Editing Atlantis (section)

====Nazism and occultism====
{{See also|Nazism and occultism}}

[[Blavatsky]] was also inspired by the work of the 18th-century [[astronomer]] [[Jean-Sylvain Bailly]], who had "Orientalized" the Atlantis [[myth]] in his mythical continent of [[Hyperborea]], a reference to [[Greek myths]] featuring a Northern European region of the same name, home to a giant, godlike race.<ref name="Edelstein 2006: 268">{{cite journal |author=Edelstein, Dan |year=2006 |title=Hyperborean Atlantis: Jean-Sylvain Bailly, Madame Blavatsky, and the Nazi Myth |journal=Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture |volume=35 |pages=267–291 [p. 268] |issn=0360-2370 |doi=10.1353/sec.2010.0055|s2cid=144152893 }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Ratner. |first1=Paul |date=26 November 2018 |title=Why the Nazis were obsessed with finding the lost city of Atlantis |url=https://bigthink.com/culture-religion/why-the-nazis-were-obsessed-with-finding-the-lost-city-of-atlantis |access-date=19 June 2020}}</ref> Dan Edelstein claims that her reshaping of this theory in ''[[The Secret Doctrine]]'' provided the [[Nazism|Nazis]] with a mythological precedent and a pretext for their ideological platform and [[The Holocaust|their subsequent genocide]].<ref name="Edelstein 2006: 268" /> However, Blavatsky's writings mention that the Atlantean were in fact olive-skinned peoples with Mongoloid traits who were the ancestors of modern [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|Native Americans]], [[Mongolia]]ns, and [[Malayans]].<ref name="Powell-36">Powell, ''The Solar System'', pp. 25–26. (Ch. 36. "The second Atlantean sub-race: the Tlavatli".)</ref><ref name="Powell-39">Powell, ''The Solar System'', pp. 252–263. (Ch. 39. "Ancient Peru: A Toltec remnant".)</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Root races |url=http://www.unariunwisdom.com/the-seven-root-races/ |access-date=29 September 2018 |website=Uranian Wisdom|date=11 August 2015 }}</ref>

The idea that the Atlanteans were [[Hyperborean]], [[Nordic countries|Nordic]] supermen who originated in the Northern Atlantic or even in the far North, was popular in the German [[Ariosophy#The occult roots of Nazism|ariosophic movement]] around 1900, propagated by [[Guido von List]] and others.<ref>Joscelyn Godwin, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=26v0qQcI0vwC&pg=PA37 Arktos: The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism, and Nazi Survival]'', Kempton ILL 1996, pp. 37–78.</ref> It gave its name to the ''Thule Gesellschaft'', an antisemite Münich lodge, which preceded the German [[Nazi Party]] (see [[Thule]]). The scholars {{ill|Karl Georg Zschaetzsch|de}} (1920) and [[Herman Wirth]] (1928) were the first to speak of a "Nordic-Atlantean" or "Aryan-Nordic" master race that spread from Atlantis over the Northern Hemisphere and beyond. The Hyperboreans were contrasted with the Jewish people. Party ideologist [[Alfred Rosenberg]] (in ''[[The Myth of the Twentieth Century]]'', 1930) and SS-leader [[Heinrich Himmler]] made it part of the official doctrine.<ref>{{cite web |author=Alfred Rosenberg |title=Excerpts from "The Myth of the Twentieth Century" |url=http://www.cwporter.com/mythos.htm |access-date=28 June 2019 |website=cwporter.com}}</ref> The idea was followed up by the adherents of [[Esoteric Nazism]] such as [[Julius Evola]] (1934) and, more recently, [[Miguel Serrano]] (1978).

The idea of Atlantis as the homeland of the Caucasian race would contradict the beliefs of older Esoteric and Theosophic groups, which taught that the Atlanteans were non-Caucasian brown-skinned peoples. Modern Esoteric groups, including the Theosophic Society, do not consider Atlantean society to have been superior or Utopian—they rather consider it a lower stage of evolution.<ref>{{cite web |title=The Theosophical Root Races |url=http://www.kheper.net/topics/Theosophy/root_races.html |access-date=29 September 2018 |website=Kepher |archive-date=1 September 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180901224225/http://www.kheper.net/topics/Theosophy/root_races.html }}</ref>