Thursday 17 November 2022

Atlantis, Blavatsky (and Ignatius Donnelly)

Blavatsky first presented her theories of Atlantis in 1877 (Isis Unveiled I, chs. 14 & 15). In 1880, she wrote a long article: A Land of Mystery, a kind of addenda to the Atlantis sections in Isis Unveiled, mainly about archaeology in Meso and South America. ([Theosophist, Vol. I, No. 6, March, 1880, pp. 159-161] Blavatsky, Collected Writings, Vol. 2 , p. 303) 

Blavatsky positively acknowledged Ignatius Donnelly's Atlantis upon publication & quoted a review from the NY Times (?) (Theosophist v3 June 1882 p237 - The Story of Atlantis.) In October 1882, in the Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, she gives some fairly detailed differences between her theories and Donnelly's (interestingly disagreeing with aspects of Donnelly's theory that have been criticized as colonialist) .

Esoteric Buddhism by A.P. Sinnett  (1883) is the first full presentation of theosophical evolutionary concepts, which includes Atlantis, a summary of the Mahatma Letters from 1880-82 (which were written out mainly by Blavatsky), a mainstream best-seller. In Blavatsky's Esoteric Buddhism commentary, 1883, while trying to spur alternative spirituality & alternative science, she was critiquing fundamentalist religions and materialistic science of the day; therefore denouncing colonialist and white supremacist attitudes.
Man, Fragments of a Forgotten History, Laura Holloway and Mohini Chatterji  (1885)  builds on the concepts introduced in Esoteric Buddhism and is more descriptive than the generally cryptic, fragmentary hints in the original theosophical literature. Finally, Blavatsky gives her fullest exposition of Atlantis in The Secret Doctrine, 1888. She references Donnelly about a dozen times, as someone who has done research that corroborates her theory of Atlantis in general and specifics points of detail. Of the 14 references, only one is about race (Vol. 2, 266n), related to Indo-European migration theories. Also, Blavatsky's writings are full of pointed critiques of colonialist-inflected scientific theories, ex.: 'Ârya (Sk.) now the name has become the epithet of a race, and our Orientalists, depriving the Hindu Brahmans of their birth-right, have made Aryans of all Europeans' (Theosophical Glossary)
 
William Scott-Elliot's The Story of Atlantis 1896 was produced after Blavatsky's break with A. P. Sinnett, so the work ignores the Secret Doctrine and has many differences of approach. I consider it inconsistent with original theosophy and an early example of neo-theosophy.
 
Ignatius Donnelly book on 'Atlantis' was 1st published in 1882. I can see why Donnelly's work gets more credit in mainstream media, it is more specialized, systematic, detailed, accessible and was more popular. However, the relationship between Blavatsky and Donnelly remains somewhat mysterious, and I think that more research needs to be done.  In French, an important precursor is Louis Jacolliot, whom she references (Histoire des vierges : History of the Virgins. Vanished People and Continents, 1874).
 
Below are some basic extracts from Blavatsky's first exposition of Atlantis, only about twenty pages specifically on Atlantis, but overall there are about one hundred pages concerned with Egypt and India that are related. References updated, with added and corrected pages numbers and various other additions and corrections. Click on page number to see scan of original work cited. An important theme in these sections concern the indigenous Americans secretly continuing their spiritual practices, which she views in a positive way, and she does not hesitate to point out the brutal persecution of the Spanish colonialists.
 
Isis Unveiled I, Chapter 14 - Section 2- The Near East, Ancient America and the Legend of Atlantis 545

Lost Inca City 547 / Mexican and Hindu Astronomy 548 / Arabian Nights and Odyssey 549 / The Near East and Ancient America 550 / Stonehenge 551 / Dragon and Sun Symbolism 551 / Biblical Genealogy 554 / The Near East and Central America 555 / Atlantis 557

Lost Inca City
 
Apart from the fact that this mysterious city has been seen from a great distance by daring travellers, there is no intrinsic improbability of its existence, for who can tell what became of the primitive people who fled before the rapacious brigands of Cortez and Pizarro? Dr. Tschuddi, in his work on Peru, (Peruvian Antiquities, Rivero y Ustariz, Mariano Eduardo de, and  Tschudi, Johann Jakob von, p. 214) tells us of an Indian legend that a train of 10,000 llamas, laden with gold to complete the unfortunate Inca’s ransom, was arrested in the Andes by the tidings of his death, and the enormous treasure was so effectually concealed that not a trace of it has ever been found. He, as well as Prescott (History of the Conquest of Peru (1847)) and other writers, informs us that the Indians to this day preserve their ancient traditions and sacerdotal caste, and obey implicitly the orders of rulers chosen among themselves, while at the same time nominally Catholics and actually subject to the Peruvian authorities. Magical ceremonies practiced by their forefathers still prevail among them, and magical phenomena occur. (see Peruvian Antiquities, So persistent are they in their loyalty to the past, that it seems impossible but that they should be in relations with some central source of authority which constantly supports and strengthens their faith, keeping it alive. May it not be that the sources of this undying faith lie in this mysterious city, with which they are in secret communication? Or must we think that all of the above is again but a “curious coincidence”? (546-47)
 
This tradition of the Dragon and the Sun — occasionally replaced by the Moon — has awakened echoes in the remotest parts of the world. It may be accounted for with perfect readiness by the once universal heliolatrous religion. There was a time when Asia, Europe, Africa, and America were covered with the temples sacred to the sun and the dragons. The priests assumed the names of their deities, and thus the tradition of these spread like a net-work all over the globe: Bel and the Dragon being uniformly coupled together, and the priest of the Ophite religion as uniformly assuming the name of his god. (Archaeologia, or, Miscellaneous tracts relating to antiquity / Society of Antiquaries of London. Volume 25, 1834, p. 220 (Observations on Dracontia, Rev. John Bathurst Deane)) But still, “if the original conception is natural and intelligible . . . and its occurrence need not be the result of any historical intercourse,” as Professor Muller tells us (Chips from a German Workshop, Volume 1, 1867, pp. 269-70) the details are so strikingly similar that we cannot feel satisfied that the riddle is entirely solved. The origin of this universal symbolical worship being concealed in the night of time, we would have far more chance to arrive at the truth by tracing these traditions to their very source. And where is this source? Kircher places the origin of the Ophite and heliolatrous worship, the shape of conical monuments and the obelisks, with the Egyptian Hermes Trismegistus. (Archaeologia, or, Miscellaneous tracts relating to antiquity / Society of Antiquaries of London. Volume 25, 1834, p. 192 Where, then, except in Hermetic books, are we to seek for the desired information? Is it likely that modern authors can know more, or as much, of ancient myths and cults as the men who taught them to their contemporaries? Clearly two things are necessary: first, to find the missing books of Hermes; and second, the key by which to understand them, for reading is not sufficient. Failing in this, our savants are abandoned to unfruitful speculations, as for a like reason geographers waste their energies in a vain quest of the sources of the Nile. Truly the land of Egypt is another abode of mystery! (550-51)

Similarities between Pre-Colombian and Near Eastern Civilisations

The perfect identity of the rites, ceremonies, traditions, and even the names of the deities, among the Mexicans and ancient Babylonians and Egyptians, are a sufficient proof of South America being peopled by a colony which mysteriously found its way across the Atlantic. When? at what period? History is silent on that point; but those who consider that there is no tradition, sanctified by ages, without a certain sediment of truth at the bottom of it, believe in the Atlantis-legend. There are, scattered throughout the world, a handful of thoughtful and solitary students, who pass their lives in obscurity, far from the rumors of the world, studying the great problems of the physical and spiritual universes. They have their secret records in which are preserved the fruits of the scholastic labors of the long line of recluses whose successors they are. The knowledge of their early ancestors, the sages of India, Babylonia, Nineveh, and the imperial Thebes; the legends and traditions commented upon by the masters of Solon, Pythagoras, and Plato, in the marble halls of Heliopolis and Sais; traditions which, in their days, already seemed to hardly glimmer from behind the foggy curtain of the past; — all this, and much more, is recorded on indestructible parchment, and passed with jealous care from one adept to another. These men believe the story of the Atlantis to be no fable, but maintain that at different epochs of the past huge islands, and even continents, existed where now there is but a wild waste of waters. In those submerged temples and libraries the archaeologist would find, could he but explore them, the materials for filling all the gaps that now exist in what we imagine is history. They say that at a remote epoch a traveller could traverse what is now the Atlantic Ocean, almost the entire distance by land, crossing in boats from one island to another, where narrow straits then existed. (557-58)

3- Comparative Sacred Architecture

Universal Religion 560 / Comparative Sacred Architecture 561 /Origin of the Jewish People 567 / Universal Symbolism of Temple Arches 571 / Common Mathematical Proportions 572 / Archaeology and Philology 574

Comparative Sacred Architecture 

Thus is it that all the religious monuments of old, in whatever land or under whatever climate, are the expression of the same identical thoughts, the key to which is in the esoteric doctrine. It would be vain, without studying the latter, to seek to unriddle the mysteries enshrouded for centuries in the temples and ruins of Egypt and Assyria, or those of Central America, British Columbia, and the Nagkon-Wat of Cambodia. If each of these was built by a different nation; and neither nation had had intercourse with the others for ages, it is also certain that all were planned and built under the direct supervision of the priests. And the clergy of every nation, though practicing rites and ceremonies which may have differed externally, had evidently been initiated into the same traditional mysteries which were taught all over the world. (561)

This chapter uses a very wide variety of references; the following are a general sampling:

Draper, John William (1811-1882), History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (1875)
James Martin Peebles (1822 – 1922), Around the World: Or, Travels in Polynesia, China, India, Arabia, Egypt, Syria, and Other ‘Heathen’ Countries, 1875
Christian Charles Josias von Bunsen (1791 –1860), Egypt’s Place In Universal History (1848)
Wilkinson, John Gardner, Sir (1797-1875), The manners and customs of the ancient Egyptians (1878)
Isaac Preston Cory (1802–1842), Cory’s Ancient Fragments (1826, 1832 ed.)
Albrecht Müller (1819–1890), “The First Traces of Man in Europe I,” in Popular Science Monthly Volume 6, April 1875
Abbé Charles-Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg (8 September 1814 – 8 January 1874), Voyage sur l’Isthme de Tehuantepec dan l’état de Chiapas et la République de Guatémala, 1859 et 1860 (1861)
Popol Vuh. Le livre sacré et les mythes de l’antiquité américaine avec les livres héroïques et historiques des Quichés (1861)
John Lloyd Stephens (American, 1805–1852), Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan (1845)
Frank Vincent (1848-1916), The Land of the White Elephant: Sights and Scenes in Southeastern Asia. (1874)

Chap. 15, section 3- Atlantis (591)

Atlantis 593 / Lost treasure of Incas 596 /
Destruction of Atlantis and Universal Flood Myths 

To continue the tradition, we have to add that the class of hierophants was divided into two distinct categories: those who were instructed by the “Sons of God,” of the island, and who were initiated in the divine doctrine of pure revelation, and others who inhabited the lost Atlantis — if such must be its name — and who, being of another race, were born with a sight which embraced all hidden things, and was independent of both distance and material obstacle. In short, they were the fourth race of men mentioned in the Popol-Vuh, whose sight was unlimited and who knew all things at once. They were, perhaps, what we would now term “natural-born mediums,” who neither struggled nor suffered to obtain their knowledge, nor did they acquire it at the price of any sacrifice. Therefore, while the former walked in the path of their divine instructors, and acquiring their knowledge by degrees, learned at the same time to discern the evil from the good, the born adepts of the Atlantis blindly followed the insinuations of the great and invisible “Dragon,” the King Thevetat (the Serpent of Genesis?). Thevetat had neither learned nor acquired knowledge, but, to borrow an expression of Dr. Wilder in relation to the tempting Serpent, he was “a sort of Socrates who knew without being initiated.” Thus, under the evil insinuations of their demon, Thevetat, the Atlantis-race became a nation of wicked magicians. In consequence of this, war was declared, the story of which would be too long to narrate; its substance may be found in the disfigured allegories of the race of Cain, the giants, and that of Noah and his righteous family. The conflict came to an end by the submersion of the Atlantis; which finds its imitation in the stories of the Babylonian and Mosaic flood: The giants and magicians ” . . . and all flesh died . . . and every man.” All except Xisuthrus and Noah, who are substantially identical with the great Father of the Thlinkithians  in the Popol-Vuh, or the sacred book of the Guatemaleans (rather the chapter on the Popul Vuh in Max Muller's Chips from a German Workshop, Volume 1, 1867, p. 338), which also tells of his escaping in a large boat, like the Hindu Noah — Vaiswasvata. (593)

Louis Jacolliot (1837-1890), The Bible in India or The life of Iezeus Christna (1869)
History of the Virgins. Vanished People and Continents (1874)
Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880), The Progress of Religious Ideas through Successive Ages (3 vols., New York, 1855)
John Denison Baldwin (1809-1883), Pre-Historic Nations or Inquiries Concerning Some of the Great Peoples and Civilizations of Antiquity and Their Probable (1869)
Xuanzang (602-664), ——— (1856). Histoire de la Vie de Hiouen-Thsang [History of the Life of Xuanzang] (in French). Paris.
Wilhelm Schott (1802-1889), Über den Buddhaismus in Hoch Asien und in China
John L. O’Sullivan (1813-1895)
Max Müller (1823-1890) Three Lectures on the Vedanta Philosophy
Cyprian (200-258), De idolorum vanitate (“On the Vanity of Images,”)
Jacques Joseph Champollion-Figeac (1178-1867), L’Egypt ancienne et moderne (1840)

Some useful links: 
 
Theosophy and the Seven Continents, David Pratt
 
Rise and Demise of Atlantis, Blavatsky
 
The Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the Secret Doctrine,  Antonios Goyios
 
Producing lost civilisations: Theosophical concepts, Handbook of New Religions & Cultural Production, 2012

Recent scientific articles:
 
A New Understanding of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and Plate Tectonics 
Jackie Rocheleau 8 March, 2021 
The first seismic data obtained directly from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge suggest that upwelling may contribute to seafloor spreading.

Lost Continents Could Be Hidden Inside Earth 
Theo Nicitopoulos Jun 16, 2022
The discovery of ancient rocks at a mid-ocean ridge suggests that if there are lost continents, remnants might still be there.

Articles on Ignatius Donnelly:

Ignatius Donnelly: Paranoid progressive in the Gilded Age 
Atlantis Zac Farber Minnesota Lawyer May 30, 2018
gave a newspaper he founded the motto: “Eternal hostility to every form of oppression of the bodies & souls of men.”
 
Doctor Huguet: Ignatius Donnelly on Being Black 
John R. Bovee Minnesota History Summer 1969 286-94 
'In almost all his books, and certainly in his novels, he stressed above all that men must live as brothers' 'In every intelligent white man the intelligent black man will find a defender; and the reign of peace and love and brotherhood will begin.' collections.mnhs.org/MNHistoryMagaz

 
 
Ignatius Donnelly His Doctor Huguet novel 1891
JS Patterson American Quarterly 22, 4 1970  

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