Lewis Spence

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James Lewis Thomas Chalmbers Spence (born November 25, 1874 in Forfarshire , Scotland , † March 3, 1955 ) was a Scottish journalist , writer and mythologist who has earned merit as a collector of Scottish folklore . He is also remembered as a poet and researcher of the occult and above all through his various books on the subject of Atlantis . Spence was a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland and was a temporary Vice President of the Scottish Anthropological and Folklore Society . He earned a D. Lit. (Doctor of Letters) and in 1951 was awarded a royal pension for his services to literature.

life and work

The grave of Lewis Spence in Dean Cemetery near Edinburgh

After graduating from Edinburgh University , Lewis Spence pursued a career as a journalist. In 1899 he married Helen Bruce. He worked as an editor for The Scotsman (1899-1906), next to The Edinburgh Magazine (1904-1905), and finally for The British Weekly (1906-1909). During this time his interest was stimulated by the myths and folklore of Mexico and the rest of Central America , which was particularly evident in his popular version of the holy book of the Quiché Maya , Popol Vuh , published in 1908. He also compiled a dictionary of mythology ( Dictionary of Mythology , 1910). Subsequently, his interest initially turned more to the culture of his homeland by studying the folklore of Scotland. As an avowed Scottish nationalist, he tried to win a seat in parliament in 1929 in a by-election in the constituency of Midlothian and Peebles Northern, without success .

Spence also wrote romantic poems that were collected and edited in 1953. As early as 1905 he had written about the British rites and traditions in the mysteries of Celtic Britain. In this book, Spence et al. a. theorized that the original British were descendants of residents of North Africa and were certainly Berber and Basque races.

His book Occult Causes of the Present War (1940), in which he a. a. a " satanic [s] element in Nazism " stated, was one of the first publications dealing with occult aspects of Nazism involved. During his long career as a writer, Spence published more than 40 books, some of which have been reprinted to this day. In addition, he was the founder of the Scottish National Movement , which later became the National Party of Scotland , which in turn led to the Scottish National Party , which still exists today .

Lewis Spence and Atlantis

Spence's early studies of the mythology and culture of the New World as well as his investigations into the cultural origins of Western Europe and western North Africa also led him to study the Atlantis problem. From 1924 he published a number of books over the following decades, with which he a. a. tried without much success to help this subject, which had fallen into disrepute in university research, to regain a certain reputation, whereas with them he exerted some influence on contemporary and later Atlantis research. On this topic he also published the magazine Atlantis Quarterly .

Spence intervened in the development of his interdisciplinary based Atlantis theory u. a. Ignatius Donnelly's ideas , which he developed further against the background of more recent scientific discoveries, eliminating most of the historical or scientific unreliability from the Platonic account. So he came z. B. on the assessment that the war between Athens and Atlantis mentioned by Plato is probably a fiction, and the metallurgical descriptions in the Atlantis report are not tenable, " since metals were only in use thousands of years after the disappearance of Atlantis came . "

In addition to Robert Benjamin Stacy-Judd , Lewis Spence was one of the first well-known authors to explicitly associate the mythical-legendary Atlantean culture with the culturally high, late-glacial 'Stone Age people' of Cro-Magnon , whose place of origin he considered Atlantis. From there these cro-magnoid Atlanteans are said to have immigrated to Europe and North Africa in three waves - that of Aurignacia , Magdalenian and Azilien . From a geological point of view, he viewed Atlantis as an enormous, central Atlantic land mass, whose continental character remained intact into the Miocene - an idea that was still debatable at the time, but is now considered geologically untenable. Towards the end of this period, due to volcanic and other events, the disintegration of this continent began.

According to Spence, larger and smaller islands and archipelagos should have emerged in the course of this disintegration . The two largest continental relics - Atlantis and Antillia - would have been a relatively short distance from the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea and in the area of ​​what is now the West Indies . These two large islands and a chain of islands connecting them would have existed until the Pleistocene . Finally, about 25,000 years ago, the decay of the rest of Atlantis began, which began about 10,000 years BC. BC found its catastrophic conclusion. Antillia still exists fragmentarily in the form of the Antilles group or the West Indies.

The Atlanteans, who left their cultural traces east and west of the Atlantic, should not, in Spence's view, have been the only highly developed culture of prehistoric times. Based on his studies of (circum-) Pacific myths and legends, he was convinced that a comparable primordial culture residing on now-sunken stretches of land also existed in the 'Pacific Ocean', although he did not, like James Churchward, in this context , spoke of ' Mu ' but - without any reference to theosophical teachings - of ' Lemuria '. He devoted himself extensively to this topic in his 1932 book "The Problem of Lemuria".

Works (selection)

Ancient Britain
occultism
  • An Encyclopaedia of Occultism: A compendium of information on the occult sciences, occult personalities, psychic science, magic, demonology, spiritism and mysticism, (1920, Reprinted 2003) Dover Publications, ISBN 0-486-42613-0
  • Occult Causes of the Present War, (1940, Reprint 1997) Kessinger Publishing, ISBN 0-7661-0051-0
  • Second Sight: Its History and Origins, Rider 1951
Atlantis and other lost cultures
  • The Problem of Atlantis, London, 1924 [8]
  • Atlantis in America, London: Ernest Benn, 1925
  • The History of Atlantis (1927, Reprinted 1995) Adventures Unlimited Press, ISBN 0-932813-28-3
  • The Occult Sciences in Atlantis, (Reprinted 1976) Mokelumne Hill Press, ISBN 0-7873-1292-4
  • The Problem of Lemuria: The Sunken Continent of the Pacific, London: Rider & Co., 1932
  • Will Europe follow Atlantis ?, London, 1942
mythology
  • The Popul Vuh: The Mythic and Heroic Sagas of the Kiches of Central America, London, David Nutt, 1908
  • A Dictionary of Mythology, 1910
  • The Myths of Mexico and Peru (1914, Reprinted 1976) Longwood, ISBN 0-89341-031-4
  • The Myths of the North American Indians, London: George G. Harrap & Co, 1914
  • Myths and Legends of Babylonia and Assyria (New York: Stokes) 1917; (Reprint 1997) Kessinger Publishing, ISBN 1-56459-500-5
  • The Legends and Romances of Spain ca.1920
  • An Introduction to Mythology George G. Harrap & Co., 1921
  • The Gods of Mexico, Fisher Unwin Ltd., 1923
  • The Mysteries of Egypt, or, The Secret Rites and Traditions of the Nile, 1929
  • The Magic and Mysteries of Mexico, 1932
  • Legends and Romances of Brittany, 1917
  • The Minor Traditions of British Mythology, 1948, London: Rider & Co ISBN 978-0-405-08989-3 , Reprinted 1972, Benjamin Blom, Inc ISBN 0-405-08989-9
  • The Outlines of Mythology, 1944
  • British Fairy Origins: The Genesis and Development of Fairy Legends in British Tradition, London: Watts & Co., 1946
  • Fairy Tradition in Britain, (1948, Reprint 1997) Kessinger Publishing ISBN 1-56459-516-1
  • Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine
  • Ancient Egyptian Myths and Legends, (Reprint 1990) Dover, ISBN 0-486-26525-0
  • Scottish Ghosts and Goblins, 1952
Poems
  • Collected Poems of Lewis Spence, 1953

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Shepard, Leslie A. Eds., Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology , 3rd Edition, Detroit (Gale Research, Inc.), 1991, pp. 1571-1572; according to: themystica.com, under: Spence, Lewis (1874-1955) (accessed: May 27, 2013)
  2. ↑ Lewis Spence, The Mysteries of Britain , Health Research Books, 1996, p. 21. For a partial and nuanced confirmation of Spence's assumptions in this regard by modern genetics, see: Bryan Sykes , Blood of the Isles - Exploring the Genetic Roots of Our Tribal History , Bantam, ISBN 0-593-05652-3 , 2006
  3. ↑ Lewis Spence, Occult Causes of the Present War , London, 1940, pp. 12-21
  4. ↑ Lyon Sprague de Camp , Sunken Continents - From Atlantis, Lemuria and Other Lost Civilizations , Heyne, 1975
  5. ↑ ibid.
  6. ↑ Lewis Spence, The History of Atlantis 1927, pp. 75 ff. (Reprint: 1995 by Adventures Unlimited Press, ISBN 0-932813-28-3 )
  7. ↑ Lyon Sprague de Camp, op. Cit .
  8. ^ Lewis Spence, The Problem of Atlantis , London (William Rider & Son), 1924, pp. 23 ff.
  9. ↑ Lyon Sprague de Camp, op. Cit .
  10. ^ Lewis Spence, The Problem of Lemuria: The Sunken Continent of the Pacific , London (Rider & Co), 1932
personal data
SURNAME Spence, Lewis
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Spence, James Lewis Thomas Chalmbers
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Scottish publicist
DATE OF BIRTH November 25, 1874
PLACE OF BIRTH Forfarshire , Scotland
DATE OF DEATH March 3, 1955