250 The Atlantis Encyclopedia
These mythic images shed light on the Feathered Serpent, the legendary
founding-father of Mesoamerican Civilization from across the Sunrise Sea. The
Quiche Mayas’ foremost culture hero was Votan, from Valum, the Kingdom of
Serpents. Both Coatlicue and Mama Ocllo, the leading ladies of Aztec and Inca
legend, respectively, belonged to “the race of serpents.” Amuraca, the Bochica
Indians’ first chief, means “Serpent King.” Like the Egyptian Serpent King, Amuraca
once ruled over an island in the midst of the sea.
The Serpent King tells his shipwrecked guest about “a young girl on whom
the fire from heaven fell and burnt her to ashes.” Why this curious aside should be
included in the tale, if not as an allusion to the celestial impact responsible for the
Atlantean catastrophe, is otherwise inexplicable.
(See Punt, Quetzalcoatl, Sea People)Shen Chou
In Chinese myth, a very ancient kingdom, preceding the creation of China itself.
Before Shen Chou disappeared beneath the Pacific Ocean, the goddess of mercy, Hsi
Wang Mu, carried away the Tree of Immortality to her fabulous palace in the remote
peaks of the K’un-lun Mountains. There she tends it for gods and only the most
virtuous human beings. At a periodical banquet, the P’an-t’ao Hui, or “Feast of the
Peaches,” these select individuals achieve immortality by eating the blessed fruit.
Shen Cho is an apparent Chinese reference to the lost Pacific civilization, as
underscored by the goddesses’ name, Hsi Wang Mu, and the Tree of Life, with its
sacred peaches, the same fruit mentioned in Japanese myth describing Lemuria.
(See Garden of the Hesperides, Mu, Urashima-Taro)Shikiemona
Sky-god of Venezuela’s Orinoco Indians. They believed Shikiemona unloosed
“The Great Water,” a worldwide flood, to drown the first humans, who trans-
gressed his sacred laws.Shinobazu
A large pond fringed with rushes and inhabited by varieties of water fowl,
formerly an inlet of Tokyo Bay, until its creation in imitation of the Chikubujima
Shrine on Lake Biwa, near Kyoto. At the center of the pond is a small island with a
temple dedicated to the sea-goddess, Benten, the mythical culture-bearer who brought
civilization to Japan from the sunken Motherland of Mu. Her arrival is symbolized at
Shinobazu by statues of fish and emblems of a pyramid surrounded by threateningly
high waves of the sea. With the political and cultural shift to Tokyo in the 17th century
A.D., the new capital declared its Lemurian legacy by creating its own version of
Chikubujima at Shinobazu. Its artificial island, connected by causeways to the shore, is
a symbolic representation of the lost Pacific Motherland.
(See Benten, Chikubujima, Mu)