THE AIRSHIPS FROM ATLANTIS
THEO PAIJMANS finds a surprising early example of a fortean coinage in a Victorian precursor of TheFly.
“The salons of the great airships had libraries, musical instruments, and potted plants, amongst the flowers of which birds darted about...”
The history of aviation is in error, a group of English savants concluded in 1908. When the scholars translated theVedas into English, they stumbled across numerous references to Atlantis – “a very advanced civilisation”, according to the text – but they also found descriptions of a flying machine resembling the most advanced models of that time. 1 Just the year before, an inventor had published a book in Bombay containing plans for an aeroplane derived from the Vedas. His name was Shivkar Bapuji Talpade and, so the story goes, he built an unmanned aeroplane around 1890 that he successfully flew in 1895. Talpade was also a scholar of Sanskrit literature and the Vedas, and his study of these ancient texts had led him to his aeronautical invention. 2
Some claim that Talpade constructed his plane under the guidance of a mystic named Pandit Subbaraya Shastry. Shastry was the author of the
Vaimanika Shastra, a Sanskrit text he obtained through channelling and automatic writing. It claimed that the vimanas in the ancient Sanskrit texts were advanced flying devices. In 1974 a team of scientists at Bangalore’s Institute of Science concluded that the Vaimanika Shastra was written somewhere between 1900 and 1922, and that rather than containing blueprints and advanced designs of ancient flying machines it was a hodgepodge of unworkable ideas. 3 Talpade’s invention too slipped into the mists of history. Some say he sold it, others that he lost interest after his wife had died.
Notwithstanding the controversial origin of the Vaimanika Shastra, it belongs to a larger canon of channelled stories about fabulous airships from a dim past, in an alternative universe where the kingdom of Atlantis is seen as more than myth. The trend started with theosophy: Madame Blavatsky, for instance, briefly mentions balloons with devastating death rays. According to her they were described in “instructions found in the Ashtar Vidya”. 4
Theosophist William ScottElliot described the Atlantean airships in more detail in his
The Story of Atlantis (1896). He had received this knowledge by astral clairvoyance, as was explained in the preface. His Atlantean airships resemble decked-over boats, for “when at full speed it could not have been convenient, even if safe, for any on board to remain on the upper deck. Their propelling and steering gear could be brought into use at either end.” They flew with
vril or through some other force. Their construction was a costly affair, so that the use of these wonderful machines was limited to the Atlantean higher classes. The airships grew in size towards the end of Atlantis with its wars and uproars: “… battleships that could navigate the air had to a great extent replaced the battleships at sea – having naturally proved far more powerful engines of destruction. These were constructed to carry as many as 50, and in some cases even up to 100 fighting men.”
The earlier ‘air-boats’ were constructed out of wood, “the boards used being exceedingly thin, but the injection of some substance which did not add materially to the weight, while it gave leatherlike toughness, provided the necessary combination of lightless and strength.” Later ones were constructed out of an aluminium-like alloy that was even lighter in weight. “Over the rough framework of the air-boat was extended a large sheet of this metal which was then beaten into shape and electrically welded when necessary. But whether built of metal or wood their outside surface was apparently seamless and perfectly smooth, and they shone in the dark as if coated with luminous paint.” 5
A book that in some quarters has lost nothing of its lustre should have preceded ScottElliott’s astral visions, except
that between the time of writing and actual publication lay almost 20 years. A Dweller
in Two Planets was completed in 1886 but only published in 1905. It was dictated by ‘a spirit’ to 17-year-old Frederick S Oliver, who never saw its publication, as he died in 1899. The detailed descriptions of the technology of Atlantis still make for interesting reading. The most prominent landmark of the Atlantean capital Caiphul, for instance, was a giant tower of pure aluminium, soaring nearly 3,000ft above sea level. The city itself drew its energy from the sea, while crystal tubes lit the Atlantean habitats with a continuous light derived from the ‘Night-Side forces’. The Atlanteans travelled around by a network of monorails and had wireless Internet: “The conveyance of images of light, pictures of forms, as well as of sound and of heat, just as the telephone thou knowest so well conveys images of sound, only in Poseid no wires or other sensible material connection was required in the use, at whatever distance, of either telephones or telephotes, nor even in clairvoyance, that is, heat-conduction.”
The Atlanteans also used submarines, but their greatest invention was the cigar-shaped airships, called vailxa: “The salons of the great passenger vailxa had libraries, musical instruments, and potted plants, amongst the flowers of which birds similar to the modern domestic canary darted about”. The principle of propulsion was “the ‘repulsion by levitation’… It meant aerial navigation without wings or unwieldy gas-reservoirs...” The book even features an intriguing illustration of such a magnificent airship in flight.
In 1908, a child spirit named Jonathan told nine-year-old ‘Laurie’ about Atlantis and its airships. In this version, the Atlanteans had many different aerial machines with which they flew high over the sea, as the spirit-child related in a chapter devoted entirely to these airships. The machines were propelled by ‘Scear-force’ that was also used in lamps. From the age of two, Atlantean children were taught about the use of Scear-force to power airships, first on the ground, in the form of small automobiles, or on the water. The airships had both propellers and blades. There were different types of airships, bladder-like affairs three of four times the size of current balloons, with boatshaped carriages hanging beneath them, and metal propellers at both ends. These vast balloons were filled with Scear-force. Another airship resembled a pair of spread wings, 20-30ft long, with a square house or box in the middle. The ‘house’ was divided into two parts, one containing the machinery, the other the passengers. This ‘bird-machine’ could reach extremely high altitudes. The Atlanteans also had an ‘arrow-machine’ with a tubular gasbag. 7
Other authors had different ideas. No gasbags, balloons, flying boats or cigar-shaped airships flew over Atlantis, according to J Ben Leslie, who insisted that giant replicas of Atlantean eagles were the norm. In his behemoth of a tome entitled Atlantis Restored (1911, and numbering some 800 pages) Leslie solemnly declared that no less than four Atlantean spirits, one of them named Alem Prolex, had assisted him. Like Olivier, who had already explained that ordinary ships became obsolete with the advent of the airship, Leslie writes that the Atlanteans “generally preferred aerial navigation to that of water, and but a few water craft were used for the accommodation of passengers on the local waters…” These boats were propelled by what Leslie terms an “electric force”. Like Olivier, Leslie had obtained his visions many years before they saw publication in book form. All the detail on the Atlantean airships, for instance, “was given us by Yer-mah in 1893, and the balance in 1904, when we revised the article. It will thus be seen that we have in no way been influenced by the later development of aviators,” Leslie assures the reader.
Leslie’s Atlantean airships are quite different from ScottElliot’s oval craft, Olivier’s cigar-shaped vailxa, Shastry’s Vimanas or Jonathan’s multitude of forms. Named ‘Telta Aeta’, they were constructed from “a model in representation of the Delis, or large Atlantean Eagle, and in exact mathematical proportions, though many times larger, in accord with the utility to which it was to be placed. The exact form and symmetry of the Delis were maintained. The legs and feet were used for rests when not in motion. The wings, when in motion, were operated by machinery, with a motive force of electricity, of which there was a constant supply, as it was drawn direct from the atmosphere. This not only kept the Telta Aeta afloat on the air, but was also the means by which it was heated and lighted. The wings not only propelled the Telta Aeta through space, but were also the means by which it was guided. In its body, near the top, were compartments and saloons for passengers. Underneath and centrally, on the bottom, was a portion of the electric machinery, while the finer and more intricate parts had place in the wings, the former and the latter having respective electric connection. At the sides were storerooms for baggage or light freight.”
The airships were constructed from a light metal, “similar in appearance to modern aluminium, strong, impenetrable and possessing a great magnetic force, which virtues were exalted by low, and diminished by high temperature; hence, a material capable, in itself, of any temperature. This material was obtained by the action of sodium on the sesquichloride of chromium, as prepared by the Atlanteans. It could not be oxidised by air, and was of such specific gravity that it was not much heavier.”
The 19th century obsession with Atlantis had started with Ignatius L Donnelly’s immensely successful Atlantis, the Antediluvian World (1882). This nostalgia for a lost Golden Age of mankind, when man rose from barbarity to civilisation, was ignited at the same time that many aviation pioneers were trying to master powered flight. Since Atlantis had been a more highly developed civilisation than our own, it would clearly have accomplished what we at the time still had not. The descriptions of the Atlantean airships share a common denominator: had they been built according to these channelled instructions and descriptions, none of them would have actually flown, the vimanas included. The Atlantean airships mostly resemble their 19th century experimental counterparts, with a pinch of wishful conjecture added here or there. Whether tubular bags filled with exotic gases, carriages hanging beneath them, or contraptions with wings like Lilienthal gliders, the fabulous Atlantean vessels were echoes of the shapes and forms we were experimenting with at the time.
But with new times came new interpretations. In 1923, when aviation had made tremendous leaps forward, a newspaper mentioned that: “There has just been brought to light in an ancient manuscript the statement that Solomon gave to the queen of Sheba ‘a vessel wherein one could traverse the air (or winds) which Solomon had made by the wisdom that God has given unto him’.” The statement was taken from the preface by Col. Lockwood Marsh, secretary of the Royal Aeronautical Society of England, who referred to an ancient Abyssinian manuscript entitled ‘The Glory of the Kings’, translated by Wallis E Budge. “This ancient manuscript has, of course, been translated many times, Col. Lockwood Marsh told the
Westminster Gazette, “but the statement about Solomon’s airship apparently escaped the notion of the reviewers, and it has been left to a flying enthusiast like myself to discover and proclaim it.” 9