06/29/01
Another individual who claimed to have authority on Atlantis was Edgar Cayce (1877 – 1945). He was a professional photographer and Sunday school teacher. He was also a clairvoyant who was renowned for his ability to diagnose disease. The book Edgar Cayce on Atlantis mentions that he recorded his "readings,’ many of which describe Atlantis.
The reason given for Cayce being able to gain so much information about Atlantis from people living in his own time was that he believed in reincarnation and claimed to "read" past lives of his 1600 or so patrons. He claims that at least 700 had past lives in Atlantis.
Cayce also agrees with evolution, similar to Heindel’s theory. Cayce also agrees with Heindel that man’s evolution was from spirit to flesh. That is, that humans were spirit beings that took on material form:
These souls or spiritual creations began to project themselves into matter, possibly first as thought forms, then into more substantial flesh, probably for their own diversion.1
God’s spiritual creations have now put on materiality.2
Edgar Cayce presents the first mention that I have found that the Atlanteans were advanced in matters of transportation (flight), electricity (radio and TV), and so forth.
He also calls Atlantis Poseidia, which may be a form of Poseidon. And you will recall that, according to Plato, Poseidon was the god of Atlantis. He also mentions that prior to the destruction of Atlantis, the inhabitants had warning and ample time to evacuate. The refugees, he claims, migrated to the Americas and northeastern Africa. That would explain the similarities between native American and Egyptian artifacts and lore.
He is called the "sleeping" prophet because he would go into trances to do his readings and many of his predictions are said to have come true.
Another book that I picked up claimed that the account of Atlantis from Plato must be real, otherwise, why would Plato spend so much time on the details?
If this argument were true, then we should also say that The Illiad is true. Or what about The Odyssey with its nine or so volumes?
Ignatius Donnelly (1831 – 1901) authored a novel about Atlantis in 1882. I was not able to get hold of that book for reference; however, the book is called "speculative" by the Encyclopædia Britannica. Donnelly also authored books describing a near miss of an asteroid with earth, and also advocated that Francis Bacon was the true author of works attributed to Marlowe, Montaigne, and Shakespeare. He also argued that since civilizations on both sides of the Atlantic used solar calendars and had pyramids and such, that they must be from a common, Atlantean root.
I think it’s interesting that every supporter of Atlantis based on Plato’s writings blatantly ignores Plato’s proliferation on the Greek gods. I think these people want to believe in Atlantis so badly that they simply overlook the absurdity of the Greek mythology. These same people will sharply ridicule Christianity as fanciful concoctions of a guilty mind, but accept without argument the creation and formation of Atlantis as the action of mythical Greek gods.
Conversely, in more than a hundred years of reporting, National Geographic has not devoted a single article to Atlantis. This periodical has notoriously documented geographical and archaeological discoveries that are worthy of mention.
The Encyclopædia Britannica says of Atlantis:
[The] legendary island in the Atlantic, just beyond the Pillars of Hercules, finally overwhelmed by the sea. It has variously been identified with the Americas, Scandinavia, the Canary Islands and Palestine.3
The Grolier Encyclopedia says:
[A] mythical island in the Atlantic. The Island has been variously identified with the Azores, the Canaries, and Crete.4
The Book of Knowledge states of Atlantis:
A continent in the Atlantic Ocean, where a fine civilization was supposed to have flourished in the mythical past.5
As you can see there are basically two camps regarding Atlantis; the group that wants to project onto Atlantis conjured ideas and fantasies passed off as fact, and the realists who cannot reasonably accept the account of Atlantis as factual in the absence of any real evidence.