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Gateway to Atlantis: The Search for the Source of a Lost Civilization
Gateway to Atlantis
by Andrew Collins
(Carroll & Graf)
Was there truly an ancient continent somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean that succumbed to cataclysmic floods sometime around the end of the last Ice Age (circa 10,000 to 8,000 BC) and then all but disappeared to history? If so, is there any genuine hard evidence to show that the legend of Atlantis is founded in truth?
Andrew Collins, author of Gateway to Atlantis, says yes. And over the course of this book, he weaves together various clues across multiple scholarly disciplines to demonstrate that indeed there is ample reason to conclude that the legend of Atlantis is actually a significant part of human history, one that may even tie together the ancient histories of Mesoamerican, European and Near East cultures.
Gateway to Atlantis does not promote a New Age image of Atlantean pyramids and crystal mindlight generators — regardless of whether such ideas are true or not. Rather, Mr. Collins is an astute historical detective who bases his arguments on ancient source material and a broad base of knowledge regarding ancient cultures, peoples and geographies. He may very well have pieced together just about all of the necessary clues to pinpoint exactly where the ancient seat of Atlantis existed. Only time — and archaeological dedication — will tell if Mr. Collins is right.
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“Very possibly, these are the same islands that Plato informs us were used by ancient voyagers to reach ‘the opposite continent’, i.e. the American mainland. What is more, the suggestion that Atlantis also gained control of lands within the Pillars of Hercules clearly implies that the empire established itself in both Europe and Libya. All this would indicate some kind of connection between the supposed Atlanteans of the Western Ocean and the ‘voyagers’ from within the Mediterranean, whom Plato tells us were able to reach ‘the opposite continent’ via a series of ‘other islands’, before the final destruction of Atlantis.” (p. 57)
Plato
Plato is the main and primary source of the Atlantean legend, and his fictional accounts of this mythic land, as told in the Timaeus and the Critias, are where Mr. Collins begins. And one of the most intriguing clues Plato gives us is the idea that ancient voyagers, prior to the destruction of Atlantis, used the Atlantean islands as stopovers to reach an “opposite continent” that Mr. Collins identifies as the American mainland.
Plato is the starting place for Mr. Collins’ Atlantean detective story and he distills some important clues from Plato’s fictional account. Plato makes it clear that mariners from some past age were able to cross the Atlantic Ocean and reach the Atlantean mainland — as well as the “opposite” continent beyond the Atlantean islands. A natural cataclysm involving earthquakes and floods destroyed the Atlantean islands and left, in the wake of the destruction, “an ‘impassable sea’ of mud and shoals (which Mr. Collins identifies as either the Sargasso Sea or the shallow waters of the Bahamas, or both) [that] occupies the former position of the sunken island preventing any further navigation to ‘the opposite continent’.” (p. 72)
If this is indeed true, how did the memory of this prehistoric age survive some 8,000 years and make its way across the Atlantic to reach Plato?
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” …I now feel we can safely conclude that the Hesperides were indeed the West Indies, and that a sketchy knowledge of this island group’s existence persisted into Roman times. It was information such as this that writers including Pliny, Sebosus and Solinus would seem to have picked up on and used as geographical anecdotes in their respective works. In turn, much later writers such as Isidore of Seville, Dicuil and Honorius of Autun included this information in their own works, which were much later consulted by medieval cartographers prior to the age of discovery. In this way ancient maritime lore, perhaps thousands of years old, came into the possession of European explorers and chroniclers in the wake of Columbus’ first voyage to the New World.” (p. 98)
Transatlantic Voyages
In order to determine whether or not ancient mariners had crossed the Atlantic, Mr. Collins scours the ancient works. But the old texts abound with islands whose ancient names often don’t have clearly identified modern counterparts. Islands such as the Gorgades, the Blessed Isles, the Fortunate Isles and the Hesperides are often referenced — however, the modern islands to which those names refer are, apparently, still debated.
After some heavy detective work, Mr. Collins seems to make sense of all the various ancient island names and concludes that the Hesperides refers to the islands of the West Indies, in the Caribbean. This is an extremely important deduction because it means that all ancient references to voyages to the Hesperides refer to Atlantic crossings to the Caribbean — in other words, transatlantic voyages.
“…if I am correct in my identification of the geographical locations to which he alludes, then we have a very rare discovery indeed. I say this because the words of Sebosus, as Oviedo obviously realised in the sixteenth century, appear to confirm that transatlantic journeys had taken place between Cape Verde on the African coast and the West Indies in ancient times. Evidence that this is indeed the case comes from the 40 days’ sailing time Sebosus gives for the voyage between the Gorgades and the Hesperides.” (p. 95)
Apparently, 40 days sailing time is an accurate duration between the Cape Verde Isles (which Mr. Collins identifies with the ancient Gorgades islands, off the west coast of Africa) and the islands of the West Indies (which Mr. Collins identifies with the Hesperides). If Mr. Collins is correct — and he pores through a vast amount of research to support the identification of these islands — then we have some substantial evidence to support the idea of ancient transatlantic voyages. This alone is enough to upset the modern notion of our ancient history.
But if the islands of the Caribbean, also known today as the Antilles (note the consonants “A-T-L” inherent in both Antilles and Atlantis) are the source of the Atlantean legend which was then brought east to Europe via ancient transatlantic voyagers, then who were these ancient mariners? Is there any evidentiary support of a seagoing people with transatlantic capabilities?
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“…if the Phoenicians and Carthaginians really were responsible for introducing Caribbean catastrophe myths to the Mediterranean world prior to the age of Plato, could these nations be linked directly to the Atlantis legend? Incredibly the answer is yes.” (p. 161-162)
The Phoenicians
In addition to ancient tales alluding to transatlantic voyages, it seems that Egyptian mummies hold some tantalizing clues that suggest transatlantic voyages must have occurred during Pharaonic times. Numerous mummies have been found to contain residue of tobacco and coca leaves. While it’s possible that tobacco leaves could have reached Egypt from more fertile parts of Africa during ancient times, Mr. Collins notes that the only source of the coca leaves could have been from the Americas.
“As fantastic as this proposal might seem, the only realistic solution to explain the discovery of cocaine in Egyptian mummies is to suggest trading contact between the two continents. Furthermore, if the coca leaf was really being exported in this manner, there has to be a possibility that tobacco from Central America was also being shipped to the ancient world. The presence of tobacco and cocaine in the same Egyptian individuals would tend to support this supposition. Moreover, the strange relationship between the names used for tobacco smoking on both sides of the Atlantic implies a cross-fertilisation of terminology, techniques, and quite possibly even plants and produce centuries before the age of Columbus. Only by establishing this ancient trade route can we go on to propose a means by which knowledge of the Caribbean islands, and the cataclysms they would seem to have suffered in some past age, can have reached the Mediterranean world prior to the age of Plato.” (p. 124)
The Phoenicians were, apparently, accomplished mariners, setting up trade routes from islands off the west coast of Africa all the way up to the British Isles. And while Mr. Collins cites circumstantial evidence from ancient texts to support the idea that the ancient Phoenicians made it to the American shores, multiple discoveries in New England of ancient Carthaginian coins (ancient Carthage having originated as a Phoenician colony) gives hard credence to the idea that Phoenician mariners must have reached America in ancient times.
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“What all this suggests is that memories were preserved among the tribes of Mesoamerica regarding a single island landmass from which came a displaced peoples who formed the ruling dynasties of the earliest races to inhabit the region.” (p. 223)
Conquest & Cataclysm
Via the conquest of the New World, Mr. Collins takes the reader on a journey into indigenous Mesoamerican myth — myth that over and over again, across multiple cultures throughout the Americas, talks about an ancient Caribbean cataclysm that tore apart a single landmass via earthquakes and floods, leaving behind the scattered islands that we know today.
Mr. Collins provides clues to ancient civilizations that existed in the Caribbean prior to the indigenous populations that were found when the Portuguese and Spanish arrived in the New World. From Olmec, Toltec, Aztec, Maya, Taino, Carib and other indigenous sources, Mr. Collins presents a convincing case that the native Mesoamerican tradition is consistent: They all speak of the origins of their civilization having emerged from the ruins from some great ancient cataclysm.
But what was this cataclysm?
Amazingly, Mr. Collins presents astounding geological evidence across the southeastern part of North America — a scarred, lunar-type landscape of impact craters known as the Carolina Bays. Mr. Collins suggests that the Carolina Bays is the geological scarring that resulted from a comet, breaking up in mid-flight, as it headed just beyond what is now the Caribbean, and what was once known as the continent of Atlantis. Mr. Collins cites two deep sea impact sites just to the east of the Caribbean as the comet’s ground zero.
The tsunamis that resulted devastated the Atlantean islands and affected the Earth’s climate such that the last Ice Age ended, the ice melted, the water levels rose — and the waters that covered that Atlantean landmass never receded.
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“All the evidence presented by the mythological traditions of the early cultures of Mesoamerica points toward the islands of the Greater Antilles being the original homeland of their earliest ancestors and wisdom-bringers, described repeatedly as ‘serpents’ or ‘feathered serpents’.” (p. 237)
The Nephilim
Mr. Collins wraps up Gateway to Atlantis with some fascinating deductions, comparing the Mesoamerican legends of the serpent people with the Hebrew tradition of the Nephilim, the race of titans (perhaps serpent-like) who helped humanity re-establish civilization following the aftermath of the global cataclysm that ended the last Ice Age.
As this burgeoning paradigm unfolds before us in this age of information and awakening, it seems perfectly logical that if there truly was a race of advanced beings on planet Earth who helped jump start human civilization during pre-historic times, then the myths of these beings should be consistent across the planet. Mr. Collins demonstrates that there is good evidence to support this consistency.
Conclusion
At the outset of this review, I noted that Mr. Collins had identified the ancient seat of the Atlantean empire — and I have purposefully left out that important tidbit of information. I don’t want to give away everything.
Gateway to Atlantis may very well be the definitive scholarly work on raising Atlantis from its watery tomb. At the very least, Mr. Collins has demonstrated with an abundant amount of direct evidence that there is a fascinating narrative to explain how the story of Atlantis passed from history to legend to myth — from destruction to indigenous lore; from the tales of ancient transatlantic mariners to Egypt; and from Egypt to Plato.
It is entirely within the realm of possibility that with Gateway to Atlantis Mr. Collins has hit ground zero. And perhaps with further investigation into the area identified by Mr. Collins, we may eventually be able to flesh out the part of this narrative that precedes the destruction of Atlantean continent.
Forgotten Civilization
Forgotten Civilization
The Role of Solar Outbursts in Our Past and Future
by Robert M. Schoch, Ph.D.
(Inner Traditions)
Robert M. Schoch is a geologist who, in the 1990’s (at the behest of renegade Egyptologist John Anthony West), threw mainstream Egyptology into turmoil when he noted that the enclosure which surrounds the Sphinx exhibits weathering characteristics consistent with heavy rainfall — a climatic condition that the Giza plateau hadn’t witnessed since at least 5000 BCE. By making this claim, Mr. Schoch upturned the apple cart. The Sphinx could not have been constructed in 2500 BCE, the date mainstream Egyptology ascribes to it. Even to this day, Egyptologists have a hard time giving up on 2500 BCE, despite the inconvenient evidence brought forth by Mr. Schoch and confirmed by other geologists.
One of the biggest problems with re-dating the megalithic structures of ancient Egypt is that we do not have archaeological evidence of a society that existed prior to the time of the pharaohs and which demonstrated having the tools and the organization to complete such a monumental project. Despite the geological evidence, Mr. Schoch didn’t have any “pottery shards” (p37). But all this hubbub occurred during the ’90s — before the archaeologists had unearthed definitive proof of a culture that both lived around 10,000 BCE and had the means to construct a megalithic city known today as Göbekli Tepe.
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“Looking only at style and quality of workmanship, one might easily suggest that Göbekli Tepe dates to between 3000 BCE and 1000 BCE. How wrong one would be. Based on radiocarbon analyses, the site goes back to the period of 10,000 BCE to 9000 BCE and was intentionally buried circa 8000 BCE.” (p41)
10,000 BCE
Those who are unearthing and studying Göbekli Tepe may very well be looking at the remains of a culture that co-existed during the same time period as the mythical Atlantis…and was subject to the very same global cataclysm that submerged that civilization beneath the waters of the Earth and the legends of our collective memory.
“Picture Stonehenge, multiply it by twenty, [and] carve the pillars more ornately…Immense, finely carved, and decorated T-shaped limestone pillars, many in the range of two to five and one-half maters tall and weighing up to an estimated ten to fifteen tons, form circles…and based on geophysical surveys, the entire site may cover three dozen hectares (about ninety acres) and contain another sixteen to twenty stone circles…This is an immense complex!” (p40)
With Göbekli Tepe, Mr. Schoch has confirmation that a sophisticated human culture existed during the period of time in which he dates the Sphinx. But what happened to it?
Scientists agree that sometime around 10,000 BCE, the last ice age ended. The ice melted. The sea levels rose. The face of the planet changed. Mr. Schoch contends that the trigger for this planet-changing event was a massive solar outburst.
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“The solar activity data, the climatic data, the petroglyphs, the rongorongo texts, and the demise of the early civilizations at the end of the last ice age indicate that something mighty — something catastrophic — was happening. All of the evidence points to some sort of solar outburst or cosmic event wreaking terror on the surface of the Earth. Today the Sun is starting to exhibit the same behavior as seen over ten thousand years ago when catastrophe hit. Will we heed the warning signs? Will we take the lessons of the past seriously and prepare for the future?” (p108)
The Glyphs
Sunspots and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are both well-known characteristics of the sun — and it’s also well-known that particularly strong CMEs have the potential to wreak havoc on our planet, affecting our magnetosphere, our ozone layer and the entire technological network that spans the globe. According to Mr. Schoch, we may very well be due for a big one — one that may rival the solar outburst that ended the last ice age.
Mr. Schoch supports this claim with solar activity data and climatic data that suggest these massive solar outbursts occur in measurable cycles; and the cycle seems to imply that we are due — sometime within this century, or perhaps even tomorrow.
If this solar event occurs, we would see massive auroral displays in the skies around the globe. And based on experiments conducted by plasma physicist Anthony L. Peratt, Mr. Schoch suggests that many of the ancient petroglyphs found around the planet are, in fact, representations of the images the ancients saw in the skies when the massive plasma discharges collided with our magnetosphere.
“Powerful plasma discharges, much more powerful than the auroras observed in the present day, form structures known as plasma columns that can expand in some places and constrict or narrow in other places…In profile these plasma columns can form donut shapes and may look like intertwining snakes, a stack of circles, or even resemble human stick figures…”(p92)
Peratt’s experiments demonstrated the variety of figures and shapes that intense plasma discharges can create — and when Mr. Schoch compared those images to Easter Island glyphs (known as the rongorongo script), the similarities were striking. Additionally, when Mr. Schoch compared the rongorongo script to the geoglyphs known as the Nazca lines, he found striking similarities as well.
Could it be that the ancients were recording on land what they were witnessing in the skies?
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“Based on the similarity of the rongorongo glyphs to the images seen in the skies during super auroral events and, as modeled by Peratt (2003), powerful solar outbursts and the resulting plasma configurations that would have been observed, I believe that the rongorongo glyphs were initially inspired by those events in the skies. The rongorongo was a record of what was seen — literally — and it was recorded in a way that made sense to the scribes and copyists of the time.” (p164-165)
Conclusion
I’m certain that Mr. Schoch will always be remembered as the geologist who challenged mainstream Egyptologists, archaeologists, anthropologists and historians — and won. As time marches on, the validity of Mr. Schoch’s evidence becomes clearer to a wider audience.
His newest claim — that many of Earth’s ancient glyphs are representations of what our ancestors witnessed during an ice age-ending, cataclysmic solar outburst that may repeat itself — certainly has legs on which to walk. Time will tell. And if he’s right, many of us will be around to witness it.
Tales of Ancient Egypt
Edgar Cayce’s Tales of Ancient Egypt
by John Van Auken
Students of esoterica know that the history of humanity stretches far beyond the 6,000 years of common knowledge. Beyond the dynastic period of ancient Egypt, beyond Babylon and Sumeria – most likely to the sunken continents of Atlantis and Lemuria. And it’s likely that the seeds of who we are that were sown so long ago originated from beyond this planet.
Edgar Cayce’s Tales of Ancient Egypt, as interpreted and related by Cayce scholar John Van Auken, takes us to the period of ancient Egypt’s birth and paints an in-depth portrait of the spiritual and political side of its origins.
The Men Behind the Book
John Van Auken has been studying Cayce’s voluminous readings for the past 40 years, specializing in the ancient mysteries and lost civilizations. Auken is also a director at Cayce’s Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E.). Auken has also written From Karma to Grace (a book on spiritual living based on Cayce’s readings) and Edgar Cayce and the Kabbalah. Cayce’s readings, which were transcribed while Cayce was in a trance state accessing the Akashic Records, are often filled with archaic and confusing language. Cayce’s readings are usually not easily understood. Having a Cayce scholar like Auken who is not only well-versed in Cayce’s readings but also the ancient civilizations about which Cayce speaks makes Auken an invaluable resource in making sense of Cayce’s readings – which may very well be some of the most important, if not entirely prophetic, body of work of the last 100 years.
Edgar Cayce grew up a simple, rural man who lived in the late 19th and early 20th Century. He became well known as the “sleeping prophet” for his ability to fall into a trance state and access information from a higher dimensional state. During his trances, he gave medical information to those who were sick, giving them the information necessary to heal. He gave information to oil prospectors that helped them determine where to drill. Because his readings were so accurate and because he had such success, particularly in healing the sick, Cayce became one of the world’s most renowned psychics. During Cayce’s readings, his wife was the intermediary between the clients and Cayce. She asked the questions on the client’s behalf. Starting in 1923, Cayce hired a secretary who began transcribing his readings. Today, 14,000 of Cayce’s readings are stored and available at the A.R.E. in Virginia Beach (as well as online and on disc).
Among Cayce’s most interesting readings are those involving spirituality, Atlantis and ancient mysteries.
Tales of Ancient Egypt
The book begins with the story of how ancient Egypt was first populated by Nubians, then peacefully “invaded” by 900 survivors of the Atlantean destruction who descended from a mountainous region of Turkey and met with a population that was well taken care of by the river Nile and preferred to make a peaceful co-existence with the newcomers. The high priest of the Atlanteans was Ra-Ta, a previous incarnation of Cayce’s.
The destruction of Atlantis signaled the end of humanity’s First Creation and the beginning of the Second Creation. The planet was nearly wiped clean of humans and the mission in those days was to repopulate the planet. Many in these ancient times still retained the Law of One philosophy of our ancestors – the idea that we are a single consciousness having individual experiences as we evolve our way back to Source. But as is also foretold by the Hindu Yuga cycle, humanity was falling into a period of extreme duality. Good and evil. Our Law of One-ness would be replaced by division, separateness, other-ness, us-versus-them. (We are now coming out of this period as the veil over the truth of who we are is being lifted.)
Auken goes on to tell Cayce’s tales of the more important figures in Egypt’s pre-Dynastic era, often intertwining Egyptian gods into the story.
Hermes-Thoth
Auken mentions that the character of Hermes-Thoth is a difficult one to pinpoint in history – and he is right on. Thoth is an extremely confusing character – appearing in Egypt as Thoth, in Greece as Hermes and in Rome as Mercury. Auken notes that Thoth has been identified at times as Enoch. And apparently one Cayce reading identifies Thoth as a prior incarnation of Jesus. All very confusing indeed. But one consistency I’ve found is that Cayce identifies Thoth as the builder of the Great Pyramid. Drunvalo Melchizedek also claims this is so.
The Mysteries
The first half of Tales details the lives of a number of pre-Dynastic characters – like Ra-Ta and others who surrounded him (and who reincarnated with Edgar Cayce to be his close friends, family and wife). The second half of the book delves into Cayce’s readings that deal with some of the mysteries of ancient Egypt. These subjects deal with ancient flight and caches of prehistoric records buried near the Sphinx on the Giza Plateau as well as prophecies that were built into the physical character of the Great Pyramid. Equally as fascinating is Cayce’s tales of where Jesus spent his so-called missing years – studying in India and training for higher states of consciousness within the Great Pyramid.
The Three Chambers
Auken does a noble job of making sense of a period of human history that is shrouded in mystery. But perhaps one day will come when we will know beyond a shadow of a doubt what our true history and heritage is.
A most curious piece of information in the Cayce collection of psychic discourses is his claim that there are three hidden chambers on this planet containing stone tablets upon which Atlanteans wrote a prehistoric story of a time when human spirits began to enter material bodies. He said that the stone tablets document millions of years of semi-physical activity in the mythological lands of Mu, Lemuria, Atlantis, Og, Oz, Zu and others. The stones tell of a time when the life forces of the godlings of the Creator were attempting to manifest themselves in this three-dimensional world from multidimensional realms beyond our normal perception. These ancient beings retained their immortality and projected into matter from out of what we would consider to be pure energy or spirit. They were soul-minds and could push their consciousness into matter or withdraw into higher dimensions at will …
According to Cayce, the three record chambers containing these ancient stone recorders are located in three separate locations on the planet. One is under the waters near the Bahamian island of Bimini near the Gulf Stream in a sunken Atlantean temple. Another is underground near the Sphinx in Giza, Egypt. The third is beneath an over-hanging temple in the Mayan lands …
Cayce stated, “as time draws nigh when changes are to come about, there may be the opening of those three places where the records are one, to those that are the initiates in the knowledge of the One God …”
We are aspects of that One God.