The Story of Atlantis A Geographical, Historical and Ethnological Sketch by W. Scott-Elliot [1896]
Imaginative Theosophic history of the Earth, the Theosophic concept of human evolution and everyday life in old Atlantis.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/atl/soa/index.htm
The Lost Lemuria by W. Scott-Elliot [1904]
A short essay by Scott-Elliot on the lost continent which preceeded Atlantis in Theosophic beliefs: Lemuria.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/atl/tll/index.htm
William Scott-Elliot (sometimes spelled Scott-Elliott) (d.1930) was a theosophist who elaborated Helena Blavatsky's concept of root races in several publications, most notably The Story of Atlantis (1896) and The Lost Lemuria (1904), later combined in 1925 into a single volume called The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria.
Scott-Elliot came into contact with theosophist Charles Webster Leadbeater who said he received knowledge about ancient Atlantis and Lemuria from the Theosophical Masters by "astral clairvoyance." Leadbeater transmitted his clairvoyant findings to Scott-Elliot, who undertook scholarly(?) research to back them up.
Scott-Elliot located Lemuria in the Pacific ocean, claiming that it was a gigantic landmass that eventually sank, leaving only small islands. The Lemurians were around fifteen feet tall, with brown skins and flat faces, no foreheads and prominent jaws. They could see sideways like birds, and could walk backwards and forwards with equal ease. They reproduced with eggs, but interbred with animals to produce ape-like human ancestors.
After the demise of Lemuria, new races emerged on Atlantis from the surviving ape-like creatures. This led to the Atlantean races, beginning with the black skinned "Rmoahal" and leading to the "copper coloured" Tlavatli, who were ancestor-worshippers, and then the "Toltecs", who had advanced technology including "airships". The Toltecs were succeeded by "First Turanians" and then "Original Semites". These later produced further sub-races, the Akkadians and Mongolians. A group of Akkadians migrated to Britain 100,000 years ago, where they built Stonehenge. The crudity of the design in contrast to Atlantean architecture is explained by the fact that "the rude simplicity of Stonehenge was intended as a protest against the extravagant ornament and over-decoration of the existing temples in Atlantis, where the debased worship of their own images was being carried on by the inhabitants."
Scott-Elliot also claimed that Atlantis split into two linked islands, one called Daitya, and the other Ruta. Eventually only a remnant of Ruta remained, called Poseidonis, before that too disappeared.
Scott-Elliot's ideas were later co-opted by Rudolph Steiner in Atlantis and Lemuria (1913).
Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner (1861 –1925) was an Austrian philosopher, social reformer, architect, and esotericist. He gained initial recognition as a literary critic and cultural philosopher. At the beginning of the 20th century, he founded a spiritual movement, Anthroposophy, as an esoteric philosophy growing out of European transcendentalism and with links to Theosophy.
From the late 1910s, Steiner was working with doctors to create a new approach to medicine. In 1921, pharmacists and physicians gathered under Steiner's guidance to create a pharmaceutical company called Weleda which now distributes natural medical products worldwide.
In 1924, a group of farmers concerned about the future of agriculture requested Steiner's help. Steiner responded with a lecture series on an ecological and sustainable approach to agriculture that increased soil fertility without the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Biodynamic agriculture is now practiced widely in Europe, North America, and Australasia.
A central aspect of biodynamics is that the farm as a whole is seen as an organism, and therefore should be a largely self-sustaining system, producing its own manure and animal feed. Plant or animal disease is seen a symptom of problems in the whole organism.
Biodynamic agriculture is a method of organic farming that treats farms as unified and individual organisms, emphasizing balancing the holistic development and interrelationship of the soil, plants and animals as a self-nourishing system without external inputs insofar as this is possible given the loss of nutrients due to the export of food. As in other forms of organic agriculture, artificial fertilizers and toxic pesticides and herbicides are strictly avoided. There are independent certification agencies for biodynamic products, most of which are members of the international biodynamics standards group Demeter International.
Demeter International is the largest certification organization for biodynamic agriculture, and is one of three predominant organic certifiers. Its name is a reference to Demeter, the Greek goddess of grain and fertility. Demeter Biodynamic Certification is used in over 50 countries to verify that biodynamic products meet international standards in production and processing. The Demeter certification program was established in 1928, and as such was the first ecological label for organically produced foods.
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