126 The Atlantis Encyclopedia
Fortune Isles (that is, the Canary Islands). Even in Greece, her surname was
Gorgophora. In Libya, Athena was actually referred to as “Medusa.” Given her
cult’s arrival in Greece from the west, via Libya, Athena may have been originally
an Atlantean goddess. This interpretation is underscored by the Gorgons them-
selves, who were described in their earliest myths as residents of the near-Atlantic,
but relocated in later accounts to Libya. Her Egyptian incarnation as Neith is
particularly cogent, because it was at her temple in Sais that the story of Atlantis
was enshrined, according to Plato.
The Gorgons’ legendary power to turn men and objects into stone suggests the
numerous islets in the vicinity of the Canary Islands, many of them fashioned into
fantastic simulacrum by the actions of wind and wave over time. Mela’s associa-
tion of the Canary Islands with the abode of the Gorgons may have derived from
numerous rocks he saw fashioned into bizarre forms by constant wave action. The
rocks were deadly for sailors, hence the Gorgons’ lethal reputation.
Gorgon means “grim-faced” and implies “the works and agencies of Earth,”
referring to geologic upheaval. Lewis Spence writes (in The Occult Sciences in
Atlantis):
Thus we find the Gorgon women connected with those seismic
powers which wrought the downfall of Atlantis...It was indeed
the severed head of Medusa, the “witch,” which, in the hands of
Perseus, transformed Atlas into a mountain of stone. The proof,
therefore, is complete that the myth of the Gorgon sisters is
assuredly a tale allegorical of the destruction of Atlantis and of
those evil forces, seismic and demonic, which precipitated the
catastrophe.Gorias
A sunken city from which the Nemedians arrived in Ireland after the Third
Atlantean Flood during the early 17th century B.C. The sacred object of Gorias
was a mysterious “dividing sword.”
(See Falias, Finias, Murias, Nemedians, Tir-nan-Og, Tuatha da Danann)Great Pyramid
According to Edgar Cayce, the Great Pyramid on the Giza Plateau was built as
a cooperative effort between Egyptian residents, who formed the labor force, and
Atlantean architects, in a successful effort to politically combine immigrants from
the west with native population through a shared public works project. He is at least
fundamentally seconded by researcher, Kurt Mendelssohn, who concluded that the
monument was raised as a state-forming act that called upon the participation of
the entire population in the cause of national unification. Placing its construction at
the very beginning of Dynastic civilization, Mendelssohn believed its completion
coincided with and actually brought about the creation of ancient Egypt.