Atlantis, the Abyss, and the Fall of the Starry Gods
- Michelle Hayman
- 2 days ago
- 17 min read
“The stone which the builders rejected, this has become the head of the corner.”; Psalm 117:22 (LXX)
The Cosmos of the Greeks and Romans: A Theater for the Gods
For the Greeks and Romans, the universe was not a cold, empty space but a living hierarchy of powers. The world itself was imagined as a vast, tiered temple, with each level governed by spiritual rulers. At the bottom was the fiery abyss of Hades. Rising upward, one passed through the waters of Oceanus, the dry land of the earth, and the airy sphere of winds and spirits. Above these stretched the heavens, divided into concentric circles ruled by the seven visible planets:
Moon
Mercury
Venus
Sun
Mars
Jupiter
Saturn
Saturn’s sphere marked the outer boundary of the visible heavens, the “gate of time.” Encircling it was the Zodiac, a shining belt of constellations that pagans treated as the calendar and compass of destiny. Beyond this arch, ancient philosophers and poets placed the dwelling of the supreme gods. Here sat a heavenly senate of twelve, six gods and six goddesses, reflecting the twelve zodiacal signs. The cosmos was thus imagined as an imperial court, with Jupiter enthroned as king, Juno at his side, and the other deities ruling like lords over provinces.
This vision was not neutral science. It was political theology written in the stars. The structure of heaven justified the structure of empire: just as the planets were to obey their rulers above, so too men were to obey their kings and emperors below. To the pagan imagination, the sky itself was a divine monarchy.
Yet the Scriptures, especially in the Greek of the Septuagint, confront this worldview directly. Israel is warned not to confuse the lights of heaven with divinity.
“Lest you lift up your eyes to heaven, and seeing the sun and the moon and the stars and all the host of heaven, you be led astray and bow to them” (Deut 4:19 LXX).
The law goes further, prescribing judgment upon anyone who dares to make these heavenly bodies into objects of worship.
The prophets record how Israel fell into precisely this snare. Under Josiah, reform was needed because “And he removed the idolatrous priests, whom the kings of Judah had appointed, who burned incense in the high places in the cities of Judah and round about Jerusalem; those who burned incense to Baal, and to the sun, and to the moon, and to the mazuroth (constellations/zodiac), and to all the host of heaven.” (4 Kgd 23:5 LXX) Ezekiel is given a vision of twenty-five men, not bowing before the Lord, but “worshiping the sun toward the east” right in the courts of the temple itself (Ezek 8:16 LXX).
Thus, what pagans exalted as cosmic order, the hierarchy of planets, the harmony of the Zodiac, the majesty of the sun; the Bible strips down to their created essence. They are lights set in the firmament, good only for signs and seasons, days and years (Gen 1:14 LXX). As created things they are gifts of God, but as idols they are deadly snares. To sacralize them is to invert creation, exchanging the worship of the Creator for the worship of the creature.
Who Were the Atlanteans? Demigods, Titans, or Men?
Plato, in the Timaeus and Critias, described Atlantis as a vast sea power, wealthy and radiant with glory, which perished “in a single day and night” beneath the waves. For him, it was partly a cautionary tale, partly a memory of an ancient world. Later interpreters, like Manly P. Hall, treated the account as both history and allegory. They spoke of ten kings who ruled over Atlantis, symbolic of the tetractys of the Pythagoreans, the sacred sequence of the numbers one through ten, the supposed building-blocks of all reality. Over these ten kings hovered the Monad, the One, the primal unity that ordered their rule.
Yet Ignatius Donnelly, in his influential book Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, proposed a simpler but startling thesis. He argued that the “gods” of Greece and Rome were in fact the Atlantean rulers themselves. They were not eternal divinities, but flesh and blood men whose power and accomplishments were magnified and retold until memory became myth. Zeus, Poseidon, Athena, and the others were once leaders who lived, conquered, and died, but their fame was reshaped into the legends of Olympus.
Here Scripture offers a parallel and a warning. The Bible knows well the human tendency to exalt men as gods. After the flood, the people said, “Come, let us build a city and a tower, whose top shall be to heaven, and let us make a name for ourselves” (Gen 11:4 LXX). Pride drove men to seek divine status through their works, to climb into heaven by their own power. Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, followed the same path. He set up an image of gold and commanded, under pain of death, that all should bow and worship it (Dan 3 LXX). The tyrant demanded divine honors, his throne transfigured into a shrine. Antiochus Epiphanes, the Seleucid ruler who desecrated the Temple, is likewise prophesied in Daniel as one who “shall exalt himself above every god, and shall speak marvelous things against the God of gods, and shall prosper until the wrath be accomplished” (Dan 11:36 LXX). The pattern repeats across the ages: human rulers taking to themselves the honors of deity.
The deeper truth is revealed in the law of Moses. When men worship idols or honor their rulers as gods, they are not bowing to neutral symbols but giving themselves over to darker powers. “They sacrificed to demons and not to God, to gods whom they did not know, new and recent ones which their fathers had not known” (Deut 32:17 LXX). Behind the mask of the “demigod” or the exalted king lies the activity of fallen spirits, eager to draw humanity into idolatry.
Thus, when the Greeks spoke of demigods, or when Plato spoke of ten kings ruling Atlantis under the One, we must interpret them not as literal divine hybrids or saviors of mankind, but as the memory of men who exalted themselves, and whom their followers deified. Their greatness, mingled with pride and corruption, became the seedbed of mythology. In biblical light, the Atlanteans are not heroes to be imitated, nor saviors to be revered. They are proud rulers, flattered as divine, and entangled with demons. Their story is another witness to the truth that “the whole world lies in the evil one,” and that man, when he turns from the Creator, inevitably bows before counterfeit gods.
The Abyss, the Sea, and Why Atlantis Sinks
In the Scriptures, the sea is never only a neutral backdrop. It is a symbol of the abyss, of the restless chaos that God alone restrains. The Creator imposes order on the primeval flood, setting boundaries to the abyss. .
When visions are given to the prophets, the sea often becomes the stage of rebellion. Daniel saw, “Four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse from one another” (Dan 7:3 LXX). In John’s apocalypse, this vision returns: “I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rising up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns” (Rev 13:1). The waters are not gentle but threatening. They are the abyss from which monstrous powers rise, images of empires that resist God.
The book of Genesis describes how, before the flood, mankind gave itself over entirely to corruption. “The Lord God, having seen that the wickedness of men was multiplied upon the earth, and that every one in his heart was diligently and continually studying evil all the days” (Gen 6:5 LXX). And again, “The earth was corrupted before God, and the earth was filled with violence” (Gen 6:11 LXX).
The story of Atlantis, as later told, is that the sea swallowed up a mighty empire because of its arrogance. But the LXX gives the true account: not merely a city or an island but the whole world perished beneath the floodwaters because of sin. Pagan cultures preserve echoes of this same cataclysm. The Babylonians told of Xisuthrus, saved in a vessel from the waters. The Hindus remembered Manu, preserved by the counsel of a divine fish. The Mayan Popol Vuh spoke of a great father figure who endured the flood. Yet only Scripture discloses the real cause: not accident, not cosmic cycles, but the judgment of God upon human wickedness, and the remedy, that one man, Noah, “found grace in the sight of the Lord” (Gen 6:8 LXX).
The prophets extend the pattern beyond water to fire. Peter proclaims, “By which the world that then was, being deluged with water, perished. But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved for fire against the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men” (2 Pet 3:6–7, echoing the LXX flood accounts). The flood was the judgment of the first world; the conflagration will be the judgment of the last. Water once, fire next.
Thus, the sinking of Atlantis in myth is but a shadow of the flood of Noah. And the flood of Noah itself is a sign pointing forward: the abyss that once covered the earth with water will in the end yield to fire, when Christ judges the living and the dead.
Today we see the same prideful men, bound to secret societies, exalting themselves and aligning with demonic powers. As the world crumbles into decay, they cry ‘climate change,’ yet refuse to see that their sorcery and lust for power have brought it to this state. In their arrogance they enslave the rest of us, blind to their own pride.
“But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven before men; for you yourselves do not enter, nor do you allow those entering to go in.”
(Matt 23:13)
Matthew 3:7
“But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, ‘Brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?’”
Matthew 12:34
“Brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.”
Matthew 23:33
“Serpents, brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell?”
Ten Kings and Ten Horns: The Meaning of the Number
Manly P. Hall, following the Pythagoreans, interprets these ten horns as the outward reflection of the tetractys, the sacred series of the numbers one through ten. To the philosophers, this sequence expressed the structure of the universe itself. The Monad, the One, ruled above; from it came duality, harmony, and finally the perfect decad, the number ten, which symbolized completion and cosmic order.
The Bible, however, unmasks this numerical harmony as a façade. In Daniel’s night vision, the empire of the last days appears not as ten harmonious kings under the Monad but as a beast, dreadful and terrible. “And behold, a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and exceedingly strong; it had large iron teeth; it devoured and broke in pieces, and trampled the residue with its feet. It was different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns” (Dan 7:7 LXX). The prophet is told what these horns mean: “And as for the ten horns out of this kingdom, ten kings shall arise” (Dan 7:24 LXX). Here, the number does not reveal harmony but the multiplication of power in rebellion against God.
The Apocalypse of John takes up Daniel’s imagery and joins it to the vision of the sea. “And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rising up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten diadems, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy” (Rev 13:1). Again the horns are kings, rulers who share in the beast’s power. The angel explains later: “The ten horns which you saw are ten kings, who have not yet received a kingdom; but they receive authority as kings one hour with the beast. These have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast” (Rev 17:12–13).
What the philosophers revered as the sacred number of order, the prophets reveal as the complete number of rebellion. Ten kings in Atlantis reflected the symmetry of the tetractys; ten horns in Daniel and Revelation signify the totality of earthly rulers allied with the beast.
A total systemic corruption
The contrast is stark. In the mysteries, ten was perfection. In Scripture, ten is the fullness of opposition, permitted for a time but doomed to destruction. For the vision does not end with the horns’ triumph. “These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them, for He is Lord of lords and King of kings” (Rev 17:14). The complete number of human rebellion meets the one true King, and the harmony of pride is shattered by the song of the redeemed.
Titans, Giants, and Rebellious Powers Before the Flood
The poets of Greece sang of an age before the Olympians, when the Titans, ancient and mighty, contended against heaven itself. They were beings of vast power and unmeasured pride, who rose up in rebellion only to be hurled down into Tartarus. Alongside them stood the Gigantes, earth-born giants, who warred against the gods in their arrogance and fell beneath the thunderbolts of Zeus. These myths of Titans and Gigantes speak of cosmic rebels, beings who overstepped their bounds, striving to grasp what was not theirs, and so brought ruin upon themselves and upon the world.
The Septuagint names the same truth in simpler words. “Now the giants (γίγαντες) were upon the earth in those days; and after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them, those were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown” (Gen 6:4 LXX). However one interprets the mysterious union of the “sons of God” and the “daughters of men,” the emphasis of the sacred text is clear. Pride and transgression led to violence; hubris gave birth to corruption. The γίγαντες are not heroes but warnings, figures of human and spiritual rebellion clothed in monstrous size. What Greek poets celebrated as the Titanomachy or Gigantomachy, the Bible records as the prelude to judgment, the swelling tide of wickedness that provoked the flood.
The spirit of Titanism did not perish with the waters. It reappears in later visions of empire. John, in Revelation, sees a beast rise from the sea: “And the dragon gave him his power, and his throne, and great authority” (Rev 13:2). The same pattern holds. As once giants and Titans walked the earth in violence, so now kings and rulers exalt themselves with borrowed strength, empowered by the ancient serpent. The angel explains, “The ten horns which you saw are ten kings … these have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast” (Rev 17:12–13). Human thrones become seats of dragon-power; earthly crowns become instruments of rebellion against heaven.
Thus the Greek memory of Titans and Gigantes, and the Hebrew memory of giants in the days before the flood, bear witness together. The world remembers in different languages that there was a time when pride and violence filled the earth, when men and spirits conspired in rebellion. The Bible strips away the heroic trappings and shows the truth: what lies behind such might is corruption, and what follows such rebellion is judgment. The Titan is not a savior, but a sinner. The giant is not a benefactor, but a corrupter. And the kingdoms that take their likeness in later days will share their fate, for all dragon-backed thrones must fall before the reign of Christ.
Pan, Saturn, and the “Death” of the Old Age
In the imagination of the Greeks, Pan was the rustic god of fertility and untamed nature, a being both man and goat. His horns and cloven feet marked him as half-animal, while his upper form retained the likeness of man. He was lord of the woods, inspirer of sudden fear, the one from whom we take the very word panic. Yet Pan was more than a countryside spirit. He was tied to the heavens through the sign of Capricorn, the sea-goat climbing from the waters toward the mountain heights. Capricorn in turn was ruled by Saturn, the ancient god of time and death, the devourer of his children, enthroned as the outermost of the seven visible planets. In Pan, the wild energy of nature and the harsh cycles of Saturn converged. Even his pipes were said to echo the harmony of the spheres, the cosmic music generated by the movements of the stars and planets.
But when Christ was born, something changed. Plutarch, in his On the Decline of the Oracles, records that a mysterious voice rang out across the Mediterranean world, crying, “Great Pan is dead!” To the early Christians, this cry was no accident. It was a sign that the old order of daemons had come to an end. The oracles of Delphi and Dodona, once trembling with strange voices, fell silent. The daemonic hierarchy that held nations in fear was broken. The Logos, the Word made flesh, had come into the world. As Matthew records, Christ declared after His resurrection: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matt 28:18). Where once Pan was worshiped as the incarnation of natural energy and Saturn as the lord of time, now the true Lord of creation had arrived, silencing their voices forever.
This same Saturnine stream coursed through Egypt. There Osiris was slain and dismembered by his brother Set, and when his body was gathered, his generative organ was missing. In its place, Isis consecrated the obelisk, the stone shaft raised toward the heavens. The obelisk became the perpetual memorial of lost power, a solar-phallus uniting earth and sky. Jeremiah, however, foretold its fate: “He shall break the pillars of Heliopolis that are in On, and the houses of the gods of Egypt he shall burn with fire” (Jer 43:13 LXX). What the prophet denounced as idolatrous pillars still stands today in "St. Peter’s Square", a monument to Osiris, Saturn, and the old religion, enthroned at the heart of Christendom itself.
The ram of Mendes, worshiped as the soul (ba) of Osiris, was later transformed into the goat of Mendes, and in modern occultism into the infamous Baphomet. Eliphas Lévi sketched him as a goat-headed androgynous figure, seated with one arm raised and the other lowered, a parody of divine wisdom. Yet the thread is one: from Pan the goat-god of Greece, to Osiris enthroned in his pillar, to the ram of Mendes, to the goat of lust and rebellion, to Baphomet exalted in modern sorcery, the same spirit of inversion persists. Goat-power, lust, and rebellion against the Creator.
But the verdict of Scripture has not changed since the days of Moses: “They shall no longer sacrifice their sacrifices to the demons (τοῖς ματαίοις), after whom they prostitute themselves” (Lev 17:7 LXX). What men adored as nature, time, or hidden wisdom, the law unmasks as idolatry, as communion with demons. Christ has silenced the oracles, broken the Saturnine chains, and exposed Pan for what he was: not a savior of the world but a shadow cast by the abyss.
Stones on the Priest’s Breastplate and the Human Aura
Manly P. Hall taught that the jeweled robes of the ancient hierophants symbolized radiant forces streaming from the human body, external signs of an invisible “aura.” In his reading, the precious stones were emblems of subtle energies, fragments of an astral light which magicians could manipulate, amplify, or consume. This “light,” he argued, was the hidden science behind ancient rites; the medium through which human vitality could be drawn, redirected, or controlled.
Scripture gives the stones a very different meaning. When God commanded Moses to prepare the garments of Aaron, the high priest, He spoke not of auras but of covenant. “And you shall set in it settings of stone, four rows of stone. A row of sardius, topaz, and emerald shall be the first row. And the second row, carbuncle, sapphire, and jasper. And the third row, ligure, agate, and amethyst. And the fourth row, chrysolite, beryl, and onyx set around with gold” (Exod 28:17–20 LXX). And again: “The stones shall be with the names of the sons of Israel, twelve according to their names, each according to the name for the twelve tribes” (Exod 28:21 LXX). These were not talismans of energy but memorials of covenant, a shining witness that the priest bore all Israel (people of God) upon his heart as he entered the holy place before the Lord.
Ezekiel saw how even this glory could be twisted. Speaking of the anointed cherub who fell, he said, “You were in the delight of the paradise of God; every precious stone was your covering, sardius, topaz, emerald, carbuncle, sapphire, jasper, silver, and gold” (Ezek 28:13 LXX). What God gave as covenantal beauty, Lucifer perverted into pride. His jeweled adornment became counterfeit radiance, corrupted splendor masking rebellion.
In John’s vision of the New Jerusalem, the stones return, now transfigured forever. “The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every precious stone: the first foundation was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, chalcedony; the fourth, emerald; the fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius; the seventh, chrysolite; the eighth, beryl; the ninth, topaz; the tenth, chrysoprase; the eleventh, jacinth; the twelfth, amethyst” (Rev 21:19–20). The gems once borne upon the breast of the priest are now built into the eternal city itself. No longer memorials of Israel’s tribes alone, they are the foundations of the bride of the Lamb, resplendent with the glory of God.
Here lies the true difference. What the mysteries called “auric light,” fragile and exploitable, Scripture unveils as divine radiance, eternal and untouchable. Magicians spoke of manipulating human energy through fear, war, sickness, and propaganda, binding souls under the stars. But the LXX proclaims a brighter word: “The Lord is my light and my savior; whom shall I fear?” (Ps 26[27]:1 LXX). And again: “In Your light shall we see light” (Ps 35[36]:9 LXX). The true light is not an astral medium but the very presence of God, the radiance of His covenant, shining in the face of Jesus Christ.
Beginning in Water, Ending in Fire
The first world perished in water. The Septuagint records with terrible clarity that “all flesh that moved upon the earth died … and every man” (Gen 7:21 LXX). Yet even as the waters closed over the earth, one man and his household were carried in the ark, preserved by grace. That judgment by water was not the end of the story, but the beginning of a pattern. The prophets and apostles speak of another and greater judgment still to come. Isaiah foresaw it: “For behold, the Lord will come with fire, and His chariots like a storm, to render His rebuke with wrath and His threat with a flame of fire” (Isa 66:15 LXX). Peter declared it openly: “The heavens and the earth that are now, by the same word, are kept in store, reserved for fire against the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men” (2 Pet 3:7).
Water once; fire next.
This is why John’s vision begins with the Son of Man who holds the power of both: “I am the first and the last, and the living one; I was dead, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and of Hades” (Rev 1:18). The flood was not the final word; the flames will not be the final word. Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, who governs both the deluge of the past and the fire of the future.
Yet the powers of this age resist Him still. Just as the Atlanteans of old exalted themselves as gods, so the rulers of the present age seek to enthrone themselves once more. The reverse of the American dollar bill bears the unfinished pyramid with the all-seeing eye, beneath the words Novus Ordo Seclorum — the “New Order of the Ages”; drawn from Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue, the pagan prophecy of the return of Saturn’s golden age. Freemasonry’s rites of self-deification echo the same desire: not to serve God, but to be gods, to ascend like the Titans of old and take their seat among the stars. The obelisk of Osiris stands in St. Peter’s Square, the goat of Mendes lingers in occult imagination, and the elites of the nations dream of restoring the age of Saturn, the reign of Pan, the lost empire of Atlantis.
It is no accident that biblical Christianity has declined in the West, that believers are persecuted worldwide, and that the nations press toward a one-world government and a one-world religion (pushed by pope Francis). The old rebellion has never died. Humanity is still enslaved by men with egos the size of mountains, who, like Nebuchadnezzar and Antiochus before them, exalt themselves above every god (Dan 11:36 LXX). They want the kingdom without the King, the throne without the Lamb, the power without the cross. But the Scriptures declare their end.
For the sea will give up its dead, and death and Hades will be cast into the lake of fire (Rev 20:13–14). The beast with ten horns will make war with the Lamb, “and the Lamb shall overcome them, because He is Lord of lords and King of kings” (Rev 17:14). The false prophet also, who leads the nations astray, who pretends to speak for the Lamb while serving the dragon, will share the same fate, for “the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet … these two were cast alive into the lake of fire burning with brimstone” (Rev 19:20).
The false radiance of stones and auras will be swallowed up by the true light, for “the city had no need of the sun nor of the moon, for the glory of God illuminated it, and the Lamb is its light” (Rev 21:23).
In the end, the message is plain. Atlantis is memory, Babylon is present, but Christ is eternal. The world began with water, it will end with fire, but in the midst of both stands the Son of Man, the Crucified and Risen One, who alone holds the keys. To Him belongs all authority, not to the Titans, not to the Zodiac, not to Saturn, not to the Beast, not to the false prophet, and not to the kings of the earth.
“The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner” (Ps 117[118]:22 LXX). The rejected stone is now the cornerstone. The Lamb is enthroned. The kingdoms of this world will fall, but His kingdom will have no end.