Over the past few years I have encountered numerous quotations from Plato relating to Atlantis, but is this the only meaning of what Plato tells us? In this article, we will delve deeper into this topic, looking not so much at Atlantis, but at the event that may have led to its demise.
The quotations we will consider are taken from Plato’s writings in the order in which they were written.
There were, are, and will be many more destructions of mankind, caused by many causes; the greatest were caused by fire and water, and the lesser by innumerable other causes.
In the above passage we get the first indications of natural disasters of extraordinary magnitude, with the greatest being caused by “…the action of fire and water,” which we can assume means volcanic activity and mighty floods.
There is a story that Phaethon, son of Helios, once harnessed the horses to his father’s chariot, but could not lead them on his father’s path, burned everything on earth, and was himself destroyed by lightning.
He begged his father Helios to allow him to drive the solar chariot, but his team spoiled him: the horses of the incompetent driver deviated from the right direction and came close to the earth, which set it on fire. Gaia begged to Zeus, who struck Phaethon down with a thunderbolt, and Phaethon fell into Eridanus and died. According to another legend, Zeus, in order to put out the fire, sent down a flood of water (a worldwide deluge), and all mortals perished, except Deucalion and Pyrrha. Phaethon’s sisters, the Heliads, who mourned their brother on the shores of Eridanus, were turned into poplar trees and their tears into amber. His gilded chariot was kept in Corinth. Phaethon became a star.
The story of Phaethon, as far as I am concerned, is one of the most fascinating things I have read, offering textual evidence of an astrological event that affected the earth we inhabit today, for Plato seems to tell us that an object bright enough to be associated with the sun “burned all that was on earth and was itself destroyed by lightning…”
I must have read this a hundred times before one detail caught my eye. What caught my attention in the above passage was not related to any other research I had done, it was rather just the way it was written. It seemed to me that the attention we gave to the passage may not have been what was intended. After the mention of Helios, the attention switches to the horses (horses) and then to the chariot.
I wondered why bring the focus back to the horses using the word “their” instead of focusing on the chariot using the word “she”? It made me wonder if the emphasis on horses was the author’s intent. This suspicion is only heightened when we consider other ancient writings in which horses are mentioned in the context of heaven.
“And so I saw in a vision the horses and those sitting on them, having breastplates of fire, and of Jacinthus, and of sulfur; and the heads of the horses [were] like the heads of lions, and out of their mouths went forth fire and smoke and sulfur.” “By these three the third part of the people were killed, by fire, and by smoke, and by brimstone, coming out of their mouths.” Revelations 9:17-18
“Then the Lord called the seven first whites and commanded them to bring to him the first of the first stars, which preceded the stars, which were shaped in part like horses; the first star that fell first; and they brought them all to him.” Book of Enoch – Chapter LXXXIX – Verse 32
Turning to the second half of Plato’s passage about Phaeton, we get the following.
“It has the form of a myth, but it really means the diminution of bodies moving in the heavens around the earth, and the great burning of things on the earth, which is repeated at great intervals.”
The next important detail that caught me completely off guard is the reference to the declination of bodies moving in the heavens above the earth, which I believe could mean one or both of the following events.
The arrays of the earth have shifted-the earth has experienced an axis deviation in which it has not regained its original axis of rotation.
While this may seem like a crazy interpretation, we do have a second reference to an axis deviation;
The reference to “the great burning up of things on the earth, which is repeated at great intervals,” in my opinion, suggests the extraordinary volcanic activity, the signs of which abound in northern Africa. This volcanic activity, I believe, is referred to in the Bible as “hell.
Before we move on, we must answer the remaining question of what might Phaeton represent? To answer it, we need to look in the Bible.
8) The second angel blew his trumpet, and something that looked like a huge mountain, all on fire, was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea turned to blood,
(9) A third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships perished.
(10) The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from heaven on a third of the rivers and on the springs of the waters…
(11) The name of the star was wormwood. A third of the waters became bitter, and many people died of the water that had become bitter. Revelation 8
The next few passages we will look at as we relate to Atlantis focus more on the floods and destruction. To keep the focus from jumping around, we will have to start mixing in passages out of order as well as some of Critias.
“For there was a time, Solon, before the universal flood, when the city, which is now Athens, was first in war and in every respect the best governed of all cities, is said to have performed the noblest deeds and had the finest physique of all that lore tells of, under the face of heaven.”
It seemed to me that this passage is important in that it gives us a timeline of what has been described as the “great flood of all” that took place at the time of the destruction of Athens and Atlantis. To support this thought we have the following;
“First of all, the Acropolis was not what it is now. For the fact is that one night of abundant rain washed away the earth and exposed the rock; at the same time there were earthquakes, and then there was an extraordinary flood, which was the third before the great destruction of Deucalion.”
Here we get the actual number of “emergency floods” – 4, with the fourth being the biblical flood. This is obviously what we should consider cyclical at this point.
“This power came out of the Atlantic Ocean, for in those days the Atlantic was navigable; and there was an island before the strait, which you call the Pillars of Hercules.”
This phrase also opened my eyes to details that I think most people overlook, for what caught my attention in this passage was “for in those days the Atlantic was navigable.” This immediately caught my eye as a statement that after the destruction of Atlantis, the Atlantic Ocean was inaccessible from the Mediterranean for some time. The next two passages also give us the same indication.
“For this reason the sea in those parts is impassable and impenetrable, because a shoal of silt stands in the way; and this was caused by the subsidence of the island.”
“and when afterwards the island sank in an earthquake, it became an impassable mud barrier to mariners sailing from here to any part of the ocean.
In this part of the above passage we are again given the indication that the Atlantic was not accessible from the Mediterranean Sea, which in my opinion is provided by the word “here. Whether “here” refers to Sais in the Egyptian delta or to the Greek city where the story was to be told, it is safe to assume that it was within the limits of the Pillars of Hercules. Thus, the underlined part translates as “travelers sailing from the Pillars to any part of the ocean.
For quite some time my problem was the lack of any mention of the Mediterranean Sea regaining access to the Atlantic, until in the course of my research I came across the 10th feat of Hercules.
“According to some Roman sources, on his way to the garden of the Hesperides on the island of Erithea, Hercules had to cross the mountain that was once Atlas. Instead of climbing the great mountain, Hercules used his superhuman strength to pierce through it. In doing so, he connected the Atlantic Ocean with the Mediterranean Sea.
There is no doubt about what Plato, and other stories, have conveyed to us, the only question is whether to believe them or not. The destruction of earthly civilizations is a cyclical and inevitable process. Whether it is “fire from the sky” or other cataclysms leading to the Universal is an irreversible process occurring at clearly defined intervals.
So what?” you may ask me.
Well, the time for the new FIFTH renewal of the world has already come.
По материалам: http://www.planet-today.com/2023/06/plato-atlantis-flood-and-cyclical.html