Fairyland.

On August 11, 1900 Doctor Edgar Lucien Larkin(1847 - 1925) found himself accepting the position of director of the Lowe Observatory. Larkin came to the Lowe Observatory on Echo Mountain from the Knox College Observatory in Galesburg Illinois. The California "fairyland" as he called it was to be his home for the next 25 years.. He was replacing the nearly blind Dr. Swift who was eighty years old. Dr. Swift was well known for his discoveries of comets and nebulae and he brought great attention to the observatory.
Dr. Larkin's approach was a bit different but in holding with Professor Lowe's ultimate dream of a scientific institute on the mountain. Dr. Larkin pushed the idea of the observatory being an informative, educational, and entertaining attraction to the many visitors from the world below.
After the fires on Echo Mountain the observatory was one of the last attractions at the top of the incline. Saturday, Sunday, and holiday evenings were set aside by the Dr. for free astronomical lectures and a chance for patrons to look through the great telescope. On other evenings the observatory was available to schools and private parties through special arrangements of the Traffic department of Pacific Electric.
When Larkin was director of the observatory the Pacific Electric Railroad (Owned by Henry Huntington, the Pacific Electric Railway Company, was incorporated on November 10, 1901) was in full control of the activities on the mountain. In fact Dr. Larkin was employed by Pacific Electric making him the worlds only astronomer employed by a traction railroad.
Dr. Larkin was a man of many interests. He was interested in the occult and two sunken continents, Atlantis and Mu, in the Pacific. Dr. Larkin was very down on astrology as many visitors soon found out upon inquiring about the subject.
The Dr. wrote a book around 1914 titled "Within the Mind Maze" described by him as a book of creative thought. It sold for $1.25 back then.
He grew up in near Ottawa, Illinois. Larkin was born in a log cabin along Indian Creek on April 5, 1847 to a father of ordinary means and a mother of high morality and nobility of mind. His parents were poor and Larkin himself said they could well be the topic for a writer of modern socialism with a title such as Submerged 9/10’s or Unequaled Distribution of Wealth. Try as they may Edgar’s parents sent him to the fields to plow corn and learn the ways of farming, but the weeds seemed to have escaped him altogether. Then he was put in sole charge of the cows, which Edgar took to and became great friends to them.
His grandfather built a frame house with pine boards brought to Ottawa on the new canal. When Edgar was eleven his father died and he and his mother went to live in the newly painted white frame house. Teachers were scarce commodities and books were the same. A retired German physician came into the area and had a library. Edgar read all the books the German had in English but the greatest of volumes were in German and like hieroglyphics to the young man.
In 1858 a school opened in the region and the task of teaching this future writer began. It was also in this same year that the greatest of events took place, which forever changed the course of life for Edgar Larkin. On October 5, 1958 Edgar lay asleep in bed when his grandmother awoke him and urged him to come outside and see the wonderful site. It was around 10:00 PM and the wonder site that awaited him was the Comet Donati. It appeared to be springing from their black forest and extended to the zenith. His eyes and those of many others had not before seen such a display.
The next day young Larkin at the age of 11 decided to study astronomy. With a dollar that would eliminate his Christmas present from grandmother that year, he bought his first book, Burrits Geography of the Heavens and Atlas. A nearby surveyor had a 4 inch lens which when placed in a piece of wood and an eyepiece added, became his first telescope to study with. By the time he was fourteen however his eyesight became so bad that he had to leave school and never returned.
Edgar Lucien Larkin penned his last book in 1916, it was called the Matchless Alter of the Soul and in 1925 he died. He was a member of the INTA.

The Great Nebula in Andromeda (Radiant Energy[1903])

The matchless altar of the soul, symbolized as a shining cube of diamond, one cubit in dimensions, and set within the Holy of holies in all grand esoteric temples of antiquity(1916)
http://openlibrary.org/books/OL7238505M/The_matchless_altar_of_the_soul

Radiant energy and its analysis; its relation to modern astrophysics(1903)
http://openlibrary.org/books/OL7248642M/Radiant_energy_and_its_analysis
Within the mind maze; or, Mentonomy, the law of the mind. (1911)
In the mid-19th Century paleontologists coined the term "Lemuria" to describe a hypothetical continent, bridging the Indian Ocean, which would have explained the migration of lemurs from Madagascar to India. Lemuria was a continent which submerged and was no longer to be seen. By the late 19th Century occult theories had developed, mostly through the theosophists, that the people of this lost continent of Lemuria were highly advanced beings. The location of the folklore 'Lemuria' changed over time to include much of the Pacific Ocean. In the 1880s a Siskiyou County, California, resident named Frederick Spencer Oliver[http://pvrguymale.blogspot.ca/2011/07/i-am.html] wrote A Dweller on Two Plants, or, the Dividing of the Way which described a secret city inside of Mount Shasta, and in passing mentioned Lemuria. In 1925 a writer by the name of Selvius wrote "Descendants of Lemuria: A Description of an Ancient Cult in America" which was published in the Mystic Triangle, Aug., 1925 (the singlemost inportant document in the establishment of the modern Mt. Shasta-Lemurian myth) and which was entirely about the mystic Lemurian village at Mount Shasta. Selvius claimed that Lakrin had seen the Lemurian village through a telescope, "Even no less a careful investigator and scientist than Prof. Edgar Lucin Larkin, for many years director of Mount Lowe Observatory, said in newspaper and magazine articles that he had seen, on many occasions, the great temple of this mystic village, while gazing through a long-distance telescope.".
Frederick Spencer Oliver[http://pvrguymale.blogspot.ca/2011/07/i-am.html] was a Yrekan (the county seat of Siskiyou County, California, United States) teen who claimed that his hand began to uncontrollably write a manuscript dictated to him by Phylos the Tibetan, a Lemurian spirit.
Oliver's novel of spiritual fiction is

"The single most important source of Mount Shasta's esoteric legends. The book contains the first published references linking Mt. Shasta to: 1) a mystical brotherhood; 2) a tunnel entrance to a secret city inside Mount Shasta; 3) Lemuria; 4) the concept of "I AM"[http://pvrguymale.blogspot.ca/2011/07/i-am.html]; 5) "channeling" of ethreal spirits; 6)a panther surprise"

The author claimed to have written most of the novel within sight of Mount Shasta, and autobiographical telling of the story from Phylos the Thibetan's point of view.
In 1908, Adelia H. Taffinder[1] wrote an article, "A Fragment of the Ancient Continent of Lemuria," for the Atlantic Monthly with its Theosophical teachings and extension of the Lemurian Myth to California.
The Lemuria-Mount Shasta legend has developed into one of Mount Shasta's most prominent legends.
Wishar Spenle Cerve's 1931 Lemuria: The Lost Continent of the Pacific was "responsible for the legend's widespread popularity”. Is "Wishar Spenle Cerve" really a letter-for-letter pseudonym for "Harve Spencer Lewis(1883–1939)", first Imperator of the Rosicrucian Order of North and South America.
The idea of a lost continent (and the subsequent existence of Lemurians on Mount Shasta), quickly became widely known, though perhaps not so widely believed.
Today the belief that Lemurians inhabit the mountain is still very popular, and anyone visiting the local bookstores will likely be surprised by the glut of texts on the subject.

[1] Tavinder wrote in American Theosophist Magazine, 1914, about “World Teachers of the Aryan Race”.

Actually one new ager channels about Lemurians at Mount Shasta.

I’ve already given up any plans of ever taking one of those boat cruises with an author. What happens if, shortly after departing, you find out they’re not all they seem to be?