The Story of Atlantis

About This Publication

The Story of Atlantis: A Geographical, Historical, and Ethnological Sketch is an 1896 work by William Scott-Elliot that presents Atlantis through the teachings of late nineteenth-century Theosophy, combining archaeological and geological arguments with information said to have been recovered through trained clairvoyance. A. P. Sinnett supplied the preface explaining the occult method behind the investigation.

The Story of Atlantis became one of the influential early books to give Atlantis a complete occult history. Scott-Elliot does far more than argue that a lost continent once existed in the Atlantic. He describes its geography, successive populations, governments, migrations, religions, educational systems, architecture, agriculture, technology, psychic abilities, airships, warfare, social customs, and eventual destruction. Atlantis is placed within a vast history of human spiritual evolution in which humanity passes through a succession of Root Races. The Atlanteans constitute the Fourth Root Race, following the Lemurians and preceding the Fifth Root Race to which modern humanity belongs. Seven Atlantean sub-races are identified as the Rmoahal, Tlavatli, Toltec, First Turanian, Original Semite, Akkadian, and Mongolian. Their migrations spread Atlantean peoples and culture across the world, with Scott-Elliot tracing their descendants into Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas.

The book is also important for understanding the occult world from which much early twentieth-century Western esotericism developed. Its teachings about hidden Masters, Initiates, clairvoyance, psychic faculties, reincarnation, spiritual evolution, occult forces, and ancient civilizations belong to the same esoteric environment that later reached readers through the Yogi Publication Society and its works on Yogi philosophy. The connection is especially clear in Scott-Elliot’s treatment of clairvoyance as a faculty through which trained occultists can gain direct knowledge of distant places and past ages, a subject that also became an important part of the YPS occult catalog.

What Is The Story of Atlantis About?

The Story of Atlantis presents a history of Atlantis according to the Theosophical system of human evolution. Scott-Elliot begins with evidence that he believes supports the former existence of a large Atlantic continent, then moves into information obtained from what the book calls the “Occult Records.” From there, Atlantis becomes the setting for hundreds of thousands of years of human development. Continents rise and sink, civilizations appear and disappear, races migrate around the globe, enormous cities are built, psychic faculties are developed, hidden forces of nature are discovered, and spiritual knowledge is gradually corrupted through selfish use.

The history is built around four major catastrophes. Scott-Elliot dates the first to about 800,000 years ago, the second to about 200,000 years ago, and the third to about 80,000 years ago. The third catastrophe destroyed almost everything that remained of the Atlantean continent except the island of Poseidonis. Poseidonis survived until the fourth catastrophe, which Scott-Elliot dates precisely to 9564 B.C. and identifies with the Atlantis remembered in the account preserved by Plato.

The destruction of Atlantis is only one part of the story. Scott-Elliot is more interested in explaining what Atlantean civilization was supposed to have been and how it affected later humanity. His account traces the development of the seven sub-races, the rise of the great Toltec empire, the spread of Atlantean peoples into other lands, and the gradual corruption of occult knowledge. Atlantis becomes both a lost civilization and an earlier stage in the spiritual history of humanity.

How Does Scott-Elliot Claim the History of Atlantis Was Recovered?

A. P. Sinnett’s preface is essential to understanding the book because it explains that The Story of Atlantis does not claim to be based solely on conventional historical research. Sinnett argues that written documents, monuments, fossils, and archaeological remains give only fragments of the human past. He then introduces clairvoyance as another means of historical investigation.

According to Sinnett, human consciousness possesses faculties that can operate beyond the physical senses. Ordinary clairvoyance may allow a person to perceive distant objects or events, while more developed forms can reach into what he calls the memory of Nature. He compares this with ordinary human memory. Individual experiences remain accessible to a person even though the events themselves have passed. Sinnett extends the principle to nature itself, proposing an enduring superphysical record in which past events remain available to a sufficiently developed consciousness.

Thought transference is offered as a simple example of consciousness reaching beyond its normal boundaries. From there Sinnett moves to astral clairvoyance, which he describes as capable of recovering events from the distant past. The investigations behind The Story of Atlantis are presented as having been conducted through this higher faculty. Sinnett claims that the memory of Nature preserves past events with complete accuracy and that trained occult investigators can consult this record.

This method places the book firmly within the occult tradition. Its detailed dates, descriptions of prehistoric peoples, accounts of Atlantean technology, and descriptions of events hundreds of thousands of years ago are presented as information obtained through clairvoyant investigation. Scott-Elliot supplements these occult records with geological, archaeological, mythological, linguistic, and literary evidence where he believes those sources support the clairvoyant account.

What Evidence Does the Book Give for Atlantis?

Before beginning the occult history, Scott-Elliot attempts to establish that Atlantis has support from conventional evidence. He discusses geological indications of former land connections across the Atlantic, similarities between plants and animals on opposite sides of the ocean, relationships among ancient peoples, similarities in architecture and religious traditions, and flood legends found among widely separated cultures.

The survival of similar traditions in Central and South America receives close attention. Scott-Elliot refers to Mexican, Guatemalan, Honduran, Peruvian, and North American traditions of a destroyed ancestral land. He also quotes a translation of the Troano manuscript attributed to Augustus Le Plongeon, which was then believed to describe a catastrophe that destroyed a land called Mu. Scott-Elliot treats such accounts as memories of the same prehistoric disasters described in the occult records.

He makes similar arguments from language and physical types. Populations separated by oceans are interpreted as descendants of peoples who once occupied connected territories. Some linguistic similarities are assigned to Atlantis, while others are traced farther back to Lemuria. In this system, the modern distribution of humanity can only be understood by reconstructing continents and migrations that disappeared long before conventional recorded history.

What Did the Continent of Atlantis Look Like?

The four maps are central to Scott-Elliot’s reconstruction. They depict the earth during four stages in the destruction of Atlantis and are meant to show how the enormous original continent was gradually reduced to islands before its final disappearance.

The first map represents the world approximately one million years ago. Atlantis is shown stretching across much of the Atlantic, beginning a few degrees east of Iceland and extending south toward the region of modern Brazil. It includes territory associated with Texas, the Gulf of Mexico, the eastern and southern portions of North America, Labrador, parts of what later became the British Isles, and an enormous Atlantic landmass extending toward the African coast. Remnants of the older Lemurian and Hyperborean continents are also included. The catastrophe around 800,000 years ago radically alters this geography. Later catastrophes continue the process until the main continent has disappeared and separate islands remain. After the catastrophe around 80,000 years ago, Poseidonis is left as the principal surviving remnant. Its destruction in 9564 B.C. closes the Atlantean period.

The geography allows Scott-Elliot to explain migrations that would otherwise require enormous ocean crossings. Peoples who later appear in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas are presented as descendants of Atlantean populations who migrated before or during the catastrophes.

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Who Were the Seven Atlantean Sub-Races?

Scott-Elliot divides the Fourth Root Race into seven sub-races. These groups appear at different stages of Atlantean history and develop different physical, intellectual, cultural, and spiritual characteristics.

They are

• Rmoahal
• Tlavatli
• Toltec
• First Turanian
• Original Semite
• Akkadian
• Mongolian

The Rmoahal are the earliest Atlantean sub-race and retain characteristics associated with the preceding Lemurian humanity. The Tlavatli follow and spread across large territories. The Toltecs become the dominant civilization of Atlantis and occupy the central place in Scott-Elliot’s history. The Turanians, Original Semites, Akkadians, and Mongolians arise later and contribute to the populations that eventually spread into the post-Atlantean world.

Scott-Elliot describes these populations in the racial language and classifications common to Theosophical writing of his period. These categories should be understood as part of the book’s nineteenth-century occult racial system. They do not correspond to modern anthropology or genetics.

Why Are the Toltecs So Important in The Story of Atlantis?

The Toltecs are presented as the great civilization builders of Atlantis. Scott-Elliot calls their development magnificent and says they ruled the continent for thousands of years with enormous material power. Their influence became so strong that later intermixture with other sub-races failed, in his account, to erase the Toltec type. He traces their distant descendants to the ancient civilizations of Mexico and Peru.

At the height of Toltec civilization, Atlantis is governed by Initiate emperors who combine political authority with advanced spiritual knowledge. Their capital is the City of the Golden Gates, a vast metropolis that becomes the political and religious center of the empire. Government, education, agriculture, science, and religion are organized under rulers who are said to possess both occult knowledge and highly developed psychic faculties.

The Toltec age also becomes the great turning point of the book. The same knowledge that produces an advanced civilization eventually becomes the instrument of its corruption. Atlanteans learn to control hidden forces of nature, yet increasing numbers use those forces for personal power and selfish purposes. Scott-Elliot identifies this misuse of occult knowledge as sorcery.

What Was the City of the Golden Gates?

The City of the Golden Gates is Scott-Elliot’s great Atlantean capital. It is described as an enormous planned city filled with temples, palaces, gardens, fountains, monumental architecture, and waterways. The scale of its construction reflects the massive physical dimensions Scott-Elliot assigns to early Atlantean civilization.

Architecture is one of the arts in which the Atlanteans are said to have excelled. Houses of importance were built around central courtyards, often containing fountains, and buildings were generally separated by gardens or open land instead of being packed tightly into streets. Public buildings and temples reached immense proportions. Sculpture was also highly developed, with statues produced in wood, black stone, gold, silver, and a metal called aurichalcum. Painting remained less developed, although brilliant colors were widely used in decoration.

The City of the Golden Gates becomes more than a physical capital as the history progresses. Control of the city represents control of the Atlantean world. When the followers of the black arts rebel against the Initiate emperor, they seize the city and establish their own ruler there. The struggle for Atlantis is thus represented through a struggle for its sacred and political center.

How Was Atlantis Governed?

During its greatest period, the Toltec empire is ruled by an emperor assisted by subordinate rulers who govern provinces and dependent territories. Scott-Elliot presents the earliest and greatest rulers as Initiates who possess spiritual knowledge and use their powers for the welfare of the population.

The system extends into education and occupation. Children pass through state-supported schools, and those displaying intellectual ability are selected for advanced training. Psychic perception is also used in deciding which occupations children are best suited to pursue. Technical schools train people for different professions and industries, while advanced colleges teach sciences and specialized knowledge.

Scott-Elliot makes the decline of this educational system part of Atlantis’s political decay. Members of the ruling classes become more interested in privilege and luxury. Higher education increasingly becomes restricted to their own children. Officials with genuine clairvoyant ability cease personally selecting children for suitable occupations and delegate the work to people who lack those faculties. Children are then assigned to work for which they have little aptitude, producing dissatisfaction throughout society.

Land ownership changes in a similar way. Earlier systems are connected to communal obligations and the administration of the state. In the later period of Poseidonis, individual ownership becomes common. Scott-Elliot presents these political and economic changes as signs of a civilization losing the principles that had guided its earlier period.

What Were Atlantean Schools Like?

Education occupies an important place in Scott-Elliot’s description of the Toltec age. Primary education is provided by the state, and children who display unusual ability are selected for higher schools around the age of twelve. Reading and writing are treated as preliminary skills. Advanced education concentrates on the fields needed for the administration and development of civilization.

Technical instruction is extensive. Students are trained for agriculture, engineering, scientific investigation, administration, and other occupations. Psychic faculties are treated as legitimate abilities that can be cultivated and used. In the earlier period, aptitude determines advancement. During the decline, hereditary privilege increasingly replaces ability. The account reflects one of the book’s recurring ideas. Psychic development and scientific knowledge are not separated. The great Atlantean civilization possesses both. Its rulers and scientists understand forces of nature that later humanity has forgotten, while clairvoyance is employed in education, government, and research.

What Sciences Did the Atlanteans Develop?

Scott-Elliot attributes extraordinary scientific accomplishments to Atlantis. The Atlanteans understand forces that modern humanity has lost and learn to apply them to transportation, agriculture, construction, and warfare. Science is closely connected with occult knowledge because the forces being manipulated include forms of energy inaccessible to ordinary physical observation.

Agriculture receives extensive scientific attention. Specialized colleges conduct experiments in plants and animals. Scott-Elliot makes the striking claim that wheat did not originate on Earth and was brought from another globe by the Manu. Atlantean agricultural experimentation then produced other cereals through crossings between wheat and terrestrial grasses. The banana or plantain is also described as an Atlantean achievement, developed through centuries of selective cultivation from a wild, seed-filled fruit.

This combination of spiritual hierarchy, psychic investigation, and scientific experimentation is characteristic of Scott-Elliot’s Atlantis. Its civilization is advanced because its people still possess access to powers and knowledge that later humanity has largely lost.

Did the Atlanteans Have Flying Machines?

One of the most famous parts of The Story of Atlantis is its description of Atlantean airships. Scott-Elliot gives surprisingly detailed accounts of aerial vessels powered by a force that could be directed through tubes and valves. The ships could move through the air, change direction, rise and descend, and be used in warfare.

The military vessels could direct their force against enemy airships. Scott-Elliot describes how an attacking current might upset another vessel and turn it upside down. A system of tubes positioned around the ship could then be used to restore equilibrium by directing force downward from one side. The same basic energy principle was adapted to sea-going vessels, although Scott-Elliot says a denser form of the force proved more effective on water.

The flying machines illustrate the technological height of Atlantis, yet they also contribute to one of the book’s main warnings. Knowledge gives the Atlanteans tremendous power over nature, and the same power that can build civilization can be redirected toward conquest and destruction.

What Were Atlantean Books and Writing Like?

Scott-Elliot describes Atlantean writing as being produced on thin metal sheets with a white porcelain-like surface. Words were inscribed on these sheets, and copies could supposedly be made by pressing another chemically prepared metal sheet against the original. Numerous sheets fastened together formed a book.

Language also changes across the seven sub-races. Scott-Elliot traces several later Atlantean languages to earlier forms. The Tlavatli language becomes the foundation of the Turanian tongue. Semitic and Akkadian languages develop from a Toltec base. He says the Toltec language retained unusual stability and survived with relatively little alteration among later populations in Mexico and Peru.

Language, like physical type, religion, architecture, and custom, is used to connect post-Atlantean civilizations with their supposed prehistoric ancestors.

What Was Everyday Life in Atlantis Like?

Scott-Elliot devotes considerable attention to food, buildings, education, writing, family customs, clothing, and social organization. These details are important because his goal is to portray Atlantis as a functioning civilization instead of simply a legendary island.

Some customs are deliberately presented as disturbing to modern readers. Scott-Elliot says that many Atlanteans consumed animal blood and parts of animals that Europeans of his time would reject. Fish, grains, bread, cakes, milk, fruit, and vegetables were also eaten. The Initiate rulers and priesthood are described as vegetarians, setting them apart from much of the population.

Wealth and social rank become increasingly important during the decline. Luxury expands among the ruling classes, hereditary privilege grows, and institutions originally created to serve the population become instruments of social division. Scott-Elliot continually links changes in everyday life with the spiritual condition of the civilization.

What Religion Did the Atlanteans Follow?

Religion in Atlantis begins under the direction of divine Instructors and Initiates who preserve knowledge of the spiritual worlds. Scott-Elliot’s religious history follows the same pattern as his political history. An original spiritual teaching is gradually misunderstood, materialized, and corrupted.

Sun worship becomes one of the major forms of Atlantean religion. The sun serves as a visible symbol of a higher spiritual reality, and the Initiate priesthood preserves an understanding of the meaning behind the symbol. As spiritual perception declines, the symbol itself becomes the object of worship. The degeneration eventually reaches an extreme form of self-worship. Wealthy Atlanteans place statues of themselves in temples and employ priests to maintain shrines devoted to their own images. Scott-Elliot describes statues of gold, silver, stone, and wood receiving offerings as though the individuals represented were gods. He calls this the apotheosis of self.

Behind this history stands the White Lodge. Scott-Elliot says that true religious ideas originate with divine Instructors or Initiates who guard the mysteries and knowledge of superphysical states of consciousness. Human beings receive fragments of these teachings and then distort them through their lower nature.

What Were the White and Black Paths?

The conflict between the White Lodge and the practitioners of the black arts becomes the spiritual center of The Story of Atlantis. Scott-Elliot says that Atlantean scientists and Initiates gradually acquired deeper knowledge of the hidden forces of nature. When that knowledge was used for selfish ends, it became sorcery.

The problem is the use made of knowledge. The same psychic and occult powers can serve the welfare of humanity or personal ambition. As selfishness, lust, brutality, and desire for power increase, Atlantis divides into opposing camps. The followers of the black arts eventually rebel against the Initiate emperor, seize the City of the Golden Gates, and establish a rival ruler. The struggle continues across immense periods. Even after catastrophes destroy much of Atlantis, black magic returns. Scott-Elliot describes a later Toltec dynasty on the island of Ruta as devoted to the black craft. At the same time, rulers acknowledging the “good law” continue to survive in other areas, so the moral conflict remains active until the final destruction of Poseidonis.

Why Was Atlantis Destroyed?

Scott-Elliot connects the physical destruction of Atlantis directly with its spiritual decline. The catastrophes are not treated simply as geological accidents. They occur as Atlantean civilization corrupts its knowledge and uses the forces of nature for selfish and destructive purposes.

The first great catastrophe takes place after the rise of sorcery and the rebellion against the Initiate rulers. Vast territories disappear beneath the sea, while tidal waves devastate regions that remain above water. The surviving population temporarily responds to the warning, and the practice of sorcery declines for a period. It later returns.

This cycle repeats. Civilization recovers, power accumulates, occult knowledge is again abused, and another catastrophe follows. The sinking of Atlantis becomes the physical expression of a civilization that has lost control of the powers it once understood. The theme places The Story of Atlantis squarely within the moral teachings of occultism. Psychic development alone does not constitute spiritual advancement. Knowledge can become destructive when separated from self-control and moral development.

How Did Atlantis Influence Egypt?

One of the major consequences of the Atlantean migrations is the transfer of people and knowledge into Egypt. Groups leave Atlantis before the catastrophes and establish settlements in other parts of the world. These migrations help Scott-Elliot explain why advanced cultures seem to appear in later history with religious, architectural, and astronomical knowledge already developed.

Egypt becomes one of the great repositories of Atlantean occult tradition. Initiates preserve teachings that had existed during the better periods of Atlantis, while refugees carry elements of Atlantean science, architecture, religion, and social organization into the Nile region.

This idea became common throughout later Western esotericism. Egypt was repeatedly presented as a surviving center of ancient wisdom whose origins stretched into civilizations preceding recorded history. It also helps explain why later occult traditions connected with Hermeticism, Hermes Trismegistus, alchemy, and the Qabalah so often placed Egypt near the beginning of their sacred histories.

How Does Atlantis Connect to Mexico and Peru?

Scott-Elliot repeatedly connects the civilizations of the Americas with Atlantean migrations. The Toltec line receives the greatest attention. He argues that descendants of the Atlantean Toltecs eventually established powerful civilizations in Mexico and Peru, preserving aspects of the old language, government, religion, architecture, and social organization.

The Inca system is treated as one example of an Atlantean inheritance. Scott-Elliot describes a system in which land was divided among cultivators, the ruler, and the priesthood. Revenue from the ruler’s portion supported government, roads, and the military, while the lands assigned to the sun supported religion, education, the sick, the infirm, and people who had reached the age at which hard labor ceased.

The American civilizations are thus presented as distant survivals of institutions once developed on Atlantis. Similarities between the Old and New Worlds become evidence of common ancestry within Scott-Elliot’s reconstruction.

What Role Does Spiritual Evolution Play in the Book?

The Story of Atlantis is built upon the Theosophical concept that humanity evolves through immense cycles. Civilizations rise and fall within that process, while the human soul continues its development across repeated incarnations. Atlantis represents the great civilization of the Fourth Root Race.

Each Root Race develops certain human faculties. The Atlantean period is associated strongly with desire, psychic power, and control over subtle forces. These abilities produce great achievements, yet they also create enormous dangers when desire becomes dominant over spiritual judgment.

The Fifth Root Race inherits the results of the Atlantean experience and develops along another line. Atlantean history is therefore presented as part of humanity’s own past. Its successes and failures become stages in a continuing process of spiritual evolution.

These ideas later became familiar to readers of Yogi Ramacharaka and other works circulated through the Yogi Publication Society, where reincarnation, spiritual evolution, psychic faculties, astral existence, hidden Masters, and successive stages of human development became recurring subjects. The terminology differs among the books, but The Story of Atlantis belongs to the occult literature that had already made these concepts familiar to Western readers before the rapid expansion of YPS publishing.

What Is the Importance of Psychic Power in The Story of Atlantis?

Psychic ability appears at every level of Scott-Elliot’s history. Clairvoyance provides the method through which the history itself is supposedly recovered. Atlantean rulers use psychic perception. Educators use it to judge the abilities of children. Initiates use it to understand spiritual realities. Scientists combine psychic faculties with knowledge of natural forces.

Yet psychic power also becomes one of the causes of Atlantis’s downfall. The book repeatedly separates the possession of unusual faculties from spiritual wisdom. An individual can have immense psychic power while remaining selfish, ambitious, cruel, or dominated by desire. Atlantis demonstrates what happens when psychic and scientific development outrun moral development.

This was an important question in occult literature at the turn of the twentieth century. Clairvoyance, telepathy, psychometry, astral perception, personal magnetism, mesmerism, and psychic influence were being studied and taught throughout occult and New Thought circles. The early Yogi Publication Society likewise devoted substantial attention to these subjects. Scott-Elliot’s Atlantis offered a dramatic prehistoric warning about their misuse.

How Does The Story of Atlantis Relate to the Yogi Publication Society?

The Story of Atlantis belongs to the Theosophical current of occult literature that strongly overlaps with subjects later presented by the Yogi Publication Society. YPS published and promoted books dealing with reincarnation, Karma, astral planes, psychic powers, spiritual evolution, ancient wisdom, Masters, occult development, and the relationship between Eastern and Western teachings. These subjects form much of the conceptual world of Scott-Elliot’s book.

The relationship is especially clear beside the early Yogi philosophy books. YPS described its program as extending from the physical plane through the mental, psychic, and spiritual planes and promised instruction in clairvoyance, clairaudience, psychometry, telepathy, psychic influence, the astral world, spiritual evolution, and the path of attainment. Scott-Elliot’s Atlantis assumes the reality of almost this entire occult framework.

There is also an important difference in purpose. The Story of Atlantis is presented primarily as occult history. The Yogi Ramacharaka books were generally organized as instruction. Scott-Elliot tells the reader what clairvoyant investigators supposedly discovered about humanity’s prehistoric past. Ramacharaka books more often explain occult principles and their application to the individual. Together they show two ways the same early twentieth-century occult readership encountered ideas about psychic faculties and hidden dimensions of human development.

Atlantis, Hidden Knowledge, and the Later YPS Occult Books

The Story of Atlantis also helps explain the intellectual setting in which later YPS books on Hermeticism, Western esotericism, and ancient wisdom could be presented to readers as parts of a long historical tradition. Scott-Elliot’s history pushes the origin of advanced occult knowledge far beyond Egypt and the civilizations of recorded antiquity. Egypt itself becomes an inheritor of an older system.

That basic picture appears repeatedly in occult literature of the period. Ancient teachings are fragments of a wisdom once possessed more completely. Initiates preserve the knowledge through periods of decline. Symbols conceal truths that ordinary humanity no longer understands. Different religious and philosophical traditions contain pieces of the same ancient teaching.

Such ideas later provided a natural setting for books such as The Kybalion by the Three Initiates, where teachings attributed to ancient Hermetic philosophy are again presented as laws preserved through an initiatory tradition. The Story of Atlantis comes from a different author and Theosophical system, yet it belongs to the same period of intense interest in reconstructing a hidden history behind the surviving occult traditions of the ancient world.

What Is the Central Message of The Story of Atlantis?

The central idea of The Story of Atlantis is that humanity possesses a forgotten history extending far beyond written civilization and that knowledge of this past can be recovered through developed psychic faculties. Scott-Elliot uses Atlantis to explain the distribution of peoples, similarities among ancient civilizations, the origin of religious traditions, the survival of occult knowledge, and the presence of legends describing a great flood or lost homeland.

Within that history, the Toltec civilization reaches an extraordinary level of achievement. Its Initiate rulers govern an immense empire. Education is organized by the state. Psychic abilities are cultivated. Agriculture and science are advanced. Great cities and temples are built. Flying machines cross the skies. Hidden forces of nature are understood and controlled.

The same civilization then demonstrates the danger of power without spiritual control. Knowledge becomes a means of personal ambition. Psychic forces become weapons. Political privilege replaces ability. Religion degenerates from spiritual teaching into material worship and finally self-worship. The practitioners of the black arts seize political power, and the civilization enters a long cycle of corruption and catastrophe.

The sinking of Atlantis is the culmination of that history. Scott-Elliot presents it as both a physical disaster and a spiritual lesson. The knowledge of nature’s hidden forces had advanced far beyond the moral development of many of the people who possessed it. The destruction of the continent closes one stage of human evolution, while survivors carry fragments of Atlantean civilization into Egypt, Europe, Asia, Mexico, Peru, and other parts of the world.

The Story of Atlantis is thus much more than an account of a legendary sunken island. It is Scott-Elliot’s reconstruction of an entire lost age of humanity and an attempt to place the civilizations of recorded history inside a much older occult chronology. Its combination of Atlantis, Root Races, reincarnation, clairvoyance, hidden Masters, psychic development, lost technology, ancient initiation, and spiritual evolution made it an important work of early Western esotericism and part of the occult world from which the literature of the early twentieth century developed.