“From a careful consideration of Plato’s description of Atlantis it is evident that the story should not be regarded as wholly historical but rather as both allegorical and historical. … Plato’s Atlantis symbolizes the threefold nature of both the universe and the human body. The ten kings of Atlantis are the tetractys , or numbers, which are born as five pairs of opposites. The numbers 1 to ten rule every creature, and the numbers, in turn, are under control of the Monad.
“With the trident scepter of Poseidon these kings held sway over the inhabitants of the seven small and three great islands comprising Atlantis. Philosophically, the ten islands symbolize the triune powers of the Superior Deity and the seven regents who bow before His eternal throne. If Atlantis be considered as the archetypal sphere, then its immersion signifies the descent of rational, organized consciousness into the illusionary, impermanent realm of irrational, mortal ignorance. Both the sinking of Atlantis and the Biblical story of the “fall of man” signify spiritual involution—a prerequisite to conscious evolution. …
“This does not mean to imply that Atlantis is purely mythological, but it overcomes the most serious obstacle to acceptance of the Atlantis theory.” ~Manly P. Hall
Plato’s Atlantis
The description Plato gave of Atlantis thousands of years ago remains a topic of much discussion and disagreement today. Every few years someone has a new theory of where Atlantis actually was and offers some limited proof to back up the theory. There are two problems with nearly all of these theories. First, they nearly all assume that Plato’s description is physically accurate, yet he may have been wrong about the location. Second, they ignore the allegory of the tale, just as so many ignore the allegorical tales in the Bible and the Upanishads. People need to start waking up to the fact that tales told by spiritual people are almost always allegorical in nature. Even if essentially true on a physical level, the allegorical interpretation is the important one. So the exact physical location of Atlantis is irrelevant. And maybe the reason it can’t be found is that they fail to see that its “sinking” was allegorical, not literal. So instead of searching for an island that sank, they should be searching for indications of a great civilization that fell apart. Continue reading “Plato’s Atlantis and Our Threefold Nature”