Editing Atlantis (section)

====Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophists====
[[File:Map of Atlantis.jpg|thumb|right|upright=1.6|{{center|Map of Atlantis according to [[William Scott-Elliot]] (''The Story of Atlantis'', Russian edition, 1910)}}]]
[[Helena Petrovna Blavatsky]], the founder of the [[Theosophists]], took up [[Donnelly]]'s interpretations when she wrote ''[[The Secret Doctrine]]'' (1888), which she claimed was originally dictated in Atlantis. She maintained that the Atlanteans were cultural heroes (contrary to [[Plato]], who describes them mainly as a military threat). She believed in a form of racial [[evolution]] (as opposed to primate evolution). In her process of evolution the Atlanteans were the fourth "[[root race]]", which were succeeded by the fifth, the "[[Aryan race]]", which she identified with the modern human race.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>

In her book, Blavatsky reported that the civilization of Atlantis reached its peak between 1,000,000 and 900,000 years ago, but destroyed itself through internal [[warfare]] brought about by the dangerous use of [[psychic]] and [[supernatural]] powers of the inhabitants. [[Rudolf Steiner]], the founder of [[anthroposophy]] and [[Waldorf Schools]], along with other well known Theosophists, such as [[Annie Besant]], also wrote of [[cultural]] evolution in much the same vein. Other occultists followed the same lead, at least to the point of tracing the lineage of occult practices back to Atlantis. Among the most famous is [[Dion Fortune]] in her ''Esoteric Orders and Their Work''.<ref>{{cite web |last=Fortune |first=Dion |title=Esoteric Orders and Their Work |url=http://www.ourladyisgod.com/images/eBooks/Dion_Fortune_-_Esoteric_Orders_And_Their_Work_cd6_id1971727491_size183.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://www.ourladyisgod.com/images/eBooks/Dion_Fortune_-_Esoteric_Orders_And_Their_Work_cd6_id1971727491_size183.pdf |archive-date=9 October 2022 |url-status=live |access-date=19 January 2021 |website=ourladyisgod.com |language=en-US}}</ref>

Drawing on the ideas of Rudolf Steiner and [[Hanns Hörbiger]], [[Egon Friedell]] started his book ''{{interlanguage link|Kulturgeschichte des Altertums|de}}'', and thus his historical analysis of antiquity, with the ancient culture of Atlantis. The book was published in 1940.