172 The Atlantis Encyclopedia
Carried throughout the makahiki was a ritual image of Lono consisting of a
tall upright wooden pole, at the top of which was a crosspiece from which were
hung sheets of white bark cloth and lei of fern and feathers. The carved figure
of a bird surmounted “Father Lono,” or this Lonomakua. Its resemblance to
the chief symbol for Mu, as described by James Churchward, is remarkable.
Lono’s identification with this sunken kingdom is underscored by his title,
Hu-Mu-hu-Mu-nuku-nuku-apua’a, which indicates he could “swim” from Mu
between the islands like a fish, a reference to his skill as a transoceanic mariner.
His myth is the folk memory of an important culture-bearer from the lost civili-
zation of the Pacific.
(See Bon, Hiva, Lak Krathong, Mu, Pleiades, Viracocha, Quetzalcoatl)The Lost Garden
Published in 1930, G.C. Foster’s witty spoof of all “lost continent” theories
has reincarnated Atlanteans hotly debating the real or imagined existence of
Lemuria, employing all the standard arguments used to either support or dis-
credit a historical Atlantis.Luondona-Wietrili
The original homeland of the Timor people, who universally claim descent
from this sunken kingdom. According to them, the little islet of Luang is the only
dry land surviving from the much larger island. Luandona-Wietrili was destroyed
by natural catastrophes in the form of a monstrous sailfish for the divisiveness of
its leaders.Lycaea
A Greek ceremony conducted at Mount Lycaeus commemorating the de-
struction of a former human epoch by a worldwide catastrophe. Each Lycaea
reenacted the story of an antediluvian monarch, Lycaon, who tried to deceive
the king of the gods into committing cannibalism. Seeing through the trick, Zeus
punished both Lycaon and his degenerate people with a genocidal flood.
Of the three distinct deluge myths known to the Greeks, the Lycaea seems
closest to Plato’s account of Atlantis, which likewise grows degenerate and is
annihilated by Zeus with a watery cataclysm. The deeply pre-Platonic roots of this
rendition tend to thus confirm at least the fundamental veracity of both Timaeus
andKritias and the Lycaea itself. The previous Deucalion and Ogygean floods
belonged to geologic upheavals and mass migrations of Atlantis in the late fourth
and third millennia B.C.
(See Deucalion, Ogriae)