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, 1855, 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, p. 174)
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
Ignatius Donnelly His Doctor Huguet novel 1891
JS Patterson American Quarterly 22, 4 1970
update: first major modern study on Ignatius Donnelly, 2024
Zachary Michael Jack, The Strange Genius of Ignatius Donnelly: The Populist Who Debunked Shakespeare and Found Atlantis.
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