Monthly JMG Book Special!

[ecosophia]

As mentioned earlier, the folks at Llewellyn have obligingly given me a set of discount codes for my backlist, one per month, 20% off if you order it directly from the Llewellyn website. For the month of September, the book on sale is Atlantis: Ancient Legacy, Hidden Prophecy, my book on the Atlantis myth and the unexpected realities behind it. You can order a copy here; enter the discount code JMG0918 at checkout for the 20% off. 

While you're waiting for it to arrive, if you've got questions about the book, why, I'm the one to ask. ;-)

Comments

Atlantis

[(Anonymous)]

JMG,

I'll be ordering the book, but yes, I'll ask a few questions, thanks. First, I believe that you once posted a comment stating that you didn't think Atlantis had anything approaching a high-tech civilization as has sometimes been envisioned by folks like the author of A Dweller On Two Planets and Edgar Cayce. You added that you did believe that the people of Atlantis were very psychic, at least at some point in their history. I'm inclined to think this way myself, but I wonder - as a highly psychic culture, wouldn't it have been possible for Atlanteans to have developed a science of sorts, based on entirely different principles than our science, a completely intuitive science perhaps, and one that could have produced something like anti-gravity vimanas and the like?

Second, whether or not the Atlanteans had developed a tech-producing science, do you believe the cascading destruction of Atlantis was caused by misuse of psychic energy? Misuse of psychic energy can certainly result in powerfully destructive forces, all the more so if the population as a whole is highly psychic.

Thanks again - Will M

Re: Atlantis

[ecosophia]

1) I've always been impressed by John Michell's comment in A View Over Atlantis that the advanced technology of the ancients may have been so different from ours that we wouldn't even recognize it as a technology. Thus I have my doubts about antigravity vimanas -- we'd recognize those instantly as aircraft, even if we might not understand the principles by which they operate. For what it's worth, I think there's some reason to think that aircraft not utterly different from ours were invented at some point in very ancient times, and someday when I want to lose all credibility with the rationalist end of my readers, I'll explain why -- but a technology based on psychism would be so different from ours that I doubt we'd even understand what it was supposed to do.

The business about psychism, by the way, is something that saw a lot of discussion among occultists. The claim is that the Atlanteans carried out a long program of selective breeding in pursuit of a range of unusual mental powers, and that this is why the Celtic peoples of northwest Europe have such a high incidence of "the Second Sight" -- northwestern Europe is supposed to have gotten a big influx of Atlantean refugees before the final catastrophe, including members of the Sacred Clan, and their genetics ended up becoming fairly widespread among the Celtic peoples.

2) The idea that the fall of Atlantis was the result of the misuse of magical or psychic powers was introduced to the legend by H.P. Blavatsky in her books Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine. It's not in Plato, the original source of the legend, nor is it in any pre-Blavatskian source. So its relevance depends on your opinion of what Blavatsky's sources were and what she was trying to do.

Re: Atlantis

[(Anonymous)]

Very interesting, thanks. I've read speculation that the Atlantean race was red, perhaps Toltec-like in appearance, thus the very early antecedents of north and south native Americans were indeed Atlanteans who fled the sinking continent. Some have also speculated that the aura of sadness and defeat that Native Americans often seem to possess is the result of race-memory dating back to the failures of Atlantis - although it would seem to me that being forcefully removed from their sacred lands and herded into reservations would be reason enough to carry an aura of sadness and defeat.

Re: Atlantis

[ecosophia]

I suspect the latter is far more likely to be an issue, since the sinking of Atlantis happened around 9600 BCE -- that is to say, long enough ago that pretty much everyone involved has gotten over it by now. As for the idea that the Atlanteans were related to Native Americans, that's been a theme in occult writings on Atlantis for a long time, and it also makes sense if I'm right about the location, of course.

Re: Atlantis

[(Anonymous)]

Concerning the Sacred Clan, was it so that these gifts ultimately became increasingly accompanied by mental issues, to the point where it was no longer worth the hassle, or is this not stated anywhere?

This does make me wonder though; my sense of Self is located at the heart. I never realized this was odd until Butler (?) pointed it out in one of his books (I think it was How to Read the Aura). Supposedly that’s a somewhat more common thing amongst people with Celtic ancestry, so it might be associated.

- Brigyn

Re: Atlantis

[ecosophia]

None of the sources I know of discuss that possibility. It's simply mentioned that a significant fraction of the Sacred Clan got out in time, and their descendants are responsible for the prevalence of the Second Sight among the Celts.

Re: Atlantis

[(Anonymous)]

As long as you don't go Ancient Aliens on us, I think you'll be just fine. ;)

Re: Atlantis

[ecosophia]

Hah! I thought Erich von Daniken was unconvincing when I first read him, and I was nine years old at the time.