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“for services to culture,” he published more than 40 books. Many of them, such as
hisDictionary of Mythology, are still in print and sought after for their incomparable
source materials.
Spence’s interpretation of the Mayas’ Popol Vuh won international acclaim,
but he is best remembered for The Problem of Atlantis (1924), Atlantis in America
(1925),The History of Atlantis (1926), Will Europe Follow Atlantis? (1942), and
The Occult Sciences in Atlantis (1943). During the early 1930s, he edited a prestigious
journal,The Atlantis Quarterly.The Problem of Lemuria (1932) is still probably the
best book on the subject. Lewis Spence died on March 3, 1955, and was succeeded
as the leading Atlantologist by the British scholar, Edgerton Sykes.
(See Sykes)Statius Sebosus
A Greek geographer and contemporary of Plato mentioned by the Roman
scientist Pliny the Elder, for his detailed description of Atlantis. All works of Statius
Sebosus were lost with the fall of classical civilization.Steiner, Rudolf
Born in Kraljevic, Austria, on February 27, 1861, he was a scientist, artist, and
editor, who founded a gnostic movement based on comprehension of the spiritual
world through pure thought and the highest faculties of mental knowledge.
Steiner’s views on Atlantis and Lemuria are important if only because the edu-
cational Waldorf movement that he founded still operates about 100 schools
attended by tens of thousands of students in Europe and the United States.
In his 1904 book, Cosmic Memory: Prehistory of Earth and Man, he maintained
that before Atlantis gradually sank in 7227 B.C., its earliest inhabitants formed one
of mankind’s “root races,” a people who did not require speech, but communi-
cated telepathically in images, not words, as part of their immediate experience
with God. According to Steiner, the story of Atlantis was dramatically revealed in
Germanic myth, wherein fiery Muspelheim corresponded to the southern, volcanic
area of the Atlantic land, while frosty Nifelheim was located in the north. Steiner
wrote that the Atlanteans first developed the concept of good versus evil, and
laid the groundwork for all ethical and legal systems. Their leaders were spiritual
initiates able to manipulate the forces of nature through “control of the life-force”
and development of “etheric technology.” Seven “epochs” comprise the Post
Atlantis Period, of which ours, the Euro-American Epoch, will end in 3573 A.D.
Cosmic Memory went on to describe the earlier and contemporary Pacific civili-
zation of Lemuria, with stress on the highly evolved clairvoyant powers of its people.
But Steiner defined Atlantis as the turning-point in an ongoing struggle between
the human search for community and our experience of individuality. The former,
with its growing emphasis on materialism, dragged down the spiritual needs of the