Title page of Rudolf Steiner's book on Atlantis and Lemuria. The term 'Akashic records' refers to a kind of collective memory-bank on the astral plane, which the initiate can tap to discover facts about the past that have escaped documentation.
Ignatius Donnelly's re-evocation of Atlantis inspired the imaginations of many others enamored with the notions of mythic lands and symbolic connections across time. People longed to know more, to verify his reconstruction and give it substance. But a problem emerged in how to proceed further. Diving to the ocean floor was not yet feasible, and while soundings could trace the sea-bed's contours, they revealed little about what may lie on it. Further investigation could be done in only two ways: by finding other accounts of Atlantis, and by occult or paranormal techniques.
These were the methods of choice of the Theosophical Society,
founded by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in 1875. Madame Blavatsky claimed
to be privy to the secret writings and knowledge of a group of Masters
of Wisdom or Mahatmas, advanced beings who had lived for ages in remote
Asian retreats, influencing the world and illuminating a favored view,
by telepathy and other such extraordinary methods. On the basis of these
secret texts, she asserted that the Atlanteans were the fourth in
a series of seven 'root-races' or phases of human development, divided
further into sub-races across continents over aeons of time. The
Atlanteans were tall beings, but physically like ourselves, male and female,
and highly civilized, the founders of all civilization known to history,
and the initiators of orders of wise men such as the Druids and Brahmins.
William Scott-Elliott, a merchant banker and amateur anthropologist, followed Madame Blavatsky's lead in The Story of Atlantis (1896), expounding on Atlantis' history by means of what he called 'astral clairvoyance'. Sub-races of the Atlanteans included the original Semites and Mongols. But Atlantis' primary sub-race was the Toltecs, a term applied in conventional history to the builders of Tula north of Mexico City. Scott-Elliot's Toltecs were a gifted people, eight feet tall and with a magnificent capital, the City of the Golden Gates, now under the sea west of Senegal. Theirs was a splendid civilization and very knowledgeable, expanding into America, Egypt, and Britain, building the pyramids and Stonehenge. The Toltecs had aircraft using a kind of jet propulsion, and they practiced magic, for a long time applying their psychic and paranormal techniques benignly. But some took to sorcery for selfish and evil ends, leading to an inundation and further disasters culminating in the final downfall. Ironically, then, Scott-Elliott's fantastic recreation returned to the original Platonic conception of Atlantis' fall as a moral one, resulting from its misuse of power.
Engraving of Australian Aborigines, New South Wales, 1798
Artist's Impression of Atlantean City, New Atlantis, 1976