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NEWS October 2024
OCTOBER 2024 The recent cyber attack on the Internet Archive is deplorable and can be reasonably compared with the repeated burning of the Great Library of Alexandria. I have used the Wayback Machine extensively, but, until the full extent of the permanent damage is clear, I am unable to assess its effect on Atlantipedia. At […]Read More »
Joining The Dots
I have now published my new book, Joining The Dots, which offers a fresh look at the Atlantis mystery. I have addressed the critical questions of when, where and who, using Plato’s own words, tempered with some critical thinking and a modicum of common sense.Read More »
Hitler
Thule Society
The Thule Society emerged just over a century ago, as an extreme nationalistic German secret society called Germanenorden was founded and after a few years, a schism in its ranks led to the Munich branch adopting the cover name of Thule-Gesellschaft. Some of its members sought to link Thule with Atlantis and the Aryans with the Atlanteans using some of the ideas of Helena Blavatsky and Jean-Silvain Bailly(a).
The Thule-Gesellschaft (Thule Society), originally the Studiengruppe für germanisches Altertum (“Study Group for Germanic Antiquity”), was a German occultist and völkisch group founded by Felix Niedner in 1910(c). Other sources name Rudolf von Sebottendorff as the founder(d).
Karl Harrer, a member of the Thule Society along with the far-right politician Anton Drexler were founders of the German Workers Party (DAP) in 1919, two years later it changed its name to Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, better known as the Nazi Party(b). The Thule Society faded with the establishment of the DAP, although there was a failed attempt to revive it in 1933.
Claims that most leading Nazis had been members of the Thule Society seem to be a gross exaggeration, having only had Rudolf Hess as a member for a brief period, although it is claimed that other high-ranking Nazis such as Göring and Himmler were also members, there is no evidence to support this claim.
History Professor Peter Staudenmeier offers a more sober view of the Thule Society than that portrayed in many popular books today. He points out that “the short-lived Thule Society, which gained brief notoriety in the aftermath of the First World War, is frequently portrayed as a paradigmatic example of the ‘secret societies’ that supposedly gave birth to the Nazi party. While the organisation was indeed secretive, and its modest membership did include several figures who went on to become leading Nazis, it was not an occult order……………the Thule Society was in reality a political organisation committed to Right-wing radicalism, not esoteric machinations. Aside from spreading antisemitic propaganda, its chief activities consisted of militant confrontations with the Left in the Munich area. Hitler had nothing to do with the group.”(d)
(a) https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/sociopol_vril08.htm
(b) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule_Society
(c) https://occultthirdreich.wordpress.com/2011/07/18/the-thule-gesellschaft/
(d) The Nazis as occult masters? It’s a good story but not history | Aeon Ideas
Espejo, José Luis
José Luis Espejo (1965- ) is a Catalan researcher and prolific writer(a). His subjects range from Leonardo da Vinci to comparative mythology to Hitler.
In 2009 he published Los hijos del Edén: toda la verdad sobre la Atlántida [1607] (The Children of Eden: 
The whole truth about Atlantis), described at the time as the definitive Atlantis book. In this 680-page offering he insists on the reality of Atlantis, but not necessarily with that name.
His latest book, Ecos de la Atlántida [1606] (Echoes of Atlantis), reviews the destruction and aftermath of an ancient civilisation, which he contends was destroyed 11,500 years ago. He equates Atlantis with Atalaentre of the Hindus, Aztlan of the Amerindians as well as the Hebrew Garden of Eden.
It would appear that the nature of this 512-page book required an understandable amount of speculation.
(a) https://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=es&u=https://www.joseluisespejo.com/&prev=search
Invasion
Invasion today, as in the past, is usually the consequence of a shortage of resources (food, metals, oil, water), climate change (affecting food supply), overpopulation (also affecting food supply) or political upheaval. Although I do not speak as a military strategist, it would seem obvious that if for any of these reasons, a state is forced into expansionism, it will first look at its nearest neighbours and assess the chances of military success. It is obvious that before the introduction of airborne attacks, propinquity in the form of contiguous territory or short sea journeys has always been critical for a successful invasion(a) and the continued control of occupied territories. This is borne out by the simple historical fact that all the earliest empires, which were located in what we now call the Middle East, expanded through the invasion of its neighbours.
Even today (27.02.22) Vladimir Putin has expanded his empire into more of the contiguous state of Ukraine, having already annexed Crimea. Some military imperatives never change.
However, over-expansion can be costly and potentially dangerous. With particular reference to the fall of the Roman Empire, Rachel Nuwer noted in a recent BBC article(c) that. “By the end of the 100 BC, the Romans had spread across the Mediterranean, to the places most easily accessed by sea. They should have stopped there, but things were going well and they felt empowered to expand to new frontiers by land. While transportation by sea was economical, however, transportation across the land was slow and expensive. All the while, they were overextending themselves and running up costs.”
Many people think that military intelligence gathering is a relatively modern development. However, ancient documents, including the Bible, have accounts of spying thousands of years ago. Mary Rose Sheldon has produced an invaluable sourcebook[1445] on the subject, as well as a volume on Spies in the Bible[1446], while Peter Dubovsky, in his Hezekiah and the Assyrian Spies[1568], focuses on espionage described in 2 Kgs 18-19. It is reasonable therefore to assume that Atlantis also exercised due diligence and endeavoured to assess their opponent’s strengths and weaknesses before invading.
Boris Rankov has noted(b) in The Encyclopedia of Ancient History that military intelligence in ancient times had its value limited by the “slowness of communications, which meant that it was often out of date before any response could be brought to bear.” This, of course, ties in with the then established practice of invading those within your immediate proximity; supply lines are shorter and information more up-to-date. In turn, it implies that Atlantis was within relatively easy striking distance of Athens!
Even in modern times, the same constraints determined the actions of invaders. Hitler could not have invaded Russia without first controlling Poland and Romania. Even expansionist Japan, although an island nation, expanded into Korea and Manchuria (China) and following the attack on Pearl Harbour spread even further within the same region.
The ancient land-based empires were dependent on military might, whereas others, such as the Phoenicians, expanded their influence through trade, supported by extensive merchant fleets. However, over time, Phoenician or more correctly Carthaginian rivalry with Rome led to disastrous wars.
One of the primary military concerns today, as in ancient times, will be to ensure that its men are fed and watered and consequently there will be a need to keep its supply lines as short as possible.
>>One of the possible threats that lay to the west of ancient Athens was from across the Adriatic in Italy. However, even closer were a number of possible rivals to the east in Anatolia, such as Lydians and Hittites and later, the Persians.<<
I argue elsewhere that according to Plato, southern Italy constituted part of the Atlantean domain (see Etruscans). I suggest that the Atlantean invasion of Greece was probably launched from there. The motivation is unclear, but we can speculate that success in Greece would have been followed by the control of the entire Aegean, including Crete, offering a huge expansion in trade.
The alternative is that the nearest part of Atlantis was elsewhere, necessitating the bypassing of other territories on the way and stretching supply and communication lines more than desirable. Italy looks the best bet, with forces added from the Atlantean HQ in Sicily or Sardinia, possibly travelling through the Strait of Messina, sometimes identified as the location of the Pillars of Heracles.
In the south, the Atlantean forces in North Africa (Ancient Libya), if not augmenting the attack on Greece, were probably planning their invasion of Egypt (Timaeus 25b & Critias 114c). Success there would have been followed by a two-pronged attack by both northern and southern Atlantean forces on the eastern Mediterranean coast, later known as the Levant, giving them total control of the eastern Mediterranean Basin.
Invasion requirements are the strongest argument against any of the fanciful Atlantis theories that place Plato’s Atlantis in Antarctica, the Andes, or North America. It is ludicrous to claim that any invasion force came across the Atlantic to attack Greeks and Egyptians. That there were remarkable early cultures in both North and South America is absolutely undeniable, however, it is foolishness to claim that they had any connection with Plato’s story.
(a) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_invasions
(b) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah26323/abstract
(c)http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse
Serrano, Miguel
Miguel Serrano (1917-2009) was a former Chilean diplomat in which capacity he was 
appointed ambassador to India from 1953 until 1962. He was also an unrepentant nazi sympathiser since 1939 and over time he developed what became known Esoteric Nazism, which continues to have support particularly in his native Chile, where there are still substantial numbers of Nazi followers(a).
*Joscelyn Godwin relates[789.126] how Serrano claimed that “the Germans also found there was a way of communication with the Hollow Earth and its secret cities, where the First Hyperboreans had taken refuge from the disaster that reversed the Poles. There a secret base was prepared during the war years, and thither Adolf Hitler escaped in a vimana (flying saucer plane) to direct the “esoteric war” to this day.”*
The spitfirelist website notes that when “Serrano returned to Chile after the Pinochet coup in 1973. Finding the regime unsympathetic to his ideas, he adopted “the role of intellectual gadfly“.[9] In May 1984, Serrano gave the Nazi salute at the funeral in Santiago of SS Colonel Walter Rauff.[9] He convened a rally in Santiago on 5 September 1993, in honor of Rudolf Hess, and in memory of the 62 young Chilean Nazi supporters who were shot dead while occupying a social security building during an abortive coup in 1938.[1][10] “(c)
Two books by the Chilean historian, Rafael Videla Eissmann, are concerned with Serrano’s views on Atlantis. Many of his other works, mainly in Spanish, are available as pdf files(b).
(a) https://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/fellows/chile_2008/
(b) https://www.pdfarchive.info/index.php?pages/Se
(c) https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-873-the-new-age-fascism-and-the-atlantis-myth/
Hörbiger, Hanns
Hanns Hörbiger (1860-1931) was an Austrian mining engineer by profession and in his spare time was an amateur astronomer. Today, he is probably better known as the father of the actors Paul and Attila Hörbiger. Another son, Hans Robert Hörbiger (1885-1955), followed in his father’s misguided cosmological footsteps, eventually working for Heinrich Himmler’s Ahnenerbe(ac).
By gazing at the moon Hanns, Snr. became convinced that he was looking at a bright outer layer of ice. Hörbiger published his “Doctrine of Eternal Ice” around 1913 in a book[389] co-authored with a schoolteacher named Philip Fauth. Hörbiger proposed an early form of catastrophism that saw the Earth capture several moons in succession. Periodically, each of these moons disintegrated as they spiralled to earth producing enormous ‘ice showers’ followed by meteors of iron. He saw the effects of these impacts as the source of Flood myths and claimed that when our current Moon was captured around 9500 BC it triggered earthquakes that led to the destruction of Atlantis. His theories were hailed in Germany during the 1930s and 1940s and were officially backed by the Nazis (see Ahnenerbe). Heather Pringle notes[0032.180] Hitler’s personal support for Hörbiger’s theories.
In 1966, Egerton Sykes wrote that “in addition, Hitler requiring a Teutonic cosmology as well as a Germanic Europe, adopted Hoerbiger’s hypothesis, probably one of the few sensible acts that the Nazis ever made”(w).
It seems that the adoption of World Ice Theory by National Socialism was intended to present a German alternative to ‘Jewish science’, specifically, to the theory of relativity, developed by Albert Einstein(x).
There was a Viennese Hörbiger Institute for World Ice Science founded in 1932(p). Their publication Mitteilungen had two volumes published from 1941 to 1944 and a third volume 1971-1976(o).
An interesting 1949 report by Manfred Reiffenstein describes the problems that the Hörbiger Institute had encountered with the Nazis from 1938 onwards. While efforts were made to close the Institute down and transfer its archives to Himmler’s Ahnenerbe organisation, this was prevented by the efforts of Hörbiger’s sons(s), which might be considered an example of postwar revisionism.
A recent paper by Graham Holton explicitly accuses Hörbiger of ‘archaeological racism’, along with Edmund Kiss, Posnansky and others in the Ahnenerbe(t). Holton also noted that Hörbiger also subscribed to Blavatsky‘s daft idea of Root Races.
His ideas were adopted and developed further by Hans Bellamy in a number of his books[092][096][097]. During the first half of the 20th century, many beyond the Nazi realm frequently referred to Hörbiger’s moon theory as authoritative.
Hörbiger refused to accept the evidence that his ‘icy’ moon had a daytime temperature of 100°C. Followers of Hörbiger existed in Germany, Britain and France after the war, until an actual landing on the Moon demonstrated that it was composed of neither ice nor cheese.
Of course, the moon landing is denounced by some as faked and according to one 2019 blogger, it must be so because it contradicts Hörbiger’s theories!!! The same blogger lists his religion as ‘Hitlerism’(y).
A bizarre consequence of Hörbiger’s status with the Nazi leadership is recounted by Pauwels and Bergier [910.170] who tell us that: “The German engineers, whose work was fundamental to the construction of those rockets that sent the first artificial satellites up into the sky, were prevented by the leaders of the NSDAP themselves from using the V2 for it to be completed at the scheduled time.
Work on the V2 in Peenemünde had to be interrupted several times because Hitler and the apologists of the Hörbiger doctrine feared that rocket launches could result in a world catastrophe.
General Walter Dornberger led the tests in Peenemünde, where the guided missiles were created. These experiments were stopped in order to submit the general’s reports to the apostles of Hörbiger’s cosmology. Above all, one wanted to know how the “eternal ice” would react in space and whether this violation of the stratosphere would not result in some kind of catastrophe in the world.
In his book “V2 – The shot into the universe” General Dornberger tells that shortly afterwards his work had to be interrupted again for two months. The guide had dreamed that the V2 would not work, or rather that heaven would take its revenge. This dream was to carry more weight for the leading men of the Third Reich than the view of the technicians. Behind the Germany of science and organization, the spirit of ancient magic was still alive.“(z)
Several other writers developed theories that were variations on Hörbiger’s ideas. 1954 saw the publication of The Moon Puzzle[786] by the Swedish engineer, N.O. Bergquist, in which he suggested that Earth had a close encounter with a planetoid which caused the ejection of a large amount of matter, which became our Moon leaving a huge scar we call the Pacific. Although many details of Berquist’s theory differ greatly from Hörbiger’s, he never refers to the then widely supported views of Hörbiger.
In 1955, G. Demortier published a theory of cosmic catastrophe that was somewhat similar to Hörbiger’s. However, a couple of years earlier, doubts were beginning to emerge regarding aspects of Hörbiger’s theories as our cosmological knowledge advanced(u), nevertheless, in the same magazine Edmund Kiss attempted to justify Hörbiger’s idea of an ice-covered Moon!
It is even more astounding that as late as 1964, Egerton Sykes, the leading British atlantologist of the day, was still clinging to the concept of an ice-covered lunar surface. In fact, after re-reading the old editions of Sykes’ Atlantis newsletter, I am amazed at the number of contributors that offered so many articles based on Hörbiger’s flawed ideas. My personal view is that having read Sykes’ newsletters, he can only be considered a gullible British gentleman.
Egerton Sykes founded and promoted an English post-war Hoerbiger Institute through his Atlantis magazine(q). In March 1948 Bellamy contributed a short article (Hoerbiger Monograph No. 1. 2nd Edition)(n) to the newsletter, reiterating his support for the idea that the capture of our moon led to the destruction of Atlantis.
Commander E.H. Nutter, a Royal Navy engineer, who contributed many articles to Sykes’ Atlantis magazine was considered “the leading technical authority on the Hoerbiger Theory in England” in the 1950s(v).
Although Hörbiger wrote extensively about the origins of our satellite, when Immanuel Velikovsky wrote a short paper in 1973 entitled Earth without a Moon(v) he made no reference to the theories of Hörbiger.
Henry M. Eichner was also drawn to Hörbiger’s Moon theory as a mechanism to explain the worldwide Deluge myths. However, as the first Moon landing took place just two years before his death, Eichner was forced to admit that Hörbiger got his claim of an icy Moon wrong, but still believed that some of Hörbiger’s ideas had merit [287.57].
Uwe Topper, the controversial German researcher has continued to support much of Hörbiger’s ideas. Additionally, in 2003, Gary Gilligan, a prominent catastrophist, first proposed that our Moon had been captured around 2000 BC, which he has now revised to 1200 BC(I)!
The August 2010 edition of the BBC’s Focus magazine (p.81), informed us that the Moon is moving away from Earth at a rate of 3.8cm per year, destroying the foundation of Hörbiger’s basic theory. The 9th Nov. 2011 issue of New Scientist published further evidence supporting this view(h), with further claims that this recession will reverse in the very distant future as the Earth’s rotation slows(r).
In the 17th century Johannes Kepler demonstrated that when an object’s orbital velocity increases, its orbital radius will expand; thus, the Moon slowly recedes from Earth(d). This idea was discussed further in a BBC documentary broadcast on Feb.1st, 2011(b).
The 9th Nov. 2011 issue of New Scientist published further evidence supporting this view(h), with further claims that this recession will reverse in the very distant future as the Earth’s rotation slows(r).
The Live Science website in April 2023 offered more information on the future of the Earth-Moon relationship(ab). “In about 50 billion years, Earth’s slowing rotation would make it tidally lock with the moon so that Earth would permanently show just one side to the moon, Jean Creighton, director of the Manfred Olson Planetarium at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, told Live Science. At this point, the moon and Earth would stop moving away from each other, Eric Klumpe, a professor of astronomy at Middle Tennessee State University, told Live Science.
However, about 5 billion years from now, as the sun begins to die, it will swell to become a red giant star, “at which point the Earth-moon system will almost certainly be disrupted and destroyed,” David Trilling, chair of the Astronomy and Planetary Science Department at Northern Arizona University, told Live Science.”
Nevertheless, updated Moon capture theories have been developed since Hörbiger. Emilio Spedicato has published a brief overview of recent contributions on the subject as well as his version(c), dating it to around 9450 BC, triggering the end of the Ice Age and the destruction of Atlantis!
It was long-accepted wisdom that a moonless earth would have made the development of complex life more difficult because of greater climatic fluctuations. However, a new study challenges this, calculating that Jupiter together with other factors would minimise the effect of not having our satellite(g)
The story of lunar history took an unexpected turn in 2011 when the journal Nature published a paper by planetary scientists Erik Asphaug of the University of Santa Cruz and Martin Jutzi of the University of Berne who proposed that originally the Earth had two moons that later collided and formed our present satellite(e). At the end of 2011, two NASA lunar probes were launched(j) which may resolve this particular question.
In America, the WEL-Institute is dedicated to investigating Hörbiger’s ‘World Ice Theory’(k). I note that the U.S. is also home to associations concerned with both a Hollow Earth(l) and a Flat Earth(m)!
(b) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12311119
(c) Wayback Machine (archive.org)
(d) Ive heard that the Moon is moving away from Earth by about an inch 25 cm each year Why is this happening – Astronomy Magazine (archive.org)
(e) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20160320161310/https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2390413,00.asp
(h) https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21147-how-the-cold-dead-moon-stayed-magnetic.html
(I) https://www.gks.uk.com/moon-origin-egyptian/
(j) GRAIL and the Mystery of the Missing Moon | Science Mission Directorate (archive.org)
(k) https://welinstitute.wordpress.com/about/
(l) https://www.ourhollowearth.com/
(m) https://theflatearthsociety.org/home/
(o) See: https://atlantipedia.ie/samples/archive-3042/
(p) See: Archive 3043
(q) https://www.amazon.ca/Atlantis-Organ-Hoerbiger-Institute-1965-1974/dp/B00MOKVR2Y (Link broken Sept. 2020)
(r) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4199400/Earth-moon-COLLIDE-65-billion-years.html
(s) Atlantean Research, Volume 1, Number 5, January/February 1949
(u) Atlantis Vol.6, No.1 & 2, May & July 1953
(v) Atlantis, Vol. 9, No. 2, January 1956, p.39
(w) Atlantis, Vol.19, No.5, September/ October 1966
(y) https://forums.skadi.net/threads/183985-Moon-Landing-was-FAKE/page8 (Link broken) See: Archive 6966
(aa) https://www.lewrockwell.com/2011/12/immanuel-velikovsky/the-earth-without-the-moon/
Dacqué, Edgar
Edgar Dacqué (1878-1945) was a leading German Professor of Palaeontology. We are told by a Dutch website(b) that he thought Atlantis to have been situated on a submarine ridge stretching from Cape Verde to the Caribbean. This sounds like a revised version of the Atlantic landbridges concept that was popular with some scientists at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.
It is reported that he supported (1927) the idea of Cape Verde as the site of Atlantis, but I have been unable to confirm this. His adherence to Theosophy coloured his professional writings, for example with his claim that homo sapiens existed at the time of the dinosaurs. Similar ideas are promoted today by other theosophists such as John S. Gordon, who has written two Atlantis related books.
It has been claimed(a) that Dacqué wrote to Hitler in the 1920’s regarding some of his (Dacqué’s) occult ideas.
(a) https://www.freemasonrywatch.org/hitler_occult.html (offline June 2016) (see Archive 2795)
*(b) https://www.kunstgeografie.nl/atlantis/atlantis04.htm (offline Dec.’15) See: Archive 2796*