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84-434: The Phantom Fighter is a collection of Occult detective short stories by author Seabury Quinn . It was released in 1966 by Mycroft & Moran in an edition of 2,022 copies. The stories are about Quinn's detective Jules de Grandin and were originally published in the magazine Weird Tales . Quinn was still alive in 1966, and he revised and modernized the stories in this collection. The Phantom Fighter contains

168-716: A "Nordic-Atlantean" or "Aryan-Nordic" master race that spread from Atlantis over the Northern Hemisphere and beyond. The Hyperboreans were contrasted with the Jewish people. Party ideologist Alfred Rosenberg (in The Myth of the Twentieth Century , 1930) and SS-leader Heinrich Himmler made it part of the official doctrine. The idea was followed up by the adherents of Esoteric Nazism such as Julius Evola (1934) and, more recently, Miguel Serrano (1978). The idea of Atlantis as

252-449: A consequence, Atlantis has become a byword for any and all supposed advanced prehistoric lost civilizations and continues to inspire contemporary fiction, from comic books to films. While present-day philologists and classicists agree on the story's fictional nature, there is still debate on what served as its inspiration. Plato is known to have freely borrowed some of his allegories and metaphors from older traditions, as he did with

336-503: A man who battles the supernatural following his own near death experience . The most successful effort of this period was the short-lived television series, Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974–75), starring Darren McGavin ; the weekly series was based on two backdoor pilots ( The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler ) produced by Dan Curtis and scripted by Richard Matheson , based on an unpublished work by Jeff Rice. Kolchak's adventures have been continued in books by Rice and in

420-527: A number of parallels between the physical organisation and fortifications of Syracuse and Plato's description of Atlantis. Gunnar Rudberg was the first who elaborated upon the idea that Plato's attempt to realize his political ideas in the city of Syracuse could have heavily inspired the Atlantis account. Some ancient writers viewed Atlantis as fictional or metaphorical myth; others believed it to be real. Aristotle believed that Plato, his teacher, had invented

504-683: A number of writers, including A. F. Kidd in collaboration with Rick Kennett in 472 Cheyne Walk: Carnacki, the Untold Stories (2000), William Meikle in Carnacki: Heaven and Hell (Colusa, CA: Ghost House Press, 2011), Brandon Barrows in The Castle-Town Tragedy (Dunhams Manor, 2016), and others. In addition, writers Joshua M Reynolds and John Linwood Grant have each produced a separate series of stories which follow on from Carnacki's death, and feature occult detectives whose work relates to

588-975: A number over the years in their own eponymous series: Bix Barton , Devlin Waugh , Ampney Crucis Investigates and Dandridge . The occult detective team of Syd Deadlocke and Doc Martin, featured in Pulse of Darkness and other comics by Chris G.C. Sequeira , also fits into this genre. There is also the comic book series Ruse , once owned by CrossGen and now by Marvel Comics . Examples in manga and anime include Majin Tantei Nōgami Neuro , Mushishi , YuYu Hakusho , Ghost Hunt , Mononoke , Death Note , Ghosts at School , Dream Hunter Rem , Bakemonogatari and Nightwalker: The Midnight Detective . Atlantis Atlantis ( Ancient Greek : Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος , romanized :  Atlantìs nêsos , lit.   'island of Atlas ')

672-580: A possible connection with Plato's island. John V. Luce notes that when Plato writes about the genealogy of Atlantis's kings, he writes in the same style as Hellanicus, suggesting a similarity between a fragment of Hellanicus's work and an account in the Critias . Rodney Castleden suggests that Plato may have borrowed his title from Hellanicus, who may have based his work on an earlier work about Atlantis. Castleden has pointed out that Plato wrote of Atlantis in 359 BC, when he returned to Athens from Sicily. He notes

756-542: A psychic investigator; The Norliss Tapes (1973) with Roy Thinnes as a reporter investigating the supernatural; Baffled! (1973), a British production with Leonard Nimoy and Susan Hampshire vs. an evil occult society; God Told Me To , a 1976 horror and detective film with police procedural and paranormal elements; Spectre (1977), starring Robert Culp and Gig Young as criminologists turned demonologists; The World of Darkness (1977) and its sequel, The World Beyond (1978), starring Granville Van Dusen as

840-506: A series of stories, some of which have been collected in book form. Dennis Wheatley 's occult detective was Neils Orsen. In Poland, Włodzimierz Bełcikowski created two stories ( W walce ze Złotym Smokiem - In Battle with Golden Dragon - 1925; Tajemnica wiecznego życia - The Secret of Eternal Life - 1926) about William Talmes (Holmes' rip off but with occult/parapsychic powers and inventor's skills) battling murderous oriental sect and psychic vampire from Atlantis . Though never large,

924-469: A story which exemplifies such a society. Critias mentions a tale he considered to be historical, that would make the perfect example, and he then follows by describing Atlantis as is recorded in the Critias . In his account, ancient Athens seems to represent the "perfect society" and Atlantis its opponent, representing the very antithesis of the "perfect" traits described in the Republic . According to Critias,

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1008-605: A technologically sophisticated, more advanced culture . Donnelly drew parallels between creation stories in the Old and New Worlds, attributing the connections to Atlantis, where he believed the Biblical Garden of Eden existed. As implied by the title of his book, he also believed that Atlantis was destroyed by the Great Flood mentioned in the Bible. Donnelly is credited as the "father of

1092-637: A theme that Bacon discussed in The New Atlantis ( c.  1623 ). A character in the narrative gives a history of Atlantis that is similar to Plato's and places Atlantis in America. People had begun believing that the Mayan and Aztec ruins could possibly be the remnants of Atlantis. Much speculation began as to the origins of the Maya , which led to a variety of narratives and publications that tried to rationalize

1176-450: A time your State stayed the course of a mighty host, which, starting from a distant point in the Atlantic ocean, was insolently advancing to attack the whole of Europe, and Asia to boot. For the ocean there was at that time navigable; for in front of the mouth which you Greeks call, as you say, 'the pillars of Heracles ,' there lay an island which was larger than Libya and Asia together; and it

1260-406: A wide range of new occult detective tales set in a range of time periods, with the occasional pastiche of classic figures from this branch of fiction. ODQ moved to Ulthar Press in 2017. On the tragic death of Sam Gafford of Ulthar Press, it was decided that editors, John Linwood Grant & Dave Brzeski, would continue the magazine under the revised title of Occult Detective Magazine from #6 onward. It

1344-651: A word it is evident that all of them borrow from Moses, and publish his statements as their own. Aside from Plato's original account, modern interpretations regarding Atlantis are an amalgamation of diverse, speculative movements that began in the sixteenth century, when scholars began to identify Atlantis with the New World . Francisco Lopez de Gomara was the first to state that Plato was referring to America, as did Francis Bacon and Alexander von Humboldt ; Janus Joannes Bircherod said in 1663 orbe novo non-novo ("the New World

1428-532: Is a fictional island mentioned in Plato 's works Timaeus and Critias as part of an allegory on the hubris of nations. In the story, Atlantis is described as a naval empire that ruled all Western parts of the known world , making it the literary counter-image of the Achaemenid Empire . After an ill-fated attempt to conquer "Ancient Athens," Atlantis falls out of favor with the deities and submerges into

1512-474: Is another well-known example, as is Derek Landy 's Skulduggery Pleasant series. Randall Garrett 's Lord Darcy stories and Dean Koontz 's The Haunted Earth are examples in which occult detectives operate in a world where the occult is simply an accepted part of mundane life. Assaph Mehr's Stories of Togas, Daggers, and Magic combine historical mystery detective in ancient Rome with fantasy and occult elements. A useful recent anthology collecting specimens of

1596-463: Is impassable and impenetrable, because there is a shoal of mud in the way; and this was caused by the subsidence of the island. The logographer Hellanicus of Lesbos wrote an earlier work entitled Atlantis , of which only a few fragments survive. Hellanicus' work appears to have been a genealogical one concerning the daughters of Atlas (Ἀτλαντὶς in Greek means "of Atlas"), but some authors have suggested

1680-841: Is not new"). Athanasius Kircher accepted Plato's account as literally true, describing Atlantis as a small continent in the Atlantic Ocean. Contemporary perceptions of Atlantis share roots with Mayanism , which can be traced to the beginning of the Modern Age , when European imaginations were fueled by their initial encounters with the indigenous peoples of the Americas. From this era sprang apocalyptic and utopian visions that would inspire many subsequent generations of theorists. Most of these interpretations are considered pseudohistory , pseudoscience , or pseudoarchaeology , as they have presented their works as academic or scientific , but lack

1764-738: Is now published by Cathaven Press in the UK. It seemed somehow fitting that refugees from Ulthar should go to Cathaven. In the 1970s, there were a number of attempts at occult detective television series and films. While not overtly occult detectives, the heroes and heroine of the ITC cult classic sci-fi thriller series, The Champions inherited occult powers from a Tibetan lama and used these powers to investigate crime. Other examples include Fear No Evil (1969) and its sequel, Ritual of Evil (1970), starring Louis Jourdan as psychologist David Sorrell; The Sixth Sense (TV series) (1972) starring Gary Collins as

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1848-639: The Atlantic Ocean . Since Plato describes Athens as resembling his ideal state in the Republic , the Atlantis story is meant to bear witness to the superiority of his concept of a state. Despite its minor importance in Plato's work, the Atlantis story has had a considerable impact on literature. The allegorical aspect of Atlantis was taken up in utopian works of several Renaissance writers, such as Francis Bacon 's New Atlantis and Thomas More 's Utopia . On

1932-855: The Dark Horse series of same name; Dylan Dog from the Sergio Bonelli Editore series; Nightlinger by Steven Philip Jones and published by Caliber Comics ; certain elements and characters in The Goon ; Martin Hel, a character created by Robin Wood ; the Joe Golem series; and Witchblade from Top Cow Productions . Two Hellblazer writers have gone on to write their own occult detective characters: Sebastian O also at Vertigo by Grant Morrison and Warren Ellis ' Gravel from Avatar Press . 2000 AD has featured

2016-566: The Greek and Mayan languages , which produced a narrative of the destruction of Atlantis. The 1882 publication of Atlantis: the Antediluvian World by Ignatius L. Donnelly stimulated much popular interest in Atlantis. He was greatly inspired by early works in Mayanism , and like them, attempted to establish that all known ancient civilizations were descended from Atlantis, which he saw as

2100-568: The Hellenic deities of old divided the land so that each deity might have their own lot; Poseidon was appropriately, and to his liking, bequeathed the island of Atlantis. The island was larger than Ancient Libya and Asia Minor combined, but it was later sunk by an earthquake and became an impassable mud shoal, inhibiting travel to any part of the ocean. Plato asserted that the Egyptians described Atlantis as an island consisting mostly of mountains in

2184-568: The Maya peoples had descended from the Toltecs , people he believed were the surviving population of the racially superior civilization of Atlantis. His work combined with the skillful, romantic illustrations of Jean Frederic Waldeck , which visually alluded to Egypt and other aspects of the Old World , created an authoritative fantasy that excited much interest in the connections between worlds. Inspired by Brasseur de Bourbourg's diffusion theories,

2268-559: The Nazis with a mythological precedent and a pretext for their ideological platform and their subsequent genocide . However, Blavatsky's writings mention that the Atlantean were in fact olive-skinned peoples with Mongoloid traits who were the ancestors of modern Native Americans , Mongolians , and Malayans . The idea that the Atlanteans were Hyperborean , Nordic supermen who originated in

2352-460: The Socratic method in order to discuss contrary positions within the context of a supposition. The Timaeus begins with an introduction, followed by an account of the creations and structure of the universe and ancient civilizations. In the introduction, Socrates muses about the perfect society, described in Plato's Republic ( c.  380 BC ), and wonders if he and his guests might recollect

2436-502: The Timaeus gives a description of the geography of Atlantis: That an island of such nature and size once existed is evident from what is said by certain authors who investigated the things around the outer sea. For according to them, there were seven islands in that sea in their time, sacred to Persephone , and also three others of enormous size, one of which was sacred to Hades, another to Ammon , and another one between them to Poseidon,

2520-454: The comic book Kolchak Tales . Matheson's Kolchak Scripts have also been published. The Saturday morning cartoon Scooby-Doo followed an occult detective format, though in the earlier series the apparent occult influences were all revealed as (fully natural) tricksters. In the wake of Scooby-Doo's success, several of the follow-ups from Hanna-Barbera involved varying degrees of occult and supernatural influence, including Goober and

2604-591: The story of Gyges . This led a number of scholars to suggest possible inspiration of Atlantis from Egyptian records of the Thera eruption , the Sea Peoples invasion, or the Trojan War . Others have rejected this chain of tradition as implausible and insist that Plato created an entirely fictional account, drawing loose inspiration from contemporary events such as the failed Athenian invasion of Sicily in 415–413 BC or

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2688-491: The " Akashic Records " (a term borrowed from Theosophy ), Cayce declared that he was able to give detailed descriptions of the lost continent. He also asserted that Atlantis would "rise" again in the 1960s (sparking much popularity of the myth in that decade) and that there is a " Hall of Records " beneath the Egyptian Sphinx which holds the historical texts of Atlantis. As continental drift became widely accepted during

2772-524: The Athenians, that it is neither a mere myth nor unadorned history, although some take it as history and others as myth", he is treating "Crantor's view as mere personal opinion, nothing more; in fact he first quotes and then dismisses it as representing one of the two unacceptable extremes". Cameron also points out that whether he refers to Plato or to Crantor, the statement does not support conclusions such as Otto Muck's "Crantor came to Sais and saw there in

2856-454: The Athenians, while that island itself was submerged by God under the sea. Both Plato and Aristotle praise this philosopher, and Proclus has written a commentary on him. He himself expresses views similar to our own with some modifications, transferring the scene of the events from the east to the west. Moreover he mentions those ten generations as well as that earth which lies beyond the Ocean. And in

2940-403: The Atlantean empire, and as the alliance disintegrated, prevailed alone against the empire, liberating the occupied lands. But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea. For which reason the sea in those parts

3024-422: The Egyptians this story about the Athenians and Atlanteans, so as to make them say that the Athenians really once lived according to that system. The next sentence is often translated "Crantor adds, that this is testified by the prophets of the Egyptians, who assert that these particulars [which are narrated by Plato] are written on pillars which are still preserved." But in the original, the sentence starts not with

3108-989: The Ghost Chasers , The Funky Phantom , and some of the 1980s entries in the Scooby-Doo franchise. To keep the plotlines suitable for Saturday morning audiences, the occult villains were kept family-friendly . More recent examples include: Angel Heart , The Believers , Blood Ties , Constantine , The Dresden Files , Dylan Dog: Dead of Night , The Exorcist III , Forever Knight , Grimm , Lord of Illusions , Lucifer , The Ninth Gate , !Oka Tokat , Penny Dreadful , R.I.P.D. , Special Unit 2 , Split Second , Supernatural , Twin Peaks , Vidocq , The X-Files , Millennium , Angel , True Detective (particularly seasons one and four), The Vampire Detective , Evil , and Wednesday . Doctor Occult , created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster ,

3192-500: The Ghost Finder . Other supernatural sleuths in fiction dating to the late nineteenth century include Alice & Claude Askew 's Aylmer Vance and Champion de Crespigny's Norton Vyse. Thomas Carnacki may well be considered one of the first true occult detectives, as he combined both knowledge and experience of what he calls “the ab-natural” with scientific deductive method and equipment. The adventures of Carnacki have been continued by

3276-693: The Haunters; or, The House and the Brain" (1859) is another student of the supernatural who probes a mystery involving a culprit with paranormal abilities. Sheridan Le Fanu 's Dr. Martin Hesselius appeared in "Green Tea" (1869) and later became a framing device for Le Fanu's short story collection In a Glass Darkly (1872). For most of its plot, The Hound of the Baskervilles , one of Sherlock Holmes 's most well-known adventures, seems to belong in this genre. However, by

3360-532: The Mediterranean, lending credence to many details in Plato's discussion. The fourth-century historian Ammianus Marcellinus , relying on a lost work by Timagenes , a historian writing in the first century BC, writes that the Druids of Gaul said that part of the inhabitants of Gaul had migrated there from distant islands. Some have understood Ammianus's testimony as a claim that at the time of Atlantis's sinking into

3444-629: The Northern Atlantic or even in the far North, was popular in the German ariosophic movement around 1900, propagated by Guido von List and others. It gave its name to the Thule Gesellschaft , an antisemite Münich lodge, which preceded the German Nazi Party (see Thule ). The scholars Karl Georg Zschaetzsch  [ de ] (1920) and Herman Wirth (1928) were the first to speak of

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3528-464: The Phantom Stranger were both published by DC Comics , with Occult falling into obscurity for decades before a 1980s revival, while the Phantom Stranger appeared steadily from his debut if mostly in a supporting role. The comic book Hellblazer began in the 1980s and boosted the popularity and image of the occult detective fiction genre and shaped it to its modern form. Many modern examples of

3612-527: The adventure of his occult detective Gregory Gordon George Green, known as "Gees", in a series of novels. Pulp writer Robert E. Howard created stories about Steve Harrison , an occult detective, in the Strange Detective Stories magazine. Margery Lawrence created the character Miles Pennoyer in her occult detective stories collected in Number Seven, Queer Street . Modern writers who have used

3696-567: The ancient culture of Atlantis. The book was published in 1940. Blavatsky was also inspired by the work of the 18th-century astronomer Jean-Sylvain Bailly , who had "Orientalized" the Atlantis myth in his mythical continent of Hyperborea , a reference to Greek myths featuring a Northern European region of the same name, home to a giant, godlike race. Dan Edelstein claims that her reshaping of this theory in The Secret Doctrine provided

3780-408: The central island itself was five stades in diameter [about 0.92 km; 0.57 mi]. In Plato's metaphorical tale, Poseidon fell in love with Cleito, the daughter of Evenor and Leucippe, who bore him five pairs of male twins. The eldest of these, Atlas , was made rightful king of the entire island and the ocean (called the Atlantic Ocean in his honor), and was given the mountain of his birth and

3864-409: The civilization of Atlantis reached its peak between 1,000,000 and 900,000 years ago, but destroyed itself through internal warfare brought about by the dangerous use of psychic and supernatural powers of the inhabitants. Rudolf Steiner , the founder of anthroposophy and Waldorf Schools , along with other well known Theosophists, such as Annie Besant , also wrote of cultural evolution in much

3948-427: The destruction of Helike in 373 BC. The only primary sources for Atlantis are Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias ; all other mentions of the island are based on them. The dialogues claim to quote Solon , who visited Egypt between 590 and 580 BC; they state that he translated Egyptian records of Atlantis. Plato introduced Atlantis in Timaeus , written in 360 BC: For it is related in our records how once upon

4032-639: The discoveries within the context of the Bible and that had undertones of racism in their connections between the Old and New World. The Europeans believed the indigenous people to be inferior and incapable of building that which was now in ruins and by sharing a common history, they insinuated that another race must have been responsible. In the middle and late nineteenth century, several renowned Mesoamerican scholars, starting with Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg , and including Edward Herbert Thompson and Augustus Le Plongeon , formally proposed that Atlantis

4116-711: The existence of Atlantis were Strabo and Posidonius . Some have theorized that, before the sixth century BC, the "Pillars of Hercules" may have applied to mountains on either side of the Gulf of Laconia , and also may have been part of the pillar cult of the Aegean. The mountains stood at either side of the southernmost gulf in Greece, the largest in the Peloponnese, and it opens onto the Mediterranean Sea. This would have placed Atlantis in

4200-505: The extent of which was a thousand stadia [200 km; 124 mi]; and the inhabitants of it—they add—preserved the remembrance from their ancestors of the immeasurably large island of Atlantis which had really existed there and which for many ages had reigned over all islands in the Atlantic sea and which itself had like-wise been sacred to Poseidon. Now these things Marcellus has written in his Aethiopica . Marcellus remains unidentified. Other ancient historians and philosophers who believed in

4284-521: The following tales: This article about a collection of mystery short stories published in the 1960s is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Occult detective Fitz James O’Brien ’s character Harry Escott is a contender for first occult detective in fiction. A specialist in supernatural phenomena, Escott investigates a ghost in "The Pot of Tulips" (1855) and an invisible entity in "What Was It? A Mystery" (1859). The narrator of Edward Bulwer-Lytton ’s novella "The Haunted and

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4368-487: The fullest and truest sense, a continent. Now in this island of Atlantis there existed a confederation of kings, of great and marvelous power, which held sway over all the island, and over many other islands also and parts of the continent. The four people appearing in those two dialogues are the politicians Critias and Hermocrates as well as the philosophers Socrates and Timaeus of Locri , although only Critias speaks of Atlantis. In his works Plato makes extensive use of

4452-589: The genre is Mark Valentine , ed., The Black Veil & Other Tales of Supernatural Sleuths ( ISBN   978-1-84022-088-9 ), published by Wordsworth Editions in 2009. Earlier themed anthologies include Stephen Jones , ed., Dark Detectives : Adventures of the Supernatural Sleuths (Fedogan & Bremer, 1998) and Peter Haining , ed., Supernatural Sleuths: Stories of Occult Investigators (William Kimber, 1986). The magazine Occult Detective Quarterly (Electric Pentacle Press, 2016) specialises in presenting

4536-541: The genre such as Hellboy , Supernatural , Grimm , The Originals , and The Dresden Files have been influenced by it, and many imitators of both the series and its character flourished such as Criminal Macabre , Gravel , Planetary , and others. Its elements and style have been used countless of times in other works and many analogues of the cynical protagonist John Constantine have appeared. Other examples of occult detectives in comic books include Doctor Spektor from Gold Key Comics ; Hellboy from

4620-700: The homeland of the Caucasian race would contradict the beliefs of older Esoteric and Theosophic groups, which taught that the Atlanteans were non-Caucasian brown-skinned peoples. Modern Esoteric groups, including the Theosophic Society, do not consider Atlantean society to have been superior or Utopian—they rather consider it a lower stage of evolution. The clairvoyant Edgar Cayce spoke frequently of Atlantis. During his "life readings", he claimed that many of his subjects were reincarnations of people who had lived there. By tapping into their collective consciousness ,

4704-600: The island of Atalantes [translator's spelling; original: " Ἀτλαντίς "] which was greater than Africa and Asia, as Plato says in the Timaeus, in one day and night was overwhelmed beneath the sea in consequence of an extraordinary earthquake and inundation and suddenly disappeared, becoming sea, not indeed navigable, but full of gulfs and eddies. The theologian Joseph Barber Lightfoot ( Apostolic Fathers , 1885, II, p. 84) noted on this passage: "Clement may possibly be referring to some known, but hardly accessible land, lying without

4788-469: The island of Atlantis on the authority of Solon is not a figment." The term " utopia " (from "no place") was coined by Sir Thomas More in his sixteenth-century work of fiction Utopia . Inspired by Plato 's Atlantis and travelers' accounts of the Americas , More described an imaginary land set in the New World . His idealistic vision established a connection between the Americas and utopian societies,

4872-487: The island to teach philosophy. The philosopher Crantor , a student of Plato's student Xenocrates , is cited often as an example of a writer who thought the story to be historical fact. His work, a commentary on Timaeus , is lost, but Proclus , a Neoplatonist of the fifth century AD, reports on it. The passage in question has been represented in the modern literature either as claiming that Crantor visited Egypt, had conversations with priests, and saw hieroglyphs confirming

4956-668: The moats, and were covered with brass , tin , and the precious metal orichalcum , respectively. According to Critias, 9,000 years before his lifetime a war took place between those outside the Pillars of Hercules at the Strait of Gibraltar and those who dwelt within them. The Atlanteans had conquered the parts of Libya within the Pillars of Hercules, as far as Egypt, and the European continent as far as Tyrrhenia , and had subjected its people to slavery. The Athenians led an alliance of resistors against

5040-442: The mountain, making a route to the rest of the island. They dug a great canal to the sea, and alongside the bridges carved tunnels into the rings of rock so that ships could pass into the city around the mountain; they carved docks from the rock walls of the moats. Every passage to the city was guarded by gates and towers, and a wall surrounded each ring of the city. The walls were constructed of red, white, and black rock, quarried from

5124-424: The name Crantor but with the ambiguous He ; whether this referred to Crantor or to Plato is the subject of considerable debate. Proponents of both Atlantis as a metaphorical myth and Atlantis as history have argued that the pronoun refers to Crantor. Alan Cameron argues that the pronoun should be interpreted as referring to Plato, and that, when Proclus writes that "we must bear in mind concerning this whole feat of

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5208-546: The nineteenth century Atlantis revival" and is the reason the myth endures today. He unintentionally promoted an alternative method of inquiry to history and science, and the idea that myths contain hidden information that opens them to "ingenious" interpretation by people who believe they have new or special insight. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky , the founder of the Theosophists , took up Donnelly 's interpretations when she wrote The Secret Doctrine (1888), which she claimed

5292-422: The northern portions and along the shore and encompassing a great plain in an oblong shape in the south "extending in one direction three thousand stadia [about 555 km; 345 mi], but across the center inland it was two thousand stadia [about 370 km; 230 mi]." Fifty stadia [9 km; 6 mi] from the coast was a mountain that was low on all sides ... broke it off all round about ...

5376-520: The occult detective subgenre grew to include such writers as Seabury Quinn (with his character Jules de Grandin ); Manly Wade Wellman , whose characters Judge Pursuivant and John Thunstone investigated occult events through short stories in the pulps , collected in The Third Cry to Legba and Other Invocations (2000) and in the novels What Dreams May Come (1983) and The School of Darkness (1985); and "Jack Mann" ( E. C. Vivian ), who chronicled

5460-1253: The occult detective theme as a basis for supernatural adventures include Peter Saxon (The Guardians series), John Burke (Dr Alex Caspian), Frank Lauria (Dr Owen Orient), Lin Carter (Anton Zarnak), William Massa (Occult Assassin, The Paranormalist, Shadow Detective, Spirit Breakers) and Joseph Payne Brennan (Lucius Leffing). The occult detective theme has also been used with series characters devised by such contemporary writers as Douglas Adams ( Dirk Gently ), F. Paul Wilson (the Repairman Jack series), Steve Rasnic Tem (Charlie Goode), Jessica Amanda Salmonson (Miss Penelope Pettiweather), David Rowlands (Father O'Connor), Rick Kennett (Ernie Pine), Brian Lumley ( Titus Crow ), Robert Weinberg (Sydney Taine), Simon R. Green (John Taylor), Steve Niles ( Cal McDonald ), Mike Carey (Felix Castor), Mike Mignola ( Joe Golem ), Mercedes Lackey ( Diana Tregarde ), Laurell K. Hamilton ( Anita Blake ), Brian Keene (Levi Stoltzfus), Jonathan L. Howard (Johannes Cabal), Brandon Barrows (Azuma Kuromori), and Jonathan Maberry (Sam Hunter). Jim Butcher 's best-selling book series The Dresden Files

5544-680: The original tales - The Adventures of the Royal Occultist and Tales of the Last Edwardian respectively. Sax Rohmer 's collection The Dream Detective features the occult detective Moris Klaw, who utilises "odic force" in his investigations. The occultist Dion Fortune made her contribution to the genre with The Secrets of Dr Taverner (1926), consisting of psychic adventures of the Holmes–like Taverner as narrated by his assistant, Dr Rhodes. Aleister Crowley 's Simon Iff featured in

5628-461: The other hand, nineteenth-century amateur scholars misinterpreted Plato's narrative as historical tradition, most famously Ignatius L. Donnelly in his Atlantis: The Antediluvian World . Plato's vague indications of the time of the events (more than 9,000 years before his time ) and the alleged location of Atlantis ("beyond the Pillars of Hercules ") gave rise to much pseudoscientific speculation. As

5712-466: The philosopher Timaeus also describes this Earth as surrounded by the Ocean, and the Ocean as surrounded by the more remote earth. For he supposes that there is to westward an island, Atlantis, lying out in the Ocean, in the direction of Gadeira (Cadiz), of an enormous magnitude, and relates that the ten kings having procured mercenaries from the nations in this island came from the earth far away, and conquered Europe and Asia, but were afterwards conquered by

5796-425: The pillars of Hercules. But more probably he contemplated some unknown land in the far west beyond the ocean, like the fabled Atlantis of Plato ..." Other early Christian writers wrote about Atlantis, although they had mixed views on whether it once existed or was an untrustworthy myth of pagan origin. Tertullian believed Atlantis was once real and wrote that in the Atlantic Ocean once existed "[the isle] that

5880-533: The pseudoarchaeologist Augustus Le Plongeon traveled to Mesoamerica and performed some of the first excavations of many famous Mayan ruins. Le Plongeon invented narratives, such as the kingdom of Mu saga, which romantically drew connections to him, his wife Alice, and Egyptian deities Osiris and Isis , as well as to Heinrich Schliemann , who had just discovered the ancient city of Troy from Homer 's epic poetry (that had been described as merely mythical). He also believed that he had found connections between

5964-426: The same vein. Other occultists followed the same lead, at least to the point of tracing the lineage of occult practices back to Atlantis. Among the most famous is Dion Fortune in her Esoteric Orders and Their Work . Drawing on the ideas of Rudolf Steiner and Hanns Hörbiger , Egon Friedell started his book Kulturgeschichte des Altertums  [ de ] , and thus his historical analysis of antiquity, with

6048-556: The sea, its inhabitants fled to western Europe; but Ammianus, in fact, says that "the Drasidae (Druids) recall that a part of the population is indigenous but others also migrated in from islands and lands beyond the Rhine " ( Res Gestae 15.9), an indication that the immigrants came to Gaul from the north (Britain, the Netherlands, or Germany), not from a theorized location in the Atlantic Ocean to

6132-627: The south-west. Instead, the Celts who dwelled along the ocean were reported to venerate twin gods, ( Dioscori ), who appeared to them coming from that ocean. During the early first century, the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo wrote about the destruction of Atlantis in his On the Eternity of the World , xxvi. 141, in a longer passage allegedly citing Aristotle's successor Theophrastus : ... And

6216-421: The standards or criteria. The Flemish cartographer and geographer Abraham Ortelius is believed to have been the first person to imagine that the continents were joined before drifting to their present positions. In the 1596 edition of his Thesaurus Geographicus he wrote: "Unless it be a fable, the island of Gadir or Gades [ Cadiz ] will be the remaining part of the island of Atlantis or America, which

6300-546: The story's end, the villain turns out to be completely human and mundane, who deliberately created this misleading impression. The next prominent figure in this tradition was Dr. Abraham Van Helsing in Bram Stoker 's Dracula (1897), followed closely by E. and H. Heron 's Flaxman Low , featured in a series of stories in Pearson's Magazine (1898–99), Algernon Blackwood 's Dr. John Silence, and William Hope Hodgson 's Carnacki

6384-463: The story, or, as claiming that he learned about them from other visitors to Egypt. Proclus wrote: As for the whole of this account of the Atlanteans, some say that it is unadorned history, such as Crantor, the first commentator on Plato. Crantor also says that Plato's contemporaries used to criticize him jokingly for not being the inventor of his Republic but copying the institutions of the Egyptians. Plato took these critics seriously enough to assign to

6468-655: The surrounding area as his fiefdom . Atlas's twin Gadeirus, or Eumelus in Greek, was given the extremity of the island toward the pillars of Hercules. The other four pairs of twins—Ampheres and Evaemon, Mneseus and Autochthon, Elasippus and Mestor, and Azaes and Diaprepes—were also given "rule over many men, and a large territory." Poseidon carved the mountain where his love dwelt into a palace and enclosed it with three circular moats of increasing width, varying from one to three stadia and separated by rings of land proportional in size. The Atlanteans then built bridges northward from

6552-420: The temple of Neith the column, completely covered with hieroglyphs, on which the history of Atlantis was recorded. Scholars translated it for him, and he testified that their account fully agreed with Plato's account of Atlantis" or J. V. Luce's suggestion that Crantor sent "a special enquiry to Egypt" and that he may simply be referring to Plato's own claims. Another passage from the commentary by Proclus on

6636-427: Was equal in size to Libya or Asia" referring to Plato's geographical description of Atlantis. The early Christian apologist writer Arnobius also believed Atlantis once existed, but blamed its destruction on pagans. Cosmas Indicopleustes in the sixth century wrote of Atlantis in his Christian Topography in an attempt to prove his theory that the world was flat and surrounded by water: ... In like manner

6720-490: Was not sunk (as Plato reports in the Timaeus ) so much as torn away from Europe and Africa by earthquakes and flood... The traces of the ruptures are shown by the projections of Europe and Africa and the indentations of America in the parts of the coasts of these three said lands that face each other to anyone who, using a map of the world, carefully considered them. So that anyone may say with Strabo in Book 2, that what Plato says of

6804-507: Was one of the earliest occult detectives in comic books with a 1935 debut. Doctor Occult was first a costumed superhero but his appearance quickly changed to a more typical detective (Fedora hat and long coat). The Phantom Stranger , created by John Broome and Carmine Infantino , first appeared in an eponymous six-issue comics anthology published in 1952, first as a debunker of fake supernatural events but later incarnations showed him with mystical or supernatural abilities. Doctor Occult and

6888-461: Was originally dictated in Atlantis. She maintained that the Atlanteans were cultural heroes (contrary to Plato , who describes them mainly as a military threat). She believed in a form of racial evolution (as opposed to primate evolution). In her process of evolution the Atlanteans were the fourth " root race ", which were succeeded by the fifth, the " Aryan race ", which she identified with the modern human race. In her book, Blavatsky reported that

6972-399: Was possible for the travelers of that time to cross from it to the other islands, and from the islands to the whole of the continent over against them which encompasses that veritable ocean. For all that we have here, lying within the mouth of which we speak, is evidently a haven having a narrow entrance; but that yonder is a real ocean, and the land surrounding it may most rightly be called, in

7056-414: Was somehow related to Mayan and Aztec culture. The French scholar Brasseur de Bourbourg traveled extensively through Mesoamerica in the mid-1800s, and was renowned for his translations of Mayan texts, most notably the sacred book Popol Vuh , as well as a comprehensive history of the region. Soon after these publications, however, Brasseur de Bourbourg lost his academic credibility, due to his claim that

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