Atlantis and the Cycles of Time: Prophecies, Traditions, and Occult Revelations

Starting with an overview of various 'rationalist' theories aimed at locating the submerged continent/island somewhere on the globe (ch. 1), the author goes on to present multifarious threads of Western esotericism, dating from the second half of the 18th century to the late 1900s. Their advocates make an exhaustive laundry list of names and ideas: French thinkers (d'Olivet, d'Alveydre, Schuré, Papus, Le Cour, Phaure); Theosophists (Blavatsky, Sinnet, Scott-Elliot, Leadbeater, Steiner's 'Anthroposophy', Bailey, Besant); Germans - Ariosophists (Lanz-Liebenfels, von List, Wieland, Wirth, Wiligut, Peryt Shou); 'traditionalists' Guénon and Evola; Britons (D. Fortune, Margaret Brown, Col. Fawcett, Randall-Stevens, Foster Forbes, Lewis Spence, le Poer Trench); 'independents' like de Bourbourg, le Plongeon, Sidney Raleigh, the Churchward bros., certain Rosicrucians, Gurdjieff.Recurring themes include: variations on root races; human devolution from a supposed Golden Age (for instance, those "sodomite hobgoblins" in Lanz-Liebenfels's 'Theozoology', p. 120); Hyperborea; Shambhala - Agartha; Lemuria/Mu; axial tilt or polar wanderings; floods/cataclysms; higher/light beings projecting themselves to the material realm; utopias; channeling; reincarnation; ESP; unfathomable time spans; Akashic records; gods/angels; so on and so forth -- the usual staple for the New Age crowd. It's left to the reader to decide whether these ideas are to be interpreted literally, or viewed rather as allegories/fantasies about 'ideal worlds' that reveal more about the particular time they were conceived in by overactive imagination, perhaps in several cases driven by an agenda, than actual pre-history. Another issue to contemplate may be the extent cryptocracy has been responsible for the proliferation of the memes under consideration (cf. Michael Tsarion's output). At any rate, you can bet Golden Age is not around the corner.The last two chapters (pp. 298-356) on the cycle of four ages/yugas (Guénon, Georgel, Daniélou) and the precession of the equinoxes may lack "the entertainment value of lost lands and bizarre visions" (p. 357). The extensive endnote section amounts merely to bibliographical references. For those unfamiliar with the controversial characters, their manipulative antics and background to outlandish claims associated with Theosophy and its offshoots, Peter Washington's Madame Blavatsky's Baboon: A History of the Mystics, Mediums, and Misfits Who Brought Spiritualism to Ameri ca (1993) provides a fascinating read. For some mysterious reason, this title has not found its way to Godwin's bibliography (pp. 404-22).

Unusual in that some chapters made for wonderful reading, while others (especially the 2 chapters on Theosophy - here the author goes into way too much detail for my liking) I found too drawn out & boring. Also, the author quotes many words & phrases in both French & German, some of which he translates, & much of which he doesn't.Listen, writers - & I have noticed many, many of you doing this - not all of us are bilingual. Please do not use any foreign phrases unless you attach an English translation of every single one! Believe me, it really helps with the reading & understanding of the book.

This book is an exhaustive history of Atlantis in the Western tradition, which takes us from rationalist-materialist attempts to find Atlantis, to completely spiritual and immaterial uses of the word "Atlantis" to give ineffable concepts a name. Anything any European has ever written about super-ancient civilizations receives at least a mention here, making the book encyclopedic in length, but still quite readable. Even for the seasoned researcher it is worth the price simply for Godwin's summaries of rare documents and obscure European debates. For initiates like myself, this book is a real gift, a gateway to further reading and a compendium of difficult works I would never have the time to read myself.Godwin's unbiased tone is a great credit to the book, making it an engaging and inviting, even if it prevents debunkers from giggling at the silly mystics. Godwin deals with a lot of unusual ideas, including spiritual and biological races, but remains sympathetic even to the most unusual statements. Rather than ridiculing his subjects he impartially reports their most important ideas. Future writers on this subject, like myself, could learn much from his example. The only concept Godwin comes out firmly against is racial supremacism, which seems like a pretty fair judgment to me.The one problem with the book is that it has no stated purpose or conclusion other than the dedication of the archivist. The final paragraph of the book is weak and basically meaningless: "It may be interesting, in conclusion, to list some of the other recurrent themes", followed by a long table of concepts shared by these very different writers. Godwin could have enlightened us with his own theory, or a little more metaphysical rigor. But that's hardly enough of a complaint to subtract a star.

This is a remarkable, scholarly, and well-written book. The subject matter is engaging and the scholarship excellent, but the genius of the book is its telling of the story in two (almost) discrete segments: the rational students of the Atlantis Legend as distinct from its more occult students. While the occult 'pre-historians' draw the author into the related legends of Mu, Lemuria, and Hyperborea (which he has covered in a previous book Arktos), his focus remains on the story of Atlantis and its devotees through the past two and a half millennia. The book summarizes materials published and unpublished that would be almost impossible for the non-scholar/library denizen to ever find. While his scholarship is impeccable, his criticism is very gentle, even redemptive. One of my favorite comments is his favorable comparison of James Churchward's fantastic, self-illustrated Mu series with Tolkein's self-illustrated novels of Middle-Earth. This is absolutely the nicest thing one could ever say about Churchward's work!Prof. P. C. Patton

Provides a solid historical context from which the ideas of many current Atlantis aficionados originated. Focus is on 19th century. Did not come to terms with Zangger' work.

For me, the most interesting chapter is "432000: the ubiquitous number", about how the number 432000 appears in mythologies from Iceland to China. However, Rene Guenon's proposed "explanation" of the yuga cycles is pathetically incorrect, so if you'd like to know their real significance, then you should read "Alien Astrology". Specifically, the numbers 432, 84, 24, and 10 form a mathematical sequence, since 431 is the 83rd prime number, 83 is the 23rd prime number, and 23 is the 9th prime number, which explains why there's 10 Babylonian Kings and 24 Chinese Kings ruling for 432000 years, as well as why Mount Meru (which has 9 or 10 levels and represents the 24 degree maximum tilt of the Earth) is 84000 yojanas high. (And, of course, there's a lot more to it than that...)

Tour d'horizon des différentes théories liées à l'existence de l'Atlantide. On y retrouve, dans le désordre, Charroux, René Guenon et tous les mouvements ésotériques qui se sont intéressés à cette île de l'âge d'or qu'ils soient européens, Américains ou indiens. Bref à lire et à compléter par d'autres lectures.

extremamente detalhado e um pouco redundante

This book is unique and a must-read for any student of occultism. It is certainly one of the most important work I have ever read on this vast subject. More over, it has given me a new understanding of the Atlantis phenomenon and has changed my view of the entire esoteric world.What distinguishes this book from any other in the genre is the fact that anyone can enjoy reading it regardless of their disposition towards the subject. What made this possible is the conscious determination of Joscelyn Godwin to review the whole of the Atlantis literature with an objective mind and full detachment.So don't count on Godwin to tell you what is good and what is less valuable, or what he likes and what he thinks is garbage. Of course he has his own opinions, but he also has the decency to keep them for himself. This commands respect because it is extremely difficult to achieve. For it is almost impossible not to have an opinion about Atlantis.At first I was quite unsettled by Godwin's approach, for I needed direction and wanted to know where he stood in relation to the material he was reviewing. This never came and I had to accept the choice he had made. The end result of this approach is a book of great objectivity which remains as easy and entertaining to read as a normal science fiction book would be.So if you have a strong interest in Atlantis you will find in a single book a summary of almost everything that has ever been written about the subject. And you may even have the impression that you are reading the original material. For the opinion of the author is never in the way and he simply describes faithfully what has been written about Atlantis without superimposing his own judgement. This allows the reader to remain in control at all times and helps us to forge our own opinion.Here is what Godwin himself had to say about his unique approach: "The Atlantis myth carries a powerful psychic charge, and has served many groups and individuals in their manipulation of people’s belief systems. I am not in the business of debunking, but I like to get to the bottom of tall tales... Am I laughing at them, or with them? It depends on the degree to which they were deliberately putting one over on their disciples or audiences."And in the following excerpt, which can be found at the end of the book, Godwin expresses his personal view of what he thinks might be the psychological mechanism behind the abundant Atlantis literature:"I offer a lightly held alternative hypothesis. It combines Buddhist doctrine with the allegory of cyberspace, and goes as follows. When sentient beings die, they release mental energies that may form congelations of intelligence, perhaps combining with other free-floating energies in resonance with them (N.B. Buddhism has no immortal soul to keep them together). These act like files containing a mishmash of information, memory, dogma, and speculation, ordered as in life by a logical program akin to language. Given a suitable recipient, they download into it, blending with the recipient’s own information, beliefs, and so forth. The way it emerges—through trance, automatic writing, and so on—is merely a matter of style. This suggestion somewhat resembles the idea of the “egregore,” a wandering influence that takes on a pseudopersonality and may be nourished by attention, belief, and sacrifice."Next Godwin explains what his aim was when he wrote this book: "My object is to give the reader solid information, properly sourced, so that it is clear where the various claims come from and what assumptions (cosmological, historical, metaphysical) underlie them. Each of these conflicting theories needs to be examined for its roots and motives, rather than accepted on anyone’s authority."When I was reading Atlantis and the Cycles of Time I often asked myself where the author had found the patience to put together such a comprehensive survey of the Atlantean literature. Here is what I discovered shortly after I finished reading the book: "There is a positive joy in this kind of research. The material is philosophically challenging, the parade of characters fascinating. Some of them may be rogues, paranoiacs, deluded and deluding, but what else do we find in profane history?"Reading this outstanding work was an enlightening lesson that I received almost like an initiation, and I was deeply moved by the experience.

L’Atlantide occupe une place pérenne dans la mémoire collective et ce n’est donc pas surprenant que Godwin, spécialiste des mystères de la Renaissance et des mythes alchimistes s’en empare pour dresser un panorama encyclopédique. En effet, le mythe de l’Atlantique n’est que la partie émergée de l’iceberg, et en tirant sur la pelote de laine, l’auteur déroule toutes les théories qui s’y rattachent : les rationalistes, avec Donnely, Horbiger, Spence, Bailly, Wilson, etc… ; les ésotériques français, avec Fabre d’Olivet, d’Alveydre, Shuré, etc…, les théosophes, avec Blavatsky, Scott-Elliot, Gurdjeff, Leadbeater, etc.. ; l’Atlantologie germanique, les traditionnalistes, avec Guénon, et Evola ; les britanniques ; le channelling ; puis en reliant tout cela avec la théorie des quatre âges de l’humanité et celle de la précession des équinoxes.Un livre capital à lire avant d’aborder une par une chacune de ces théories.