Some versions of this interesting cosmogram are shown in several other codices, also reproduced above. In the second of the above figures (Gemelli-Carreri Codex), the holy mountain is explicitly represented as a volcano, with a lofty plume on its top resembling a giant palm tree.
This is the source of the widespread myth of the giant Tree of Life (or of Death) which grows atop the Holy Mountain. In India, this myth corresponds to the giant Jambu Tree which grows on top of Mt. Meru, in
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Jambudvipa. This quaint symbolism is described in much more detail in our Atlantis site linked here. ↑032
The third figure, taken from the Boturini Codex, also illustrates the same scene. But the Indians are here explicitly shown crossing the ocean in a boat, towards America, shown as the land encircling it. This motif quaintly evokes the map of the world of Cosmas Indicopleustes discussed further below, as well as Plato’s description of the Peirata Ges, the Outer Continent. In this codex, the Holy Mountain is explicitly shown as a stepped pyramid with a volcanic plume (or “tree of life” or “pillar of heaven”) on top and surrounded by six other islands.
This stepped pyramid evokes the ones of Indonesia or those of Mexico and Peru. But here it apparently represents the volcanic mountains of Indonesia and the agricultural terraces used for cultivation there. The seven islands (or tombs?) are the ones of Chicomoztóc (“Seven Recesses”). As such, they also correspond to the Seven Islands of the Blest, which again symbolize the same thing.
The Foundering of Tolán (Maya)
The next figure reproduces a beautiful bas-relief carved in one of the Mayan temples in Mexico’s Yucatan. The perfect correspondence with the Aztec traditions illustrated in the previous figure of this list is telltale. It seems that the barbarous Aztecs actually absorbed the sacred traditions of the more civilized Mayas and added them to their own religious and sacred traditions.
Or perhaps the two great Mexican cultures were two sides of the same coin, one pious and the other barbarous, as is so often the case with Atlantean relicts. In the bas-relief we see the alias and counterpart of Noah hastily abandoning the destroyed region of Tolán, the Mayan Paradise. The dead fish and the dead person vividly illustrate the lethal nature of the great cataclysm depicted here.
And so do the solid stone temples (pyramids?) which are shown collapsing. The whole island has already sunken down, with only the top of the volcano itself remaining emerse, forming an island. The curious wisps of smoke leave no room for doubting that the Holy Mountain of Paradise was indeed a volcano and that it was its eruption that somehow triggered the fateful disaster.
Like the other Indians, both the Mayas and the Aztecs were unsure of the true location of Aztlán-Tolán. More likely, they knew it well, but were unwilling to profane the sacred traditions by revealing it to the public. The Incas – who were in all probability the true civilizers of both the Mayas and the Aztecs – were quite sure of the western location of Paradise.
In other words, the Incan Paradise lay beyond the Pacific Ocean, towards the west. Thence their civilizers came – Zumé, the Inca rulers, etc. – in the dawn of time. In contrast to the Atlantic Ocean, an empty waste in prehistory, the wide Pacific Ocean was where all the action actually concentrated, according to Leo Frobenius, the erudite German archaeologist and several other experts, Thor Heyerdahl in particular.
The Brazilian Indians sometimes place their Paradise in the east, sometimes in the west. So, it is at least risky to unreservedly believe in their sacred traditions, unless one can make sure first that they are not sheer mystifications or misinformation intended to deceive us, the profanes.
As for myself, I prefer to believe in traditions like the ones of the Incas or the Navajos and other Indians of the Pacific coast, or in the even more reliable ones of the Hindus and the Buddhists concerning the Western Paradise of Buddha Amitabha. But I also recall once again that, just as Columbus reasoned, the farthest west is actually coterminous with
the farthest east, so that the two places are really one and the same. This inescapable fact was well known to the ancient mythographers, who often made use of it to baffle and confound the profanes they despised.
Quetzalcoatl and Atlas Holding Up the Skies
The first of the previous two figures reproduces an Aztec bas relief illustrating Quetzalcoatl bearing up the skies. This type of motif was recurrent in both Aztec and in Maya art, where the god is named Chibchacun. The second figure represents the mighty titan Atlas, doing the same according to Greco-Roman mythology. This particular figure is the so-called Atlas Farnese, the famous Greco-Roman statue. ↑033
In Mexican art two male figures are often illustrated doing this: Quetzalcoatl and his twin brother and dual, Tezcatlipoca. Curiously enough, Tezcatlipoca’s tree is called arbol espejo (“mirror tree”), much as the two Phoenician Pillars of Hercules and/or Atlas were also deemed to be mirror images of each other at the two opposite sides of the world.
The same motif also happens in Greco-Roman traditions, where Atlas and Hercules take turns bearing up heaven. One should note that the Mexican hero or god – half-human, half-divine, as so many heroic saviors of mankind – wears a long beard in the illustration, much as does Atlas, incidentally. The Bible too speaks of twin Trees, of Life and Knowledge, and so do other Old World traditions, India’s included.
Beards are highly unusual with both the Aztecs and the Mayas. These natives, like most other American Indians, essentially never have beards which can be grown into a goatee such as the one illustrated here. The curved posture of Quetzalcoatl is also curious. It closely reproduces the one of Atlas just shown, bent under the excessive weight of the earth or heaven, which he attempts to keep separated, but eventually fails.
Here, these two levels (heaven and earth) visibly correspond to the floor and ceiling of the temple, which is itself an accurate image of the cosmos and its several layers of heavens and hells.
According to both Maya and Aztec traditions – as well as those of the ancient Greeks and Hindus and other peoples – an Atlas figure (atlante) supports heaven, preventing it from falling down over the earth.
When Atlas (or Hercules) succumbs under the excessive burden, the sky falls down, and becomes the new earth. A new heaven and a new earth result, more or less as told in the Book of Revelation about the New Jerusalem. The old heaven becomes the new earth, and the old earth becomes the new hell.
When this figure of Quetzalcoatl is compared in detail to the majestic Atlas Farnese, or the many others that exist both in America and in Greece, it is not difficult to see that the curved postures of the two heroes are identical, both bent under the excessive weight of heaven.
The parallels are so close that it is hard to deny that the two religious traditions originated from a pristine one common to both nations, since they agree in every detail. These close parallels extend to several other features: falling serial heavens, successive Creations, Civilizing Heroes and Saviors, etc..
As we have already asserted, it is only the aprioristic stance of the academics against the possibility of pristine contacts which misleads them all into claiming an independent origin of such identical cosmogonies.
Such is particularly the case when one realizes that the figures of Quetzalcoatl, like the ones of Atlas, are also visibly one and the same bearded hero. Both are the great Civilizing Heroes of Humanity and both personify Atlantis itself. Both heroes are also the aliases and archetypes of similar Saviors of Mankind, such as Jesus Christ, Hercules, Osiris, Tammuz, Attis, Mithras, Krishna, Balarama, among several others.
So are also the personages of their wicked twins and oppositors, the very incarnations of the Devil: Hercules in Greece; Tezcatlipoca in Mexico; Seth-Typhon in Egypt, and so forth. The great duel between the two brothers eventually led to the destruction of the whole world, which they were forced to recreate anew. And this duel of cosmic proportions is really an allegory of the Great War of Atlantis, as expounded by Plato in his famous dialogues on the Lost Co
ntinent, as well as by ourselves in the present book.
The Atlantes of Tula (Mexico)
The Atlas figure at left, reproduced faithfully from the famous Atlantes of Tula (Mexico), represents an atlante or telamon. Such figures were widely used in Greece and Rome, just as they also were in the Americas. The erect, stiff figure simulates a pillar. And it was indeed used as such in Greece and other Mediterranean loca-
tions. ↑034
The same type of stiff standing figure serving as a pillar for temples and palaces was also popular in ancient Greece and Rome. There they were called atlantes (Greek) or telamones (Latin). They also had other names such as caryatides, canephores, calatophores, etc.. ↑035
And they could be either masculine or feminine, but in every case they represented the same thing: the figure of Atlas bearing up the skies on his head. Sometimes, Atlas is represented standing like an atlante. Such atlante figures are often twins, representing Hercules and Atlas in Classical antiquity and Quetzalcoatl and his brother in Mexican traditions. This dualism may be observed in the two pillars of the figure shown. ↑036
The term atlantes actually derives from Atlas or Telamon, his alias and counterpart. Both names actually derive from the Greek root tla meaning “to bear up, support” (scil., the world or heaven). The Aztecs also often attribute the myth of the Pillar of Heaven to the figure of Tlaloc, their great civilizer. Once again we find the radix tla- associated with an Atlas figure and with the myth of Atlantis (or Aztlán). These uncanny coincidences are of course far more than casual.
The myth of Atlas bearing up the world (or the sky) also closely corresponds to that of Quetzalcoatl, who also does the same in the Aztec traditions. So does his twin, Tezcatlipoca, as we just discussed.
In Greek mythology, Atlas and Hercules likewise function as twins, and take turns in bearing up the world. In fact, the two heroes represent the two Pillars of Hercules and/or Atlas, just as their Aztec counterparts also do. In Hindu traditions, the twin heroes correspond to Krishna and Balarama or their many aliases, including Shiva and Vishnu.
One pair of Pillars of Hercules was located in the Far West, in Gibraltar, and the other, the pair of “pillars” posted at the sides of Sunda Strait, in Indonesia, the actual entrance to Taprobane, the true site of Atlantis-Eden. They were volcanoes deemed “pillars of heaven” because their lofty plumes reached all the way to heaven itself.
Once again, we have here a perfect correspondence of the two sacred traditions on Paradise Lost, the one of the Greeks (Atlantis) and that of the Aztecs (Aztlán). It is quite obvious that the two symbols and the two heroes represented one and the same thing both in the Old and the New World. It is only the stubborn obstinacy of certain scholars that prevents us all from seeing the obvious, even when it is pointed out, as here.
Consider the parallels given below and try to estimate, as some sort of homework, the following sequential improbabilities of purely random coincidences: twin giants bearing up heaven and/or earth; twin trees of life; twin volcanoes on whose tops they grow as mirror images of each other (antipodal); heaven falling down and destroying the former world; Indians having long beards; such personages equated to flying dragons or winged serpents; trees growing in opposite directions (one upside down); twin central guardians flanked by four helpers at the four corners of the world; etc..
It is a pity that anthropologists or archaeologists or even linguists never consult physicists and statisticians like myself on such purely mathematical matters, much as Napoleon once consulted Poisson on the probabilities of foot-soldiers being trodden upon by cavalry horses or as insurance companies consult statisticians on the risks of loss.
They would fast conclude that the odds of such random coincidences are essentially impossible, and should hence never occur in actual practice. It is perhaps for this very reason that the present human disciplines are kept so widely separated from the exact ones everywhere in the modern world. This even seems to be the result of deliberate planning, so that the Illusion of Separativity may survive in this brave world of ours.
Chapter 6 – Atlantis in Ancient Cosmograms
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
The Mountain of Sunrise and Sunset
The remarkable figure below reproduces the decoration on an
Egyptian vase dating from pre-dynastic times (Amratian Period, c. 4,000– 3500 BC). This figure is a cosmogram, a sort of cosmological map illustrating the inner working of the cosmos. The extreme antiquity of this motif – encountered in a great many variant forms in Egypt – attests the fact that this sacred tradition dates from extreme antiquity: 6,000 years ago, and perhaps even more.
Since their civilization had not yet developed, it is apparent that the Egyptians brought this symbolism from whatever place they originally came from, before the dawn of history. This place was, in all probability, the East Indies, where this symbolism is current ever since Vedic times, the times of Atlantis.
The two mountains shown are the Mountain of Sunrise and the Mountain of Sunset, already commented in the previous entry. The wavy lines – an Egyptian hieroglyph for “water” – represent the WorldEncircling Ocean. The sun is shown entering the world from the right (the Orient), at dawn (6:00 AM), and exiting it from the left (the Occident), at dusk (6:00 PM).
The strait at the left is known to be Gibraltar Strait, alias “Pillars of Hercules”. The strait at the extreme right, the extreme Orient, is really unknown up to now. But it is also known that the ancient Egyptians considered these two straits the extremities (or “fringes”) of the world, one in the far occident (Gibraltar), the other one in the far orient. We have, after a very long study of the problem, been able to locate and identify these Eastern Pillars in Indonesia and, even more exactly, in Sunda Strait, in Sumatra.
Sumatra was, in antiquity, the site of Taprobane. And this site was invariably considered the site of the start of the day. It was there that the City of Lanka was located, the fabulous capital of Ravana’s worldwide empire. And this great mythical empire was the alias and archetype of Atlantis itself. We will return to this subject further below, when we discuss the true identity of the White Ethiopians.
This Egyptian symbolism closely corresponds to the one of Nut in her diurnal, celestial aspect devouring the sun in the morning and birthing it in the afternoon; or, conversely, in her nocturnal (chthonian) aspect, doing the opposite. This type of symbolism is recurrent in Egyptian iconography. In alternative interpretations, the earth/celestial goddess is substituted by the Double Lion (Acker or Ruty). ↑037
The idea here is that the sun is first “devoured” by the underground earth monster, which it enters when night starts. And then the sun reissues from there at sunrise, returning to the sky in this world, which it then crosses, as if in the interior of another twin monster, the celestial one.
Some Egyptian iconographies – which we discuss in the links just given – portray this curious belief with the sun entering the arched body of Nut or Hathor (the Sky) via her mouth and exiting through her vulva. It then reenters the earth, where the process is reversed. In other versions, also discussed there, the Goddess is substituted by the Double Lion (Acker) or the two pylons or the Mountain of the Orient, and so on. ↑038 But the symbolism is invariably the same: the Earth Monster which is also the Earth Serpent or the Double Lion or the Vadava or, even more exactly, the Split Mountain (Mashu), etc.. Even more exactly, these two gates are the two straits illustrated in the figure above.
Actually, these two gates or portals are Sunda Strait in the Far Orient and Gibraltar Strait in the Far Occident. Alternatively, Sunda Strait is the monster’s mouth, and Gibraltar its anus. All in all, these strange symbolisms represent the events which actually happened in Atlantis-Eden, in the dawn of time. Devoured by the giant volcanic caldera which opened up on the occasion of its demise, its many people resurrected in the Occident, supposedly immortalized.
In India, the en
ormous caldera is specifically compared to the giant mouth of the Earth Monster (the Serpent Shesha, or its alias, the Submarine Mare), or to earth’s yoni, etc.. The volcanic caldera (tophet) also corresponds to the fiery dragon’s mouth (or lion’s mouth or hell’s mouth) which we encounter in so many traditions the world over. The hero has to be devoured by the Dragon, in order to revive and to become immortal, very much as is the case of the Australian initiants just commented.
In Greece we also find the same belief vividly illustrated in the quaint Greek vase linked here. It illustrates Jason being vomited out by the dragon during his quest of the Golden Fleece. The scene is watched by Pallas Athena, herself a personification of Atlantis as the Great Mother of both gods and humans. ↑039
The process of swallowing is started when the sun enters this world via the mouth (at dawn), and is reversed when it exits this world via its anus (at sunset). And this course is repeated in reverse when the sun enters the netherworld, as everything there runs in reverse, time included.
The Celestial Being corresponds to Nut, the sky goddess, and the Terrestrial Being to Geb, the earth god. Their sexes are often inverted, and so are their roles. The two gods correspond to earth’s two hemispheres, separated since the dawn of time, as we comment in more detail in our Atlantis site.
This symbolism is encountered the world over. In India it often figures in the Rig Veda, where the feat is variously attributed to Purusha, Vishnu, Agni, Varuna, etc.. In Polynesia it is Tane who separates his parents, Rangi (Heaven, male) and Papa (Earth, female). In Greece, it is Kronos (Saturn) who separates Ouranos from Gaea by cutting off his father’s penis. These examples could be multiplied. In Mesopotamia it is Enlil who separates Earth and Heaven in order to create breathing space for humans, who soon after emerged from the ground.
Atlantis the Lost Continent Finally Found Page 13
