Lost Lands Aplenty

The lost island of Atlantis continues to fascinate mankind. It harks back to a Golden Age when things were different.
But of course, it couldn’t last. Not if it involved man. So man caused the gods to destroy his paradise.It is a typical story – in one way it echoes our lives, in that when we’ve got it good, we tend to upset things, as if we’re a self-destructive species. However, Atlantis is not the only supposed lost land from the past. Many western cultures have myths of lost lands, where once lived our great ancestors.

Typical is Lyonesse, a fabled land once said to exist between Land’s End and the Scilly Isles, off the British coast.On this land stood the city of Lions and some 140 churches. Folk tales, and later poets such as Tennyson, kept the fable alive by associating it with King Arthur. Thought to be the place of his birth, his death has also been associated with the lost land.Logically, it seems the fable arose from its association with the Breton town St-Pol-de-Leon, know to the Roman’s as Leo’s Castle. Another such fable concerns Atland.

First coming to popular attention in 1848, when antiquarian Cornelius Over de Linden first produced his Pera Linda Book, Atland is said to be an ancient land off the Dutch Frisian coast.With a sub-tropical climate and well advanced, happy population, a catastrophe struck in 2l93BC, destroying the land. Survivors went on to travel the world, founding Egyptian, Greek and Indian civilisations.The Oera Linda Book was written on cotton paper and de Linden claimed it came from 1256, copied from an even older work. Published in 1876, many people consider it a fraud.

LEMURIA
Some lost lands are more modern, and said to be rationally theorised to have existed. For instance, there is a problem with a primitive group of primates called lemurs. They are found only on Madagascar, off the African coast. But they have close relatives in the bushbabies of Africa and the lorises of India.Prior to the understanding of continental drift, zoologists realised this was mysterious. How could such closely related species appear an ocean apart? The problem was first tackled in the 19th century by English zoologist Philip Sclater, who argued for a lost continent, which he called Lemuria.In the 1870s, the idea was taken up by the likes of Huxley and Wallace, leading scientists of their day. Ernst Haeckel even went so far as to suggest Lemuria could be the origin of humankind.

Mystics soon got into the act regarding this new ‘Garden of Eden’. Among them was Madame Blavatsky. Contacting her psychic ethereal beings, they told her that there had existed on Lemuria the Third Root Race of humanity.
At this stage of their evolution they were brutish apes, Lemuria finally being destroyed in a cataclysm before humanity advanced and moved on to Atlantis. However, even though continental drift may explain the distribution of the lemurs, some still believe in the existence of this lost continent.

MU
A further lost land is Mu, which, according to former Bengal Lancer, Col James Churchward, existed in the Pacific Ocean. Claiming to have found evidence in 1870 from clay tablets found in India, man first appeared here 200,000 years ago, advancing to a civilisation of ten tribes with some sixty million people.
Also gaining knowledge from trance visits to previous lives, Churchward never produced any real evidence, but argued that the truth was found in legends throughout the world. Like Atlantis, Mu disappeared about 12,000 years ago following volcanic eruptions and tidal waves.

MYTHS OF THE PAST
As we can see, most of these lost lands are quite fanciful, but share a similar psychology to other forms of lost worlds. Typical is the monotheist Garden of Eden.
Said to be a paradise long, long ago, its civilization was restricted to a single couple, who were thrown out, not through cataclysm, but copulation. But other such lands have more social structure.
Take the Norse Asgard, the realm populated by the Northern gods. It is said to exist in the centre of the universe, reached by the rainbow bridge. It contains many regions and mansions, the most famous being Valhalla.
This is the home of the souls of slain warriors, taken there by the Valkyries, where they drink and feast for eternity.

We can see many similarities, in terms of metaphor, between such heavenly lands and lost civilisations. They both seem other worldly, and are surrounded by similar fantastic mythology.
It seems that when a society is at peace with itself, the metaphor continues to exist, but when the society falls into less moral times, their fantasy land is destroyed, thus becoming a moral tale of regret. And perhaps we can understand what is going on by looking to the eastern Shambhala.

by www.thesupernaturalworld.co.uk