[This article was written years ago, after the end of Season 4 of LOST. It analyzes and speculates about the plot of the first four seasons, and contains massive spoilers. If you haven't finished the first four seasons, proceed with caution!]
Before reading this article, please read:
The Book of Secrets, Prologue | My Most Spectacular Theory (Blowing My Own Trumpet)
The main text begins:
The mysterious island in LOST, this “place where miracles happen,” has by now unquestionably become the series’ true lead character. The ultimate answer to every mystery now points toward the island’s true nature. The island has all sorts of miraculous powers: healing and causing illness (John and Locke), extending life (Richard), apparently sentient black smoke, an electromagnetic field strange enough to warp space-time… Why does it possess these powers? What are these powers really? These questions can actually be answered through another question—where did the island come from in the first place?
The Island’s Origins
Going by the LOST writers’ longstanding love of teasing and provoking the audience, the island’s origins must have several characteristics:
First, it must be something American viewers—the show’s target audience—have always been familiar with, or at least something widely known in Western culture. Only then can the answer be both surprising and perfectly logical once the mystery is revealed;
Second, it can’t be something too definite, or there would be no mystery and no room for the plot to play with it.
So its origin must inevitably be an “unsolved mystery” surrounded by all kinds of mysterious legends.
An answer satisfying both conditions is practically shouting itself, isn’t it?
Here are a few hints:
What does the title “LOST” actually mean? The survivors are “lost” on the island? Their “confusion” in the face of the island’s secrets? The “loss of their way” in the human heart? All of these seem plausible. But have you ever considered that the subject of “LOST” might not be people at all, but the island itself? The title may mean that the island is itself a place that was once lost.
One more hint:
There was unquestionably a very ancient civilization on the island, and that civilization seems to bear traces of ancient Egypt.
By this point, you may have guessed the answer. That’s right, the island’s true origin is:
The last surviving piece of the mysterious, vanished continent of antiquity—the lost utopian kingdom known as “Atlantis”!!
I dare to say this because my evidence is rock-solid! Hehe o(∩_∩)o
Evidence One: The Location of Atlantis
Atlantis first appears in Plato’s dialogues. In Plato’s description, Atlantis was a huge island in ancient times, located right at the “mouth” of the Strait of Gibraltar. Its existence allowed people of the time to travel to other islands by way of it. It possessed a powerful civilization, went to war with the Greeks, and after being defeated was destroyed by a sudden earthquake and flood, sinking beneath the sea. Today, the basic view of Plato’s account is that he developed the story of Atlantis from legends circulating in Greece about some civilized island nation, in order to express his own political views.
For a long time, popular legend has tended to place Atlantis on a lost island in the Atlantic. But look at Athens’ geographical position, along with the primitive seafaring technology and poor channels of information at the time, and it is almost certain that the ancient civilizations most likely to have come into contact with and influenced Greek civilization were those around the Mediterranean and North Africa. The Atlantic was still beyond the known world back then. In fact, unlike popular legend, the mainstream view among the archaeologists and geologists who believe Atlantis existed is that it was in the Mediterranean!
And the ancient Mediterranean was a very dangerous place: tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions were common. Evidence already shows that some ancient Mediterranean civilizations really were destroyed by tsunamis and volcanic eruptions. So it is perfectly reasonable that an ancient civilization could disappear overnight in the Mediterranean. There is plenty of historical material on this; interested readers can Google it.
1. The Island’s Original Location
I believe the writers of LOST adopted the idea that Atlantis was somewhere in the Mediterranean. Why?
Let’s turn our attention to some details in LOST. Season 4 tells us that the island’s location can move. And judging by Ben’s familiarity with moving the island, it must have been moved at least once before (Ben probably experienced the island’s movement in the past, although he certainly wasn’t the one who moved it that time). Its current location is not its original one. So where was the island originally located?
Now let’s turn back to the legends of Atlantis. Among all the theories about Atlantis’s location, some scholars and explorers have narrowed it down to a more specific area of the Mediterranean. One of them is likely to make LOST viewers gasp!
The following passage is quoted from Baidu Baike:
“...However, this view was opposed by Béliou, who wrote in his 1874 work The Atlanteans that the land of Atlantis should be located in what is now North Africa. His view attracted considerable attention; in 1893 it was repeatedly cited and further developed by the German Knett. Later, this view inspired Pierre Benoît and gave him the idea for his famous novel Atlantis. By 1926, Borchardt had made the claim more specific, saying that Atlantis lay in the salt-lake region of Tunisia.”
Tunisia!
In Season 4 of LOST, Charlotte digs up a fossilized polar bear in the Tunisian desert, wearing a collar from the Dharma Initiative. Clearly, this was a polar bear kept at the Dharma Initiative’s Hydra station, which accidentally swam off the island because of the 305-degree magnetic bearing and then happened to enter the one breach point in the magnetic field surrounding the island. But because it failed to continue at precisely that angle, a serious “side effect” occurred: it traveled through time to the Tunisian desert long ago and eventually became a fossil. Why did it travel to Tunisia rather than somewhere else?
Now look at Ben after the island moved. He, too, was transported to the Tunisian desert (in his case, he jumped forward several months; don’t worry too much about the timing here, because Dan already said the “side effect” is random and it’s hard to predict how far through time someone will jump). But why Tunisia again!?
Clearly, Tunisia has a powerful connection to the island. After people or objects are sent through space-time under the influence of the island’s magnetic field, there is a very high chance they will be transported to Tunisia.
So my deduction is:
In ancient times, the island was originally located where Tunisia is today. That spot was not yet connected to the African continent; it was simply part of the Mediterranean, and the island stood there. So even after the island jumped elsewhere many years later, it retained some natural connection to its original location. That is why people and objects strongly affected by the magnetic field and sent through space-time have a very high probability of jumping to this “original place.”
There is also corroborating evidence that the island may originally have been near the Mediterranean. In the Season 3 episode “The Man Behind the Curtain,” during Ben’s flashback, his teacher holds up a volcano model in class and says the island had volcanic activity “a very, very long time ago.” In Season 2, when Jack and Sayid first enter the Swan station, they also discover enormous geothermal resources beneath it. All this suggests that geologically, the island was extremely unstable in ancient times. That matches the ancient Mediterranean’s frequent volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and tsunamis. And in Plato’s original description of Atlantis, Atlantis was destroyed by an earthquake and a flood (actually a tsunami?).
Atlantis’s possible location—Tunisia—the island’s location having jumped—the place to which the island’s time travelers were most likely transported—the island’s geological characteristics. If this evidence still hasn’t completely convinced you that the island is a fragment of Atlantis, that’s fine. I have plenty more evidence.
2. Places the Island Has Been
Before analyzing the other evidence, let’s settle another question: did the island move directly from its original location in Tunisia to its current location somewhere in the Pacific? The answer is no! Before that, the island must have made at least one earlier jump.
Why do I say that? Let’s look at the Black Rock’s journey. The Black Rock set sail from Portsmouth, England, to do business in ancient Thailand. The year was 1845. Note that the Suez Canal had not opened yet, so its route took it into the Atlantic first, along Africa’s west coast, around the Cape of Good Hope, and into the Indian Ocean, only then heading for ancient Thailand. It had no reason to enter the Mediterranean and no chance to get near Tunisian waters. So where did it accidentally stray into the island’s range? The answer is obvious: the Atlantic!
If the LOST writers really did take the legend of Atlantis as the original inspiration for the story, then when designing the plot they would certainly consult every study, popular legend, and literary work about Atlantis circulating in the world. The more the plot accommodates those Atlantis traditions, the more entertaining the answer will be when it is revealed. That is exactly in keeping with their “the show must shock, no matter the cost” style.
So, since the more common popular belief places Atlantis in the Atlantic, the writers would certainly arrange for the island to have jumped to somewhere in the Atlantic long ago (before the legend took shape). I’ll analyze the reason for this jump later.
So we now know that many years after the island jumped to somewhere in the Atlantic, the Black Rock, sailing across the Atlantic, accidentally wandered into the island’s range and opened the prologue to the modern legend of Atlantis.
Evidence Two: The Civilization of Atlantis
As I mentioned earlier, an ancient civilization existed on the island.
The evidence of an ancient civilization shown in the series includes roughly the following:
First, at the end of Season 2, Sayid, Sun, and Jin see a statue with only four toes, of which only the portion below the calves remains. Then there is the “Temple” where Ben repeatedly says they can take refuge. The place where Ben orders Locke to kill his father also looks like the ruins of an ancient civilization. The latest evidence comes when Ben summons the black smoke and opens a stone door carved with hieroglyphs, whose style is extremely close to that of ancient Egyptian civilization.
All this indicates that a very ancient civilization once existed on the island, and that it may have had countless links with ancient Egypt. Was the legendary Atlantis like that too?
Although the legend of Atlantis first appears in Plato’s dialogues, Plato also explains in those dialogues where the legend came from earlier. He says that the story of Atlantis was first told to Solon, the famous ancient Athenian statesman and lawgiver, by an elderly local priest when Solon traveled to ancient Egypt.
Later, Plato’s grand-disciple Crantor traveled to Egypt to verify what his master had said, and actually found stone pillars inscribed with hieroglyphics recording the history of Atlantis. Plato, however, never mentioned these pillars. Whether this fellow’s research was genuine or not, one thing is clear: the origins of these Atlantis legends all lie in ancient Egypt. It seems that ancient Egyptian civilization may once have had an extremely close connection with Atlantis.
In fact, there is a legend that it was the Atlanteans who migrated to the American and African continents after some catastrophe, bringing their civilization to those colonies and creating the Mayan and Egyptian civilizations. For example, Robert Sarmast, an American adventurer who calls himself an expert in mythology and ancient studies, argues in his book Discovering Atlantis that:
“The world's pyramid architecture originated in Atlantis; after Atlantis was destroyed, the Atlanteans spread this civilization throughout the world” (quoted from Baidu Baike).
1. The Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean
A more direct connection between Egyptian and Atlantean civilization comes from the text on something called “The Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean” (The Emerald Tablets of Thoth-The-Atlantean). Supposedly, this tablet appeared in ancient Egypt in the distant past, and the original version has probably been lost. Yet these “Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean” somehow became the “Bible” of later European alchemists, who regarded them as the original source of their occult arts.
So who exactly was the original author of these tablets, the old ancestor of alchemy, “Thoth (THOTH)”? According to Doreal, who first translated the tablet text, Thoth (THOTH), the author of the tablets, was the High Priest of the island of Atlantis (Priest-King)! After his homeland sank, he established a colony in ancient Egypt.
Even stranger, this Thoth was none other than the famous ibis-headed, human-bodied god of wisdom in ancient Egyptian civilization (see the picture below)! Legend has it that he invented Egyptian hieroglyphics! (Think back to the hieroglyphics on the stone door Ben opened. Quite a coincidence, huh?)
An Atlantean high priest ultimately became not only the ancestor of Western mysticism centered on alchemy, but also the legendary source of ancient Egyptian knowledge. And the object god Thoth is holding in the picture above is a tetrahedral star made from the legendary Atlantean Seed Crystals. Why would this high priest be holding an Atlantean crystal? In the next piece of evidence, I’ll reveal the connection between Atlantean crystals and the island’s miraculous powers in LOST. It will absolutely blow your mind.
And later, by combining this with other evidence, I’ll go further and deduce the relationship between god Thoth and the “bad people” in LOST, and argue that the four-toed statue on the island may well be god Thoth before he left Atlantis!
You can compare the connection between Atlantean and Egyptian civilization with the connection between the island civilization and Egyptian civilization in LOST. If you think this evidence is just grasping at shadows for now, don’t worry—I’ll connect it with the other evidence later. One coincidence is an accident; countless coincidences linked together are inevitability.
2. God Thoth, Alchemy, and Harry Potter
For now, let’s keep our eyes on god Thoth. As I mentioned earlier, he was the ancestor and source of knowledge of alchemy, which had an enormous influence on Western mysticism. So, does everyone actually know what alchemy is?
Those of us from the East, lacking much background in Western culture, often mistakenly think alchemy is just the deluded fantasy of turning base metals into precious ones. That’s completely wrong, of course. The alchemists’ jars and bottles were merely the surface appearance; the true purpose of alchemy was “the art of immortality.” Many people know that the great scientist Isaac Newton spent much of the latter half of his life studying alchemy. Had he gone crazy from poverty? No—he was searching for the secret of immortality!
Alchemists hoped to find, through certain unique chemical methods, a substance capable of creating eternal life. That is the true face of alchemy. One of the most famous legends and mysteries in Western alchemy concerns an alchemist named Nicolas. According to the story, this former small-bookshop owner in Paris discovered alchemy’s ultimate secret after accidentally obtaining an ancient book, and thereby gained eternal life. Some believers in Western mysticism even think he is still alive today.
When J. K. Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter novel, she drew heavily on this legend. In her version, Nicolas really did live into the modern era, becoming Dumbledore’s oldest friend, and the immortality-granting treasure he created—the object countless alchemists dreamed of—was the Philosopher’s Stone! That is the origin of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. And the source of it all was, unbelievably, that Atlantean high priest. What this Atlantean high priest possessed was not a chemical equation for turning iron into gold, but the secret of immortality.
By this point, you must be thinking of Richard, who never ages, and Mikhail, who keeps coming back from the dead, in LOST, right? Add in my analysis in The Land of Divine Gifts, the Kingdom of Immortality, and doesn’t the connection between Atlantis and the island now have “immortality” as another crucial piece of evidence!?
Evidence Three: The Crystals of Atlantis
In the previous piece of evidence, I mentioned that god Thoth was holding an Atlantean crystal. So where did this crystal come from? What was special about Atlantean crystals? And what do they have to do with LOST?
As far as we know, there is still no direct evidence that Atlantis ever truly existed in history. Everything about Atlantis is, for now, merely legend. And the person who added the most vivid and dramatic strokes to that legend was an American psychic, a legendary figure who lived during the first half of the twentieth century. His name was Edgar Cayce.
This fellow could put himself into a hypnotic trance and answer some extremely esoteric questions, producing answers that were just as extremely esoteric. One of his favorite topics during his psychic sessions was Atlantis. Many details now circulating about Atlantis’s technology, civilization, social structure, and destruction all come from records of Edgar Cayce’s psychic conversations.
Edgar Cayce insisted that Atlantis had really existed as a continent with highly advanced technology and civilization. The legend mentioned earlier—that ancient Egyptian and American civilizations originated with Atlantean refugees—came largely from Edgar Cayce’s claims.
And the countless details about Atlantis in Edgar Cayce’s psychic records match the island in LOST with truly astonishing precision!
Let’s first look at Edgar Cayce’s description of a miraculous crystal on Atlantis. Edgar Cayce mentioned many times that the island had a miraculous crystal called the “Great Crystal.” This Great Crystal, possessing mysterious powers, was the source of all Atlantean technology and civilization.
The Great Crystal was placed inside a domed building. The dome could open and close, allowing the Great Crystal to absorb the energy of the sun and moon at the proper times. The inner walls of the building were decorated with insulating materials. The Great Crystal was also called the Firestone. It was enormous, roughly shaped as shown below—a long, hexagonal column.
Above the Great Crystal was a movable “dome” (does that word sound familiar? The experimental chamber at the Orchid Station, where the Dharma Initiative was activated, was called the “dome” too. The Orchid Station orientation video also said that the station was located very close to some kind of “mysterious substance”.)
What exactly were the Great Crystal’s mysterious energies used for? Let’s look at Edgar Cayce’s descriptions, along with those found in some other legends, of the Great Crystal’s powers (you can find all of this on English-language websites about Atlantis)—
1. Great Crystal Power One: Psychic Communication
Edgar Cayce said that, at first, the Atlanteans were a peaceful people who placed great emphasis on the spiritual realm. So initially, the energy in the crystal was used by certain “people capable of manipulating this energy” as a tool for psychic communication (spiritual tool). Psychic communication is familiar enough: it basically means talking with ghosts and gods.
Let’s think about LOST. Psychic communication is probably one of the most familiar themes in the whole series, right? Characters who died on the island (Christian, Charlie, Yemi, and others) were almost all “tamed” by the island, becoming something like earthbound spirits and serving as “spokespeople” for the island or its master, Jacob. Clearly, the island possesses powerful psychic abilities. This power can bring ghosts under the island’s control for its own use, and it can also allow people like Locke, who strongly resonate with the island’s power, to talk with these ghosts and gods.
So the first power of the Great Crystal matches the island’s power.
2. Great Crystal Power Two: Extending Life and Eternal Youth
Edgar Cayce continued: as Atlantean civilization developed, the originally spiritually focused Atlanteans became increasingly materialistic, so they began using the Great Crystal’s power to rejuvenate their bodies, allowing them to live for hundreds of years while maintaining a youthful appearance! This is what it means for god Thoth—the Atlantean high priest and ancestor of alchemists seeking the art of immortality—to be holding an Atlantean crystal.
Think of Richard, whose face never ages, in LOST! I don’t need to say much more, do I? Richard may well be a true native of the island, born there many, many years ago. He was either one of the Atlanteans or their direct descendant. So even if the island of today has changed dramatically from Atlantis of the distant past, people like him may still retain an innate connection to the Great Crystal’s power of “eternal youth”—remaining young forever and living forever.
You remember, right? In Season 3, Ben teased Richard by asking, “Do you remember your birthday?” That wasn’t a throwaway line! The writers were hinting that Richard might be so old he could no longer remember his own birthday.
The LOST Experience game also revealed that the Hanso Foundation had an important research project called the “Life Extension Project.” The game further suggested that Dr. Alvar Hanso might be much older than he appeared. Other clues in the game also revealed that this boss of the Dharma Initiative was personally participating in an experiment—one involving rejuvenation by taking some kind of drug!
Could the true purpose of the Dharma Initiative have been to use technology to unlock the secret of the Great Crystal’s power of immortality? The Hansos and Widmores were obsessed with obtaining the island. Was their ultimate goal to gain immortality? At this point, it certainly seems possible, but I’ll leave that for further analysis in the middle installment.
In short, the Great Crystal’s second power matches the island’s phenomenon of immortality!
3. Great Crystal Power Three: Providing Power
Edgar Cayce said that the power of the sacred crystal was later developed further and put to other uses. One of these was as a power source.
The sacred crystal’s energy could travel across the entire island like radio waves. The island’s aircraft, vehicles, and submarines could move at the speed of sound.
Although no ancient aircraft, vehicles, or submarines have appeared in LOST yet, don’t you think the passage above sounds a lot like it is describing an electromagnetic force? It can cover the whole island in the form of waves, and it can become the driving force of machines—those are all electromagnetic properties. It seems that the sacred crystal’s energy is essentially a strange kind of electromagnetic force. And in LOST, the island just happens to be covered by a mysterious magnetic field!
Actually, in the Chinese sources I have seen, the sacred crystal is translated as “magnetic ore”! I also mentioned earlier that Edgar Cayce said the inner walls of the temple housing the sacred crystal were decorated with insulating material. That was obviously another hint at the crystal’s electromagnetic properties.
So the electromagnetic nature of the sacred crystal’s energy matches the island’s miraculous magnetic field!
4. The Sacred Crystal’s Fourth Power: Transmitting Sound and Images over Long Distances
Edgar Cayce went on to say that another new use of the sacred crystal’s energy was transmitting the human voice and images over great distances (were also able to transmit over great distances the human voice, and pictures). In the same way, the energy could also project light and heat toward specific locations.
Some of LOST‘s Others, as well as Walt, can suddenly appear and disappear in front of people. Did they really show up, or were images of them simply transmitted there? When Tom of the Others first confronted Jack, Sawyer, and the others, he used a few henchmen to create the appearance of countless torches. Could that also have been the same power reproducing images of torches? Whenever the Others use their powers, and whenever strange phenomena appear on the island, an extraordinarily strange “human voice” can be heard. Its purpose is still unknown, but could it also be evidence that the crystal’s power is transmitting sound?
So, at least in appearance, the sacred crystal’s fourth power matches the long-distance teleportation displayed by certain people on the island.
5. The Sacred Crystal’s Fifth Power: Stimulating and Enhancing Psychic Abilities
This is another power connecting the sacred crystal with the mind, apart from “mediumship.” Think about Walt’s behavior on the island in LOST. Surely his supernatural abilities were not as powerful off the island as they were on it, right?
In fact, the sacred crystal was originally used for mental and spiritual purposes (see Evidence Four). If the magnetic field is the formal essence of the sacred crystal’s energy, then its soul-related abilities are its functional essence. And this corresponds perfectly to the island’s powers.
6. The Sacred Crystal’s Sixth Power: Telepathy—Mental Transmission—Psychokinesis
Compared with “transmitting sound and images over long distances,” this is even closer to the spatial teleportation displayed by the Others, Walt, and the rest.
(Everything above is Edgar Cayce’s description of the sacred crystal. The following points are also descriptions of the Atlantean sacred crystal, taken from Crystalinks, a site devoted to the mysterious powers of crystals. I am not sure whether Edgar Cayce actually said these things.)
7. The Sacred Crystal’s Seventh Power: Healing and Childbirth
Every part of this point matches the island’s powers in LOST. The island’s power can heal serious illnesses and injuries among its inhabitants. Could the deaths of pregnant women on the island be because the sacred crystal’s original power to assist childbirth became disrupted for some reason?
8. The Sacred Crystal’s Eighth Power: Generating a Magnetic Field
This hardly needs any elaboration, does it? The speculation I made when analyzing Power Three is confirmed here.
9. The Sacred Crystal’s Ninth Power: Storing Knowledge
This explains why the Atlantean crystal held by Thoth the god mattered. Besides all kinds of miraculous powers, the crystal may also have contained ancient knowledge. Thoth may very well have become the god of wisdom in later ancient Egypt because of this knowledge.
10. The Sacred Crystal’s Tenth Power: Controlling the Weather!
This one is almost too much of a coincidence, isn’t it?
The orientation video for the Dharma Initiative’s Swan Station mentions that the first field of research in the Dharma Initiative was “meteorology.” Locke could also accurately predict changes in the island’s weather. All this suggests that the island’s climate is being manipulated by some force rather than being entirely natural.
On this point, the powers of the Atlantean sacred crystal once again match LOST perfectly.
11. The Past-Life Memories of a Female Psychic
All the points above about the sacred crystal’s powers come more or less from that great psychic Cayce’s channeling accounts. But stories about the sacred crystal and the powers it produced also appear in other legends of Atlantis. Besides Cayce, there was a female psychic named Ingrid Bennett (sorry, I couldn’t find out anything about her background) who claimed she could remember her life in Atlantis in a previous incarnation. Her description is largely consistent with that of Edgar Cayce.
Here are a few excerpts from her recollections (taken from Baidu Baike):
“Her memories tell us that the Atlanteans had an extremely advanced level of scientific development. For example, they used crystals as an energy source; at the time, a single enormous crystal was enough to supply the energy needs of an entire city. Crystals were also combined with herbs and fragrances to treat illness. These developments were based on viewing mind and matter as having the same nature. Ingrid recalled that she had been the priestess in charge of the crystal’s energy, responsible for ensuring that its power generation operated normally. What she relied on was not superior technology, but the strength of her own steadfast heart. The Atlanteans also used the concept of mind-body unity in healing: music to heal the ears, fragrance to heal the nose. They emphasized the application of invisible and intangible energy or magnetic fields, believing that the mind was not something vague, but something that could genuinely alter the state of matter.”
“In transportation, the Atlanteans also used magnetic energy fields to propel flying machines resembling flying discs. Their development of the spirit and mind emphasized a cosmic outlook of overall harmony. The Atlanteans used highly developed psychics as relay stations for transmitting information, functioning much like satellite receiving stations today……”
“Schoolchildren developed their potential through meditation activities resembling Zen sitting meditation. The Atlanteans believed that only the integrated elevation of body and mind could allow human beings to reach their greatest potential. So schoolchildren did not aspire to become officials or make money. Instead, at the age of sixty (the average Atlantean could live to two hundred), they hoped to become a respected ‘wise one,’ because wise ones could guide people through confusion, convey celestial signs and foresee the future, and lead every person, affair, and thing into the most harmonious and appropriate position.”
—The sacred crystal, the connection between the sacred crystal and the mind, magnetic fields, the Atlanteans’ emphasis on spiritual cultivation, supernatural mental powers, and long lives: all these elements with important links to LOST also appear in this female psychic’s account.
If you can still hold on after reading all that, don’t worry—there is also Evidence Four.
Evidence Four: The Social Structure of Atlantis
Besides sensing that Atlantean civilization and technology all originated from one miraculous sacred crystal, Edgar Cayce also sensed Atlantis’s social structure. And this, once again, will make viewers familiar with LOST gasp.
1. The Origin of “The Good People”
According to Edgar Cayce, in the earliest period the Atlanteans were beings that existed almost purely as spirits, and they could maintain the most perfect resonance with God. They were pure and noble beings untouched by corruption. But later, some Atlanteans increasingly slid toward material desire. Atlantean society gradually divided into two factions that would remain opposed for a very long time.
Those who were not corrupted by material desire and still maintained a high spiritual resonance with God belonged to the “good” faction, called the “Sons of the Law of One” (Sons of Divine Law); those who became increasingly attached to material desire formed the “evil” faction, called the “Sons of Belial” (Sons of the Devil). The Sons of the Law of One and the Sons of Belial continued their open and covert struggle. The Sons of the Law of One upheld their original morality, kept their distance from material desire, and maintained a spiritually harmonious state with heaven. The Sons of Belial, meanwhile, extravagantly developed their original powers as tools for satisfying material desire.
Overall, it is not hard to see from Edgar Cayce’s description that, in their attitude toward their god and the original power through which they communicated with God, the Sons of the Law of One, representing “good,” valued “harmony,” while the Sons of Belial, representing “evil,” valued “development.”
Their struggle continued until Atlantis was destroyed, and Atlantis’s ultimate destruction was caused by the conflict between good and evil. I will explain that in more detail later.
—By now, you should have an idea what this brings to mind, right?
Starting in Season Two, the Others led by Ben kept emphasizing that they themselves were “the good people”! The subtext, of course, is that there must be a “bad faction” besides them. This clue finally became clear in Seasons Three and Four: in the Others’ eyes, the protagonists of LOST—the survivors of Flight 815—were never really enemies worth worrying about. What the Others had been carefully guarding against all along was a powerful force from off the island that had long coveted the island. At first, its advance force was Alvar Hanso and his Dharma Initiative. From the second half of Season Three onward, Charles Widmore gradually emerged as the new core of that off-island power.
Judging from what was revealed by the game LOST Experience and the novel-within-the-game Bad Twin, the Hanso and Widmore families had very close ties all along. For example, Alvar Hanso himself was a director of the Widmore Group. The actual plot of LOST contains similar clues: Charles Widmore participated in the auction of items related to the Hanso family’s Black Rock; and a painting hung in Widmore’s office featured “namaste,” the Dharma Initiative’s slogan, with its palms-together greeting.
All these clues suggest that the Widmore and Hanso families were really just different branches of the same interest group, each flourishing in different eras or circumstances. These people were the “evil ones” opposing the “good people” in Ben’s words.
From the history of good and evil battling in Atlantis to the main storyline of “good people” versus “evil people” in LOST, could this really be another coincidence?
In Atlantis, the Sons of the Law of One wanted to preserve spiritual harmony with God, while the Sons of Belial wanted to develop that power. In LOST, the Others seem to be protecting the island’s original ecology, while the Dharma Initiative of Hanso, Widmore, and the others are doing precisely what? Developing the island’s power. The behavior patterns of the Others, Widmore, and the rest match those of the ancient Atlantean Sons of the Law of One and Sons of Belial perfectly.
I believe the Sons of the Law of One and the Sons of Belial in Atlantis were the ancestors of the Others on the island today, and of Widmore and the others off the island. This is a struggle over Atlantis’s ultimate power that has continued from ancient times to the present.
2. The Possible Origin of the Smoke Monster
And now for something even more interesting:
Under the leadership of these two factions, what was life in Atlantean society like? According to Edgar Cayce, they did not live in families as modern people understand them, but in groups. These groups included priests, farmers, artists, and so on. And besides human beings, Edgar Cayce mentioned that there was also a nonhuman thing among them! This thing was an important source of labor for the group. Edgar Cayce called it “the thing” (things) or “a mere machine”!
And one of the biggest disputes between the Children of Divine Law and the Children of the Devil was how to treat and use these “pure machines.” On the eve of Atlantis’s second great catastrophe, the Children of the Devil believed they should treat “those things” as nothing but free labor and develop them further (exploit them), while the Children of Divine Law wanted to help them develop and grow. That dispute led to Atlantis’s second devastating catastrophe.
According to Wikipedia, Edgar Cayce said that these mysterious “pure machines” were creatures that were half human and half beast, but had low intelligence. Still, let’s imagine it ourselves: they were “things,” they could also be called “machines,” and yet they clearly had “intelligence.” Don’t those traits remind you of something in LOST that was always called the “Monster”?
Let’s take a moment to remember the various times the Black Smoke showed what it could do.
In most cases, the Black Smoke was carrying out the island’s will; Ben could summon it; and it also possessed a certain degree of intelligence—all of this suggests that the Black Smoke was the island’s loyal servant, working for the island and its spokesperson. The inspiration for LOST‘s Black Smoke most likely came from the “things” that had served Atlantis since ancient times.
If some tough soul has made it this far without collapsing, here’s the final blow.
Evidence Five: How Atlantis Was Destroyed
If the previous piece of evidence holds up, one question remains: in ancient times, both the Children of Divine Law and the Children of the Devil lived on Atlantis. So why, in the modern era, are only the Children of Divine Law still on the island, while the Children of the Devil were “exiled” outside it? The answer can be found precisely in the process that destroyed Atlantis.
According to Edgar Cayce, as time passed, Atlantis’s civilization and technology became more and more advanced—so advanced that they surpassed every civilization of the past, present, and future. Their technology should have been more advanced than ours today. They had not only spacecraft and submarines, but had even developed electronic equipment such as navigational devices and computers (the Children of the Devil were probably the ones pushing technological development). But how could such a powerful civilization ultimately be destroyed?
Unlike Plato’s earliest account, Cayce believed that Atlantis did not sink beneath the sea overnight, but was destroyed only after three great catastrophes.
1. The First Catastrophe
The first great catastrophe sounds completely absurd: Atlantis was invaded by “giant members of the animal kingdom.” And while using their knowledge to defend themselves against the invading animals, the Children of the Devil made a serious mistake, causing the animals to destroy the power of Spirit/God. What this clearly means is that the sacred crystal was damaged.
The result was that the continent of Atlantis split into five islands.
2. The Second Catastrophe
The spark that ignited the second catastrophe, long afterward, was the dispute I mentioned earlier between the Children of the Devil and the Children of Divine Law over how to treat “those things” (things). The precise course of this catastrophe is unclear, but it seems to have had something to do with the Children of the Devil continuing to abuse the knowledge and power of the sacred crystal. The result was that large amounts of land sank and the climate changed. After this catastrophe, the technology Atlantis retained was still quite impressive, but its former glory, from the previous two eras, was gone.
After this catastrophe, Atlantis’s land was reduced to a chain of islands, the largest few of which were called Poseidia, Aryan, and Og. So was the island in LOST one of them?
3. The Third Catastrophe and the Secret of the Swan Station
After the second catastrophe, the conflict between the Children of Divine Law and the Children of the Devil still hadn’t disappeared. The Children of the Devil remained busy figuring out how to satisfy their desires and fight for power. In the end, they caused Atlantis’s third catastrophe—the one that also brought Atlantis’s civilization to an end.
And the direct cause of the catastrophe was a massive explosion triggered when the crystal was charged beyond its capacity! (The final destruction was the overcharging of the crystal which caused a massive explosion.)
You know what that sounds like, right?!
Remember the Swan Station staff’s bizarre assignment? They had to release the electromagnetic charge at regular intervals. Now you can understand that strange assignment, right? There must have been a fragment of the sacred crystal discovered by the Dharma Initiative beneath the Swan Station! They placed the fragment at the bottom of the Swan hatch, where geothermal resources allowed it to keep absorbing geothermal heat and “charging,” so that it could continuously generate the island’s distinctive magnetic force for the Dharma Initiative to study. But if the excess electromagnetic charge wasn’t released regularly, the accumulating magnetic field would become too powerful and cause an explosion, endangering the Dharma Initiative’s other research projects. So they arranged for a team of researchers to release the excess electromagnetic charge on a schedule. If an accident prevented the equipment from releasing it, they would use manual means to release it all at once. What Dharma didn’t anticipate was that the magnetic storm caused by releasing the charge all at once also had a ferocious “side effect.” More on that later.
4. Atlantis’s Destruction and the Island’s First Move
The following passage’s description of the destruction is especially interesting:
Although the destruction came very suddenly, the Children of Divine Law who had retained their pure spiritual power and had not fallen had still predicted the catastrophe and arranged a “transportation to let those who were “permitted” leave! The Children of Divine Law also sealed Atlantis’s crystallized wisdom inside the “Sphinx” and activated some kind of safeguard to ensure that the wisdom inside would not be accessed for thousands of years, until the right moment arrived.
Atlantis’s islands vanished overnight, and then came “transportation”—what do these descriptions make you think of?
The Island’s Movement
After watching the episode in which Locke met Christian, the spokesperson for Jacob, in Season 4, I was really curious how the writers had come up with the idea that the island could move. Later, after I analyzed the connection between the island and Atlantis, it suddenly clicked—the moment the island moves, from the perspective of people standing at its edge, the island simply vanishes.
If the remaining islands of Atlantis had moved like this thousands of years ago, then to the people of other countries along the Mediterranean coast, Atlantis would have vanished overnight. How could they explain such an unbelievable phenomenon? There was no other way: they could only explain it by saying Atlantis had sunk beneath the sea in an earthquake! And that is the truth behind Atlantis’s “vanishing overnight.” Atlantis didn’t vanish; it moved somewhere else!
Actually, here I have been reasoning backward from LOST to Atlantis. In reality, it should be the other way around: the writers of LOST got the idea that the island could move from Atlantis’s “vanishing overnight.”
So what happened before the island moved? Did the Children of Divine Law choose to allow some people to “leave” Atlantis? Obviously not. In fact, the opposite happened: the Children of Divine Law “permitted” some “good people” to “transport” together with the island!
Based on my analysis earlier, this was the island’s first transportation! This time, it moved from its original location in the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Ocean, and only the two small islands that still exist today successfully made the move. The other parts of the Atlantean island chain were destroyed in the massive explosion caused by the sacred crystal being overcharged during the third catastrophe.
At the critical moment of the catastrophe, the Children of Divine Law and the “good people” they had chosen may have obtained part of the sacred crystal, used its power to teleport themselves and Atlantis’s two islands, and then used that fragment’s power to create a magnetic field that twisted space-time around the last remaining land of Atlantis. It formed an impossibly powerful barrier that permanently shut out the threat from the Children of the Devil.
And the Children of the Devil and their followers who survived the third catastrophe discovered that they could no longer find the last homeland that had vanished in an instant. This is why, in the present day, the good people are inside the island and the evil people are outside it.
5. The Fate of the Children of the Devil
Afterward, the Children of the Devil colonized Egypt and the Americas. They continued Atlantis’s civilization while trying to find their lost homeland again. They modeled their pyramids on the temples in their homeland that housed the sacred crystal, hoping to reestablish a connection with the motherland—this is, of course, my guess. But I would bet myself one whole yuan that the temple Ben mentioned so many times in LOST was pyramid-shaped, and that it was the source of the pyramids in Egypt and the Americas! The temple also housed the largest remaining fragment of the sacred crystal from the island.
The Children of the Devil had originally enjoyed lifespans of several hundred years, or even immortality, under the sacred crystal’s rejuvenating protection. They found it hard to accept their sharply shortened lives after leaving their homeland, so they ordered their subjects to preserve their bodies after death and place them in a “copycat” temple—the pyramids—where they might once again establish a connection with the sacred crystal in a temple that resonated with the homeland’s “original.” They hoped that one day the power of the sacred crystal would descend upon the temple, revive them, and give them eternal life once more—this is the origin of mummies! This is also my guess, of course, but I think it lets us connect even more history to the story. I can’t imagine the writers of LOST passing up such a fun opportunity.
At this point, I’ve basically laid out all the evidence that the island is the last remaining piece of Atlantis. I believe you’ve collapsed several times by now. Anyone still standing, I challenge you to a one-on-one!
Jacob and Thoth—the Left Hand of Light and the Right Hand of Darkness
Finally, let’s go back and take another look at the Egyptian god of wisdom mentioned earlier, the high priest of Atlantis—where did Thoth actually come from? Combining that with the account of Atlantis’s destruction I laid out earlier, it isn’t hard to conclude that Thoth was the spiritual leader of the Children of the Devil.
Before Atlantis was destroyed, Thoth was very likely a high priest responsible for using the power of the sacred crystal to keep the Children of the Devil young forever. From the descriptions above, we can clearly see that the sacred crystal was something controlled through spiritual power. Those who could establish the strongest spiritual connection with the sacred crystal would naturally become spiritual leaders, and would inevitably rise to the top of Atlantis’s power structure. Those people were the high priests. I imagine that both the Children of Divine Law and the Children of Light had their own high priest. If Thoth was the high priest of the Children of the Devil, then who was the high priest of the Children of Divine Law?
It was very likely Jacob! (Many people speculate that Jacob might have been the captain of the Black Rock and Alvar Hanso’s grandfather. I am certain that’s wrong. If Jacob were Hanso, wouldn’t the conflict between Dharma and the indigenous people basically be a grandfather fighting his grandson?)
As I said earlier, the original Atlanteans were beings that were almost pure spirit, which fits Jacob’s qualities as a restless spirit tied to the island extremely well. In addition, the island’s power clearly had to be expressed through Jacob—or, put another way, their powers had already merged into one. So Jacob was also someone capable of establishing the strongest spiritual connection with the sacred crystal, which fits perfectly. And besides, Atlanteans naturally had extremely long lifespans. As the leader of the Children of Divine Law, whose spiritual power was the strongest, it is entirely possible that he has lived all the way to the present day.
So Jacob and Thoth were the island’s left hand of light and right hand of darkness. They were the spiritual pillars and sources of power for the Children of Divine Law and the Children of the Devil respectively, and they presided over this prehistoric war.
After the destruction of Atlantis, the surviving Thoth led the Children of the Devil away from Atlantis with a fragment of the divine crystal and colonized Egypt. Unfortunately, once it left the island, the divine crystal lost its original mystical power. Even the great temples he built in Egypt, modeled after the one that housed the crystal, were of no use. And so the path to immortality he had once possessed gradually became an eternally unreachable fantasy for alchemists.
Let’s take another look at that four-toed statue. It must depict a great figure from the history of Atlantis. And it seems the statue was damaged during the third cataclysm. So it was probably either Jacob or Thoth.
The reason to think it was Thoth is this: if the statue were Jacob, and the Children of Divine Law had occupied the island all these thousands of years, why wouldn’t they have repaired it? So it could have been Thoth—if it was a statue of the enemy’s leader, they could simply let it fall into ruin. But it’s also possible that, before the third cataclysm, the Children of Divine Law sealed away Atlantis’s knowledge, causing the island’s technology and civilization to decline dramatically afterward. They simply lacked the power to restore what remained of the ancient civilization. So for now, we still can’t determine whether this statue represented the left hand of light or the right hand of darkness.
After the two small islands of Atlantis carrying the Children of Divine Law disappeared, this prehistoric war finally came to an end.
And after thousands of years of silence, the god of fate played a huge joke on Atlantis.
A merchant ship accidentally sailed into this lost paradise, forgotten for thousands of years. And the owner of the ship turned out to be a descendant of the Children of the Devil! After wandering the mortal world for thousands of years, the Children of the Devil had finally found the key lost for a millennium and reopened the sealed gates of their ancestral homeland.
A war that had lain silent for thousands of years was about to burst back into flames!
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