Atlantis, the Original Homeland of the Aryans

Arier-Verlag, Berlin, 1937.

A Note of Gratitude and Introduction

We meet again, dear friends. I must first offer my heartfelt apologies for my months of absence, for life’s tumult swept me into its iron embrace. On a brighter note, my hands have not been idle. I come to you with this gift of mine, hoping it may in some small measure atone for my silence. At long last, the translation upon which I have laboured has reached its completion.

The first time I encountered Atlantis, die Urheimat der Arier, I was not seeking Atlantis. I was in an antiquarian bookshop in Nürnberg with my brotherkin

Alphart

, thumbing through dusty volumes and manuscripts. The name of the author, Karl Georg Zschaetzsch, was unfamiliar to me at the time, but his work stood out to me for its ambition: to reconstruct the earliest racial and mythological history of humanity through the lens of Atlantis.

Published in 1922, the book emerged in the charged intellectual and political climate of interwar Weimar Republic, a period where notions of race, ancestry, and identity were being aggressively debated. Zschaetzsch, a self-described Ariosophist and racial theorist, developed a cosmology that designated Atlantis as the cradle of the Aryo-Germanic race.

According to Zschaetzsch, the primaeval world before the Great Flood was shaped by a series of apocalyptic events: a drought, a great storm, and a cataclysmic fire caused by a comet impact, echoing ancient notions of cosmic cleansing similar to the Stoic ekpyrosis. Out of this chaos, only three individuals survived: an aged foster father Wotan, a newborn boy, and his sister, who, after serving as the boy’s caregiver, later became his wife. Zschaetzsch saw in these figures the mythic root of later Aryan lineage, linking them not only to Norse deities but also to the biblical Adam, Eve, and God the Father.

The survivors, he claimed, repopulated the world from their island homeland of Atlantis, before establishing colonial settlements across the globe. Egypt, Mesopotamia, Peru, and ancient Athens were, in his view, high civilisations formed through the interaction of Aryan settlers with non-Aryan indigenous peoples. Yet, this mixing also led to the eventual decline of those cultures. The narrative unfolds as both a mythic genealogy and a racial migration theory, tracing the movements of the pure Aryans from their Atlantic homeland through Northern Europe and into the wider world.

Zschaetzsch’s vision reached well beyond the boundaries of classical mythology. He wove together elements from Greek legends, Norse cosmology, Biblical accounts, and even ancient Mesoamerican lore, perceiving them as fragmented echoes of a long-forgotten civilisation. Through what he termed ‘racial memory,’ he sought to unify these diverse traditions into one cohesive narrative, one that invariably led back to Atlantis as the shared point of origin.

We will see each other again in the near future. Until then, may wisdom guide you, and may fortune favour your every endeavour.

-Christer D’Adeleer

Chapter I

The original homeland of the blond, blue-eyed, Aryan tribe, which is also commonly known among us by the name Germanic people, was the island of Atlantis, which disappeared into the sea during the catastrophe known as the Great Flood, and whose remnants still rise above the Atlantic Ocean in the Azores Islands.

Given the location of the island of Atlantis between Europe and America, emigrations took place not only to the former continent but also to America. The emigrants carried with them the ancient traditions about the events that had occurred on the island, transferring them to the new lands, where they continued to endure. To clarify the historical events on Atlantis, one must therefore also consult the American traditions, which, moreover, extend much further back than the European ones and recount events that lie even further back than the Great Fire.

The European mythologies (legends, traditions) speak of four world ages, which are called the Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Iron Ages. However, these world ages only encompass the period between the Great Fire and the Great Flood. The situation is different with the world ages mentioned in the American traditions. These encompass much longer time spans than those mentioned in European mythologies and deal with periods that were of the greatest significance for the fate of the Atlanteans, that is, the Aryans, as they called themselves. At the end of each of the first three world ages, a severe calamity befell the Aryans. The sequence of world ages is not entirely consistent in the American traditions. Since the last world age is concluded by the sinking of the island into the sea and the preceding one by a rain of fire, the downfall of the two earlier world ages is attributed to hunger and wind. As to which of these was the first and which the second world age, the traditions differ. The sequence given in the Codex Chimalpopoca: Sun of the Tiger or Hunger, Sun of the Wind, Sun of Fire, and Sun of Water, should, since the last two world ages are correctly identified, likely also be regarded as accurate for the order of the first two world ages.

The first world age (or Sun) meets its end through hunger, as an evil spirit uproots all grass, flowers, and plants, thereby causing the death of humans. This is the common tradition. According to Gómara¹, the destruction is brought about by earthquakes. In both versions of the myth, it is always the Earth that, by withholding its benevolence, brings about the downfall of the first world. Those humans who had escaped hunger or the earthquakes were devoured by tigers.

The second world age is that of wind or air. At the end of this world age, mighty hurricanes arose, uprooting trees, tearing apart houses and even rocks, and bringing ruin to the people.

The third world age is that of fire. At its end, the god of fire descends to Earth to destroy it. Only the birds escape, along with the humans who had been transformed into birds. A single human couple saves themselves by taking refuge in a cave.

The fourth world age is that of water. At the beginning of this period, the serpent woman Cihuacōātl or Quilaztli populated the Earth. Each time, she gave birth to twins. For this reason, she was later revered as the mother of the human race and the protective goddess of children, indeed as a goddess of the first rank. At the end of this world age, the water goddess Matlalcueye², the wife of the water god Tláloc, appeared and destroyed the human race through a universal flood.

In the Mexican tradition, the duration of the four great world ages is also specified, namely, according to Humboldt's determination, as 18’028 years. Furthermore, both in the American tradition and in that of the Egyptian priests, who communicated this information to the Greek sage Solon and later also to the Greek historian Herodotus, time references have been preserved, according to which the sinking of the island of Atlantis, that is, the Great Flood, occurred approximately 9’600 years before our era; this results in a total period of 29’500 years from the beginning of the first world age to the present day. From this, it follows that the Aryans have known a system of time reckoning for 29’500 years, if not longer, and thus lived in discipline and order.

While specific details about the first two calamities, those of hunger and storm, which can therefore also be called Great Hunger and Great Storm, are not found in the traditions, there are partially quite precise accounts preserved about the two later calamities: those of the fiery hail of comets (Great Fire) and the disappearance of the island into the sea (Great Flood), as well as about the events in the intervening period, both in the Old World and the New World.

Furthermore, in the various mythologies, in addition to the events in the period between the Great Fire and the Great Flood, there are also references to the division of the land, the buildings, the customs and traditions, and other conditions in Atlantis. Given the significant gaps present in all mythologies, one must, in order to form a coherent picture of Atlantis as well as of the events and conditions there, compare the mythologies with one another, compile the relevant elements from them, and mutually supplement them.

Chapter II

The fiery hail (Great Fire), which was presumably caused by a comet that came too close to Earth, does not seem to have swept across and devastated the entire island of Atlantis, but only the southern part, where the fertile plain inhabited by the Aryans was located. Here, the Aryans had united to form a large community. The northern uninhabited part, however, where the volcanoes were located and which was likely covered by dense primeval forests, which is why it was not cultivated by the Aryans, was spared from the global conflagration or suffered less damage, so that animals survived there

If, therefore, the comet apparently only touched the southern half of Atlantis, the main area of its devastation must have extended further south from Atlantis. Due to the Earth's rotation, the comet must also have affected the regions lying southeast and southwest of Atlantis. To the south and southwest of Atlantis lies the Atlantic Ocean, where a fire could leave no traces. The situation is different with the lands that lie south of the latitude and east of the longitude of the Azores, that is, primarily northern Africa, namely the Sahara, and further east to Arabia. In the Greek myth of Phaethon, it is also said that the Earth was set ablaze by the runaway chariot of the sun, which the young and inexperienced Phaethon could no longer control. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, it is stated:

Sanguine tum credunt in corpora summa vocato
Aethiopum populos nigrum traxisse colorem;
tum facta est Libye raptis umoribus aestu
arida, tum nymphae passis fontesque lacusque
deflevere comis

Then the skin of Ethiopians took a swarthy hue, the hot blood tingling to the surface: then the heat dried up the land of Libya; dishevelled, the lorn Nymphs, lamenting, sought for all their emptied springs and lakes in vain

-Ovid, Metamorphoses, Liber II, 235

Although other regions, such as Scythia, the Caucasus, the Alps, and others, are also listed, they were likely not damaged by the comet's fiery trail. The inclusion of all regions known to the ancients probably stemmed from the belief that the Great Fire had destroyed the entire world. Later, upon their arrival in North Africa, the Aryans would have found traces of fire everywhere, leading them to conclude that the global conflagration had been more extensive. It is now very likely that lands that were already not very rainy were transformed by such an enormous fire, which destroyed all vegetation, into deserts that remained barren thereafter. That the Sahara was once much richer in water and thus also in vegetation is evident from the numerous water-carved gorges and the silicified tree remains found in the region. The comet, therefore, must have begun to touch the Earth much further east of the longitude on which the Azores lie.

The traditions provide a fairly detailed picture of the events during the Great Fire. The fiery hail began in the evening of the spring equinox with such speed and intensity that of the entire numerous Aryan tribe inhabiting the plain, only three people, who happened to be near a spring (Urd = well), found refuge in a cave located at the edge of this spring and thus escaped destruction. These three were a somewhat elderly man, his much younger sister, and the latter's small daughter, who was about nine or at most twelve years old. Among them, the woman was so severely wounded that she died on the second evening or the following night.

As the traditions further recount, she gives birth to an immature fetus while dying, or rather, the child had to be cut from the body of its mother by the man, or rather the old man, who had also lost an eye during the Great Fire. This child was a boy, born as a seven-month-old child, and he was cared for by the old man, who became his foster father, and by his little sister, who was first his foster mother and later his wife. They raised him and nourished him with the help of animal milk. As to which animals provided the milk, the traditions are not consistent. Presumably, it was various animals that had to nurse the child in succession, and these were apparently a wolf or dog-like creature, then a wild goat, and a doe; among these, the wolf or dog seems to have fled into the saving cave together with the humans. Since the Aryans were still vegetarians at that time, the animals moved without fear near the humans. It would therefore not have been difficult for the old man to accustom some of the animals to providing milk for the child.

That three people of the Aryan tribe survived the Great Fire was due, apart from the protective cave, to the two springs that formed the well, the so-called Urðarbrunnr of Norse mythology. Of these, one was ice-cold and the other hot; the former was presumably located closer to the cave, while the hot one was situated nearer to the Yggdrasil tree. The hot spring emitted strong vapours, which kept the foliage of Yggdrasil constantly moist, and these likely caused Yggdrasil to resist the fire of the global conflagration. The cold spring, on the other hand, is credited with preventing the water of Urðarbrunnr from boiling during the Great Fire; at the same time, the cool water rising from it brought relief to the surviving humans and thus enabled them to endure the terrible fire to which the rest of the Aryan people succumbed.

In Norse tradition, Yggdrasil is referred to as an ash tree; however, this cannot be correct. For Ygg or Yg corresponds strikingly to the Norse Eg and the English Dak = Eiche (Oak), and Yggdra or Ygdra to the Norse Egetrae and the English Daktree = Eiche, Eichbaum (Oaktree), while the ending sil is identical to Seele (Soul). Yggdrasil would therefore mean oak tree of the soul, or, since Seele = Leben (Soul = Life), also oak tree of life and thus tree of life. The designation 'tree of life' suggests that this tree bore a fruit that served for sustenance and life.

Among oak trees, there are several species that bear edible fruit. These sweet acorns can be eaten either raw or roasted, or, as was the case in Atlantis, they can also be used as flour for bread. One of these species, which is evergreen, is found in both Western Europe and North Africa. Such an oak species would indeed have been Yggdrasil, which was kept moist by the water vapours rising from Urðarbrunnr and thus escaped the global conflagration. It remained green and fruit-bearing, and it was this tree that provided the foster father and his little niece with food in the early days.

The veneration of trees, which is found in all parts of the world, was therefore a veneration of the tree of life, Yggdrasil. This tree was often symbolically represented by a simple cross and revered in this form in various parts of the world. The use of the cross itself was very widespread in ancient America; crosses or trees were planted on the graves of the deceased, crosses were worn as amulets, and cross signs protected against ghosts at night. In some regions of America, the cross was also directly referred to as the 'tree of life' and revered as such. The cross erected by Quetzalcōātl or Huemac was worshipped as the god of rain or health and as the tree of nourishment or life. The cross also appears in the form of the swastika in Europe, Africa, Asia, and America.

The cult of springs, which was as widespread as the cult of trees and which were often closely connected, can be traced back to the sacred Urðarbrunnr, by which Yggdrasil also stood.

Connected to this Urðarbrunnr is also the practice of water baptism, which was found in various parts of the world. This custom was also present in ancient Germanic times. Water baptism can be traced back to the ancient Atlantean tradition of sprinkling the newborn with the water of the sacred Urðarbrunnr, with the water of life that once animated the primordial ancestors. Alongside water baptism, there was also a fire baptism, in which the newborn was passed through the fire. This custom likewise relates to the Great Fire, as it was intended to make the child immune to fire. The jumping over fire by bridal couples also has the same meaning.

The legend of the fountain of youth or the rejuvenating spring, which is also found in various parts of the world, is likewise connected to Urðarbrunnr. For example, this rejuvenating spring appears in the German heroic saga of Wolfdietrich. Wolfdietrich was taken by ship across the sea by the wild Else³ to a land (Troy), where she ruled as queen; there, she has herself baptised in a rejuvenating spring, sheds her rough skin in it, and emerges with the new name Sigeminne as the most beautiful of all women⁴. This land (Troy) is Atlantis, and the rejuvenating spring is said to be Urðarbrunnr. In the Edda, it is said: 'This water is so holy that everything that enters the well becomes as white as the skin inside an eggshell.' This is a common phenomenon that can often be observed at hot springs, where objects placed in them become coated with a white mineral deposit. On the Azores, there are still hot springs today that deposit such mineral sediments.

Furthermore, the German folk belief that small children are brought by the stork from a pond is connected to the Urðarbrunnr. This pond is the Urðarbrunnr, and the stork takes the place of the swan, which is rare in our regions. For the Edda states: ‘Two fowls are fed in Urdr’s Well: they are called Swans, and from those fowls has come the race of birds which is so called.’

The first three humans of the new post-conflagration age can be found in various mythologies. They are particularly clearly depicted in one of the American traditions, where the aged foster father is called Botschika, his foster daughter is named Bachué, and the boy, who was born shortly after the rain of fire, is referred to as the "boy bridegroom."

In the tradition of the Old Saxons, however, only the aged foster father clearly stands out under the name Wodan⁵, while his two foster children, Donar and Saxnot, are less prominent. This trio can also be found in the triad of Sun, Moon, and Fire mentioned by Caesar, which, as he writes, was revered by the Germans. In this interpretation, the Sun represents the foster father, the Moon the foster son, and Fire the foster daughter, as a goddess or guardian of the hearthfire.

The symbolic representation of the first humans as the Sun, Moon, and Venus is also found in America, though this symbolism or veneration of ancestors in celestial bodies is not uniform everywhere. In some regions, the Sun was regarded as the symbol of the foster father, the Moon as that of the foster son, and the star Venus as the symbol of the foster daughter. In other parts, the Moon was assigned to the foster daughter, and the star Venus to the foster son. Elsewhere, the Sun is found as the symbol of the foster son and the Moon as that of the foster daughter; or even the reverse, where the Sun represents the foster daughter as the elder of the two siblings and the Moon the foster son as the younger or smaller. In this case, the foster father was symbolised by the rainbow or by the dawn that precedes the Sun. The latter, as well as the dawn, seem at times, apart from occasional designations for the foster daughter, to have also served as symbols for the mother of the two children, who perished during the fiery cataclysm. Consequently, the most famous descendants of the primordial pair were later symbolised by their descendants in stars or constellations, such as Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Saturn, Hercules, the Pleiades, the Hyades, and so on. This worship of celestial bodies is thus nothing other than ancestor worship. This, in turn, forms the foundation of the various religions, which are composed of ancestor worship and moral law or moral worship.

The biblical tradition also begins with three persons. Among them, God the Father is identical to the foster father, while Adam represents the foster son and Eve the foster daughter. The only difference is that Eve was the elder and Adam the younger, and that Eve was not taken from Adam’s side; rather, Adam had to be cut from his mother’s body after she succumbed to injuries sustained in the Great Fire. As the Bible correctly continues, the primaeval parents had three sons; however, their daughters, who numbered four, are not further mentioned. Of these four daughters, the eldest remained unmarried, while the other three pairs continued the Aryan lineage.

While in the first period after the Great Fire, the primordial pair and the first generations stayed at the Urðarbrunnr, later, as the tribe grew more numerous, a migration back to the great plain took place, which was then once again brought under cultivation.

Chapter III

In the Bible, the presence of an irrigation system is mentioned right at the beginning, during the creation of man:

ποταμὸς δὲ ἐκπορεύεται ἐξ Εδεμ ποτίζειν τὸν παράδεισον ἐκεῖθεν ἀφορίζεται εἰς τέσσαρας ἀρχάς

And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.

- Genesis 2:10

Thus, irrigation was already in place there since the time before the Great Fire. Even though the old system did not need to and could not be put into operation by the primordial pair and the first generations, it was later, as the tribe grew more numerous, repaired and expanded so that food could be available throughout the year once again.

This tradition of the Bible also appears in Plato's account, though in greater detail and precision. According to him, a main canal encircled the plain, which collected the rivers flowing down from the mountains. From this main canal, starting from its upper part, other interconnected canals were branched off, running through the plain, so that it was crisscrossed by a regular network of canals and could be irrigated.

The construction of the canals is said to date back to the beginning of the second world age, after the first world age had come to its end through a terrible drought, which claimed the lives of many people, while the rest were decimated by the wild animals dwelling on Atlantis, which, driven by hunger, attacked the humans. Just as the Aryan spirit invented a remedy for every evil, so too will it have introduced irrigation and invented the spear to prevent such misfortunes. With the help of this irrigation, the extremely fertile plain, situated in a warm climate, continuously yielded harvests. The irrigation system was therefore as valuable and nourishing to the inhabitants of the Atlantean plain, or Midgard, as it is called in the Edda, as if milk had flowed through it. From this comparison arose the designation of the land where milk and honey flow. This is a tradition that was later transferred in the Bible to the land of Canaan.

What the main nourishment of the Aryans was is not clearly evident from the traditions. According to Ovid, it is written:

Ipsa quoque inmunis rastroque intacta nec ullis
saucia vomeribus per se dabat omnia tellus;
contentique cibis nullo cogente creatis
arbuteos fetus montanaque fraga legebant
cornaque et in duris haerentia mora rubetis
et quae deciderant patula Iovis arbore glandes

Then of her own accord the earth produced a store of every fruit. The harrow touched her not, nor did the ploughshare wound her fields. And man content with given food, and none compelling, gathered arbute fruits and wild strawberries on the mountain sides, and ripe blackberries clinging to the bush, and corners and sweet acorns on the ground, down fallen from the spreading tree of Jove.

-Ovid, Metamorphoses.

From this, it might seem as though the Aryans subsisted on fruits that grew wild. This may have been partly the case, but they would not have needed irrigation for that. Since such a system existed, they must have possessed cultivated plants and practised agriculture many thousands of years before the Great Fire.

As the primary food plants of Atlantis in the earliest times, only those can be considered which were found in both the Old and the New World, and which may have already been brought from Atlantis to the warm regions of the old world as well as to America by emigrating Aryans, together with the art of irrigation, before the Great Fire. Such plants are: the banana, the taro (a tuberous fruit), and the bean; these plants are also very suited to irrigation. In addition, the yam root and the coconut palm may also be considered, for the latter was, according to Plato, also native to Atlantis.

Of the banana, Humboldt says that banana plants have accompanied humans since the earliest infancy of their culture. Furthermore, considering that in the banana, all seed formation has been completely suppressed in favour of the fruit pulp, the frequently expressed claim that the banana is one of the oldest cultivated plants in the world is justified; its cultivation must therefore have begun in the earliest primordial times. This fruit is also mentioned in the Bible, though under a different name: ‘And they came unto the brook of Eshcol, and cut down from thence a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bare it between two upon a staff'.’ The land 'where milk and honey flow' did not mean the land of Canaan, but the land of Atlantis, and the fruit that two men had to carry on a pole was not a grapevine, but a bunch of bananas, which can weigh up to fifty kilograms. The banana plant loves warmth, moisture, and good soil. All of this was present in Atlantis, and whatever moisture was lacking was supplemented by irrigation; even today, bananas still thrive in the Azores. The designation of the banana as the 'fig of paradise' or 'Adam's apple' is likely not entirely baseless, but rather probably stems from some obscure tradition.

According to Ovid, grain was originally not one of the first foods, although it was cultivated during the Golden Age. At first, it must have been cultivated by hand using a stick or a hoe-like piece of wood, but already in the Silver Age, Ovid states that cultivation was carried out with a plough and draft oxen. According to Scythian legend, the plough and yoke were known in Atlantis, for, as Herodotus reports, during their early kings, a plough, a yoke, an axe, and a bowl, all made of gold, fell from the sky into Scythian lands. This means that these items were already in use in Atlantis and that the Scythians, during their migration, took some of them with them to the north. In the Peruvian tradition, the exact time of the invention of the plough is also given, and it is said to have occurred through Thor's predecessor or father, who died 1’500 years after the Great Fire.

Various traditions speak of the primordial mother knowing and teaching weaving. In the Bible, however, it is said that the first humans wove fig leaves together and made loincloths. It is likely that, alongside weaving, there was another method of producing clothing, which is to be regarded as the older one; however, this did not consist of weaving fig leaves but rather processing the bark of the fig tree into fabrics. This is done by removing the hard outer bark from the stripped bark, after which the remaining bast layer is beaten until it becomes a cloth-like material that serves as clothing. Even today, such bark cloth is produced in Africa, particularly in regions where banana cultivation is native, and the bark of wild fig trees is preferred for this purpose.

The consumption of meat-based food among the Aryan population only emerged in the post-cataclysmic period, when a mixed population arose in the settlements of Atlantis itself due to the influx of non-Aryans and mixed-race individuals, who could not entirely abandon the habits of their non-Aryan ancestors. While the non-Aryan races consumed anything that could fill their stomachs and satisfy their hunger, the Aryans had until then lived solely on plant-based foods, which were also carefully selected for their digestibility. When they later tried meat-based food, it turned out that it was not only less beneficial to health but also caused more or less discomfort depending on the type of meat consumed, making it advisable to restrict meat consumption and, in some cases, to impose a complete ban. Consequently, decrees were likely issued that directly prohibited certain types of meat and prescribed periods of abstinence from meat consumption for others, i.e., mandated fasting. The benefits of fasting, as well as abstinence in every respect for the human body, were presumably already known and practised in Atlantis from earlier times.

The dietary laws found among various peoples thus partly trace back to these ancient Atlantean regulations, which were likely subject to numerous changes over time. Some prohibitions also stem from the later totemic system, as the totem animal or totem plant that a particular non-Aryan or mixed-race tribe bore as its symbol could not be consumed by that tribe. Some prohibitions may also have political origins, as a party or tribe declared the sacrificial animal of another party or tribe to be unclean in order to prevent mixing between their own people and the followers of the opposing party. That such prohibitions were possible is also demonstrated by German history: Among the Germanic peoples, the horse was a sacrificial animal, the consumption of which was later forbidden by the Christian priesthood.

While in the ages before the Great Fire, the main seat of administration was presumably located in the centre of the great plain, after the Great Fire, this main seat was moved to the region of Yggdrasil and the Urðarbrunnr, which in Norse tradition is called Idafeld. Here, at this sacred place, which was the starting point of the new lineage, not only was the seat of the highest administration established, but also the institutions for the boys and girls were built, where they were taught in all areas of knowledge. Furthermore, accommodation was provided here for the sick and ailing, as well as for those who remained unmarried and now occupied themselves with weaving and the making of various tools for the administration and the institutions of Idafeld.

This Idafeld was located at the edge of the plain and was separated from it by one or more bodies of water or watercourses. These were later connected in order to establish a link with the canal system and to better defend Idafeld, making it into an island. Furthermore, this water belt was connected to the sea by a long canal, allowing sea vessels direct access to the capital.

The water that separated Idafeld from the plain (apparently, in later times, two land rings and two water rings were added around Idafeld) was later bridged so that Idafeld could be reached from the great plain on dry land. According to Plato, the bridge was a hundred feet wide and built of white, black, and red stones. This bridge is also mentioned in Nordic tradition under the name Bifröst, and it is said of it: 'It is of three colours, and very strong, and made with cunning and with more magic art than other works of craftsmanship.' In the memory of the Aryans who migrated north, the bridge Bifröst was as beautiful and colourful as the rainbow. Over time, as the true meaning of the traditions faded more and more, the bridge, which was 'as beautiful as the rainbow,' came to be mistaken for the rainbow itself. Furthermore, in Nordic tradition, it is said: 'The gods made a bridge from heaven to earth, called Bifröst.

The "earth" refers to the great plain, while the "sky" refers to the hill or mountain behind the Urðarbrunnr, which was called the "Heaven Mountain" or simply "Heaven." At the top of the Heaven Mountain, which was later terraced, stood the "Heaven" fortress with a high seat for the All-Father (king), from which he had a wide view in all directions. The Heaven Mountain also contained large cavities inside, which were either naturally present to such an extent or were artificially enlarged and expanded; these were not only connected to one another but also to the cave at the Urðarbrunnr and to the temple or palace, the fortress, at the summit of the Heaven Mountain through passages. These cavities within the mountain served partly as treasure chambers and partly as burial places for princes and other individuals who had contributed to the well-being of the tribe; their bodies were carefully embalmed and then laid to rest in the Heaven Mountain. The other members of the tribe, however, were buried in stone graves. Later, when the tribe had grown numerous and diseases were brought in through contact with overseas settlements, the practice of burning the bodies on funeral pyres began.

This should not be confused with the later practice of burning bodies in one of the volcanoes. Also, those who in the late Atlantean period did not obey the Priest-Kingdom and its laws, or who in any way became displeasing, were punished by being thrown into the eternal fire that burned inside the volcanoes, the region of hell. This punishment was also carried out on the bodies of those who had sinned against the laws of the Priest-king or Priest-God, or who otherwise stood in opposition to the priestly rule. For example, Baldr's body was secretly stolen by his enemies and thrown into a volcano. In contrast, those individuals who proved to be loyal followers of the Priest-King or who had otherwise contributed to him and his rule were given an honourable burial, if not on the Idafeld, then at least on the island.

Even before the beginning of the priestly rule, when the governing power on Atlantis was still in the hands of the kings, it seems to have been customary that esteemed Aryans who died in overseas settlements enjoyed the privilege of being buried on the homeland island. This must have also been the case here in the north, as evidenced, among other things, by the expression "absegeln⁶," which was commonly used in folk speech to mean "die." Later, when rule on the island and in most overseas areas had fallen to the Priest-King (although the Aryans who had migrated to northern Europe never lived under his rule), this practice was likely extended in order to gain greater influence. The decision of whether the bodies of the deceased were to be buried on the island or entrusted to the eternal fire burning in the volcanoes was then assigned to a special death tribunal on the island of Atlantis.

The great plain, originally the only inhabited area that occupied the southern part of the island of Atlantis, was divided into nine districts, and the Aryan population of each district was again divided into two groups. This resulted in 18 groups or original clans, each of which had a special name made up of the consonant of the respective region and a vowel (i.e., a syllable). The difference was that in one group from a particular region, the consonant came first and the vowel followed, while in the second group of the same region, the vowel came first and the consonant followed. From the 18 groups or proto-clans into which the population was initially divided, new clans later arose through intermarriages, which took on new names made up of the old ones. The name of the paternal clan came first, and the name of the maternal clan followed.

The emigrating clan members then took their names with them to their new settlement areas in different parts of the world, where they continued to live on, sometimes as names of regions, tribes, mountains, rivers, and towns. It was customary for the clans to name the places, regions, or rivers where they settled after their own clan names. The same thing occurred here in the north, which became the second homeland for the Aryan tribe. Here, even the individual clans can still be traced in family names, for many of them are nothing more than old clan names, and their bearers are still members of these clans.

The division of the population of each district into two groups or clans, as well as the naming of the sub-clans arising from intermarriages with distinct clan names, was done for the purpose of work division, with the two groups of each district taking turns weekly in their labour. According to the oldest Atlantean calendar, the year, corresponding to the nine regions with two population groups each, was divided into 18 months. Each month was again divided into four weeks of five days each. These 18 months of 20 days each totalled 360 days; the surplus five days were inserted as intercalary days. To align the civil year of 365 days with the solar year, 13 days were added after a 52-year cycle, and at the end of ten 104-year cycles, seven days were subtracted. Between the Great Fire and the Great Flood, changes to the calendar system occurred multiple times. It is likely that the later division of the year into twelve months and the week into seven days also originated in Atlantis, as this system was also found in America.

Apparently, this division of the year and week was also brought to Germania by emigrating Aryans, for even before the introduction of Christianity, there was a holiday in the week here in the north, specifically on Monday. This is also related to the term "Blue Monday," because blue, in addition to being the colour of the rulers, had also become a sacred colour. The other sacred colour was white.

At the head of each district stood an elder or prince, who was elected by the district's inhabitants and held his position for only one year or a series of years. These nine princes, or the entire tribe, then elected another prince as the leader or king (father of the gods), who also had authority over the Idafeld. Over time, as the administration became more complex, the election was made for life, and later, the position, especially of the king, passed from father to son. These ten Atlantean princes were then assisted by a committee or parliament consisting of fifty representatives of the people. To these ten princes were later added the leader of the army (Mars, Ares) and the leader of the fleet (Neptune, Poseidon, Jörmungandr), who also had jurisdiction over the communication routes with the settlement areas. This brought the number to twelve. Over time, as the institutions of the Idafeld expanded, a division occurred, and the Idafeld was given its own leader, which, to the ruin of the Aryan state, is referred to in Nordic tradition (the Edda) by the title Loki. Through this, the number thirteen became associated with misfortune.

Another prince who resided on the island but did not belong to the old council of princes of the Aryans was the head of the non-Aryan and mixed population settled in the volcanic mountains. He is referred to in various traditions as Vulcan, Hades, Hephaestus, Pluto, or, as in the Edda, Fenrisúlfr; other titles for him include Devil, Satan (although sometimes Loki is meant by this), and also Fire God and Lord of Hell, as the prince of the volcanic or hellish region.

Although the Idafeld received some harvest yields from its own resources, these were by no means enough to feed the inhabitants of the many institutions that were established on the Idafeld over time. Since all these institutions and administrative facilities served public purposes, they had to be supplied by the people, i.e., the inhabitants of the nine districts. For this purpose, the nine regions had to deliver a portion of their harvest to the Idafeld, which was located on the edge of the plain and thus formed a tenth region. This is where the term "tithe" comes from; originally, it was not the handing over of one-tenth of the harvest, but rather the provision of food to the tenth region, the Idafeld.

The palaces and temples erected on Idafeld were, as various traditions indicate, covered and overlaid with gold and silver and were filled inside with these precious metals, which were abundantly available in Atlantis. For the other buildings, they partly used stones of the same colour and partly multicoloured stones. The ring walls were additionally coated with tin or brass. The architectural structures of Idafeld must have made an overwhelming impression in later times, when everything was completed and most beautifully adorned, an impression that can hardly be imagined today and which, as far as the use of precious metals is concerned, has never been matched in splendour anywhere else on Earth.

Chapter IV

A very detailed and vivid tradition about Atlantis had been preserved within the Egyptian priesthood, who conveyed it to the Greek scholar Solon during his visit to Egypt. This account was then passed down to posterity by his descendant, Plato, as follows:

I’ll proclaim it, having heard an old account from a man not young. For indeed, at the time, Critias, as he claimed, was already fairly close to ninety, while I was somewhere around ten, and it happened to be our day of Cureotis during the Apaturia⁷. Now the children’s part of the festival that was usually held on that occasion also took place at that time, and our fathers set up contests in the recitation of epic poetry. And so, although many poems by many poets were recited, since those of Solon were new at the time, many of us children chanted them. Then one of the members of our clan said (either because he really thought so at the time or because he meant to pay Critias a compliment) that Solon, as it seemed to him, had proven to be both the wisest of the Seven in other matters and what’s more, in his poetry, the most free-spirited of all poets. At that the old man was very pleased (I remember it well) and with a big smile said: “If only, Amynander, he hadn’t misused his poetry by treating it as a diversion but pursued it seriously like the others, and if he had finished the account he brought here from Egypt and wasn’t compelled to neglect it because of the factions and all the other evils he discovered when he came back here, then, in my opinion at least, neither Hesiod nor Homer nor any other poet would ever have become more highly reputed than he.” “But what account was that, Critias?” said he. “Why,” he declared, “it was about the greatest and most justly famous action this city ever enacted, although, through time and the destruction of those who performed it, its account didn’t survive down to our day.” “Tell from the beginning,” said he, “what Solon went on to say, and how and from whom he heard these things held as true.”

“There is, in the Delta of Egypt,” said he, “where, at its head, the stream of the Nile splits in two, a certain district called Saïtic, and the greatest city in this district is Sais (where in fact King Amasis also was from),⁸ whose founder is a certain goddess—the name in Egyptian is Neith, but in Greek (so their account goes) it’s Athena; and these people claim to be great Athens-lovers and in some fashion relatives of the people here.

“Now Solon said that when he had passed through there, he came to be very much held in honor among them, and that once, furthermore, while putting questions about old things to the priests who were most experienced in them, he discovered that neither he himself nor any other Greek hardly knew anything at all, so to speak, about such things. And once, when he wished to induce them to give speeches about antiquities, he attempted to speak of the most ancient things of all in the accounts given here—about Phoroneus, said to be the first man, and about Niobe—and he proceeded to tell stories about Deucalion and Pyrrha after the flood, and about how they survived it, and to give the genealogy of their descendants; and by recalling how many years it took for the events he was speaking about, he tried to count the periods of time.

“And one of the very oldest of the priests said: ‘Solon, Solon, you Greeks are always children, and there’s no such thing as an old Greek!’ Now when he heard this, Solon said: ‘What do you mean by that?’ ‘You’re young,’ he declared, ‘young in soul, all of you; for in those souls you don’t have a single old opinion derived from ancient hearsay or any study hoary with time. And the cause of this is the following. Many destructions of mankind in many ways have come to be and will be—the greatest by fire and water, but different and lesser ones by thousands of other means. For what is also told in your parts—that once Phaethon, son of Helios, yoked his father’s chariot and, through his not being able to drive it along his father’s path, burned up what was on the earth and himself perished when he was struck by a thunderbolt—has the figure of a story, but its truth is a shifting of the bodies that move around the earth and along the heavens, and the destruction that comes about on the earth by a great deal of fire at long stretches of time. All who dwell on mountains and in high and dry regions then suffer a greater destruction than do those who dwell near the rivers and the sea; but for us, the Nile, our savior in other ways as well, at that time too saves us from this impasse by rising up. And when in turn gods purify the earth by flooding it with waters, then those who live in the mountains—herdsmen and shepherds—are saved, while those who live in the cities near you are swept into the sea by the rivers. But along this place here, neither then nor at any other time does water stream down on the fields from above, but it all tends by nature to come up from below. Hence, through these causes, the things preserved here are said to be the oldest. The truth is that in all the regions where neither excessive cold nor heat is at work, there is always some class of human beings, sometimes more, sometimes less in number. And if anything that is beautiful or great or has something distinctive about it has come to pass somewhere, either near you or here or even in another region that we know by hearsay—all such things have been written down from olden times and preserved here in our temples. But it happens that at any given time your lands and those of other people have only just been equipped with writing and all the things that cities need; and after the usual span of years, the heavenly stream comes back again like a plague to sweep your people away, and leaves only the illiterate and uneducated among you, so that you become young, as it were, all over again from the beginning, knowing nothing either of things here or of whatever was in your own land in olden times.

“ ‘At any rate, Solon, the genealogies you went through just now about the events in your land aren’t much different from children’s stories. First, you remember only one flooding of the earth, whereas many have come to pass before this. Second, you don’t know that the most beautiful and best race among men was born in the place where you live, from whose little bit of seed that was left over, there exists both you and the entire city that is now yours; but you’ve forgotten all this because for many generations the survivors met their end without giving voice to themselves in writing. For indeed, Solon, once, before the time of the greatest destruction by water, what is now the city of the Athenians was the best in war and was outstanding in all respects for her excellent laws. The most beautiful works are said to have been born in her, as well as the most beautiful regimes of any of those under heaven and that we’ve inherited through hearsay.’

“When he heard this, Solon said he was amazed and put all his heart into begging the priests to recount for him, with precision and in order, everything about his fellow-citizens of old. And the priest said: ‘I bear you no grudge, Solon, so for your sake I’ll speak, and for the sake of your city, and most of all for the sake of the goddess, who took as her lot both your city and this one here and brought them up and educated them—the city in your land first by the span of a thousand years, when she took over your seed from Gê and Hephaestus, and the one here at a later point. And the number of years for the arrangement here in our land, as it was written down in the sacred texts, is eight thousand. Now concerning the citizens born nine thousand years ago, I’ll make plain to you in brief their laws as well as the most beautiful of deeds enacted by them. As for the precise sequence of all this, we’ll go through it at another time at our leisure, once we’ve gotten hold of the writings themselves.

“‘As for their laws, take a look at the ones here; for you’ll discover, right here and now, many examples of what was once there in your land: first, the class of priests, which is bounded off as separate from the others; and after this, the class of craftsmen, of which each sort does its crafting all by itself without mixing with another; and then the class of shepherds, of hunters, and of those who till the earth. And, in particular, regarding the warrior class, you have no doubt perceived that it’s been separated off from all the other classes, and its members have been ordered by the law to care for nothing but what relates to war. Moreover, there’s the state of their armament—shields and swords—with which we were the first in Asia to be armed, the goddess having displayed this to us, just as she had first displayed it in those regions around you. Again, regarding prudence, you no doubt see how much careful attention the law here has paid to the cosmos right from the beginning by having invented all that accrues to human things from the divine, down to divination and medicine, which aims at health, and by having acquired all the other studies that follow them. Now at that time, the goddess, having arrayed you before all others with all this arrangement and order, settled you by singling out the region in which you were born, since she observed in it a good blending of seasons, one that would bear the most prudent men. So inasmuch as she’s both a lover of war and a lover of wisdom, the goddess singled out this region as the one likely to bear men who most resembled her, and settled it first. And you dwelled in the observance of such laws as these—indeed, ones that were still better—and you surpassed all mankind in every virtue, as was suitable for those who were the offspring and pupils of gods.

“ ‘Now, your city’s many and great deeds that are written down here strike people with amazement, yet there is one that rises above them all in magnitude and virtue. For our writings tell of how your city once stopped a great power, which, in its insolence, was advancing against all of Europe together with Asia, having proceeded from somewhere far out in the Atlantic Ocean. At that time the ocean there could be crossed, since an island was situated in front of the mouth that you people call, as you say, the Pillars of Hercules.⁹ The island was bigger than Libya and Asia together, and from it there was access to the other islands for those traveling at that time, and from the islands to the entire opposing continent that surrounds that true sea. For these parts around here, which lie within the mouth we’re talking about, are clearly a harbor that has a narrow entrance for sailing into, while out there is genuinely an ocean, and the land surrounding it would in perfect truth be most correctly called a continent. And on this very island of Atlantis there was gathered a great and wondrous power of kings, which mastered the entire island, many other islands, and even parts of the continent; and in addition to these, they further ruled over the lands here within Libya as far as Egypt, and over Europe as far as Tuscany.

“ ‘Now once this whole power had been gathered together into one, it undertook in a single onslaught to enslave the region around you and the one around us, and the entire region within the mouth. It was then, Solon, that the power of your city proved illustrious to all mankind for virtue and might, for she stood before all others in bravery and in all the arts relating to war, at one point leading the Greeks, at another standing alone, of necessity, when the others defected; and having taken the most extreme risks and having mastered the invaders, she set up trophies;¹⁰ and she prevented from being enslaved those who were not yet enslaved, while as for the rest of us who dwell within the boundaries of Heracles, she liberated us all ungrudgingly. But at a later time, when monstrous earthquakes and floods came about, and one grievous day and night assaulted them, then the entire assembly of warriors among you sank beneath the earth, and the island of Atlantis likewise sank beneath the sea and disappeared—which is why, even now, the ocean in that spot has become impassable and unexplorable, since it’s blocked by the shoal mud the island produced when it settled.’ ”

Above all, we shall first call to mind that, in total, nine thousand years have passed since that war took place, so it was told, between the people beyond the Pillars of Heracles and all those who dwelled within them, of which I shall now give a precise account. On the one side, our state is said to have ruled and brought the entire war to an end, while on the other, the kings of the island of Atlantis held dominion. This island was, as noted, once larger than Asia and Libya together, but it perished through earthquakes and, in doing so, left behind an impassable, muddy shoal, which hinders anyone who seeks to journey to the sea beyond from further advancing.

Since in the nine thousand years that have passed from that time until now, many Great Floods have taken place, the soil that was washed down from the heights during this time and through such events did not accumulate high, as in other regions, but was instead carried away all around and disappeared into the depths. Thus, as happens with small islands, compared to the land as it was then, so to speak, only the bones of a diseased body remain, since the rich and loose soil was washed away, leaving behind only the meagre skeleton of the land.

In those ancient times, when the land was still intact, its mountains were high and covered with soil, and its plains, which are now referred to as stony ground, were full of rich earth; on the mountains stood dense forests, of which clear traces still remain today. For now, some mountains provide food only for bees, yet it is not so long ago that roofs made from the trees, which were felled there as beams for the largest buildings, still stood in good condition. The land also bore many tall fruit trees and provided the herds with an inexhaustibly rich pasture; moreover, the rain throughout the year brought it great fertility, for the water did not, as it does now, where it is lost to the sea due to the barren ground, vanish, but instead, the rich soil absorbed the rain, retained the water in its clay-filled depths, and then let it flow down from the heights into the valleys, thus supplying abundant springs and rivers everywhere. Even now, sacred markers can still be found at their former sources, proving the truth of what is now recounted about them.

Such, then, was the nature of that land, once so fertile, and it was cultivated by true farmers who truly deserved that name, dedicating themselves solely to agriculture, striving for what is right, and being well-endowed with abilities, as they also enjoyed the best soil, the most abundant irrigation, and, in terms of climate, the most favorable alternation of the seasons.

Now, let us also describe the conditions that existed among their adversaries and how they developed from the very beginning. I hope that my memory does not fail me in recounting what I heard as a boy, so that I may relay everything to you, my friends, with exact detail.

Before proceeding with my account, I must first mention a small matter so that you do not wonder why non-Hellenic men bear Hellenic names. You shall learn the reason. When Solon wished to use this story for his poetry, he conducted thorough investigations into the meanings of the proper names and discovered that those ancient Egyptians, who first recorded them, had translated them into their own language. Thus, he himself examined the meaning of each proper name and transcribed it according to how it would appear in our language. These records were in the possession of my grandfather and remain with me to this day, and I had already studied them closely as a boy. Therefore, do not be surprised if you hear proper names there that resemble those found in our own land. You now know the reason for this.

But now, let us turn to our long account, which began somewhat as follows. We have already mentioned above that the gods divided the whole earth among themselves, some receiving larger, others smaller portions, and that they established their own sanctuaries and sacrificial altars. Thus, the island of Atlantis fell to Poseidon, and he settled his offspring, whom he had begotten with a mortal woman, in a place on the island of the following nature.

On the coast of the sea, toward the middle of the whole island, lay a plain said to have been the fairest and most fertile of all; at the edge of this plain stood a moderately low hill, about 30,000 feet from the sea. On it lived Euenor, one of the men sprung from the earth at the beginning, with his wife Leucippe; they had an only daughter, Cleito. When the girl came of age, her mother and father died, but Poseidon grew inflamed with love for her and lay with her. He fortified the hill where she dwelt by encircling it with strong defenses: he placed several rings, two of earth and three of water, around the hill, each evenly spaced from the others in all directions, rendering the hill inaccessible to men, for at that time ships and sailing did not yet exist. This hill, now transformed into an island, he furnished most splendidly—a task that posed no difficulty for him as a god: he caused two springs, one warm, the other cold, to rise from the earth and made abundant fruits of every kind grow from it.

With her, he fathered five pairs of male twins, reared them, and then divided the entire island of Atlantis into ten parts. To the firstborn of the eldest pair, he granted his mother’s dwelling and the surrounding land as the largest and finest portion, appointing him king over the others. The rest he likewise made rulers, each entrusted with dominion over many people and a vast territory. He also gave them all names: the eldest, the first king who then reigned, he named Atlas, after whom the entire island and the sea were named. To Atlas’ younger twin brother, who received the outermost part of the island—from the Pillars of Herakles to the region of present-day Gadeira—he gave the name Gadeiros in the native tongue, or Eumelus in Greek, a name that would later lend itself to the land’s designation. Of the second pair, he named one Ampheres and the other Euaemon; of the third, the firstborn Mneseus and the younger Autochthon; of the fourth, the elder Elasippus and the younger Mestor; and of the fifth, the elder was named Azaes and the younger Diaprepes.

All of these, along with their descendants, lived for many generations on the island of Atlantis and ruled over many other islands in the Atlantic Ocean. Moreover, they extended their dominion as far as Egypt and Tyrrhenia. From Atlas descended a great lineage, which was not only highly esteemed in general but also held the kingship for many generations, as the eldest son always passed it down to his firstborn. Through this, the dynasty preserved such an abundance of wealth as had never before existed in any kingdom and will not easily exist again in the future. They also possessed everything needed both in the city and in the countryside.

Foreign lands brought these rulers many goods, yet most of what was necessary for life was provided by the island itself. First and foremost, it yielded everything that mining could offer in terms of solid or smeltable metals, including a certain type of brass, now known only by name, but at that time more than that, it was mined in many places on the island and was valued by the people of that age second only to gold.

The island also produced in abundance everything that the forest provides for the works of builders and nourished wild and domestic animals in great numbers. There were, for instance, many elephants, for the land offered ample fodder not only for all other creatures inhabiting the marshes, ponds, and rivers, as well as the mountains and plains, but also for this, the largest and most voracious of all beasts by nature.

Furthermore, every fragrance that the earth now produces, whether in roots, grasses, different types of wood, sap, flowers, or fruits, was borne and nurtured in great abundance on the island. Likewise, ‘the delightful fruit’ and the fruit of the field, which serves as our food, as well as all those other plants we consume as nourishment and collectively call vegetables, were present. There was also a tree-like plant that provided drink, food, and ointment alike, as well as the quickly perishable fruit of orchard trees, meant for our joy and pleasure, and everything that we serve as dessert—a welcome stimulant for the sated stomach of one who has overeaten.

All of this, the island, then still exposed to the rays of the sun, produced in marvellous beauty and unlimited abundance. Since the land offered them all these riches, its inhabitants built temples, royal palaces, harbours, and shipyards, and they also arranged the entire land in a structured manner, following the order which I shall now describe.

First, they built bridges over the canals that encircled their ancient seat of power, thus creating a connection to the royal citadel. This citadel they had erected from the very beginning upon that same abode of the god and their ancestors; each ruler inherited it from his predecessor, and each strove to the best of his ability to enhance its adornments and to surpass the one before him, until at last their dwelling, through its sheer size and splendor, presented a sight wondrous to behold.

First, they dug a canal from the sea, three hundred feet wide, one hundred feet deep, and thirty thousand feet long, leading up to the outermost ring, thereby allowing entry from the sea as into a harbour, wide enough to admit even the largest ships. They also cut channels through the earthen embankments between the concentric canals beneath the bridges, creating passages wide enough for a single trireme to pass from one waterway to another. These channels they then bridged over, so that ships could sail beneath them, for the rims of the embankments rose high enough above the sea.

The widest of the concentric canals measured eighteen hundred feet across, and the earthen ring that followed it was of equal width. The next canal was twelve hundred feet wide, as was its adjoining earthen ring. Finally, the innermost canal, which encircled the island itself, was six hundred feet wide, while the island upon which the royal citadel stood had a diameter of three thousand feet.

This island, along with the earthen rings and the hundred-foot-wide bridges, they enclosed entirely with a stone wall, erecting towers and gates upon the bridges at the points where the passages from the sea opened. The stones used for these—white, black, and red—were quarried from the slopes of the central island and from the inner and outer faces of the embankments. In this way, they also created hollowed-out docks along both sides of the embankments, roofed over by the living rock itself.

For their constructions, they sometimes used stones of a single hue, but elsewhere, to delight the eye, they artfully combined stones of varied colours, enhancing their natural beauty to its fullest. The outermost wall, running along the exterior of the outermost earthen ring, they sheathed in bronze; the innermost wall they overlaid with tin; and the citadel itself they clad in orichalcum, which gleamed like fire.

The royal residence within the citadel was arranged as follows. At its centre stood a temple sacred to Cleito and Poseidon, enclosed by a golden wall and accessible only to priests. Within this temple, the lineage of the ten princes had once been conceived and born. Each year, the first fruits of the harvest were sent there from all ten provinces as offerings for each prince.

Nearby rose the Temple of Poseidon, six hundred feet long, three hundred feet wide, and proportionally tall, built in a somewhat foreign architectural style. Its entire exterior was sheathed in silver, and its battlements in gold. Inside, the ceiling was of ivory, adorned with gold and orichalcum, while the walls, pillars, and floors were clad in orichalcum. Golden statues stood within: the god himself, standing upon his chariot and driving six winged steeds, so vast that his head touched the ceiling, and around him a hundred Nereids astride dolphins, for such was their believed number. Many other statues, dedicated by private citizens, also filled the temple.

Outside, golden statues of the ten kings and their wives encircled the temple, along with those of all their descendants, and countless other votive offerings from the kings and from private donors, both of the city itself and of the foreign lands under their rule. The altar, too, matched the temple in grandeur and craftsmanship, just as the royal palace was fitting to the empire’s might and the splendour of its sanctuaries.

They made use of the two springs—one warm, the other cold—which flowed in abundant streams, their waters wholesome and marvelously suited to every purpose. Around them, they constructed buildings and groves of suitable trees, and established bathing facilities: some open to the sky, others roofed for warm baths in winter, with separate quarters for royalty, commoners, women, and even stalls for horses and other beasts of burden, all appointed fittingly. The runoff water they channelled partly into the grove of Poseidon, where trees of every kind grew to exceptional height and beauty thanks to the soil’s richness, and partly through conduits across the bridges into the outer ring canals.

There, too, stood shrines to many gods, gardens, and exercise grounds; some for men, others for chariot teams upon the islands formed by the earthen rings; while a dedicated racetrack, six hundred feet wide, lay at the center of the larger island, its entire circumference designed for chariot races. Around this track stood barracks for most of the royal guard. The most trusted were stationed on the smaller earthen ring nearer the citadel, while those who had proven exceptional loyalty dwelt within the citadel itself, closest to the palace.

The naval arsenals were filled with triremes¹¹ and all the necessary equipment for outfitting such ships, all kept in good condition and ready for use. Such was the arrangement of the royal residence.

But once one had passed beyond the three harbours located outside of it, one came upon a wall that began at the sea and ran in a circular path, enclosing the largest ring and the main harbour, always maintaining a distance of thirty thousand feet from it. This wall ended at the same point where the canal emptied into the sea.

The entire enclosed space was densely packed with numerous dwellings. The main harbour and its entrance were bustling with ships and merchants from all parts of the world, and at all hours—by day and by night—there was a great din, loud shouting, and a constant clamour of all kinds.

The land yielded them two harvests per year: one in winter, nourished by the fertilising rains, and one in summer, sustained by irrigation through the canals.

Regarding the number of inhabitants, it was decreed that each estate within the plain was to provide a battle-ready leader. Each estate measured one hundred square stadia in size, and the total number of estates was sixty thousand. In the mountains and other regions, the population was said to be immeasurable, yet all were assigned to one of these estates and its respective leader according to their settlements.

Every six of these leaders were required to provide a war chariot, amounting to a total of ten thousand chariots available for warfare. Furthermore, each leader had to supply two horses with riders, as well as a two-horse chariot without a seat, carrying a warrior armed with a small shield and a charioteer. Additionally, each leader was responsible for two heavily armed soldiers, two archers, two slingers, three stone-throwers, three javelin-throwers, and four sailors for manning a total of 1,200 ships. Such was the military organisation of the royal state, while in the other nine states, different regulations prevailed, which would lead us too far afield to discuss in detail.

The conditions of government and the offices of state were arranged from the very beginning in the following manner. Each of the ten kings ruled over his allotted territory from his own city, governing its inhabitants and standing above most laws, so that he could punish and execute whomever he wished. However, their rule over one another and their mutual relations were determined by the command of Poseidon, as handed down to them by law, engraved by their forefathers upon a pillar of brass in the centre of the island, within the temple of Poseidon.

There, they assembled alternately every five and every six years, granting equal recognition to both the even and the odd number. In these gatherings, they deliberated on common affairs but also examined whether any among them had transgressed the law and rendered judgment accordingly. Before pronouncing judgment, however, they would first exchange this pledge of loyalty among themselves.

They would hunt the bulls that roamed freely in Poseidon's sanctuary, using no weapons but wooden clubs and ropes, while praying to the god that they might capture the sacrifice most pleasing to him. The captured bull was then led to the pillar and sacrificed upon its capital, directly above the inscription. This pillar bore not only the laws but also an oath invoking terrible curses upon any who disobeyed them.

Upon this pillar, in addition to the laws, there was an oath formula that pronounced terrible curses upon anyone who disobeyed. When, according to their custom, they had consecrated all the bull’s limbs to the god, they then filled a mixing bowl, poured a drop of blood into it for each of them, and burned the remaining parts in the fire, cleansing the pillar all around. After that, they drew from the mixing bowl with golden cups, poured their libations into the fire, and swore to judge according to the laws inscribed on the pillar, to punish anyone guilty of wrongdoing, never to violate any of the provisions willfully, and to obey no ruler other than the one who governed according to the laws of their father. When each of them had made this vow for himself and his lineage, he drank and then dedicated his cup as an offering to the temple of the god. Afterwards, they arranged for their meal and took care of their bodily needs.

Once darkness fell and the sacrificial fire had died down, they all dressed in a dark-blue robe of the finest beauty, gathered around the embers of their oath sacrifice, extinguished all the lights in the sanctuary, and passed judgment in the night whenever one of them accused another of breaking the law. At dawn, they recorded the judgments on a golden tablet and dedicated it, along with their robes, as a memorial.

There were many other laws regarding the rights of the kings in particular, but the most important one stated that no king should ever take up arms against another. Instead, all were to assist one another if any one of them attempted to overthrow the royal lineage in any city. After deliberation, as their ancestors had done, they were to decide on war and all other matters, but the leadership and supreme command were to remain with the lineage of Atlas. The right to execute a relative was granted to a king only if the majority of the ten rulers had approved it.

This power, which at that time existed in those lands in such a manner and to such an extent, was led by the god against our land, according to the legend, for the following reasons. For many generations, so long as the divine lineage was still active within them, they obeyed the laws and were well-disposed toward the divine, to which they were akin; their disposition was sincere and altogether magnanimous; in the face of all the vicissitudes of fate as well as in their dealings with one another, they displayed gentleness and wisdom; every good, except for excellence, they deemed worthless, and they regarded the abundance of their gold and other possessions with indifference and rather as a burden; their wealth did not intoxicate them, nor could it rob them of self-mastery or bring them to ruin; rather, with sober discernment, they recognized that all these goods thrive only through mutual love, combined with excellence, whereas zealous striving for them leads to destruction, along with them, excellence itself perishes.

With such principles and the ongoing activity of the divine nature within them, everything I have previously described flourished in the best possible way. But when the god-given portion of their being began to wither through repeated and frequent mingling with the mortal, and the human nature came to predominate, they were no longer able to bear their own prosperity but degenerated; anyone capable of perceiving this recognized how shamefully they had changed, in that they ruined the most beautiful among all valuable things; yet those who were unable to discern what kind of life truly leads to happiness believed them, at that very time, to be especially noble and blessed, as they were in full possession of unjustly gained wealth and unlawfully acquired power.

But Zeus, the god of gods, who rules according to eternal laws and is well able to perceive such things, resolved—seeing how wretchedly this once-excellent race had deteriorated—to punish them, so that, brought to their senses, they might return to their former way of life. Therefore, he gathered all the gods in their most venerable dwelling place, which lies at the centre of the universe and grants an overview of all that has ever come into being, and he spoke…’

Here, the narrative breaks off. Since he only began writing it in his later years, death must have overtaken him before he could complete his work. However, from the account given at the beginning, we can piece together the conclusion: When all warnings were of no avail—meaning, when the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, which had already been occurring for some time before the final downfall of the island, brought no change in the conduct of the mixed Atlantic populace—then, during a dreadful day and a fateful night, the island of Atlantis sank.

Now, some suspect that Plato invented this entire story merely to present his countrymen with an ideal state; how it ought to be and how it can perish through mismanagement. It is inconceivable that Plato wrote this account for tendentious purposes, for he would not have used the name of his own ancestor to claim that Egyptian priests had related these events to Solon. Plato himself had also been to Egypt, and had he wished to hold up to his countrymen the mirror of a once-perfect state sprung from his imagination, which then collapsed due to its own failings, he could just as easily have declared that he himself had heard it from the Egyptian priests. Precisely because he involves the name of his ancestor, this must serve as proof of the truth of Plato’s account; for it cannot be assumed that he would have misused the name of one of his forebears. Solon had visited Egypt and there conversed with the most learned of the Egyptian priests on philosophical and historical questions. Given the esteem he enjoyed as a Greek scholar, it is quite possible that the Egyptian priests set aside their usual reserve and shared with this foreigner, whom they otherwise regarded as their equal in knowledge, matters they guarded even from their own people. A certain vanity may also have played a role, allowing them to present themselves to this renowned Greek scholar as the superior party in wisdom.

According to Plato’s account, the story of Atlantis also begins with four people. There is Euenor, who is identical to the foster father; Leucippe corresponds to Semele, whose daughter, Cleito, is the foster daughter, and Poseidon is the boy born in the cave by the lake, who also appears as a river god in Greek mythology. However, the Poseidon of Plato’s account has nothing to do with the Poseidon, the ruler of the seas, i.e., the commander of the Atlantean fleet. The report that, when Cleito had grown up, her father and mother died, is not entirely accurate, for the mother breathed her last shortly after the cessation of the rain of fire, while the foster father lived for a long time and not only taught his foster son but most likely also his children in the pre-Deluge sciences. The foster father was, as already mentioned, a brother of Leucippe. Even if we assume he was the oldest of Leucippe’s potential siblings, he would hardly have reached the onset of old age by the time of the Great Fire. Given the very moderate lifestyle of the Aryans in early Atlantean times, it is likely that he was blessed with a very long life.

Such inconsistencies, which were unavoidable in oral transmission, continue to appear, but they can easily be corrected through comparison with other mythologies.

Chapter V

In the tradition that was preserved in Peru about the primaeval times of Atlantis, it is said: 'These descendants (of the first human pair) lived for about half a millennium in peace and unity with each other.' Such peace must have reigned over Atlantis throughout the many preceding millennia, for the disturbance of this peace and unity did not originate from within, but was brought to the island from the outside, namely by the three Thursen daughters, as they are called in the Edda.

Already before the Great Fire, they had begun in Atlantis to cross the world ocean surrounding the island, the Atlantic Ocean, in order to provide suitable land for settlements for the Aryan offspring, for whom the plains on the island no longer offered space. The volcanic and forested areas of the island in the north were too difficult to cultivate. According to the traditions of the Muzo in present-day Colombia (South America) and the Arcadians on the Peloponnese (Greece), it is clear that these peoples descended from Aryans who had already migrated there before the Great Fire. It is quite possible that at that time Aryans had settled in other parts of Europe, America, or even Africa, in particularly suitable places that were easy to cultivate, but who were either wiped out by wars with the indigenous people of the new lands or who had mixed with the indigenous people of the land. Over time, through ever-increasing mixing, these descendants likely became wild again, having forgotten all tradition of the past.

Nevertheless, through these emigrants, certain Aryan skills, such as those of fire-making and the production of stone tools, must have been brought to the new regions. Therefore, if traces of fire and old stone tools are found in very ancient layers, these must originate from Aryan emigrants who had settled in those areas before the Great Fire; from there, these skills may have spread further over time.

As the Aryan tribe on Atlantis had increased so greatly over the following centuries after the Great Fire that overpopulation was imminent, they must have recalled the tradition of the pre-Great Fire period, which had been shared with them by their foster father, and once again directed their steps overseas.

The tribes which the Aryans found there and which are referred to in the Edda as Ask and Embla lived in a completely primitive state. These tribes had to be taught by the Aryans, who came to them either as envoys or settlers, the knowledge of fire-making, agriculture, various crafts, as well as the basic concepts of morality and law, and timekeeping; in short, the Aryans had to make these tribes into humans.

The reports about the original races of Mesopotamia, East Asia, Africa, Australia, and America all consistently state that these races also lived in a completely wild state and that they had not even created the beginnings of a culture on their own, but that everything was brought to them by the Aryans. Some of these races proved to be very eager pupils in many respects, to which the Aryan blood they acquired through mixing with the Aryans may have contributed.

Chapter VI

Whether the tribes of Ask and Embla were located in the Old World or the New World (though the former is more likely) and in which century the Aryans from Atlantis made contact with them is not further specified. It is quite possible that this occurred before the end of the fifth post-conflagration century. The three Thursen daughters who now arrived in Atlantis after the first five hundred years had passed were apparently no ordinary Thursen daughters but, judging by the Edda’s expression ‘rich in power’, the daughters of tribal or horde leaders among whom the migrating Aryans had settled. Furthermore, it seems that these three Thursen maidens were married by some of the princes of Atlantis, either for political reasons or as a gesture of goodwill toward the tribes of Ask and Embla. As further revealed by Peruvian tradition, the three Thursen maidens did not come alone, but were accompanied by a following, and from this entourage, as may be assumed, a portion remained behind in the beautiful Atlantis together with the three Thursen daughters.

Soon afterwards, the Edda mentions a Heid who seems to have been connected in some way to the Thursen-daughters, whether she was one of them or, more likely, one of their descendants or of their Thursen kin or retinue who had remained in Atlantis. This Heid understood the Sudkunst, that is, the art of brewing, the craft of preparing intoxicating drinks. According to Mexican tradition as well, the invention of an intoxicating beverage—created by a woman—marks the beginning of the unlucky era in the history of Tula, i.e., Atlantis.

In the Bible, it is Eve who, through the consumption of a forbidden fruit, commits such a sin that she, along with her husband, is expelled from Paradise. By eating a non-poisonous fruit, no calamity could have been caused; however, through the Sudkunst, the production of intoxicating beverages, untold misfortune has indeed been brought about. It is therefore likely that the fruit in question was, perhaps, even grapes, which, instead of being eaten fresh, were at some point experimentally pressed. After such an experiment, the invention of an intoxicating drink is easy to understand, for pressed juice ferments after a short time and then has an intoxicating effect.

The expulsion from the Idafeld likely did not even occur as a punishment for the making of an intoxicating drink, but rather it was only the increasingly rampant excesses that made this a necessity. For in the Mexican tradition, a festival is mentioned that was celebrated on the Mountain of Foam with the pulque¹² invented by the woman Mayahuel, and that the prince Cuextecatl became so intoxicated therein that he ‘exposed his shame’. By the Mountain of Foam is meant the Heaven-Mountain, the hill or mountain behind the Foam-Spring, the Urðarbrunnr. This event is also found handed down in the Bible, only in a different version. Here it is Noah, of whom it is said: 'And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent.' This until-then unique occurrence then prompted the Aryans to put an end to the whole activity through the expulsion from the Idafeld.

Instead of removing the expelled, who for the most part likely belonged to the race of the Thursen, entirely from the island, which perhaps was no longer possible due to their number, they were assigned the uninhabited, mountainous part of the island. Until the time of their expulsion, they will have been provided for, insofar as the planted groves of the Idafeld did not suffice in yield, from the harvests of the plain as well. That now ceased, and they had to till the soil in the mountains by the sweat of their brow and thereby procure their own sustenance, or else gather it in the forests.

The Idafeld then had to be guarded, as emerges from the Bible, against the return of the expelled. It was especially the Tree of Life, the Yggdrasil, that was protected. From the entire third chapter of Genesis, it becomes clear that the fruit trees present on the Idafeld, including the oaks in the sacred grove, had been made available to the strangers. Only the Yggdrasil was excepted from this, because its fruits were gathered and consumed by the Aryan tribe during the annual commemorative celebration. This Yggdrasil was thus the tree whose fruits were not to be touched or eaten. But even this prohibition, the strangers had not heeded.

The event of the Fall of Man, therefore, did not take place during the lifetime of the first human couple, but at least five hundred years later. Furthermore, the woman who caused the Fall was not the primal mother Eve, but an entirely different Eve, and moreover, not an Aryan. One can see from this example how, in the traditions, legendary transmissions occurred, and how events separated by many centuries have been compressed and merged.

Following this, the Bible describes the first murder - Cain's killing of his brother Abel. According to the Edda, this murder is connected to Heid's brewing art. Even after the expulsion of those who had committed excesses, the production of intoxicating drinks either continued in use or was resumed. However, it is also possible that this murder occurred before the expulsion and was either a contributing cause or the main reason for it. According to the Bible, however, the murder occurred only after the expulsion had long since taken place. Through the drinking of intoxicating beverages, tempers had been inflamed; one word led to another, and from words it came to blows. This incident apparently occurred in the palace or the great hall on the celestial mountain — 'in the High One’s Hall' — which, due to its desecration by the murder, was given over to the flames and then rebuilt anew. The first murder mentioned in the Bible and the one in the Edda concern the same event. The first murder that occurred on Atlantis was committed by an Aryan against an Aryan.

In the Edda, following this murder, a second murder is mentioned, which is translated by Legis as war-murder. Whereas the first murder was committed by a single man, the second murder involved a battle in which likely more than one of the participants lost their life. Furthermore, it was not a battle among the Aryans themselves — such a conflict had never yet occurred — but rather one with the mountain-dwellers, that is, with the descendants of those formerly expelled, who had been living in the mountains of Atlantis. These had, over the course of centuries, greatly increased in number through their own reproduction and through new influx from Europe or elsewhere.

Given the diverse origins and composition of the population of the mountainous and forested region on Atlantis, it appears that this population was not uniformly hostile toward the Aryans; on the contrary, the inhabitants of certain parts of this region — which in extent significantly surpassed the plain — seem at times to have rather stood in the retinue of the Aryans or to have been their allies. Nevertheless, they too were likely often compelled by the prince of this mountainous and forested land, who had his seat in the volcanic region, to take part in his battles against the Aryans.

According to the tradition that was preserved in Peru regarding the primaeval history of Atlantis, King Huanakahui married the daughter of the supreme chieftain of Huayllaca, Mama Mikay, and begot many children with her. Huayllaca here means the mountainous region. The supreme chieftain of this area, as well as his daughter, were therefore not Aryans, but mixed-bloods or non-Aryans. Presumably, one of the sons from this union was to be forced upon the Aryan tribe as successor to his father by armed force, or one of these sons attempted, with the help of the battle-hardened mountain dwellers — who counted him, as the son of Mama Mikay, among their own and therefore supported him — to rise to the kingship of Atlantis by force, or perhaps had already done so. The Aryans, on the other hand, elected Sintschi Kozke, the eldest son of Huanakahui from his first marriage with an Aryan woman, as king. The mountain dwellers advanced on Cusco— by which the Idafeld is meant — with a considerable force, but were defeated by Sintschi Kozke after a bloody battle. The 'battle-wise Vanir¹³' who passed through the field were therefore composed of these mountain dwellers. They, as well as all other original tribes except the Aryans, were battle-wise because, from time immemorial, the law of the stronger had prevailed among them; whoever could not defend himself fell prey to his neighbours.

The mountain dwellers — partly non-Aryan, partly of mixed blood — to whom the Aryans, in their good-naturedness, had granted the volcanic region of their island, ultimately brought about the downfall of the Aryan state over time. As, in due course, a numerous class of priests and scholars arose on the Idafeld, one increasingly intermixed with non-Aryan blood, this group, in its efforts to seize power and oppress the Aryan population, always found willing allies among the mountain dwellers.

This struggle began at the start of the reign of Sintschi Kozke, who assumed rule around 1440 after the Great Fire.

Chapter VII

To King Sintschi Kozke, a peaceful reign until the end of his days was not to be granted. Although he had been acknowledged, for the greater part of his life, even by the mountain dwellers as the king of the whole island, he was yet to live to see, in his old age, that he was once more overrun with war by them. The tradition that has been preserved in Peru, which, as happened almost everywhere in such cases, was adapted for better understanding to the circumstances of the country in which the tradition lived on, ran as follows:

About forty leagues from Cusco lay the province of Antahuaïla, inhabited by the tribe of Ischanka; two brothers, Guaman Huaroka and Hakoz (according to others, Hastu) Huaroka, ambitious and brave young men, had succeeded in subjugating several neighboring chieftains and making them pay tribute. From then on, the ambition of the two brothers knew no bounds; they resolved to conquer Cusco and subjugate its ruler. Only one circumstance held them back: the king of Cusco was generally regarded as the son of the sun, and they feared provoking this deity's wrath should they wage war on Sintschi Kozke. They therefore agreed to attempt the king’s submission by peaceful means, sent an embassy to him, and demanded that he recognize their overlordship—otherwise, they would declare the cruellest of wars upon him.

The king replied to the envoys that he would give them an answer in a few days and sent scouts to the province of Antahuaïla to gain certainty regarding the strength of the enemy army. Their reports were most unfavorable, stating that the number of enemy warriors was beyond reckoning, that the majority were wild barbarians, that the sound of their war horns made the earth quake, and that although the common warriors were drunk nearly the entire day, their leaders nonetheless kept strict watch. Sintschi Kozke lost his courage. After much deliberation, he decided to submit to the two brothers—at the very least, to leave the city and retreat with wife and children to the fortress of Saxahuana, and there to await further developments. Some of his counselors agreed, others opposed. When the king perceived such indecision, he departed the capital with his wives and young children and made his way to the aforementioned fortress.

Hardly had the inhabitants of Cusco learned of the king’s departure when their own courage failed them as well. They began preparing to follow Sintschi Kozke’s example—to flee and hide in the forests. Only Inti Kapak Yupanki, the king’s youngest son, encouraged his many brothers and relatives to resist. He assured them that their common father, the sun god, had appeared to him, had promised his mighty assistance, and had even handed him several golden lances, with which the enemies could be overthrown. When he indeed showed such lances and distributed them among his kinsmen, his words were believed, and they pledged to await the enemy under his leadership.

Inti Kapak Yupanki then gave the foreign envoys the following reply: 'As sons of the sun god and priests of the world-creator Illja Tizi Huirakotscha, the kings of Cusco could acknowledge no overlord, and must wonder that other rulers, instead of humbly making pilgrimages to Cusco to worship those deities in the sun temple, to offer gifts and sacrifices, would threaten the children of the sun with war—especially since the peaceful inhabitants of Cusco could not even conceive of submitting to anyone.’

Scarcely had the envoys conveyed this response to the two chieftains than they set forth with their entire host against Cusco. Through his scouts, Inti Kapak Yupanki was kept precisely informed of the enemy’s movements. These, having learned of the king’s departure, no longer deemed it necessary to concern themselves with the prince’s preparations and relied instead on their superiority in numbers. When the hostile army was but a day’s march from Cusco, Inti Kapak Yupanki resolved to march out and attack before dawn—before the warriors had slept off their habitual drunkenness. In the evening, he set out from Cusco and, after only a short march, already heard the sound of war horns, which signaled the changing of the night watch. Before daybreak, the prince reached the camp, encountered no sentries or outposts, fell upon the drunken enemy, and wrought a terrible bloodbath among them. Victorious, Inti Kapak Yupanki returned to Cusco, found his aged father there, and was crowned king of Cusco by him in the presence of the army and with the approval of the entire kin and council of elders.

This occurred a few years before the year 1500, after the Great Fire. A king of nearly the same name is mentioned as the fifth successor of Inti Kapak Yupanki. Of him it is said: 'In his old age, this ruler handed the crown to his son, Inti Kapak Pirua Amaru. Shortly thereafter, the people urged the aged prince to depose his son for his vices and to take up the reins of government once again himself. The deposed king gathered a band of warlike youths around him, left Cusco at their head, marched against the wild inhabitants of Colljao, subdued them and other tribes dwelling in the province of Tscharkas, returned victorious to the capital, and was now welcomed not only by his father but also by the entire populace, chosen once more as king, and died in his eightieth year, deeply mourned by his subjects.'

One of these—presumably the former—appears to be the original Thor, onto whom, however, the nature and deeds of the other, Inti Kapak, were also transferred.

Inti Kapak, who is completely identical with Thor in the Nordic tradition, also appears in the mythologies of other peoples—for example, as Heracles in the Greek, as Indra in the Indian, and as Huitzilopochtli in the Mexican tradition. Aside from the two names Inti Kapak and Huitzilopochtli, which are derived from the Peruvian and Mexican languages, respectively, names such as Thor, Heracles, and Indra are clan names. That an Aryan king of Atlantean prehistory was given different names among various peoples can be explained by the fact that the bards—or also the priests—who preserved the old legends and recited them to the tribespeople on feast days or other occasions, used the names of the first lineages of their own clan when referring to the foster-father, the primeval ancestors, Thor, and so on. These leading lineages—foremost among them the princely line—were thereby meant to be honoured. In the same way, as previously mentioned, the events on the island of Atlantis were transposed to the new homeland, so as to make them more vivid to the people. Similarly, in referring to the enemies whom the Aryan princes once had on the island of Atlantis, the bards employed the names of the leading lineages of neighbouring tribes, or of such tribes that stood in opposition or hostility to their own.

Next to the foster-father and the primaeval ancestral pair, Thor is the ancestor dearest to the descendants and the one most celebrated by them. The adversaries he had to overcome, as emerges from the Peruvian tradition, were two brothers; the same is also reported in Indian mythology, and these two figures are likewise still discernible in Greek mythology. Of these two brothers, the elder was the prince of the mountain people, while the younger had succeeded in becoming the commander of the Atlantean fleet, which, already at that time, both in leadership and crew, was largely in the hands of mixed-bloods and non-Aryans. These two brothers now acted in concert in their endeavor to seize dominion over the Idafeld and over the Aryans.

Thor first had to reconquer the Idafeld, which had already fallen into the hands of the mountain dwellers and had been turned by them into a pigsty (in the Greek tradition, the term 'cattle stall' is used for this); he pursued the defeated enemies into their mountains in order to finally overthrow them there. Once this had been accomplished, Thor turned against the hostile or rebellious fleet, which was likewise defeated, and he pursued its remnants across the sea to the most distant hiding places. In these battles, the two brothers also fell. Thor was loyally served by his comrade-in-arms or subordinate commander, who was also the first to scale the wall of the Idafeld during its recapture.

Thor's task was made easier by newly invented implements of war—namely: armour, bow and arrow. Until then, the weapon of the Aryans had been the spear, which moreover had not been invented as a weapon of war or for hunting, but only for defending against animals that had become dangerous due to hunger, as had occurred during the Great Hunger. In addition to the bow and arrow, the Aryans also seem to have used specially constructed throwing hammers or throwing sticks; such missile weapons, like the boomerang, even today, return to the thrower if they fail to hit their target.

Chapter VIII

Somewhat after the year 2000, reckoned from the Great Fire, there occurred in the occupation of the royal throne a change which had the gravest consequences for the Aryan tribe. Whereas until then the royal throne had remained in the hands of the Aryans, now for the first time it was ascended by a member of the priestly and scholarly caste, which had developed upon the Idafeld and was intermingled with non-Aryan blood. This ruler is named, according to the Peruvian tradition, Lljoke Tesag Amauta. Since Tesag apparently is the same word as Tansacaa, which means High Priest, and Amauta means scholar, his designation Lljoke will thus signify the High Priest and Scholar. But Lljoke or Lloque is the same name as Loki or Loke in the Nordic tradition. This clan name, which the first king from the priestly and scholarly caste bore, was retained in Nordic mythology as a title for the high priests of earlier times and the Priest-Kings of later times, when all power on the island had passed into the hands of the priesthood. From Lloque Tesag Amauta onward, the title Amauta appears more frequently in the names of Atlantean rulers. Royal dignity had therefore not yet entirely passed into the hands of the priesthood or the scholarly caste. Thus, in the Peruvian tradition, two rulers are mentioned by the names Manko Auki Tupak Batschakutek and Sintschi Apuski, who did not bear the scholarly title and are presumably identical with Njörðr and his son Freyr of the Nordic tradition.

Of these two it is said in the Peruvian primeval history: Manko Auki Tupak Patschakutek, a mighty war hero, expanded the borders of the empire by adding the territory of many neighboring tribes (by which are meant the mountain dwellers), gave wise laws, and altered the calendar established by Kapak Amauta in such a way that he set the 25th of September as the beginning of the year. He died of old age in the fiftieth year of his reign and left the throne, instead of to his eldest but unworthy son, to his younger son Sintschi Apuski, a courageous, brave, and virtuous youth. The new king began his reign with the extermination of the idolatry which had, in a terrifying manner, become rampant (i.e., among the mountain dwellers), forbade all idol images, and commanded that the world-creator Illja Tizi Huirakotscha (that is, Botschika) be worshipped as the supreme deity. Because he had purified the religion, the people gave him the epithet Huarma Huirakotscha.

In addition, the king issued strict laws against adulterers, robbers, arsonists, and liars, and punished such offences and crimes with such relentless severity that long after his death, no Indian (i.e., mountain dweller) is said to have dared to tell a lie. He died in his eightieth year, after having ruled some forty years. His death falls in the year 2570 (after the Great Fire).

Among the Amautas, the scholars who ascended the royal throne, there must also have been rulers who still thought and acted in the Aryan manner. Thus, in the Peruvian tradition, a ruler named Tupak Amaru Amauta is mentioned, of whom it is said:
‘Grave and silent, this monarch spent his life; during his twenty-five-year reign, no one ever saw him smile.’ This ruler is said to be identical with the silent Víðarr of the Edda, of whom it is not only said that the gods trust him in all dangers, but also that he, along with Baldr and some other gods, survives or returns after the end of the world. This proves that he must have been a truly outstanding king.

The Edda further reports that Víðarr’s mother, Gríðr, was a giantess, thus descended from the mixed-blooded mountain people. Víðarr was therefore not a completely pure Aryan, yet he must have possessed a thoroughly Aryan inner nature and stood fully and completely for the Aryans. According to the Peruvian tradition, the silent Ase lived in the penultimate century before the completion of the third great solar year (one solar year = one thousand years) after the Great Fire.

Just as earlier the priestly and scholarly caste had endeavored to place its own members upon the royal throne, so too later, after repeated further influxes of pupils from the mountain lands who were then admitted into its ranks, it became ever more power-hungry, and came to claim both the throne and the other influential positions entirely for its own members. In these efforts to seize power and to oppress the Aryan population, the priestly and scholarly caste at all times found willing helpers in the mountain dwellers.

Without a doubt, already from the time when Loki ascended the royal throne on the Idafeld, there must have been repeated violent struggles between the Aryans on one side and the priesthood and the mountain people on the other, and in this contest, the advantage was not always on the side of the Aryans. Nonetheless, they remained in possession of the plains and partly continued to provide the kings for the throne on the Idafeld from within their own ranks. Thus, the last king, who then fell in the decisive battle on the Wigrid-field, was also an Aryan; in the Peruvian tradition, he is called Titu Yupanki, a name that is again taken from the Peruvian language and cannot have been his actual name. His predecessor, by contrast, bore the title Amauta, from which it may be inferred that this penultimate king was a member of the scholarly caste.

It is by no means impossible that Titu Yupanki had ascended the throne against the will of the priestly and scholarly caste, while they had intended once again to place one of their own upon it. In any case, given the priesthood’s striving for sole rule, renewed conflicts must have arisen, in which the king could rely only upon the inhabitants of the plains: the Aryans. Since the Idafeld had long since fallen into the hands of the priesthood, and the Aryans’ settlements in the plains no longer offered sufficient security, the king had a strong fortress constructed on a steep mountain in the heights bordering the plain—regions which, it is likely, had partly always remained under Aryan control.

In the conflicts now taking place, the Fenris-wolf acted as the High Priest’s loyal henchman. He was the head of the non-Aryan and mixed-blood population dwelling in the volcanic mountains. Likewise, the Jörmungandr participated, he being the leader of the entire naval force. Since the power of these three allies was still not sufficient to subdue the Aryan army, Loki, who, by virtue of his position as High Priest or head of the Idafeld, together with the fleet commander, held great influence in the settlements, summoned or brought reinforcements from those territories. As the fleet, at least for the most part, stood on Loki’s side, the Aryans were unable to prevent this.

The auxiliary armies that contributed to the downfall of the Aryans, according to the Edda, originated from the East—that is, from the settlement regions of Western and Southern Europe and North Africa, as well as from the South, that is, the northern part of the West African coast, i.e., from Morocco, and from the regions of Senegal and Gambia and Upper Guinea.

This tradition once again corresponds entirely with that of the Peruvian primaeval history. There it says:

‘But also from the seacoast wild hordes advanced upon Cusco, while the barbarians coming over the Andes, among whom were Moors, drew daily closer to the beleaguered capital, broke through the resistance of the king’s military leaders, and, overwhelming in strength, drove the officials and warriors of the latter back toward the city of residence.’

The tradition then continues:

‘The ruler, to whom each day brought new tidings of misfortune, dispatched seasoned commanders against the enemies advancing from the coast and marched himself to meet those coming over the Andes. On the steep mountains of Pucara, he fortified himself in a double-entrenched camp, the first wall of which encircled the base of an inaccessible rock, while the second, built at the summit of the mountain, formed an inner stronghold. Here, Titu Yupanki had food supplies accumulated in great quantity and pitched his royal tent. Thus prepared, he awaited the approaching enemy. When he heard of their nearness, he resolved to offer them battle in open field, left the fortifications with his army, and stood in opposition to the barbarians. A bloody, heated struggle broke out.

The king, enthroned upon a golden palanquin, spurred his brave warriors to battle in the foremost rank; then an arrow struck him fatally, and dying, he sank upon the seat, his blood spattering the bearers. Wails of grief drowned out the din of battle, and the dreadful news spread through the army like lightning. No one held their ground any longer. Even the bravest warriors threw down their weapons and sought to escape in hurried flight, carrying the body of their beloved ruler with them back to the camp.

Many were overtaken and slain; yet the loyal bearers, chosen exclusively from among the noblest of the realm, succeeded in bringing the corpse to the rock cave of Tamputocko. From there they sent envoys to the enemies feasting at their victory banquet and begged permission to bury their fallen brothers from the battlefield, but they received a refusal... Titu Yupanki’s death became the cause of the collapse of the most ancient Peruvian kingship, the downfall of the empire, and the loss of the written language.’

In the battles, it appears that the priesthood’s side also employed as a weapon a kind of explosive or other inflammable or corrosive mixture, which was thrown or sprayed upon the Aryans.

In the Edda, this decisive battle, in which the last remnants of Aryan rule were destroyed, is referred to as the battle on the Wigrid-field or Wigrid-plain. According to the Peruvian tradition, this battle took place approximately 3’500 years after the Great Fire. The unfortunate outcome of this battle also determined the further fate of the Aryans: they not only lost all influence over the governance of the island but were also stripped of their independence and, as the vanquished, subjected to heavy forced labour. The remaining portion of the Aryan people then escaped this subjugation through emigration.

The Aryan tribe, which had, in the truest sense of the word, sprung from the very soil of the island and clung to it with every fiber of its heart, was forced to flee before the descendants of those foreigners whom it had once, in its good-naturedness, welcomed among them and to whom it had granted the uninhabited part of the island.

The traditions do indeed report variously of princes who, with their followers, saved themselves by fleeing across the sea. However, it remains uncertain to what extent such traditions refer to earlier, unsuccessfully ended struggles over the Idafeld itself, during which various defeated princes may have likewise been forced to take flight across the sea.

By contrast, the story of the Exodus from Egypt in the Bible most likely refers to the emigration of the remaining Aryan people. This appears to be a tradition brought to Canaan by Nordic Aryans, and later adopted, along with many other things, into the tribal history of the Israelites after they had settled in Canaan. The Israelites then associated this deed, as well as various other Atlantean events, with Moses or transferred them onto him.

It is not out of the question that a portion of the Israelites did in fact reside for a time in Egypt, and that certain memories from that period or other traditions related to their own migration experiences were woven into the Nordic migration legend.
The term Durchzug is likewise not to be taken literally here, nor the expression of crossing a body of water; in both cases, what is meant is a transport—one that, when involving a broader waterway or a sea, could only have been accomplished by boats or ships.

After the defeat of the Aryans, power passed into the hands of Loki (the High Priest), Jörmungandr (the Lord of the Seas), and the Fenris-wolf (the Lord of the Mountains). The High Priest assumed the position formerly held by the Atlantean kings, thus taking precedence as Priest-King; the leader of the fleet or Sea Prince held authority not only over the entire naval power but also, to a certain degree, over the settlements. Meanwhile, the Prince of the volcanic region was left only with the mountainous territory of Atlantis.

Even though the ancient Aryan rule had been definitively abolished, the age-old antagonism between the mountain-dwelling population and those who later inhabited the fertile plains and the Idafeld must have remained or flared up anew. Above all, the Mountain Prince, also referred to as the Prince of Hell, must have cast envious eyes upon the Idafeld and begrudged the Priest-King the treasures that flowed in from all corners of the world as offerings, though he did not dare rise up against the power of the Idafeld with open force.

By contrast, there seems to have generally existed a friendly relationship between the Priest-King and the Sea Prince, for the latter, being in control of all sea traffic and thus of the connection to the settlements, also benefited richly from the tributes that came to him from all sides.

After the battle on the Wigrid-field, when the Aryan princes (gods) were eliminated and power in Atlantis passed to the High Priest, he and his successors ruled as Priest-Kings (Priest-Gods) for roughly 1’000 years—the Thousand-Year Reich—guiding the fate of the island and the world. The priestly kingdom, like all of Atlantis, met its downfall through the submergence of the island into the sea (the Great Flood), though even before this, the power of the Priest-King had been broken or destroyed by uprisings led by the Mountain Prince (Fenris-wolf).

Chapter IX

Apart from the Aryans, who had settled in the north of Europe and had maintained themselves entirely independent from Atlantean rule, it appears from Egyptian tradition that not even all the other settlements were completely subjected to the priestly dominion of Atlantis; those which had existed prior to the establishment of the priestly rule and which were not situated too near to Atlantis were, although more or less under the influence of the Priest-King, still in part rather independent. The aim of the Atlantean Priest-Kings now lay in bringing even these settlements, one after another, into complete subjugation. To this end, the Atlantean military force was set in motion against the Mediterranean basin, in order to subdue those regions located in its eastern part, which in some respects were still, at least partially, independent. The people there, under the leadership of the ancient Athenians, did indeed offer resistance, but gradually fell away, so that the ancient Athenians, left to rely upon themselves alone, could repel the attackers only with the 'utmost peril.'

In the Platonic account, it then continues: '…the power of your city proved illustrious to all mankind for virtue and might, for she stood before all others in bravery and in all the arts relating to war, at one point leading the Greeks, at another standing alone, of necessity, when the others defected; and having taken the most extreme risks and having mastered the invaders, she set up trophies; and she prevented from being enslaved those who were not yet enslaved, while as for the rest of us who dwell within the boundaries of Heracles, she liberated us all ungrudgingly. But at a later time, when monstrous earthquakes and floods came about, and one grievous day and night assaulted them, then the entire assembly of warriors among you sank beneath the earth, and the island of Atlantis likewise sank beneath the sea and disappeared'. Through the repelling of the pressing enemy, the ancient Athenians were indeed able to liberate their own land, but not the territories of all the Mediterranean peoples.

This entire passage is thus to be understood in the sense that, after the failed attempt of the Atlantean Priest-King to subjugate Greece, factions arose on Atlantis itself, which entered into contact with the ancient Athenians and other peoples and incited them to make a landing on Atlantis. The Athenians alone would not have been capable of such a landing; it could only happen if they had allies among the population of the island itself.

Now, shortly before the Great Flood, there was no longer any Aryan population on Atlantis; rather, it had either emigrated or, for the most part, succumbed to the plague and the unrest that had raged on the island over the past thousand years. The population—which, according to American tradition, numbered 64 million at the time of the catastrophe, had thus been repeatedly replenished from the settlement areas and from all corners of the earth, and consequently consisted of all sorts of non-Aryan primordial races and mixed types.

Any empire that possesses such a mixed population is, insofar as it is not governed strictly according to Aryan laws and customs, doomed to perish—since in both the non-Aryan and the mixed race, there exists an excessive urge for self-expression and enjoyment, coupled with an unrestrained lust for power.

In the late Atlantean period, the Priest-King embodied within himself the highest secular and spiritual power that existed on the island and in the settlements dependent upon it. As long as this power encountered no adversary capable of offering successful resistance, its aura—of which it possessed an incomparably great measure—remained secure. But when the war-force sent against Greece had to return home without having accomplished its purpose, there awakened among the Atlantean factions, who never found peace, but rather continually feuded and fought one another, an almost unanimous desire to eliminate the priestly power and seize its treasures for themselves.

To that end, they entered into contact with the ancient Athenians and other peoples of the European mainland, and incited them to land on the island. There, on the island, the Athenians, together with the other allies from the Mediterranean who had joined the victors, erected victory monuments, and, with the help of the insurgents, shattered the priestly power and thereby liberated the settlement regions groaning under the yoke of Atlantis. The victors were likely compelled by the subsequent factional struggles to remain longer on the island, and before they could return home, they too were dragged into the depths by the flood that swept in.

The same tradition—that great battles took place during the downfall of the island—has also been preserved in the Edda. As is often the case, events that are far apart in time appear merged into one in the traditions, or else they follow one another so directly that they seem like a single narrative—especially when the figures involved were given the same names or bore the same titles by the bards, in honor of the leading clans. The catastrophe known in Norse mythology under the name Ragnarök (Fate of the Gods), concerning the downfall of the ruling gods and the world, refers to the collapse of the last remnants of Aryan rule on Atlantis, which, according to Peruvian tradition, took place around 3500 years after the Great Fire. In this way, the battles that occurred shortly before the Great Flood on Atlantis have been merged into one with these later events.

According to the Bible, the soul of the uprising against the Priest-King was the prince of hell, the Fenris-wolf. In the Revelation of John (20) it says:

καὶ ὅταν τελεσθῇ τὰ χίλια ἔτη, λυθήσεται ὁ σατανᾶς ἐκ τῆς φυλακῆς αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἐξελεύσεται πλανῆσαι τὰ ἔθνη τὰ ἐν ταῖς τέσσαρσιν γωνίαις τῆς γῆς, τὸν γὼγ καὶ μαγώγ, συναγαγεῖν αὐτοὺς εἰς τὸν πόλεμον, ὧν ὁ ἀριθμὸς αὐτῶν ὡς ἡ ἄμμος τῆς θαλάσσης. καὶ ἀνέβησαν ἐπὶ τὸ πλάτος τῆς γῆς καὶ ἐκύκλευσαν τὴν παρεμβολὴν τῶν ἁγίων καὶ τὴν πόλιν τὴν ἠγαπημένην. καὶ κατέβη πῦρ ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ καὶ κατέφαγεν αὐτούς

And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog, and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.

According to the Peruvian tradition, the great battle against the Aryans on Atlantis took place around 3500 years after the Great Fire, in which the Aryans were finally defeated. From that point on until the Great Flood, which occurred around 4500 years after the Great Fire, the rule of the Atlantean Priest-Kings or Priest-gods endured. At the end of this thousand-year kingdom of the gods, the prince of hell appeared and did the same as Loki had done a thousand years earlier: he gathered auxiliary forces from all ends of the world and with them encircled the camp of the saints and the beloved city—that is, the Idafeld.

This occurred shortly before the destruction of the island through the outpouring of lava masses and its sinking into the sea. According to the tradition of the Egyptian priesthood, the allies of the prince of hell must have been primarily the ancient Athenians and the Mediterranean peoples allied with them, to whom, as the Bible states, reinforcements from all four corners of the earth were added. The prince of the sea must likewise have allied himself with the prince of hell, for otherwise it would not have been possible for him to bring together the multitude of auxiliary peoples from all four directions.

In the great battle between the gods and Loki along with his followers, according to the Edda, the sky goes up in flames, and the Jörmungandr douses the earth with water. Yet the names Fenris-wolf as well as Jörmungandr hold another meaning too, namely that of the volcanoes and the sea.

This remarkable tradition of the Edda, according to which the masses of fire from the volcanoes and the surging floods of the world sea destroy the remaining fighters, is to be explained only in that, besides the Old Athenians and other peoples, Aryans from the Nordic Odin-realm were also called upon for help by the Atlantean factions striving for power. The auxiliary army from the Odin-realm, just like the army of the Old Athenians, was taken by surprise by the breaking catastrophe, and in the course of a dire day and a dire night, the entire warlike race sank in droves beneath the earth, and likewise the island Atlantis disappeared into the sea.

From this coincidental occurrence, that at the downfall of Atlantis also a great number of Odin-people perished, it explains itself that the skalds united the two battles, which lay roughly a thousand years apart, and treated them as a single event.

As the final catastrophe began to draw near, refugees would have left the island, and indeed, the flight would have continued until the very last moment. Even if none of the vessels that departed last could have escaped destruction, yet surely one or another of the vessels that departed earlier will have been saved. It is also not out of the question that some of the refugees from the sunken vessels clung to pieces of wood and were then picked up by ships that were on their way to Atlantis. From these, as well as from a few survivors who had fled to the peaks of such mountains that were not active, or who were saved by some other accident, the events of Atlantis’s final days will then have become known to the world.

Indeed, many flood legends of the New World agree with those of the Old World in such a manner that a common point of origin must be assumed, which was likely the Iberian Peninsula, which not only lay closest to Atlantis but also most resembled the motherland in terms of culture. Vessels which, at the time of the island’s downfall, happened to be en route to Atlantis both from America and from Europe, will have made for the nearest region—that is, the Iberian Peninsula—and will have brought the news heard there back to their home countries. It is also not out of the question that even after the downfall of Atlantis, for a time, vessels from America chose the Iberian Peninsula in order to obtain goods that had until then come from Atlantis.

A report from America has been preserved concerning the downfall of the island, in which the catastrophe is described as follows:

“In the 6th year of Kan, on the 11th Muluk in the month of Bac, terrible earthquakes occurred, which continued without interruption until the 13th Chuen. The region of the Mud Hills, the land of Mu, was the victim: it was lifted up twice, and suddenly, overnight, it had vanished; the sea was continuously agitated by volcanic forces. As a result, the land sank and rose repeatedly at various places within a certain boundary. At last, the surface gave way, and ten countries were torn apart from one another and scattered. Unable to withstand the tremendous convulsions, they sank along with their 64’000’000 inhabitants.”

The sudden disappearance of an island, judging by the depth chart of the Atlantic Ocean, of approximately the size of the Iberian Peninsula or even larger, was indeed an utterly extraordinary event. Among German scholarly circles, the hypothesis has been expressed that the continents of Europe and America are shifting their positions relative to one another through the rising and sinking of the sea floor. Meanwhile, efforts have already begun to examine this question; yet several decades will pass before any indication can be obtained as to whether the theory of the continents drifting apart proves to be true or not, assuming that a change can be detected at all within such a comparatively short time span.

Should the assumption that a drifting apart is occurring between Europe and America prove correct, then the mystery of the sudden disappearance of such a large island would indeed be solved. With the drifting apart of the continents, the ground between the two landmasses—that is, in the Atlantic Ocean—would have had to be pulled apart. This will have occurred at various places over countless millennia. If this happened to occur at a location where an island lay, then that island would have had to disappear beneath the ocean surface. In the case of Atlantis, there was the added circumstance that the subterranean inner core of the island consisted of a liquid, glowing mass. When the moment arrived, during the continents’ drifting apart, when the seabed could no longer withstand the tension or stretching, the rupture of the ground took place, and the island resting above it sank. In this process, the sea floor gave way and thereby deprived the solid upper part of the island of its support. This sinking portion of the island then pressed upon the liquid lava mass, which was forced upward through crater openings. At the same time, seawater also flowed through newly formed fissures from below and from the sides into the volcanic chamber and exerted additional pressure on the liquid mass, which had to find an outlet upward. The downfall of the island was thus not caused by ordinary volcanic eruptions or flooding, but the reason lay precisely in the sinking of the sea floor, during which process immense masses of fire and lava were also hurled forth, and the island sank into the sea.

Even to this day, the volcanic hearth located beneath the Azores has not ceased its activity. Since their acquisition by the Portuguese, the islands have been struck 21 times by earthquakes and eruptions. A subsidence of the earth’s surface occurred in the region of the Atlantic Ocean as recently as roughly a century and a half ago. This event is described by Donnelly in his book Atlantis as follows:

But it is at that point of the European coast nearest to the site of Atlantis at Lisbon that the most tremendous earthquake of modern times has occurred. On the 1st of November, 1775, a sound of thunder was heard underground, and immediately afterward a violent shock threw down the greater part of the city. 'In six minutes 60,000 persons perished'. A great concourse of people had collected for safety upon a new quay, built entirely of marble; but suddenly it sunk down with all the people on it, and not one of the dead bodies ever floated to the surface. A great number of small boats and vessels anchored near it, and, full of people, were swallowed up as in a whirlpool. No fragments of these wrecks ever rose again to the surface; the water where the quay went down is now 600 feet deep.

-Ignatius L. Donnelly, Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (1882)

The cause must have been the same. Here too, a rupture of the seabed must have occurred. What happened here on a small scale must, in earlier times, have occurred on a large scale.

That a volcanic eruption, in and of itself, can already result in the sinking of land is proven by the eruption of the volcano Krakatoa, located on an island in the Sunda Strait between Sumatra and Java, in the year 1883, during which nearly three-quarters of the island sank into the sea. If, therefore, a volcanic eruption alone could already have such an effect, it is all the less surprising that, in the downfall of Atlantis, a sinking of land occurred on an even far greater scale, since the main cause here apparently lay in the subsidence or rupture of the sea floor; the volcanic eruptions and tremors that occurred simultaneously are thus to be regarded merely as accompanying phenomena.

Chapter X

From the various traditions, one is not only able to form a good picture of the events and conditions on the island of Atlantis, but one can also discern from them in which season and even on which days the most important events took place. These memorial days are the following:

3 February: Day of death of the foster father.
22 March: Toward evening the comet hail began.
24 March: Toward evening or during the night the foster father’s sister died.
25 March (or during the preceding night): Birthday of the forefather (foster son), who became the progenitor of the new Aryan race. Even into our present reckoning of time, the 25th of March was celebrated as the beginning of the year in many regions.
1 May: Day of death of the forefather (foster son).
11 May: Wedding day of the primeval ancestral couple.
19 May: Thor’s birthday.
24 June: Memorial day of the reconquest of the Idafeld and the Ida-fortress by Thor.
15 August: Day of death of the primeval mother (foster daughter). Mid-August: Coronation of Thor as king of Atlantis 8 September: Birthday of the primeval mother (foster daughter). 6 December: Birthday of the foster father. Mid-December: Day of death of Thor. 25 December: Freyr’s birthday.

As can be seen from this account, the old, so-called heathen festivals, as well as the midsummer festival, have nothing at all to do with the course of the sun, but were ancestor festivals, memorial days from the Aryan ancestral homeland Atlantis.
Even the midsummer festival, also called the summer solstice festival, is by no means connected with the course of the sun, but is the memorial day of the reconquest of the Idafeld and the "heavenly" or Ida-fortress.

As the primordial history of Peru recounts, the Atlantean king Sintschi Kozke, along with the other inhabitants, withdrew from the Idafeld before the approaching non-Aryan and mixed-blood mountain dwellers. This land then had to be reconquered later by Inti Kapak Yupanki = Thor. This reconquest—during which Thor’s loyal companion-in-arms or subordinate commander, who was the first to break through, was honoured as the hero of the day—is the event to which the festival of the burning of the fortress refers. The capture of the Idafeld, or rather of the heavenly mountain, could only have been made possible by the use of fire.

This burning of the fortress apparently concerns the temple or palace situated on the heavenly mountain, to which the mountain dwellers had retreated once the rest of the Idafeld had already fallen into Thor’s hands. There they defended themselves so stubbornly that the attacking Aryans had no other choice than to bring wood and straw in order to set fire to the building situated on the mountain. The defenders then perished in the flames.

The summer solstice fires, therefore, symbolise the reconquest of the Ida-fortress, for which the use of fire had become necessary. The Easter fires, on the other hand, are meant to keep alive the memory of the Great Fire caused by the hail of comets.

Just as little does the Christmas festival have anything to do with the winter solstice, but it was originally the birthday celebration of Freyr. Later, Thor’s day of death, which falls around mid-December, was also shifted onto the Christmas festival, so that it is, in truth, a festival in memory of both a birth and a death.

Chapter XI

After an emigration had already begun before the Great Fire, it was later resumed, once the tribe had recovered from the murderous event of the comet hail and had again grown into a numerous people.

Reports of earlier emigrations from the island of Atlantis to lands lying beyond the sea were no doubt conveyed both by the foster-father and the foster-daughter (first mother), who had both lived through the pre-Fire time and were knowledgeable about the former age, to the foster-son (first father) and his sons. This tradition thus continued to live on within the new tribe, and on occasion, attempts were again made to establish contact with lands lying across the sea. Emigration, too, will then have been taken up again, once the necessity for it arose, and it will have extended both to the old and the new world. In this, the cool highlands lying in the warm zone and the warmer parts of the temperate zone will once more have been preferred.

In all these regions, the emigrated Aryans did not remain pure, but over time mingled with the original races present in those areas, some of whom had joined the incoming Aryans. From the immigrants and the native following, numerous state formations developed—on the highlands of Central and South America, in the Mediterranean region, in the fertile plain of Mesopotamia and beyond—which were later in part transformed into priestly states, after the model of Atlantis.

In the time of the Priest-Kings, envoys were then sent out to all parts of the world, even as far as Australia and the South Seas, placing the natives there in the service of the Atlantean Priest-King or Priest-God. It also appears that during this period, when the island had, for longer stretches, been free of unrest and plagues, emigrations took place from the mixed-blood and non-Aryan population of the island, for instance to North America and to the region of the Black Sea. Wherever totem practices can be found, they are to be traced back to late-Atlantean influences or immigrations. By contrast, regions marked by a distinct cult of ancestors were settled and claimed by Aryans, whether directly from Atlantis or later from the North.

To the north of Europe, an emigration of Aryans from Atlantis took place already at a comparatively early time after the Great Fire, not only to Germania and Scandinavia, but also—given the geographical situation of the lands—to Britain and Gaul. British legends indeed speak of three tribes of the same race (presumably Aryans who immigrated to three different regions or at three different times), who were called the peaceful, for they obtained neither land nor goods by battle or strife, but through justice and peace. These Aryans must, insofar as they were not worn down in later conflicts, have over time merged into the aboriginal population or into the later-Atlantean population that had settled there, for by Caesar’s time, no pure Aryans were any longer present in those regions. The traditions of the Druids in Gaul likewise relate that one part of the people was to be regarded as native, while others had come from the farthest islands in the ocean, by which only Atlantis can be meant.

But it is not only the traditions of the Druids that point to an overseas immigration into Europe—the traditions of the Germanic tribes themselves also state that their ancestors arrived by sea. Thus it is said in Tacitus’s account of the Germans: ‘For it was not by land, but on many ships that, in ancient times, the wanderers came who sought a new dwelling place.’ This tradition must have been widespread at the time and was conveyed to Tacitus by the Germanics with certainty, for otherwise he would not have presented it as an established fact, but—as he does elsewhere—would have added: ‘Others claim’ or ‘so some believe.’ An immigration from Sweden into Germania cannot be meant here, for such a short passage across the Baltic would not play a major role in the tradition of a people possessing seaworthy vessels; especially since, if the immigrants had wished to avoid the short crossing of the Baltic, there was still another route available—through Denmark. The broadest body of water that had to be crossed there, the Great Belt, is at its narrowest point scarcely wider than the Elbe at Cuxhaven.

But among the individual tribes of the Germanics as well, there were still traditions according to which they had come by sea. Thus it is reported of the Saxons that they ‘came to these regions by ship and first landed at the place which to this day is called Hadolaun.’ And further: ‘The people of the Saxons, according to ancient tradition, originated from the Angles, the inhabitants of Britannia, and, sailing across the ocean in search of new settlements to meet their needs, landed on the shores of Germania, in a region called Haduloha.’

Both traditions state that the Saxons came by ship to the mouth of the Elbe and landed in a region that is today called Land Hadeln. In the second tradition, it is even said that they descend from an island people and, crossing the ocean, landed in Germania. The island from which they are said to have originated is named as Britannia. Taken literally, this report does not hold true, for in earlier times no Aryans dwelled on Britannia—or those who had settled there had, insofar as they were not worn down by the unrest prevailing on the island, been absorbed into the rest of the population. The original tradition will therefore have stated that the Saxons descend from an island lying in the same direction as Britannia—or rather, lying beyond Britannia. And that fits: to reach Germania from Atlantis, one would have to pass Britannia—whether through the Channel or around Scotland.

Concerning the origin of the Swabians, tradition reports:

‘In the northern land, by the sea, there lies—so it is said—a region called Swabia.’ It then tells how a famine arose there, whereupon it was decided to ‘lead a part of the offspring across the sea.’ The account continues:

After having procured what was needed to outfit the keels, all (the sons and daughters) boarded them; but a fierce storm wind arose and drove them off course to a harbor of the Danes at a place called Sleswic. After they were cast ashore there by the force of the storm, they broke all the vessels into small pieces, so that none of them might return home. And after they had passed through this land of the Danes with armed hand, they reached the river Alba; they crossed it and spread out across the lands along its banks.

So also among the Swabians, there existed a tradition that they had come on ships from a land called Swabia to Germania. At the same time, the reason for their emigration is given here: famine. The soil of their homeland island could no longer sustain the growing population. A portion of the population lived in celibacy anyway, for the monastic and convent life of the Christian era is merely a continuation of Atlantean institutions. Despite the celibacy of that segment of the population dedicated to the service of the community, the population increase was still such that emigration had to be undertaken. The world, after all, offered ample space. Apart from regions that were either entirely or nearly empty, such as those in northern Europe, other regions, in which aboriginal populations lived, still offered limitless room. Among all the original races—except the Aryans, who remained vegetarians even into the post-conflagration period—cannibalism, one must assume, was the norm. If not that alone, then certainly the absence of any culture must have prevented the emergence of strong populations. Only contact with the Aryans, and the introduction of organised state systems, agriculture, and other cultural assets which the Aryans brought to the aboriginal peoples, enabled them to grow into strong tribes.

Another tradition of a seaborne immigration is reported by Jordanes in his De origine actibusque Getarum; he writes:

Habet et in ultimo plagae occidentalis aliam insulam nomine Thyle, de qua Mantuanus inter alia: 'tibi serviat ultima Thyle'. Habet quoque is ipse inmensus pelagus in parte artoa, id est septentrionali, amplam insulam nomine Scandzam, unde nobis sermo, si dominus iubaverit, est adsumpturus, quia gens, cuius originem flagitas, ab huius insulae gremio velut examen apium erumpens in terram Europae advinit: quomodo vero aut qualiter, in subsequentibus, si dominus donaverit, explanavimus. […] Ex hac igitur Scandza insula quasi officina gentium aut certe velut vagina nationum cum rege suo nomine Berig Gothi quondam memorantur egressi: qui ut primum e navibus exientes terras attigerunt, ilico nomen loci dederunt. Nam odieque illic, ut fertur, Gothiscandza vocatur.

And at the farthest bound of its western expanse it has another island named Thule, of which the Mantuan bard makes mention: ‘And Farthest Thule shall serve thee.’ The same mighty sea has also in its arctic region, that is in the north, a great island named Scandza, from which my tale (by God's grace) shall take its beginning. For the race whose origin you ask to know burst forth like a swarm of bees from the midst of this island and came into the land of Europe. But how or in what wise we shall explain hereafter, if it be the Lord's will. […] Now from this island of Scandza, as from a hive of races or a womb of nations, the Goths are said to have come forth long ago under their king, Berig by name. As soon as they disembarked from their ships and set foot on the land, they straightway gave their name to the place. And even today it is said to be called Gothiscandza.

- Jordanes, De origine actibusque Getarum.

These passages from Jordanes have been cited by historians as proof of the Aryans’ descent from Sweden. However, this Gothic legend actually referred to the emigration from Atlantis. Scandza refers to Atlantis, while Gothiscandza means the island of the Goths, that is, Sweden. In later times, the Goths residing in southeastern Europe blended this ancient legend of Atlantean origin with the emigration of a part of the Goths from Gothiscandza—that is, Sweden, also simply called Scandza—to the mainland south of the Baltic Sea.

In addition to this legend of the Goths' migration from the island of Scandza across the ocean to Gothiscandza, Jordanes also mentions another tradition. He writes:

nec eorum fabulas alicubi repperimus scriptas, qui eos dicunt in Brittania vel in unaqualibet insularum in servitute redactos et in unius caballi praetio a quodam ereptos. Aut certe si quis eos aliter dixerit in nostro urbe, quam quod nos diximus, fuisse exortos, nobis aliquid obstrepebit: nos enim potius lectioni credimus quam fabulis anilibus consentimus.

Nor do we find anywhere in their written records legends which tell of their subjection to slavery in Britannia or in some other island, or of their redemption by a certain man at the cost of a single horse. Of course if anyone in our city says that the Goths had an origin different from that I have related, let him object. For myself, I prefer to believe what I have read, rather than put trust in old wives’ tales.

Here, Jordanes reports that the Goths possessed yet another tradition, according to which they had come from Britannia or another island. This tradition does not, as Jordanes believes, contradict the first account he provided, but instead fully agrees with and complements it. The island being referred to lay beyond Britannia; for all emigrants who came from Atlantis to the north had to pass by Britannia—hence also the confusion with that island. That the Aryans ultimately emigrated from Atlantis in order to escape subjugation is also consistent with this.

As for the report that the Goths were ransomed for the price of a single horse, this is based on a misunderstanding; for taken literally, such a tradition would indeed be a fable. However, this account cannot have been invented out of thin air—there is merely a distortion present here, since the reference to a horse also appears in the saga of Troy. This saga does not concern the Troy in Asia Minor, but rather describes the struggle for the Atlantean Troy—that is, the Idafeld on Atlantis—and ends with its capture, during which Priam and his entire house met their downfall. Aeneas is said to have led a part of the population on a flight across the sea, saving the household gods of his family and his closest kin from the burning city.

In the capture of Troy, it is well known that a wooden horse played a fateful role. As the event is portrayed, it could not have occurred that way, for the defenders of the Idafeld would not have fallen for such a crude trick. Instead, this likely refers to a person—either a non-Aryan who bore the name Horse, or an Aryan or mixed-blood individual whose hieroglyph or emblem was a horse. This man, whether he was called Horse or bore the sign of the horse, appears, judging by the saga, to have played a decisive role, either during the fall of the Idafeld or during the emigration of the remaining Aryans.

This Troy saga also appears in the tradition of the Franks, who traced their lineage back to the Trojans; here, too, what is meant is the Atlantean Troy. In the Greek saga of Troy, the Franks recognised their ancient ancestral legend from Atlantis. Among the Vandals and Heruli as well, there is a blending of their seaborne migrations with Greek myths.

The earliest mythical king of these two tribes is said to have been Anthyr. After the death of Alexander the Great, he is said to have departed Asia Minor aboard a ship called Bucephalus (Ox-Headed), which bore an ox head on its flag and a gryphon at its prow. Driven into the Atlantic Ocean and from there into the North and Baltic Seas, he landed in Mecklenburg and founded several cities there. He then married a Gothic princess named Symbulla and fathered a son with her, Anana, who became his successor, whereupon Anthyr himself disappears from the mythic tales of the region.

All the traditions of the Germanic tribes thus point to a seaborne immigration, and in most cases from a region situated in the direction of Britannia—or rather, beyond that land. This land of origin of the Aryans was the island of Atlantis. The mythologies of various peoples revolve around the events that took place on that island.

It is not out of the question that northern Europe, at a time when Atlantis still rose from the ocean waves, had a somewhat milder climate, because the Gulf Stream must then have been pushed more forcefully northward by the island of Atlantis, thereby bringing more warmth to northern Europe. Today, by contrast, the Gulf Stream begins to veer southward already near the Azores.

A primary attraction for settlement in northern Europe must have been the abundant presence of flint. Even though bronze production arose in Atlantis during the second half of the post-conflagration period, it was likely known primarily in the volcanic region and on the Idafeld, while the actual Aryans, who dwelled in the nine districts, practised it little. Unless they acquired bronze tools and weapons through trade, they continued, just as before, to use wood, reed, stone, and similar materials for making their implements and utensils.

If a suitable type of rock was found in an overseas region—as was the case in northern Europe, for example, in northern France, along the southern coast of England, on the Danish isles, and in the North German lowlands—with flint available there in great quantity and of excellent quality, such areas, despite certain shortcomings, would have been highly valued for settlement. This was especially true because, when the first Aryans settled in the North, bronze production had not yet been invented, and metalworking in Atlantis was still limited to gold and silver for jewellery and similar objects.

The later immigrants, by contrast, likely brought with them some tools and weapons made of bronze. Yet even then, obtaining further bronze goods from the old homeland, Atlantis, would have been very expensive and complicated, so that—at least for everyday use—people continued relying on the customary making and use of stone tools. The working of iron, in fact, was not even invented in Atlantis until the time of the priestly rule, by which point Germania had long been settled by Aryans.

It is to be assumed that both the knowledge of bronze production and the working of iron was transmitted by the priesthood to various of their colonies, in which the raw materials were present or easily obtainable, so that, when Atlantis sank, this knowledge lived on. Over time, new centres arose from which the neighbouring lands were supplied with metal tools and weapons, and metalworking continued to spread. In this, it must be taken into account that bronze, compared to iron, as the older, better-known, and more beautiful of the metals, long enjoyed preference.

Another factor that will have contributed to the stronger settlement of Germania was the presence of the great navigable rivers, which extend far into the interior from the coast. However, for the first Aryans who resettled from Atlantis to Germania, the interior of the land did not yet come into consideration, for these first settlers established themselves in the Rhine estuary region and along the Frisian coast.

The later emigrants will then have settled the lower and middle river regions of the Rhine, the Weser, and the Elbe, some of the Danish islands, and certain areas of southern Norway. Still later emigrants settled, apart from Scandinavia, along the lower and middle courses of the Oder and the Vistula, as well as in certain places along the Baltic coast. The last-arriving emigrants then settled the as-yet unoccupied parts of the southwestern Baltic region, as well as of Sweden and the Baltic lands.

In some places, larger state formations also arose, such as the Odin-realm on the Danish islands, which likely also encompassed the adjacent coastal strip of southern Sweden; furthermore, the Baltic Scythian realm, which later extended from the Vistula to the Gulf of Finland.

Whereas in other parts of the world the immigrated Aryans over time mingled with the existing primaeval races and formed new peoples, the Aryan population in Germania and Scandinavia remained pure for a long time thereafter, because these regions were either entirely uninhabited or, at least, so sparsely populated as to be practically empty.

Chapter XII

The population growth of Germania at first settled the tracts of land adjacent to the old settlements, then the upper courses and tributaries of the Rhine, the Elbe, the Oder, the Vistula, the Niemen, the Daugava, and so forth. After the settlement of these areas, the surplus of people had to move into more distant regions and began to open up the lands bordering Germania. Over the course of millennia, this growth from the old and new territories pressed westward, southward, and eastward, reaching as far as Africa and Asia and even beyond the latter still further.

The surplus population of Scandinavia likely joined in part with Aryan emigrants from Germania, but in another part sought new areas for settlement by sea, in the coastal regions of Western Europe and the Mediterranean.

In the regions of the Mediterranean, in the Near East, and elsewhere, these bands of emigrants from the North encountered old, great Atlantean colonial territories, such as in Egypt and Mesopotamia, where, in accordance with the late Atlantean priestly era, state authority lay in the hands of priesthoods. Into these old cultural lands, whose populations lived on in rigid forms, the Aryan immigrants from the North brought new blood and new life, and the old priestly governments were replaced by popular governments of the new arrivals.

But even here, the immigrants did not remain pure, but over time intermingled with the old population. In the same measure as the mixing progressed, the influence of the popular representation brought by the Aryan immigrants, through which the powers of the leader were limited, also diminished; in the end, its influence disappeared entirely, and absolute rulership arose.

The connections of the emigrants with the North can still today be well traced by means of tribal, regional, mountain, river, and place names.

Thus, for example, quite apart from the Roman gods’ names, the names of the patrician and plebeian families of the Roman Republic are also of northern origin. Not only can their names still be found today in mountain, river, and place names, especially of western and central Germany, but also the routes which the emigrants took can in part still be traced by such geographical names in the regions between Germany and Italy—Austria, Switzerland, and southeastern France—where they first settled and some of them remained.

Accordingly, the influx that immigrated into Greece, settling there among the old population, also came from the North, though, as becomes clear when compared to Italy, from more eastern regions, namely from the Baltic areas. This is clearly shown by the Greek gods’, heroes’, and tribal names, which can still be traced, especially in the regions of East Prussia and the Memelland, in the names of rivers and places there.) For example, the Greek tribal name 'Hellene' has been preserved in the East Prussian river name 'Alle', which was formerly called 'Alna' or 'Alne'; even earlier, its name is said to have been 'Alana' or 'Alane'. Over time, the second 'a disappeared, and it became 'Alna' and 'Alne', until it was shortened further in modern times to 'Alle'. The Poles call the river 'Lyna', in which case the vowel before the 'l' has been lost. The leading clan of the Hellenes were the 'Zeus' (also called 'Zas' and 'Zes'), whose name has likewise been preserved in the East Prussian river 'Schieß'.

When Greece, in later times, became so heavily populated that no room remained for further Nordic immigrants, we find north of the Black Sea a large Scythian empire, which had developed there and likewise consisted of tribes of Baltic origin. The Scythians must have been settled in that region for a long time already, for they are mentioned even in the reports of the oldest Greek writers; so also by Homer in the Iliad, under the name Hippomolgi (mare-milkers). At the head of the Scythians stood the tribe of the Royal Scythians, whose original name was 'Tschotsch' or 'Tschötsch', a name that is entirely identical with 'Zeus'; the Z and S here had simply become a 'Tsch', just as in the river name 'Schieß' in the Memelland, the ancestral seat of the Zeus or Tschotsch, the sounds had turned into 'Sch' and 'ß'. Just as among the Greeks there was the tribe of the Hellenes, among the Scythians there was the tribe of the Alans, whose ancestral seats likewise lay on the same 'Alle' in East Prussia as those of the Hellenes. Even the name 'Scythian' (Skuz, Skythes) is nothing other than a corrupted form of the name 'Tschotsch'. Since a name like this was difficult or impossible for some people to pronounce, the first 'Tsch' was changed to a 'Sk' in Asia Minor and Greece, and the second 'tsch' to a 'z' or 'thes'. Even today, the region on the Dnieper where the main seat of the Tschotsch in southern Russia was located still bears the name 'Ssitsch'. Here, once again, the first 'Tsch' has transformed into an 'Ss'. A few centuries ago, this region was called 'Setsch'; from this, one can see how even the vowels have undergone change.

Around 128 B.C., the Scythians were called upon by the Parthian king Phraates to assist against Antiochus of Syria. Following this, a portion of these Scythians under the leadership of the Tschotsch or Tschötsch took permanent possession of the southern part of Drangiana within the Parthian Empire; this is also indicated by its present-day name Sedschistan, or in its shortened form, Seistan.

Shortly thereafter, a part of these Scythians moved toward the Indus and founded a new kingdom there, which, when the Parthians also settled in that region in the 1st century A.D., likely merged with them. Just as the name Sedschistan in Persia denotes the area in which the Tschotsch settled, so too has the clan name been preserved in a regional name in the Indus area. In the Punjab, the part of the land lying between the rivers Jehlam and Chenab bears the name Tech Doab (pronounced: Dschetsch Doab). Doab means, in northern India, the land between two converging rivers; thus, Dschetsch remains the regional name. The Dschetsch Doab was therefore the part of the Indus region in which the Tschotsch settled.

The rest of the Tschotsch who had remained behind in southern Russia were, after the invasion of the Huns, swept westward by them and, like the majority of the tribes formerly settled in southern Russia, whirled together and scattered. A portion of them moved with the Sorbs into the Sorbian March, located between the Saale, Elbe, and the Ore Mountains, as is evident from local place names found there, such as Zaasch, Zetzsch, Zeutsch, Zschaitz, Zschauiz, Zschetzsch, and the desolate district Zäsch, also called Zescher Mark, which, only a few centuries ago in the records, was still written as Tzschetzsch and Zschetzsch.

This example clearly shows how the names of clans and tribes can be traced through the millennia by way of river, regional, and place names.

Just as parts of the Tschotsch moved to India, so it was also the case with other populations of the Baltic lands, the Vistula region, and the rest of Germania. From all these regions, over the course of many millennia, groups from all sorts of clans made their way to India. And just as parts of these clans still live on today in the families of Germany and neighboring countries such as Poland, Lithuania, England, etc., so too do members of these same clans still live on today in the families and tribes of India; this can be clearly demonstrated from the family names here in the North and the clan and tribal names in India. While the members of these clans here in the North preserved a more or less significant portion of their Aryan blood, in India they absorbed a considerable portion of non-Aryan blood.

As ever, new waves of immigrants from northern Europe arrived in India, space became too limited, and from there a new migration began—by land and by sea—further to the East, as well as an overseas migration westward, the latter going to East Africa. This can be clearly demonstrated by the tribal, regional, mountain, river, and place names of East Africa, both in the English and the former German parts; these names are not only still found in India but are also present today in northern Europe (i.e., former Germania). Some of the names in East Africa, however, are likely of direct Atlantean origin, for the land was opened up not only during the time of the Atlantean kings, but also later, during the priestly rule, remained in constant connection with Atlantis by way of Egypt.

Under the Atlantean priestly rule, the gold mines of Ophir in southern East Africa were already being exploited, and the gold destined for the Atlantean Priest-King (a heave offering) had to be transported to the East African coastal location of Amu, which is mistakenly written as 'Lamu' by Europeans, but which is still called 'Amu' by the native inhabitants. From there, it was picked up by ships of the Egyptian priesthood and first brought to Egypt, from where it was then delivered onward to Atlantis. Later, the Egyptian kings assumed these rights and had the gold brought from Amu for themselves.

Chapter XIII

From the North, the growth of the Aryan people, who dwelt from beyond the mouth of the Rhine as far as the Gulf of Finland, could, throughout the whole millennia until shortly before our calendar began, migrate unhindered toward the East and Southeast. India and China, as well as other parts of East Asia, took in countless masses. While the Aryan immigrants from the North in India did indeed absorb non-Aryan blood, they otherwise retained their language more or less; in China, however, they mixed to an even greater degree and even gave up their old language there. It also seems as though China, as well as all of East Asia, was far more afflicted by unrest than India, so that East Asia in every respect became a grave of peoples for the Aryans.

In time, however, the population in East Asia had grown so strong that it could no longer take in any immigration, and from there began a counter-movement. The Chinese population pressed beyond its old borders westward and pressed upon the peoples dwelling there, who now likewise began to push westward in turn. Thus arose a general westward movement, by which an emigration toward the East, already before the Hunnic onslaught, became an impossibility.

On the other hand, in Southern Europe arose the great Roman Empire, which also took possession of Gaul and thereby made an emigration of the surplus population from the Germanic regions to the South and West an impossibility. The population growth between the Rhine and the Gulf of Finland, which earlier had a free outlet, now found no further possibility of migrating into distant lands. In part, the emigrants gathered in Southern Russia, where they helped to form the great Gothic Kingdom; partly, however, they moved back and forth in great masses along the Roman borders, once the soil of the old homeland no longer offered sufficient space for all, in order, since peaceful settlement was no longer possible for them, to win with sword in hand the necessary land for their sustenance. These masses, who had banded together into tribal confederations under the names of Ostrogoths and Visigoths, Vandals, Suebi, Alans, Burgundians, Franks, Lombards, and others, consisted, apart from bondsmen whom they acquired on the way or who joined them, solely of the surplus population from the North; a migration of the old population of Germania, including the Vistula region and the Baltic lands, did not occur; thus the name Migration Period is also misleading.

The emigrated surplus population was, however, not entirely severed from the old homeland, but remained in lively connection with it and still possessed certain unsettled claims to the soil of the old motherland. Thus the Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea reports of an embassy which compatriots of the Vandals from the old homeland had sent to their tribal brothers who, under King Geiseric, had emigrated to Africa, with the request that they renounce their claims to the native plots; this request was refused, because the emigrants did not wish to lose the old homeland in case of misfortune.

Of the Vandals, a portion emigrated around the middle of the second century after Christ from their homeland in Silesia to Dacia. There, in the year 334, they suffered such a severe defeat at the hands of the Goths on the Maros that the remainder had to request dwelling places from Constantine the Great, who then granted them such in Roman Pannonia. At the beginning of the fifth century, a part of these Vandals again set out from there, crossed the Rhine with Suebi and Alans in 406 into Gaul, and from there moved further into Spain, where in 422 they conquered Andalusia, which since then bears their name. In the year 429, the Vandals were called upon for assistance by the Roman governor of North Africa, which later came into their own possession.

Those who were to renounce their claim to the native plots were either the Vandals who had emigrated from Pannonia, or it may concern a new influx from the old Silesian homeland, who, when the Vandals in 406 resolved upon the march across the Rhine, were summoned from the former homeland; perhaps even later, new groups of emigrants from the Silesian homeland followed their tribal brethren into Gaul and Spain again and again.

From Procopius' report and the entire situation, it becomes clear that the old tribe in the motherland and the emigrants, both in Dacia and Pannonia, as well as later in Spain and North Africa, remained in contact with one another, and furthermore, that the emigrants still retained the right to the native land for a long time, with the possibility of returning. This right may have been claimed by many who, tired of wandering and roaming, or who had suffered misfortune. And as it was with the Vandals, so it must have been with the other Germanic tribes as well; there, too, the emigrants remained in contact with their homeland for a long time and received new influxes from the old tribe, and in the event of misfortune and defeat, part of the emigrants may have returned to the old homeland. Given the scarcity of information from that time, it is not surprising that history is almost completely silent about such return migrations; one case is mentioned, in which 20’000 Saxons, who had moved to Italy with the Lombards, later returned to their old settlements in the Harz.

When the Huns invaded Europe from Asia across the Volga, the Aryan, half-Aryan, and non-Aryan tribes living north of the Caucasus and in Southern Russia were swept westward. Of these, some took possession of the regions that had been depopulated by the Huns through their raids, which stretched as far as the Baltic Sea. Such people, who then inserted themselves among the Germans, were the Sorbs, Kashubs, Czechs, and Moravians. Other peoples displaced from Southern Russia, such as the Heruli, Rugians, and Ostrogoths, turned against the Roman Empire after Attila’s death and brought an end to the Western Roman Empire.

Although the Hun empire had collapsed after Attila’s death and the Huns had been pushed back to Southern Russia, the pressure from the East did not cease. Instead of the Huns, other peoples began to make their presence felt, who in turn began to press upon their neighbours, forcing them to flee.

According to Polish traditions, the Lechites left their homeland around 550 before the advance of the Avars, in search of another place to settle. After wide-ranging migrations, they found such a place among the Polans who lived between the Oder and Vistula. The Polans gladly and willingly gave up the unused lands to the Lechites, in exchange for the Lechites taking on the obligation of military service for the potential defence of the now jointly inhabited land. Over the following centuries, the Sarmatian Lechites sought to gain an ever greater influence on the administration and a social superiority that gradually pushed the Germanic Polans further back. The previously balanced differences, however, turned into open conflict when Prince Mieczyslaw I (962-998), after his marriage to the Bohemian princess Dombrowka, adopted Christianity and recommended its adoption to his people. The Lechites followed his example and, upon the prince's command and support, took on the sole military responsibility for converting the still pagan Polans. The Polans were not only forcibly converted but were also compelled to cultivate the lands of the Lechites. Under Mieczyslaw II (1025-1034), the Lechites had to fight many battles against external enemies. The Polans seized this opportunity to revolt. A bloody civil war ensued, in which the Lechites were defeated, and they had to surrender the greater part of their lands to the Polans and step down from the higher offices. When King Kazimierz came to power in 1041, he sought to restore the previous order. However, when he met with strong resistance from the Polans, he attempted to force them with the help of the Lechites. In the ensuing battles, the Lechites emerged victorious. The Polans had to give up the lands once again, were removed from the higher offices, and were legally declared unfit to hold such positions, losing their previous equality. From then on, the Lechites not only saw them as far inferior, but also as a subservient people; in fact, they no longer considered the oppressed even worthy of their own name Polane or Pole, after which the kingdom was named. They were henceforth called Kmieci (peasants). Under Boleslaw II (1058-1082), the Polans again tried to free themselves from oppression but were defeated by Boleslaw in 1077, and their fate was now sealed forever. As punishment, they were declared a subordinate people within the state, lost their equality, were barred from public offices and positions of honour, and were no longer allowed to bear arms. In contrast, the foreign Sarmatian Lechites, who had risen to the ruling class, formed the nobility, the so-called Szlachta.

Sarmatian intolerance and insatiability, in alliance with the Christian priesthood, had managed to strip the former Germanic owners of the land, who had once welcomed the Lechite refugees with aid, of their land, freedom, and even their name.

Thus, a large area in the east of Germania had passed into foreign hands, and the formerly Germanic inhabitants of the land were either destroyed or had fallen into complete dependence on the non-Aryan Sarmatians. Parts of the land between the Rhine and the Elbe in the west of Germania were subjected to the Franks. These now sought to subjugate the Saxons living to the north of them, which they succeeded in doing only after a thirty-three-year war. Much Germanic blood was shed in this conflict; further blood was spilt by the Saxon butcher Charlemagne, who had 4’500 noble Saxons executed. Moreover, over 10’000 Saxon families were resettled beyond the borders among the Franks, and in exchange, it can be assumed that settlers of non-Germanic descent came into the land from Gaul.

After Christianity had been introduced between the Rhine and the Elbe through bloody struggles, it was carried by the sword into the lands east of the Saale and Elbe as well. The battles that took place in the Sorbian March lasted nearly a century and a half, while the fighting east of the Elbe — in the Havel region, in Mecklenburg, and in Holstein — dragged on for three and a half centuries, until a general crusade, supported by Danish, Moravian, and Polish aid, subdued the remaining Lutici and Obotrites.

The designation of the East Germans — that is, the inhabitants east of the Elbe and Saale — as Slavs or Wends is misleading. Indeed, among the ranks of the East Elbians, some of the dependents and some of mixed ancestry may have taken part in the conflicts, but they were certainly not in the majority. In fact, the area between the Elbe and the Vistula was one of the main centres of Germanic culture on the European mainland south of the Baltic Sea. When the West Germans eventually prevailed, they owed this to the support of the Roman Church and to the alliances and superior resources provided by Western culture. On the side of the East Elbians, by contrast, no real unification of the tribes between the Elbe and the Vistula had taken place.

After the West Germans, through their numerical superiority, their allies, and the abundant means at their disposal, had finally subdued and converted the last of the old inhabitants in the border regions east of the Elbe, the more distant tribes of the Oder region and in Pomerania also adopted Christianity. This now presents the peculiar fact that, although the West Germans were only able to gain a foothold in the lands east of the Saale and Elbe after centuries — and even then, only after the old inhabitants had been largely exterminated — not long afterward, the Slavic language in the territories reaching to the Polish border mostly disappeared, and almost everywhere German came to be spoken.

From this rapid Germanisation, it was concluded that remnants of Germanics must still have been present among the Slavs. The opposite was the case. Among the Germanics, Slavs had here and there settled in larger or smaller groups, or had been settled as dependents, who later gradually succumbed to Germanisation. Had the area east of the Elbe–Saale line been inhabited predominantly by Slavs, it would scarcely have been possible for the inhabitants on both sides of the Oder, from the sea up to Upper Silesia, to have largely given up their language and adopted German within a short time. Given the fierce resistance that the eastern dwellers of the Elbe and Saale had shown for centuries against the advance of Christianity and especially against subjugation by the West German princes and counts, it is hardly likely that their companions living even farther east would, without further resistance, have also abandoned their Slavic mother tongue — if they had truly possessed one. The fact is, the inhabitants of East Elbia were primarily Germanics, hence the extraordinarily rapid "Germanisation."

While in the territories between the Elbe and Oder, over centuries of struggle between Christianity and heathenism, the Germanics were almost completely annihilated, the regions between the Elbe and the Rhine suffered incursions by the Hungarians and Avars, who brought terrible devastation and bloodshed especially in the Saxon and Frankish provinces, and decimated the Germanic population there.

Waves of such Mongol-mixed peoples have surged against Central Europe from time to time since the incursion of the Huns. A few centuries after the collapse of Hun rule, it was the Avars who, advancing along the northern shores of the Black Sea, devastated the Balkan lands and pushed as far as Germany and Italy. About a hundred years later began the incursions of the Hungarians began, which brought death and destruction to Germany. After the Hungarians were decisively defeated in 955 on the Lechfeld near Augsburg, not quite three hundred years later came the invasion of the Mongols. These had set out from East Asia under Genghis Khan, and after defeating the Russians and Poles under his grandson Batu, they threatened the West. On the battlefield at Liegnitz in Silesia in 1241, they suffered such losses that they withdrew to Hungary. The next wave did not, exceptionally, come over the vast plains of southern Russia, but rather over Asia Minor and the Balkans; these were the Turks, whose advance only came to an end in 1683 before the walls of Vienna. Even the events that have taken place on Germany's eastern border since the beginning of the World War were once again caused by such a wave, which had been building up there for a long time and had now finally moved forward — and even with the conclusion of the World War, it had not yet come to an end.

While the advance of this West Asian or East European–West Asian mixture of peoples — however one chooses to describe it — has, by its nature, mostly been directed against Central Europe and sought to flood it, there is also another region threatened by these masses of peoples, and that is India. It has already been subjugated by the North several times in historical times. Such a renewed conquest of India, as well as the general developments in the regions of Eastern Europe and Western Asia, are by no means of indifference to the rest of Europe, because there is a danger that the increase in human material, which the powers then find in India and elsewhere, may at some point be set in motion against Europe.

A large part of the old Aryan population of Germania was thus annihilated through centuries-long struggles and through the incursions of Asiatic hordes. On the other hand, the whole time, there was a non-Aryan influx into the Germanic regions from all directions. Thus, in the wake of the Franks as well as the Christian priesthood, a mass of non-Germanic newcomers from Gaul will have settled in West Germania. Again, from the east and southeast, Slavic immigrants will have arrived who settled as dependents among the Germans of East Elbia. Furthermore, both before and after, the slave trade flourished, so that in both West and East Germania, a multitude of foreign-blooded male and female servants would have entered the land as slaves or bondsmen. In Germany, Roman campaigns, the Thirty Years' War, which brought Spaniards and all sorts of other peoples into Germany, the Huguenot immigration, the plundering raids of the French, the Seven Years' War, and the Napoleonic Wars brought non-Germanic blood into the country and consumed Germanic blood in return. It is therefore no wonder that today’s German people, in their racial composition, differ greatly from that of 2,000 years ago.

Also in the other Germanic countries outside of Germany, the Aryans have not remained pure; foreign blood has entered everywhere. Even in distant Iceland, through the Viking expeditions, slaves and slave women were brought into the land and intermingled with the Germanic population of the island.

This influx of non-Aryan blood into the so-called Germanic countries has by no means ceased, but continues still, and threatens to rob the Aryan race of its best qualities through ever-advancing mixture.

Chapter XIV

If one now looks back over the millennia and sees how the Aryans have influenced the world and the other races, and how the Aryan blood, which still lives on in so many peoples of the world today, again and again creates new things and above all beneficially influences the life of the state, then no one will be able to close themselves off from the conviction that the Aryan stock has rendered the most important services to the world.

Furthermore, history also teaches that when the Aryan blood present in a people is squandered, or when the Aryan upper class of a people or land no longer has influence or is even destroyed, and the rest of the people—as is all too often the case—disregard the old laws, then the states in question move toward their downfall.

Without Aryan principles, no state can endure. Even rulers by force, be they who they may and of whatever lineage, must again return more or less to Aryan principles if their rule or that of their descendants or successors is to be lasting.

Just as the various human races are different in themselves, so too is the Aryan race in comparison with the others. And more than this, the Aryan stock possesses certain abilities and qualities that are not inherent in the other human races, but have nevertheless already brought so endlessly many blessings and advantages.

It, therefore, cannot be in the interest of humanity to allow such a stock to die out. Yet this danger lies ahead if it is not halted in time. For through the continuing mixture, the pure-blooded stock diminishes more and more, which now can only be found here and there in remote regions and in small numbers.

Since it is not possible to transplant old and young alike from their long-familiar native conditions without further ado, and since only a certain portion together with the younger generation is suited for this, two territories are necessary for a new Aryan state foundation: one as a gathering place and the second as new land, as a future homeland, for the newly to-be-established state. In the gathering area, however, only those may be admitted who are Aryan, and not those who merely consider themselves to be Aryan; who is Aryan and who shall be admitted must be decided by the leadership. From the gathering area, the younger adults who prove to be pure-blooded Aryans, as well as the completely pure Aryan offspring (light blond, blue-eyed, and marked with the other Aryan racial characteristics), will then be transferred to the new land, the actual settlement area.

In the ongoing traffic that must take place between the gathering area and the new land, the gathering area must possess its own harbour or harbours suitable for sea-going vessels. The region of the Baltic coast would be best suited for this; only, the gathering area must be kept sufficiently large to be able to receive Aryan growth from the Germanic and neighbouring countries for generations to come. Since this area already once formed part of the original settlement territory of the Aryans in Europe, it would be nothing but right and proper if the uncultivated land in this region were again made available to the Aryan stock. Given the mass of population already existing in this region, a purely Aryan state could not be established here. Moreover, it would always again be exposed to the perpetual pressure of the Asian masses of peoples.

It is therefore necessary to assign to the Aryan stock a territory situated in a more peaceful region of the world as a homeland. Such a territory, one that is sparsely populated, healthy, and fertile, and of sufficient size, is still to be found in East Africa. This is, first and foremost, the so-called Masai Land, which possesses healthy, elevated areas. In the north, it touches the foothills of the Abyssinian highlands; to the south, it extends over Uhehe into the highlands of Lake Nyasa, and to the west, it continues into the highlands of Rwanda and Lake Tanganyika. Its centre lies in the former German East Africa, where it, with its elevated regions, reaches nearly to the coast. The borders of the Aryan sphere of interest in East Africa thus establish themselves—on the one side through the sea, and on the other side inland through the low-lying regions of the Nile and Congo river systems, and in the south through the low-lying valley of the Zambezi. Apart from Abyssinia in the north—whose continued existence as a native state can only be in the interest of the Aryan stock—the area in question includes, beyond the former German East Africa (the current mandate territory), various other territories under European sovereignty, which, should a transfer of ownership ever occur, would have to fall to the Aryan state.

For a resettlement to the Aryan new land in East Africa—the homeland—only young people of both sexes would come into question, who can adapt to the new climate and to the new Aryan institutions. Admission to immigration must likewise lie entirely in the hands of the leadership, so that only members of the completely pure Aryan stock may come to settle there. In the elevated regions of East Africa, there are enough areas where Aryan immigrants from northern Europe can engage in physical labour. Other parts of the highlands, with more moderate elevations, will only be able to be settled by the grandchildren of these settlers, for one must take into account that the stock has now lived for more than 12’000 years in the cold north of Europe and thus undergone an adaptation. But if one considers that the Aryans originally came from a warm country, then over time, an acclimatisation to the warm climate will also occur for the descendants of the Nordic Aryans who emigrated to the highlands of East Africa.

Even if this adaptation will not go so far that the Aryans can live and work in the hot lowlands with woman and child, still in time the elevated parts and the mid-altitude regions will form a contiguous Aryan territory, while the lowlands will remain with the native Negro. Moreover, these low-lying hot regions are much more suited to the Negro than the highlands; he has only retreated into the highlands out of fear of marauding neighboring tribes or because of the better pastures for his cattle.

An unavoidable necessity is that the entire area, including the Negro population, passes solely into the hands of the Aryan stock, so that no mixed population arises and the Negroes, through capitalist exploitation and mistreatment, are not brought into opposition with the Aryans living beside them. Such an opposition must be kept away from the Aryan area in time through appropriate measures, so that the Aryans are not drawn into the conflict that will develop between whites and blacks, and which will take on particularly bloody and hate-filled forms. With the current method of colonisation, the emergence of such conditions, which merely represent a slightly different form of general cultural development, is unavoidable. Another unavoidable necessity is that in those parts of the East African territory to be settled by the Aryan stock, the Aryans keep themselves separate, live according to their own customs and traditions, and perform all the work themselves. In the first years, the latter will be somewhat difficult, but it must be assisted by appropriate measures. However, once there are more offspring, performing all the work will no longer pose any difficulties.

The establishment of an Aryan state in East Africa, if neutralised, would have the advantage for the neighbouring countries that it would provide them with good rear and side coverage, thereby securing important connections running from north to south and from east to west over long distances. Similarly, for India, a neutralized Aryan state on the east coast of Africa, after it later, in the event of a change of ownership of the European colonies located there, might come under the whole of East Africa from the Bab el Mandeb Strait to the mouth of the Zambezi, would be a valuable flank protection.

As the Aryans, by their entire nature, are an agricultural and loving people, they will also turn to this in their new homeland, as it suits them best. Consequently, the new Aryan state would be a constant customer for the industrial nations, and in turn, these nations would be able to supply it with desirable agricultural and forestry products.

In the interest of the continuation and preservation of their stock, the Aryans have both the duty and the right to claim a territory for themselves, in which they can live and develop according to their nature. On the other hand, they must also avoid imposing their views and institutions on other peoples, or obstructing other peoples and their leading circles who follow their own paths and pursue their special interests. The Aryan stock, once it possesses its own territory, must carefully refrain from such actions and limit itself solely to its own affairs.

Here, an opportunity is presented to those peoples, circles, and individuals who advocate for reconciliation between peoples and the right to self-determination, to engage in a beneficial way, by working toward the granting of a territory to the Aryan stock, in which it can live among itself in its own way, according to its own preferences, and in which it can remain pure-blooded, continue to exist, and multiply.

For the reformation of the Aryan stock, only purely Aryan families or the offspring of those families who have remained completely pure are eligible as members. But also all those who are of Aryan descent and origin, or who have Aryan blood in their veins, can, regardless of the countries or continents in which they find themselves, provided their hearts beat for the Aryan cause, assist the stock through support and the provision of resources necessary for the nurturing and strengthening of the Aryan stock, as well as for the later establishment of an Aryan state. In doing so, they too would have a share in the resurgence of the people to whom they owe the best part of their being.

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終わり

1. Francisco López de Gómara ( 1511–1564) was an ecclesiastic and Spanish historian. He entered the service of Hernán Cortés as chaplain and secretary, accompanying him on the failed expedition to Algiers in 1541. His admiration for the conqueror of Mexico (Cortés) quickly became evident, and he remained close to Cortés until his death in 1547. In 1552, he published Historia general de las Indias, written using information supplied by Cortés and other explorers, since he himself had never been to the Americas.

2. Also known as Chalchiuhtlicue, the deity of water, rivers, seas, streams, storms, and baptism.

3. A wild woman approached Wolfdietrich, walking on all fours like a bear. She immediately asks him to marry her, but he refuses. Enraged, she casts a spell on Wolfdietrich, then steals his sword and horse. In a second encounter, Wolfdietrich finds Else sleeping beneath a tree, and asks her for his sword and horse back. Again, he refuses to marry her, and again he is hit by a spell, causing him to go mad and wander alone for half a year through the forest. Later, an angel comes to Else and demands that she release Wolfdietrich from his madness, or else she dies. Else lifts the spell from him and asks him a third time to marry her, claiming that she is so ugly because her stepmother had cursed her. She then takes him to her realm, Old Troy (‘alten Troye’)

4. There, she jumps into a fountain of youth (‘junkbrunnen’) and suddenly turns into a beautiful woman named Sigeminne, the fairest in all the land (‘die schönste über alle lant’). Her old ugly skin (die ruhe hut) is stripped off in the water. Upon seeing this, Wolfdietrich himself jumps into the fountain and becomes a handsome young man again.

5. Odin / Óðinn

6. To sail off / away

7. The Apaturia was held in October and came to be associated with the god Dionysus. The Cureotis took place on the third day of the festival, at which time the youths or kouroi were initiated into their clan. The word Apaturia derives from phratria or brotherhood.

8. “Amasis was a great lover of the Greeks” (Herodotus, Inquiries 2.172 ff.).

9. Straits of Gibraltar

10. A trophy (tropaion) consisted of pieces of armor that were taken from the enemy and hung on trees or displayed on upright posts.

11. The trireme (τριήρης) was the devastating warship of the ancient Mediterranean with three banks of oars. They were fast, easy manoeuvrable, and equipped with a bronze-sheathed ram on the prow to sink enemy ships.

12. Traditional alcoholic beverage produced from the fermentation of the fresh sap known as aguamiel (mead) extracted from several species of Agave (maguey) plants that grow in the Central Mexico plateau. The fermented product is a milky white, viscous, and slightly acidic liquid beverage with an alcohol content between 4 and 7° GL and a history of consumption that dates back to pre-Hispanic times.

13. The Vanir are one of the two principal tribes of deities featured in Norse mythology. (The other tribe is the Aesir.) Among their ranks are Freyja, Freyr, Njörðr, and arguably the early Germanic goddess Nerthus as well.