L: Ladon to Lyonesse 165
Law of One
According to Edgar Cayce, this monotheistic cult arose in Atlantis as a reaction
to the Followers of Belial, who made a religion of materialism. Tenets of the Law
of One included social service for the less fortunate, acts of charity, abstinence,
and humility. Although more of a social service creed than a theology with any
original spiritual ideas, Cayce regarded it as a forerunner of Christianity. In any
case, both the Law of One and its opposite number in the Followers of Belial
were symptoms of the overall decline of Atlantean civilization during its final
phase, when the former quest for enlightenment degenerated into a narrow-
minded religious struggle for ascendancy. The Followers of Belial finally triumphed
politically, only to have the technology they idolized blow up in their faces. Both
sides were intolerant of opposing views, and together they contributed, despite
their intense mutual animosity, to the social chaos of Atlantis in its latter days.
(See Cayce)le Cour, Paul
French professional Atlantologist who, in 1926, stated that Atlantis was not a
“continent,” but a large island not far outside the Strait of Gibraltar.Lemmings
Every three or four years, hundreds of thousands of lemmings (Lemmus
lemmus) head away from the Norwegian coasts, swimming far out into the Atlantic
Ocean, where they thrash about in a panicky search for dry land, then drown. The
small rodents do not begin to move in packs, but usually head out individually,
their numbers growing into a large mass. After rejecting overpopulation versus
food resources as the cause, animal behaviorists do not understand why the
self-destructive migrations take place. But it is the singular manner in which the
process occurs that points to something special in their migratory pattern.
Lemmings have a natural aversion to water and hesitate to enter it. When
confronted by rivers or lakes, they will swim across them only if seriously threat-
ened, and otherwise move along the shore or bank. Their mass-migrations into
the ocean dramatically contradict everything known about the creatures. Natural
scientists recognize that lemmings seek land crossings whenever possible, and tend
to follow paths made by other animals and even humans. Their suicidal instinct
may be a persistent behavioral pattern set over thousands of years ago, when some
land-bridge, long since sunk, connected the Norwegian coast to a former island in
the Atlantic. The other three lemming genera (Dicrostonyx, Myopus, and
Synaptomys), whose habitats have no conjectured geographical relationship to
such an island, do not participate in migratory mass-suicides.
Nostophilia is a term used to describe the apparent instinct in certain animals
which migrate to locations often very great distances from their usual habitat.
Perhaps some behavioral memory of a large, lost island that for countless generations