122 The Atlantis Encyclopedia
important as a fifth, central point of the Hesperides. She was entrusted with the
perpetual flame, that initial spark that created the universe and is located at its
very center. Hestia presided over the sacred fire at the hearths of private homes,
as well as in public temples. Hers was the torch with began the Olympic Games.
The Hesperides were venerated in Rome as the most holy concept, with particular
emphasis on Hestia as Vesta. Her temple enshrined a perpetual flame attended
by virgins known as Vestals.
Edgar Cayce said that sacred flames were tended in the Atlantis Temple of
Fire, always by women, like the Hesperides. He mentions Ameei, Asmes, Assha,
Ilax, and Jouel (like the five Hesperides, who they possibly impersonated) in
separate readings as priestesses “to the fire worship.”The Gate-Keepers
In the Nile Valley, the Gate Keepers were deified guardians of the pillars of
Sekhet-Aaru, the “Field of Reeds.” Like much in Egyptian myth, Sekhet-Aaru was
regarded simultaneously as a real place and a religious metaphor. Elements of both
the historical and the spiritual combined and interacted. Sekhet-Aaru’s description
in the Egyptian Book of the Dead as an island for the souls of the departed located in
the far western ocean and featuring concentric walls clearly identifies it as a poetic
rendering of Atlantis, itself characterized by Plato as a “sacred isle.”
The “pillars” of the Gate Keepers are the Pillars of Hercules, an ancient ref-
erence to the Straits of Gibraltar, dividing Europe and Africa from the Atlantic
realm, including the pillar-cult that was practiced in Atlantis at the Temple of
Poseidon, according to Plato in Kritias. The names of some of these mythical
Gate-Keepers echo the Atlantean experience: Mistress of the World, Mistress of
Destruction, Lady of the Flames, Covering Deluge, and so on.Gateway to Remembrance
A 1948 theosophical novel about Atlantis by Phyllis Cradock. Even the Atlantis
debunker, L. Sprague De Camp, admitted that he found Gateway to Remembrance
“a skillfully wrought and absorbing narrative.”Gaueteaki
A Melanesian creation-goddess revered at Bellona Island and throughout the
Solomon Islands, where secret rituals inform her followers how they may over-
come death and attain eternal life. Gaueteaki is worshiped in the unusual form of
a smooth, black stone. This is the Omphalos, or “Navel Stone,” centerpiece of the
chief mystery-religion in Atlantis, carried by surviving initiates around the globe
following the destruction of their homeland. She is also known as Gauteaki.
(See Navel of the World)