214 The Atlantis Encyclopedia
Among the Ho Chunk, Olle is remembered as Wakseksi. The so-called “Man
Mound” near Baraboo, Wisconsin, the 90-foot-long effigy mound of a man wearing
a horned helmet, represents Olle-Wakseksi. He is also portrayed in petroglyphs
at Jeffers and Pipestone, both sites in southwestern Minnesota. At Jeffers, he is
depicted walking away from a circle, signifying the all-encompassing flood that
ravaged the world.Omphalos
The “navel stone,” shaped like an egg, at the sacred center of Delphi, the most
influential oracle in the ancient world. The Omphalos was the symbolic centerpiece
of the Atlanteans’ “Navel of the World” reincarnation cult. With the destruction of
their homeland, its principles were reinstated wherever the survivors landed.
Omphalli were almost identically revered in Egypt (the Ben-Ben, or “Phoenix,” of
Heliopolis); Troy (the Palladium, of Mount Ida); Rome (the Temple of Saturn’s
navel-stone); Ireland (County Galway’s Turoe Stone); the Canary Islands (Tenerife’s
zonzonas, or “sacred precinct” [“zone”]); North America (the Mandan Indians’
Nat-com-pa-sa-ha, “Center of the World,” at Heart River, North Dakota); and even
as far away as Easter Island (known to the natives as Te-Pito-te-Henua, “the Navel
of the World”) where, in fact, an egg-shaped stone was worshiped.
(See Okipa, Navel of the World)Ora Martima
A world history with longer, more thorough descriptions of Atlantis than Plato
recorded in his account. Sections detailing the sunken capital were lost with the
fall of Classical civilization, although a few references survived. Ora Martima’s
author, the first-centuryB.C. encyclopedist Avienus, composed his history based
on original documents salvaged from the Great Library of Carthage before its
incineration during the Second Punic War.Orichalcum
A term Plato cites in Kritias to describe a precious metal, second only in value
to gold, manufactured in Atlantis. A strict translation of orichalcum renders some-
thing approximating “gleaming copper,” or “superior copper.” At the height of
their cultural extravagance and material prosperity, the Atlanteans decorated
whole sections of their exterior walls with broad sheets of orichalcum as flamboyant
displays of wealth.
It is an important addition to Plato’s account, because orichalcum links Atlantis
to the Upper Great Lakes copper mines, which were operated until their abrupt
shut-down around 1200 B.C., the same historical moment when the island capital
was finally destroyed. Orichalcum, Plato wrote, “survives today only in name, but
was then mined in quantities in a number of places throughout the island.” It was