So do the initiatic novels of the Arthurian Cycle. The Argonauts
too are, at the crux of their saga, lost in the "wilderness" before they
reach the Garden of the Hesperides which, as we said further above, was
precisely the one of the legendary daughters and lovers of Atlas. In fact,
the Seven Atlantides (or Hesperides) represent the insular remains of sunken Atlantis,
as we show elsewhere in detail.
This mythical "wilderness" also figures
in the Bible, where it is often confused with a desert. But is indeed a
desolated, haunted, gloomy, fearful region like a tropical forest. Hermits
everywhere seek this kind wilderness in order to exile themselves in their
quest of Paradise. In this they follow the
aranyakas ("errants in
the forest") that we find in Hindu traditions, and who seek the seclusion
of forests for their retirement from society.
The idea is that what little remained unsunken
of Paradise, became a pestilent, infernal region, and was abandoned by
all survivors, becoming a deserted jungle in the middle of nowhere. But
the Indonesian islands formed out of the mountains of Atlantis that remained
unsunken eventually recovered from the cataclysm, and were again inhabited,
this time by headhunting savages that took a lot of effort to pacify.
The Atlantic Islands
Among the Seven Atlantic Islands that
is, "islands of Atlantis" and not indeed "islands of the Atlantic" sought by the explorers and discoverers everywhere there was always one of them
called by names such as "Selvaggia", "Madeira", "Boscosa", "Isla Verde"
and other such names that mean something like "woody", "forested", "wild".
In reality, this island is no other than
Java, whose name derives from the Sanskrit
Yava meaning the same.
And Java, like Sumatra and her other counterparts, indeed deserves the
name, as it was the wooded island whence the nations fetched their wood,
in antiquity. Indeed, the Indonesian islands were the mysterious Meru whence
the Egyptians fetched the wood for their temples and their ships, just
as did King Solomon and others.6
Yet an argument that is telltale of the
true meaning of the origin of the pillars of Egyptian temples has to do
with the name of Atlantis. The Hindu name of Atlantis is Atala, (or Patala
or Tala-tala), names which are derived from
tala ("palm tree", "pillar").
Atala is the same place we know as Hades.
This Abode of the Dead is often confused with Hell, though the Hindu abode
of the dead ancestors is indeed very pleasant, like the Punt of the Egyptians,
the Dilmun of the Babylonians and the Elysium or Islands of the Blest of
the Greeks. Indeed, Atala (or Patala) is the archetype of all such "Realms
of the Dead" of the ancients.
Actually, Atala (or Atalas) is also the
name of Shiva as "the Pillar of World". And this is the very epithet of
Atlas, the eponymous hero of Atlantis. It can hardly be doubted that Shiva
Atalas was the archetype of Atlas in Greece. In India, many legends tell
of the "fall" of Shiva who is, indeed, like Atlas, the Primordial Castrate.
And this "fall" or "castration" indeed refers to the one of Mt. Atlas,
the Phallus of the World.
There is, yet, another connection between
Atlantis and palm trees that is even more compelling to Westerners than
the one of Atala. The name of Punt (Puanit in Egyptian) is, as we
saw above, precisely the same as that of Phoenicia, the primordial Phoenicia
that was both the "Land of the Phoenix" and the "Land of the Palm-Trees".
The origin and reason of this name is not
hard to discover. In the Far East, and particularly in the Andaman Islands,
the palm-tree is considered the Tree of Life, due to the many products
that are taken from it.
