The hidden prophecy

John Michael Greer is a polymorphous author, equally at home in the murky world of environmentalist politics and the ecstatic lights of esoteric knowledge. He has even penned a work on vampires, ghosts and other monsters!

"Atlantis" is JMG's take on the ultimate sunken continent, a staple of occult lore since at least Madame Blavatsky's "The Secret Doctrine". Being at the moderate end of the alternative-knowledge spectrum, Greer actually rejects most speculations about Atlantis as too wild, not to mention too oblivious to what Plato actually said in "Timaeus" and "Critias", the two Socratic dialogues where the story of Atlantis makes it first known appearance. Other sunken continents, including Lemuria and Mu, are given even shorter shrift.

After a survey of everyone from Ignatius Donnelly and Blavatsky to Hans Hörbiger (how I hate *that* guy!) and Colin Wilson, Greer is nevertheless left with a kernel of hard facts he believes cannot be discounted. JMG eventually reaches the conclusion that Atlantis may have been a real island, situated off the coast of Florida in the Caribbean, with an empire spanning North Africa and parts of the Mediterranean. The whole thing collapsed around 9,600 BCE, when the Earth at large was rocked by catastrophic floods following an abrupt change in climate.

It's not entirely clear how seriously JMG takes these speculations, or whether he really wants us to scry our way into the akashic records, something he suggests (in an appendix) we might experiment with in our precious spare time. "Atlantis" isn't really about Atlantis. It's about...ourselves, and our once and future fate. World history is cyclical, Earth is unstable, man-made climate change is real, and our megalomaniacal Modern Civilization have it coming. It *will* go under, one way or another. This is the first and starkest message of JMG's book, and one many of its readers simply won't be able to assimilate. "Get used to it", as the author (an archdruid, BTW) says in a tense moment.

However, the book also contains a ray of hope. All over the world, evidence suggests that a civilization is possible to create even with Stone Age technology, a civilization including ocean-going ships, advanced permaculture, domesticated horses, and small towns. If this is true, then we don't have to fear the impending doom of Western civilization. The human race will go through some really hard times ahead, but somewhere our species will survive the cataclysm and start a new (and hopefully better) cycle.

That is the hidden prophecy of Atlantis.

(For a longer review of the book, see its main product page.)