From the book
Ancient Mystic Oriental Masonry
R. Swinburne Clymer · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordAtlantis and America form competing or overlapping settings for the book’s account of a prehistoric source of sacred wisdom.
- In Ancient Mystic Oriental MasonryOne passage makes America the center of the prehistoric past and associates it with Atlantis; another uses the biblical Flood and later voyages to account for American settlement.
- In this editionAmerica is the source’s broad geographical designation.
- A place to readM.9: … “the constellations, those immovably and perpetually fastened upon America are reached, it will appear that, while” …
Meaning
Atlantis and America form competing or overlapping settings for the book’s account of a prehistoric source of sacred wisdom.
Use in the book
One passage makes America the center of the prehistoric past and associates it with Atlantis; another uses the biblical Flood and later voyages to account for American settlement. The transmission narrative places esoteric teaching first in Atlantis and then in Egypt. Elsewhere, similar generative symbols are allowed a separate and independent origin in different peoples. The book thus preserves more than one explanation of resemblance.
Places to read
- Mystic Masonry · Block 9… “the constellations, those immovably and perpetually fastened upon America are reached, it will appear that, while all that is sublime in the historic past centers upon Egypt, all that is sublime” …
- Mystic Masonry · Block 11“11. "America was evidently peopled from the old continent, because there were only eight persons saved at the Deluge; the principal part of their posterity, during the whole of the first” …
- Foundations of Mystic Masonry · Block 75… “can see that the esoteric teachings which in Atlantis first, then in Egypt, in Persia, and in Greece, were kept from the ears of an illiterate multitude precisely because it was” …
- Masonic Symbolism · Block 140… “none more clearly than in those of Central America, thus proving not only the wide extent of the doctrine, but also a separate and independent origin, springing from those innate principles” …
In this edition
America is the source’s broad geographical designation. Atlantis is retained as part of the proposed sacred history, without being presented as a verified archaeological place.
Reading the argument
These accounts should not be forced into a consistent archaeological history. They reveal the author’s and his sources’ efforts to explain universality. A symbolic parallel, a conjectured migration, and an asserted primordial homeland are distinct kinds of claim.
Atlantis
“Atlantis” — 12 occurrences in 11 text blocks: M.7, 9–10, 36, 54; F.75, 80–81; S.27, 35, 151.
America
“America” — 26 occurrences in 13 text blocks: M.4–11, 14, 27; S.103, 140; R.13.
American
“American” — 3 occurrences in 3 text blocks: Ded.1; M.8; N.184.
prehistoric
“prehistoric” — 4 occurrences in 2 text blocks: I.15; M.9.