specific), Iltar—with a group of followers that had been of the household of Atlan, the followers of the worship of the One—with some 10 individuals —left this land Poseidia, and came westward, entering what would now be a portion of Yucatan. And there began, with the activities of the peoples there, the development into a civilization that rose much in the same manner as that which had been in the Atlantean land. [The reference is to the Mayans.] Others left the land later. Others had left the land earlier. There had been upheavals earlier from the land of Mu, or Lemuria, and these had their part in the changing … when much of the contour of the land in Central America and Mexico was changed to that similar to [what] may be seen in the present.
Cayce, who made many predictions about coming events in the twentieth century, declared that Atlantis would rise from the depths in 1968 or 1969. He said that this extraordinary event would take place in a part of the Bahamas, the three-island chain of Bimini (North Bimini, South Bimini, East Bimini) 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the coast of Florida and a part of the Bahamas.
In the 1930s, as the bulk of Cayce’s Atlantis readings—remarkably consistent, if nothing else—were conducted, his followers were inclined to take his word, or at least not to search actively for verification. It would be some years before some adventurers were curious enough to go looking. The results would be disappointing. A sympathetic (if not entirely uncritical) observer, K. Paul Johnson, sums it up in a sentence: “There appears to be no case in which historical information in the readings that was not generally known at the time has subsequently been proven true.” That, of course, prominently includes Atlantis.
From the 1960s to the present, explorations of the waters around Bimini have sought evidence of the lost continent. Some searchers, perhaps the most vocal of them David Zink, who photographed them, found a series of large, stones, positioned in straight lines and sharp right angles, which they thought were a major archaeological discovery: an Atlantean road. Zink went on to write a whole book on the subject.
A 1923 illustration from a Swedish journal speculated that the Azores are the last visible remnants of Atlantis (Mary Evans Picture Library).
UNDERWATER CIVILIZATION
Ivan T. Sanderson (1911–1973) was a bright, articulate man, trained in zoology, botany, and geology at Cambridge University. He became an American citizen in 1947, while retaining his British citizenship. Until the last decade of his life, he traveled widely collecting animal specimens and writing popular books about wildlife around the world. In the 1950s, as a regular guest on television talk and variety shows, he presented specimens of exotic creatures. For a time he was something of a celebrity in the early television age.
There was another, less well-known side to Sanderson. It would come to dominate his life and career in the last decade and a half, though his interest in the world’s mysterious and controversial phenomena had been sparked, he would claim, when he attended a lecture by Charles Fort, the influential author of books on anomalies. As early as 1948, in a Saturday Evening