by Manly P. Hall

Very few people know of this wonderful land, now one with the land of forgotten things, for today there is very little to remind us of this ancient continent that was once so fair and greater even than ours in glory and beauty, a land filled with happy homes, with peasants, statesmen and philosophers, and all those things which we now think of in connection with the highest and greatest phases of life.

This great continent now lost, the great land of Atlantis, is now somewhere miles beneath the ocean and over it pass our great ocean liners and sailing ships. Strange sea creatures now play through the pillars of its ancient temples, weeds and mosses are twined around its ancient gateways, its libraries containing the sacred tomes of ages have vanished from the light of day and are now known only to the finny denizens of the deep, a land of desolation miles under the surface of the sea-blue waters, its wondrous arches thick with coral and its statues deep beneath the shifting sands of the ocean bottom.

In truth it is a continent that is gone, a land forgotten save by a few poets whose ancient songs tell of its vanished glory. Can we say that it is lost? No, nothing in nature can be lost, but great changes have come in the eternal program of divinity. As a land it is no more but as a memory that will remain forever in the soul of the mystic while the wondrous lessons that it teaches is well worth the glory that is gone.

Nature is like the changing surface of the sea and the waves that come and go. Today a thing is, tomorrow it is no more, but somewhere in the endless vistas of the infinite the thing that once has been shall always be. In a new environment, in settings changed, its life goes on manifesting the powers of the Creator. The broken flower is gone, not dead; it has vanished but is not lost. Somewhere mid stick or star it will bloom again. In other lands it will carry on its work of charming the eyes of the world and building ever more stately mansions and more complex organisms to give greater expression to its tiny life; its message is eternal and its life is without an end.

In order to understand the sublime message and the wondrous mystery of Atlantis it is necessary to realize the indestructibility of all things, and while its continent now lies beneath the ocean its work still goes on, its memory remains, its finger prints are on the marble slabs of eternity. Its work is never done but when it needs new fields for its endeavors, nobler channels for its expression, it goes on to other worlds, to other lands, to other beings, and its empty, broken shell moulds from the sight of men.

Let us picture for a moment this lost continent inhabited by a strange race, a few broken remnants of which still wander the earth, tottering slowly towards the veil of oblivion. Here and there still walks a Red Man, the remnants of a dying people. The ancient Egyptian of the Pharaohs is gone and now there lives in his place another people; the glory of Egypt is crumbled to the dust and the Temples of the Rising Sun are buried beneath its desert sands. The ancient Red Man is fast vanishing from our midst, he is no more, his last great stronghold in the Western Americas has been broken and as a dying wanderer he passes silently into the eternal West. Many are they who have hastened the day of his destruction, many are there today who have upon their hearts and hands the blood of this ancient people. But the law works eternally and those who have helped to bring about the destruction of even the least of these ancient peoples shall live to see their own land in ruins, and the time will come when the white race shall lie down in an endless tomb to be listed with the forgotten, to be laid side by side with the mighty kings of Atlantis. But that does not concern us at the moment.

Let us picture the Red Man in the days of his glory. A few remnants of broken temples on the Peninsula of Yucatan, a few deserted altars amid the snow peaks of the Andes, here and there a lonely pyramid rising from a desert waste, a sphinx of stone that never speaks, a handful of dried bones, a few old philosophies and heaps of broken stone, are all that is left to tell us of an ancient civilization upon whom the wrath of the gods was loosened and whose annihilation is practically complete. They had brewed their cups of poison which they themselves drained to the dregs. Their iniquity overflowed and they vanished as all must do.

Let us pass again back through the ages to the dawn of human thought, let us read again their record in the living powers of nature. As we gaze into the eternal mystery we see great mountains rise from the blue waters of the Atlantic; great plains clothed in verdure glorious appear from the darkness of the tomb; wondrous cities with twisting spiral minarets rise upward to the sky; colleges and universities paved in marble dot the fairest of all lands; great coliseums and amphitheaters, which modern man has never sought to build, rise out of the mists and bring back memories of days gone by. A beautiful land stretches before our eyes, a continent that blossoms as a rose, which extended all over that great area where now the mighty Atlantic rolls.

Far up in Iceland and Scandinavia, from Nova Scotia and Labrador, through banks of ice and snow great mountains rise, peopled with strange, wild beings. Further South the beautiful lands of the temperate zone rise out of the deep, from the British Isles to the coast of the United States, a great host of phantoms rise from the forgotten past, a mighty race of copper colored beings. Down through Egypt and South Africa they pass in steady streams; even through South America they wandered mid-fertile fields which they tilled, and over wondrous mountains that they climbed. A mighty race of happy, laughing people, strong of arm, great of heart, glorious in ideals. They were the Red Men that are now fast disappearing in the setting sun.

There amidst them great nations were established, princely governments were built, great universities spread knowledge to the corners of creation, kings and emperors in robes of silk and gold, in jewels and diamonds the heritage of gods, ruled over mighty peoples as numberless as blades of grass.

Here there came into being the Priest Kings of ancient times; the divine servants of the gods with the snakes upon their brows ruled Atlantis in the days of its glory, for it was not a land as we know it but a world of demigods, a land of masters. Life as we know it now was very different in the world in which they lived. Their civilization was wild, massive, and grand. The ignorance of many but the divine wisdom of a few marked the civilization of that ancient Empire.

During those days great giants labored on the earth. Man was no puny being as he is today but stood rather like the one-eyed Cyclop gods of Homer and the strange beings of the Odyssey and Iliad. There the Frost Giants of Scandinavia walked the earth in the millions of years that are past. And the glorious, grand and wonderful truth is, that these giants are not dead, the Hercules of myth still lives, the bodies have changed but so surely as these ancient peoples wandered the earth in the dawn of this day of creation so surely we are those peoples.

You and I have wandered amid the temples of Atlantis. The City of the Golden Gates has open its portals that we might enter. We are the ones whose footsteps sounded on its streets of marble in the days of the greatest race that yet has been. Row after row of pillars, mile upon mile of fluted columns, millions of domed roofs, marked the civilization of Atlantis. Then the pyramids were in their glory and the casing stones had not yet known the vandalism of neglect. On ancient tablets now lost, in languages forgotten were engraved the history of mighty things, of the world in its making, of the glory of gods and sages that walked with men.

You and I were there in the ages listed with the dead, we wandered through the pillars of the ancient temples, in the robes of glory we stood before the altar fires, we gazed down from the mountain tops in pride and glory upon the works of our hands. Stone by stone we built the City of the Golden Gates, we were the Atlanteans who raised temples on the mountain peaks to the glory of our gods. Through the ages we labored, as slaves we have known the master’s whip, as kings we have held the scepter, and today we are living the things we once were as we raise our eyes and gaze into the future as of old from the mountain peaks of Atlantis.

In order that we may appreciate the civilization of the ancients, it is necessary for us to accept the great fundamental principle of the continuity of life. Those unwilling to accept this principle can never learn the mysteries of Atlantis, they can never know why that continent came and vanished again. In order to find the true reason, we must gaze back to the things we were and realize again how the altar fires in the temples burned low and dying buried beneath them the nations of the dead.

Let us try to picture one of the great Atlanteans,-his massive frame, his glorious brow, his eyes filled with the luster of primitive life, unhampered by the ties which bury races, unbroken by the millstone of today’s affairs, which in this land of ours are grinding human hearts to feed ambition. They had many things that we have lost, we have many things they never knew.

The reason for it all is that man must grow along many lines. If it were only necessary for him to have a glorious body and strength divine then the world would have ended with Atlantis or its end might have come in the days of classic Greece and the work would have been well finished, but there were other things to do.

Today we are the fifth great race of beings that have inhabited our world, the Atlanteans were the fourth, they lived their day and now have passed on to endless sleep, but the spirit continues its march eternal. Man has not yet reached the grandeur of Atlantis in the new civilization with which he works, but one day in the mystic future he will pass beyond anything that ever was before, and, having reached the heights of all, the white race will draw its shroud around it and vanish to make way for other peoples and other works, but the same spirits will remain.

Let us learn the lesson of Atlantis and build again in the mirror of the mind the things that brought about its grand destruction in the seventh day of its creation. We are the breakers of new ground but ‘ere we go on we must review the old, we must live again that great power of concrete thought which was the crowning genius of Atlantis, we must remember its philosophies and sciences. Then shall we be crowned with a new power to which end all races are striving,-the power of creative genius, the power of abstract thought, the power to unite, and that spiritual eye which sees the oneness of life and the brotherhood of man.

The keynote of Atlantis was the survival of the fittest, its great ones were great because the weak were weaker, but in our day a new power is being added. We have not yet reached the glory of the Aztec king before the coming of the white race, but we will reach it and pass beyond it with the great power of compassion crowning us more gloriously than ever, but, in passing, let us learn the lessons on the way.

Our world today stands as Atlantis stood, our buildings rise upward, their many towers pointing to the skies, our libraries are filled with ancient wisdom, our scientists and philosophers are exploring the mysteries of nature, again we fly through the air and under the sea, again we walk the path that Atlantis walked, but we must go on, we must survive to the glory of a greater work. The great birthright of every people is to labor with new things. This new world has dreams which Atlantis never dared to conceive and possibilities undreamt of by the men of old. But to do great things we must ham the courage of conviction and the power to pave the way. You see we have other works to do in other ways. For a day we forgotten the things we were, a veil conceals the past that we may learn the new thing in a different way. We are unfolding new powers, building new faculties, mastering new arts, creating new ideals.

The old soul, its years measured by the labors it has done, is now confronted with a great problem. It is our duty to take the best that Atlantis had to give, to learn the mysteries that Lemuria, now lost beneath the waters of Australasia, gave us in times more ancient even than Atlantis, and use them as steps to build upon their top a new temple based upon the foundations of the old. To go higher, to reach ever heavenward, is the age-long cry of the mysteries. It is the same cry that sounded through the temples of Atlantis. It is the fulfillment of this inner urge that makes necessary new experiences, that bring new worlds out of the waters and causes others, their labors finished, to vanish from the sight of men.

In Atlantis many of the things we call sublime would have formed but kindergarten classes amid those ancient philosophers. White-domed temples of education filled Atlantis. Every city no matter how small was crowned by its universities and colleges and in the City of the Golden Gates were the divine sources of learning which initiated those who came out of the world into the way of the gods. We have taught many things they did not know but they taught things which today we cannot remember but still have hidden in our souls to be used again when the moment arises. Or mayhaps we were thoughtless then as we are now and today we little realize life because we never lived or studied it then. Therefore we wander through the mazes of religion, our spiritual teachers contradict each other eternally, and when we read the mysteries of Revelation we believe the writer must have written for himself alone. We wander betwixt sacred philosophies and moral ethics which are sealed truths that mean nothing to our souls. We were the drones amid the hives of learning as of times we are today, so now we know what we learned then and tomorrow we shall be known by what we learn today.

We can tell the world how to live but we cannot make them live it. Those who were told but did not practice, today know not the lessons that they might have learned.

There was in the City of the Golden Gates a temple dedicated to the worship of Light, the divine principle of human knowledge. This Light was served by the priestcraft, it was served also by the legislator, it was honored and adored by all the powers of that ancient land. From between the pillars of this temple came forth the Priest Kings. Here humbly before the altar they prayed that the divine light from the seven stars might come down to them, but the years went by and materiality took the place of spirituality. Then came the handwriting on the wall, the stars in their courses upon the heavens penned strange, celestial words upon the blue field of eternity, and the priests raising their crucifixes, cried, “Behold! the Sun-God is murdered, the Light is passing over into darkness!”

Then the great cataclysms came that shook this mighty people to the very foundations of their world. The savages from the North and South fought with the civilized people who tried to enslave and defraud them. They were driven back but the debt of blood was upon the hands of Atlantis and the priests of the ancient temples cried in the marketplaces, “With the spilling of blood Atlantis has sealed its doom!”

Its high spiritual ideals were buried beneath materiality, death and pestilence walked in its ways, degeneracy and lust overran its people, and its nations were drenched in blood.

There are many kinds of blood. There is that which comes from broken hearts, there is the life blood that pours from the soul, there is the blood of our fellowmen, and all this was loosened by the falling peoples of Atlantis. Again the warning of the gods broke upon it, its nations were split and torn, but more and more the black light took the place of the white. Slowly the divine Priest King lost his touch with God, his connection with divine powers which mold the destiny of worlds was broken, the priestcraft lost its sacred word, the name of the Living God; the light went out upon the altars; magic and sorcery took the place of the sacred mysteries and from the gods no longer flowed the life which makes nations live.

A new people was born out of the land of darkness to carry the dying fires and the Shekinah’s glory out of the lost land. All glorious things it seems must sometime wither; all the flowers that bloom must one day fade. Blessed are those who know that the fading flower but marks the passing of a life to a more glorious work, for man need not be always in the trough of the sea but may step from the crest of one wave to the crest of the next. So a new race was born to take charge of those who were true, and the Great White Brotherhood slowly formed a new people amid the falling temple pillars of the old, and the sacred Ark with the Cherubim sacred to the Lord passed slowly onward to the West. Around them gathered the faithful ones and the Great Light went out in the land of darkness which again was shattered by mighty cataclysms. Its people were torn by an unknown fire; none knew what that fire was for they had not read the handwriting on the wall; they had not heard the warning which the white-robed priests had spoken to them from the housetops nor the sacred words which were chanted from the temple steps for their ranklings and dissensions had drowned its note.

But the voice had sounded from the temples of Atlantis, saying, “Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.” The Great White Brotherhood worked on however in a mysterious way and a new continent was unrolled for the chosen peoples, a great pathway was made in the waters and those who still served the noble and true passed onward into the promised land.

All that was left of the Continent of Atlantis was a single island. At last about 9000 B.C., or a little later, this dying remnant of Atlantis sank and in less than twenty-four hours millions of souls were freed from their molds of clay.

Now comes the problem. With all their arts and sciences crystallization crept in, which is the end of all that lives, the crystallization of thought, vitality, and growth. Nothing has to crystallize but all things do that stagnate. Today we face the same problems that brought about the destruction of Atlantis in the ages that are past. Our lands stretch out in peace and plenty and we too feel secure. Nothing, surely, can happen to us! Yet the moment no man knoweth. But one thing we do know, either the work must be done and done well, either the soul must learn its lessons or else new environments are necessary to make completion possible.

When we allow the fires upon our altars to die out, when we allow our higher beings to starve, then we are failing in the great work. Then again will the thunderbolts of Jove be loosened and the eternal scythe reap in its harvest.

Let us consider some of the causes that brought about the destruction of Atlantis. The first was blood. All those who live by the sword shall perish by the sword and with the first drop of blood that man sheds comes the price,-his own must flow. Blood feeds the flames of passion and when the animal in man is fed he becomes as a ravening wolf and the Four Horsemen ride forth again on their journey of destruction. Only peace can bring peace and that must come from man himself. We are all the body of the Father, we are all the Christ in flesh, and when each of us does as he should things will prosper, not with the transcending prosperity that rises up and then disappears like a comet but with the slow, gradual growth that marks the spreading oak. Unless man learns the ways of peace the day is not far off when the blue waves will break over his homes and the Light will go on to other lands.

The second necessity of man is to find the lost art of beauty. Probably you do not know what beauty means, for beauty is a mystic thing. We can look at a man like Lincoln, as homely as the fence rails that he split, and yet there is beauty there. We can look around us and many are there whom we call handsome but beauty is not there. There is much prettiness but little beauty. As we look at the gods of Greece and Rome we find what the world has long called beauty, but when you look at the eyes you will find a blank for the sculptures did not fill them in. Few realize what beauty is or how subtle are its ways. None know it who have it; none realize who really possess it. It is something that shines out and molds man into an expression of itself. Gold trinkets, ribbons, and a powder puff are not the secrets of beauty. Beauty is of the soul and we need more of it. We must have more of that beauty that molds form into the ideal. The eyes of form see the beauty of form alone but the true mystic realizes that the source of beauty is not the form, it is the soul that shines within. We may look over the world at those who are now judged as the beautiful, the handsome, the distinguished, and yet always there is something missing, and it was the loss of that something that sank the Continent of Atlantis. We must have more beauty and the world must realize more and more that “Beauty is as beauty does.” Never mind how perfect the form if the soul and mind be not there, it is an empty shell. It is a dead thing without a reason for its being. The beauty of harmony based upon strength, the beauty of peace strong on the foundation of compassion, the beauty of purity supported by knowledge, is missing. It was missing with the later Atlanteans and if we would not follow in their footsteps we must find it again today.

We must mold our lives into that divine glory we seek under the name of Christ, into the grandeur that was found in the temples of the ancients where a beautiful life molded a body worthy of a Greek god. The beauty of compassion, of love, and of spiritual thought is sadly missing in the world today. It is the first to go. We hardly know when it goes; slowly it fades away and with it fades the strength of a people. Long before the inharmony breaks forth as a ravenous flood, this subtle something vanishes in the night. It is the handwriting on the wall, a warning to all who live, for when beauty goes, with it goes the strength of a people. We can bring it back, this elusive thing, this Psyche, floating over the marshlands, veiled in a mystic haze, a something unseen but felt. It must come back, if our age is to reach the goal it seeks.

There is something else also that must return,-the universities of Atlantis must be built again. We must raise again the schools of learning, by learning how to live, for the ignorant are dead and there are none so ignorant as those who will not learn, there are none so blind as those who will not see. Yet we forget, but let this thought be in our minds, those who forget shall be forgotten. Our world is filled with forgetful people who forget by habit, they have forgotten so long that now they cannot remember, but in some way they must be helped to learn. We must understand the meaning of education, educo, to draw forth, not to cram in, to bring out that which we have already built within. From the heart of our beings blaze forth the fires of Atlantis, in our souls is the history of peoples as we have lived it. We must remember it, we must draw forth that knowledge, for the great things we would build can only be raised upon the things we know. If we are to create dream castles in the ethers we must bring back again the power of dreaming. We cannot imagine that which we have never known or think of that which we have never been, therefore education means to draw forth and profit by the things that we have been and the lessons that we have learned.

This world must learn. If it learns as Atlantis did it will die, but if it profits by the lessons of Atlantis it will live, and each of us were the Atlanteans and have studied the lessons that can save our lands. It is no longer a problem of what we want to do, it is what we should do, it is what the duties of nature demand of us. In the name of the gods we must act. Let us remember the blood that sank Atlantis. Blood is heat, strife, and confusion. It is the life force of the universe, it is the Lamb of God slain for the sins of the world, it is the power of a people. We must take the golden chalice and catching in it the life blood that now we waste return it to the altar of our God.

Then too we must have beauty, beauty of thought, glory of ideal. The loves of men must give place to the loves of God, the passions of our age must be transmuted into the compassions of the gods, form must give place to spirit, or again we shall be numbered with the dust.

We must have education, if we do not we shall find out to our sorrow that the strength of a people depends upon the knowledge that it applies; not upon hopes, wishes, or the willy-nilly blowing of concepts but upon the solid rock of truth must our nations stand.

Man is a slave of his fears, a servant of ignorance, and a groveling wretch at the feet of the Unknown. He must rise and taking his light explore the recesses of each mystic cave. Each individual, if he does not know how to live, to eat, to think, must find out; the gods will never tell him unless he hears the voices of the gods in the wisdom of his fellowmen. The way of knowledge, brotherhood, and service, the way of purity and truth, alone can liberate us from the wheels of birth and death. We may talk of our shortcuts, back doors, second stories, patent medicine spirituality, canned religion, just-as-goods, etc., to say nothing of the advanced spiritual teachings which transcend common sense, but unless we live the life to which we aspire we shall be numbered with Atlantis.

It is more important to know these things by far than rounds and periods, for upon them rests life itself. We are governed by the laws of cause and effect and today we are building the causes which sank the Atlantean world and we can expect nothing better for ourselves. We must realize that the earth beneath our feet is indeed the Son of Necessity born that man may live. It will mold itself into the needs of man but his needs are seldom his wants. Humanity needs a good housecleaning but they do not want it, and it must either come about through our loving service and labors with our fellowman or the thunderbolts of Jove.

Let the spiritual fires of our universities rise from the planes of matter, let the grandeur of ancient Greece be ours, let us so live that we shall be a credit to creation and to the plan that brought us into being. As Luther Burbank converted the cactus with its prickly thorns into a nutritious food product by removing the sting, so let us transmute the powers of the people that they may rebuild and recreate. It is far more important to help someone who is not able to help himself than to have been cloistered for hours with the sages. We warn all occultists and true students that their place is in the world working and not in the temple praying, that their duty is to make the world their temple, to don the white armor of purity and ideals, and armed with the greatest of all weapons, which leaves no sting, the sword of truth, knowledge, and light, to go out and labor for the right.

We cannot escape the sorrows of the world but we can go out and change its tears to laughter and be in a happier world that we ourselves have made.

So as we stand on the cliffs of lost Atlantis and see the restless sea breaking upon the shore and hear the dark waves which are like the surgings of a lost people, let us realize that they are our own broken lives and that our own voices speak to us from the depths of the waters salty with the bitterness of the tears of millions who allowed black magic to replace the true mysteries, even as we do today. Black magic means the perversion of things. When we use energy to destroy, when we tear down the dream castles of those we love, when we fill our lives with sordidness, we are black magicians. When we take the powers of God and use them to deceive our fellowmen, when we use the powers God gave us to free our souls, to cast down, then we are black magicians who have not learned our lesson from the sinking of Atlantis.

Let us open wide the gates, let the gates of brass swing open and man come forth. Let the tombstones be rolled away and the divine in man be released from the shackles that now bind him, let the divine in us be liberated, and Christ call unto the lower man, “Lazarus, come forth!” Let our ideals be gleaming lights upon the hilltops. We must tear up the thistles and briers before it is too late and plant flowers in their place and dedicate our lives to helping, serving, lifting, purifying, and glorifying, mentally, physically, and spiritually, all with whom we come in contact. We shall then be listed with the white robed Brothers, who, carrying the sacred relics, pass with them into the promised land.

A new race is to be born. Who will be its parents? There are few of earth who are ready to give to the new land a proper birthright. Let us remember once more the three things which bring with them the loss of all, the price of blood, the loss of beauty, and the perversion of education which sank an Empire greater far than our own, and that the same power will sink this continent unless in each individual peace and brotherhood takes the place of blood and hate, beauty of spirit replaces sordidness of life, and that great eternal light, knowledge, supplants human ignorance.