There are three assumptions regarding Atlantis and Lemuria that must be believed in order to validate their mythical framework. The first is that the myths of Atlantis and Lemuria are very ancient, existing in an unrecorded past and before any surviving history. Natural history, geology, and zoogeography, which came into their own as paleo disciplines over the course of the nineteenth century, lend credence to these lost continents. The second is that Lemuria and Atlantis are lost in every sense of the word, but their cultures are not. Lemuria and Atlantis are paleo-mythic worlds, they will never be known in our present world, and their existence can only be speculated. Lastly, the spatial history of Atlantis and Lemuria is contested and lost; there was a catastrophe where they sank violently to the bottom of the ocean, but the locations are contested. Therefore, these lost places exist only as long as people believe they exist.

Edens, utopias, and Golden Ages are often placed in the distant past, future, underground, or on other planets. The Golden Age is always nostalgic because if it were placed in the present, the occultists’ idealized place would lose legitimacy. Mythical memory disregards the present time in favor of the past, which is then reconstructed in the present.

Further Reading