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Rise And Demise Of Atlantis

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Prefatory Notes

This compilation is primarily from the second volume of The Secret Doctrine (1888). It sketches out the occult features of the Fourth Race of Humanity and Atlantis, and its homonymous complex of islands. It has been prepared for a “White Lotus Day,” organised by the United Lodge of Theosophists in Greece, and presented in a special gathering in Athens, on the 14th May 2006. White Lotus is an annual commemoration of the life and works of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891), founder and principal exponent of the modern Theosophical Movement.

Further revised and typographically enhanced, it is now republished as part of our Integrative Theosophical Studies Online Series 4, on Anthropogenesis. The clarity, power, and majesty of H.P. Blavatsky’s writings are self-evident. Rather than paraphrasing her, a common but presumptuous trend these days, we reproduced them here verbatim — save the side captions and few explanatory notes. She being dead yet speaketh.1 Towards the end of her Introduction to The Secret Doctrine, Blavatsky reiterates what she had stated all along, clothed in the words of Michel Eyquem de Montaigne:
Gentlemen, I have here made only a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the sting that ties them.2

Titles of frequently quoted works are abridged as indicated in: Compassion the Spirit of Truth (2009). The Editor’s Notes are common to all our publications and can be found in the same place. A glossary of keywords is provided at the end of this work. Those who may not be familiar with the philosophical terms of the subject matter may wish to consult it first.

Seventeen studies, supplemental to this title, can be found in our Atlantean Realities Series. These are listed on the last page.

There now follows a synopsis, followed by a passage from the pen of Blavatsky that sets the tone and spirit of this compilation. 

SERIES EDITOR 17th November 2009