ALT-lantis

Working Creatively With Pseudo-Historical Occult Lore

Atlantis has never been very credible.

It is certainly possible that one (or several) impressive island civilizations were cataclysmically submerged by geological or astronomical events over many thousand of years. Yet a cautious evaluation of probabilities is seldom the motivation of the romantic souls & New Age storytellers are enchanted by tales of the Lost Continent. A realistic critique of fantastical sentiments is necessary. Still, there maybe ongoing usefulness in this fragment of Western occult lore.

Tales of Atlantis — whether true or false, gross or subtle — have been an enduring part of the our magical history since before wise Plato heard them recounted in the dark temples of Egypt. We could call them part of our astral or imaginal heritage.

Xagick explores our emerging epoch’s attitudes and requirements for occultism. This involves many rethinks. For example, we are rethinking practices, ethics, and metaphysics. We are also rethinking the act of esoteric storytelling.

Our mythic “Atlantean” inheritance, appears to operate on at least three levels:

i.

It reminds us of our capacity (and duty) to feel into longer aeons of time. To viscerally connect with forms of deep human activity that exceed the narrow consensus of the modernist scholars, institutional historians & prosaic archaeologists.

ii.

It presents us with a mystery. Atlantis is an occult mystery in the sense of being occulted, hidden. It lurks behind the veil of Isis and resonates in the crevasses of our subconscious mind. Perhaps our subconscious intelligence is the Dream Ocean (what Clive Barker called Quiddity) into which that legendary civilization sank?

In this sense, we may consider Atlantis to be a hidden message or a kind of liminal food. A poignant packet bequeathed to our contemporary unknowingness from the unknowingness of our ancestors.

iii.

It offers esoteric practitioners a kind of History that serves and elevates their own particular task. Atlantis is an example of a “backstory” that makes the wise, strange, and unusually attuned people into protagonists of human history.

They flourished. They were disrupted. They have been hidden.

Perhaps they will return?

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So Xagick participates in all three of these functions on their own terms:

• We grow our ability to viscerally sense longer & richer periods of Time.

• We feel into the peculiarity, absurdity, and mystery of the idea of Atlantis, allowing its unstable resonances to fall upon our souls without the simplifying factors of “belief,” “denial,” or “resolution.”

• We experiment with telling our own alternative stories (our alt-lantis-es) about a plausibly inspiring history of esoteric practitioners.

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