William Scott-Elliot

 

In Theosophical cosmology, as formulated by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine (1888), human history unfolds through a sequence of “root races,” each associated with vast prehistoric landmasses that have since vanished. These lost continents—most famously Atlantis in the Atlantic and Lemuria (or Mu) in the Pacific—were imagined as the cradles of advanced civilizations whose destruction in immense geological catastrophes both explained their disappearance and reinforced their mythic status.

This framework was significantly elaborated by later Theosophists, particularly William Scott-Elliot, whose The Story of Atlantis (1896) and The Lost Lemuria (1904) built a detailed narrative of these vanished worlds. Scott-Elliot drew heavily on the “astral clairvoyance” of Charles Webster Leadbeater, who claimed access to esoteric knowledge transmitted by Theosophical “Masters.” Scott-Elliot attempted to supplement Leadbeater’s visionary material with what he regarded as scholarly and scientific support, producing a hybrid of imaginative prehistory and quasi-scientific speculation. His two volumes were later republished together in 1925 as The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria.

Within Scott-Elliot’s reconstruction, Atlantis is portrayed as a highly sophisticated civilization whose internal development and eventual fragmentation map onto the evolution of successive root races. Influenced by Ignatius Donnelly’s enormously popular Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (1882), Scott-Elliot embellished the myth with further geographic and historical detail. He described Atlantis as breaking into two interconnected landmasses (Daitya and Ruta) before shrinking to the final island of Poseidonis, which itself ultimately sank. 

Map of Lemuria superimposed over the modern continents
                              from The Story of Atlantis and Lost Lemuria.                               

Lemuria, meanwhile, was imagined as a gigantic Pacific continent, home to an earlier root race whose physical form and societal life diverged dramatically from those of later humanity.

The lost civilizations of Lemuria and Atlantis were thus inserted into a grand, speculative narrative of human evolution. Lemurians, depicted as enormous, egg-laying beings with avian visual capacities and minimal cranial development, were said to have interbred with animals and produced ape-like ancestors of later races. After Lemuria’s destruction, Atlantis became the arena in which new human types emerged: from the dark-skinned “Rmoahal” and “Tlavatli” peoples to the technologically advanced “Toltecs,” who allegedly developed airships. Later sub-races (such as the “First Turanians,” “Original Semites,” Akkadians, and Mongolians) were woven into this imaginative prehistory, with each group assigned a place in the declining phases of Atlantean civilization.

Scott-Elliot’s account extended beyond grand continental narratives to specific cultural claims. For example, he asserted that a group of Atlantean-derived Akkadians migrated to Britain 100,000 years ago and constructed Stonehenge. The monument’s architectural simplicity was explained not as primitive but as a deliberate reaction against what he portrayed as the excessive ornamentation and self-deifying religious practices of late Atlantean temples.

Taken together, these works exemplify the Theosophical approach to “lost civilizations”: a synthesis of Victorian esotericism, speculative anthropology, and imaginative prehistory. Atlantis and Lemuria served not only as mythic locations for vanished advanced cultures but also as structural pillars in a cosmological system that sought to explain human origins, diversity, and spiritual destiny through the rise and literal disappearance of entire continents.