About Khalid Farhan

I am nobody,nothing. It is just a fun but i tried to be informative.So,i guess you will find a lot of info here and totally free...
                  Khalid Farhan

Twilight In Edward's Point Of View & the Nine Pics

Unless you are living under a rock, you already know that Twilight Saga by Stephanie Meyer has been written in Bella Swan/Bella Cullen's point of view. 
After the release of the last book, Breaking Dawn, Stephanie decided to write the first book, Twilight in Edward Cullen's point of view. So that, the fans can understand Edward's character, his thoughts & his feelings, just like we understood Bella's. 
But the Midnight Sun's partial draft was illegally posted on internet. After that, Stephanie stopped the project & published the first 12 chapters on her official site. 
Good news is, Stephanie has restared her Midnight Sun project & hopes to finish it soon. 

Read The First 12 chapter(you need the Adobe Reader): 
http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/pdf/midnightsun_partial_draft4.pdf 

Cover Samples: 

this one was designed by Stephanie herself

this one is just so ... lame

my fav one
this should be the cover

Twilight Dominates The MTV Movie Awards '09 + The Full Official Trailer Of Twilight

Twilight Won Five Awards At The MTV Movie Awards '09!

She wore Converse at red carpet ... loved it.

Best Female Performence
Kristen Stewart - Twilight
Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13fUjuQ3QP0

& he wore nike snickers! these two pals really match!

Breakthrough Performance Male
Robert Pattinson - Twilight
Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u3XJDeFZck

rob wanted to.. kris saved it for the backstage!

Best Kiss
Kristen Stewart & Robert Pattinson - Twilight
Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70rFTh1eTUY

Best Fight
Robert Pattinson vs. Cam Gigandet - Twilight
Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TsgjNd6kJg

Kristen is trying chew a metal popcorn, Rob seems entertained by that.

Best Movie
Twilight
Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibvPx7R1bgg

Other Awards

Best Song In A movie
"The Climb" by Miley Cyrus - Hannah Montana: The Movie
Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zWy0CNgBDo

Best Male Performance
Zac Efron - High School Musical 3: Senior Year

Breakthrough Performance Female
Ashley Tisdale - High School Musical 3: Senior Year

Best Comedic Performance
Jim Carrey - Yes Man

Best Villain
Heath Ledger - The Dark Knight 

Best WTF Moment
Amy Poehler - Baby Mama, "Peeing In the Sink"

MTV Generation Award
Ben Stiller

World Premiere of New Moon Trailer
Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0woJ7R45Hc

Other Attractions(!)
Michael Bay (Introduced a sneak peek of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen))
Bradley Cooper (Introduced Eminem)
Megan Fox (Introduced a sneak peek of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen)
Rupert Grint (Introduced a sneak peek of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince)
Ed Helms (Introduced Eminem)
Taylor Lautner (Introduced a sneak peek of New Moon)
Danny McBride (Presented Best Comedic Performance)
Robert Pattinson (Introduced a sneak peek of New Moon)
Daniel Radcliffe (Introduced a sneak peek of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince)
Kristen Stewart (Introduced a sneak peek of New Moon)
Emma Watson (Introduced a sneak peek of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince)

Twilight Saga : The 2nd & 3rd Movie

Twilight fans! 

The 2nd Movie 'New Moon' will be out on November, '09 ! 

& the filming of the 3rd one 'Eclipse' will start in August '09 which will be released in 2010 ! 

Bio: Edward Cullen

click here for official New Moon Wallpapers:http://robsten.wetpaint.com/photos/album/124725/New+Moon+Official+Wallpapers 

Bio: Bella Swan

click here for New Moon Movie Stills :http://robsten.wetpaint.com/photos/album/124810/New+Moon+Official+Website+Images 

New Moon Special Edition Book Cover

New Moon Official Poster

Twilight Fans! NEW 'New Moon' Pics + The Evil Vampires, Volturi

Edward Cullen & Bella Swan

The Volturi

Alice+Jasper & Bella+Edward

Click Here For More Photos:
http://robsten.wetpaint.com/photos/albums

Quick Download Link: New Moon

Quick Download Link: New Moon Opens on Nov 20th. Last look at the exclusive
clips, behind the scenes footages & Trailers (15 Videos)
The link:

http://www.everglowmedia.net/videos/index.php?cat=18

White Horse Mythology

There are so many mythological entities onWhite Horses in different books of different cultures. In fact, White horses (which are rarer than other colors of horse) have a special significance in themythologies of cultures around the world. They are often associated with the sun chariot, with warrior-heroes, with fertility (in both mare and stallion manifestations), or with an end-of-time savior, but other interpretations exist as well.


Both truly white horses and the more common grey horses, with completely white hair coats, were identified as "white" by various religious and cultural traditions.

Portrayal in myth

From earliest times white horses are mythologized as possessing exceptional properties, transcending the normal world by having wings (e.g. Pegasus from Greek mythology), or having horns (the unicorn). As part of its legendary dimension, the white horse in myth may be depicted with seven heads (Uchaishravas), eight feet (Sleipnir), sometimes in groups or singly. There are also white horses which are divinatory, who prophesy or warn of danger.

As a rare or distinguished symbol, a white horse typically bears the hero- or god-figure in ceremonial roles or in triumph over negative forces. Herodotus reported that white horses were held as sacred animals in the Achaemenid court of Xerxes the Great (ruled 486-465 BC), while in other traditions the reverse happens when it was sacrificed to the gods.

In more than one tradition, the white horse carries patron saints or the world savior in the end times (Islam and Hinduism), is associated with the sun or sun chariot (Ossetia) or bursts into existence in a fantastic way, emerging from the sea or a lightning bolt.

Though some mythologies are stories from earliest beliefs, other tales, though visionary or metaphorical, are found in liturgical sources as part of preserved, on-going traditions (see for example, "Iranian tradition" below).


Mythologies and traditions

In Celtic mythology, Rhiannon, a mythic figure in the Mabinogion collection of legends, rides a "pale-white" horse. Because of this, she has been linked to the Romano-Celtic fertility horse goddess Epona and other instances of the veneration of horses in early Indo-European culture.

White horses are the most common type of hill figure in England. Though many are modern, the Uffington White Horse at least dates back to the Bronze Age.

In Scottish folklore, the kelpie or each uisge, a deadly supernatural water demon in the shape of a horse, is sometimes described as white, though other stories say it is black.

In Greek mythology, the white winged horse Pegasus was the son of Poseidon, in Poseidon's role as horse-god.

Copper engraving of Kalki from the late 18th century..‎White horses appear many times in Hindu mythology. The Vedic horse sacrifice or Ashvamedha was a fertility and kingship ritual involving the sacrifice of a sacred gray or white stallion. Similar rituals may have taken place among Roman, Celtic and Norse peoples, but the descriptions are not so complete.

In the Puranas, one of the precious objects that emerged while the devas and demons were churning the milky ocean was Uchaishravas, a snow-white horse with seven heads. (A white horse of the sun is sometimes also mentioned as emerging separately). Uchaishravas was at times ridden by Indra, lord of the devas. Indra is depicted as having a liking for white horses in several legends - he often steals the sacrificial horse to the consternation of all involved, such as in the story of Sagara, or the story of King Prithu.

The chariot of the solar deity Surya is drawn by seven horses, alternately described as all white, or as the colors of the rainbow.

Hayagriva the avatar of Vishnu is worshipped as the God of knowledge and wisdom, with a human body and a horse's head, brilliant white in color, with white garments and seated on a white lotus.

And Kalki the tenth incarnation of Vishnu and final world savior, is predicted to appear riding a white horse, or in the form of a white horse.

Learn about Windows Processes & Services: svchost.exe

What is svchost.exe and why is it running: You are no doubt reading this article because you are wondering why on earth there are nearly a dozen processes running with the name svchost.exe. You can't kill them, and you don't remember starting them… so what are they? According to Microsoft: "svchost.exe is a generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries". Could we have that in english please? Yes, some time ago, Microsoft started moving all of the functionality from internal Windows services into .dll files instead ofexe files. From a programming perspective this makes more sense for reusability… but the problem is that you can't launch a .dll file directly from Windows, it has to be loaded up from a running executable (.exe). Thus the svchost.exe process was born. 

Why are there so many svchost.exes running: If you've ever taken a look at the Services section in control panel you might notice that there are a lot of services required by Windows. If every single service ran under a single svchost.exe instance, a failure in one might bring down all of Windows… so they are separated out. Those services are organized into logical groups, and then a single svchost.exe instance is created for each group. For instance, one svchost.exe instance runs the 3 services related to the firewall. Another svchost.exe instance might run all the services related to the user interface, and so on.

So what can i do about it: You can trim down unneeded services by disabling or stopping the services that don't absolutely need to be running. Additionally, if you are noticing very heavy CPU usage on a single svchost.exe instance you can restart the services running under that instance. The biggest problem is identifying what services are being run on a particular svchost.exe
instance… we'll cover that below. If you are curious what we're talking about, just open up Task Manager and check the "Show processes from all users" box:

Checking From the Command Line (Vista or XP)
If you want to see what services are being hosted by a particular svchost.exe instance, you can use the tasklist command from the command prompt in order to see the list of services.

tasklist /SVC

The problem with using the command line method is that you don't necessarily know what these cryptic names refer to.

Checking in Task Manager in Vista: You can right-click on a particular svchost.exe process, and then choose the "Go to Service" option. This will flip over to the Services tab, where the services running under that svchost.exe process will be selected. The great thing about doing it this way is that you can see the real name under the Description column, so you can choose to disable the service if you don't want it running.

Using Process Explorer in Vista or XP: You can use the excellent Process Explorer utility from Microsoft/Sysinternals to see what services are running as a part of a svchost.exe process. Hovering your mouse over one of the processes will show you a popup list of all the services: Or you can double-click on a svchost.exe instance and select the Services tab, where you can choose to stop one of the services if you choose.

Disabling Services: Open up Services from the administrative tools section of Control Panel, or type services.msc into the start menu search or run box. Find the service in the list that you'd like to disable, and either double-click on it or right-click and choose Properties. Change the Startup Type to Disabled, and then click the Stop button to immediately stop it.

You could also use the command prompt to disable the service if you choose. In this command "trkwks" is the Service name from the above dialog, but if you go back to the tasklist command at the beginning of this article you'll notice you can find it there as well.

sc config trkwks start= disabled

Hopefully this helps somebody!

List of Best Mystery Novels

If you love reading mystery and adventure novels then you may have already read many of these books listed here. I found this list on metafilter. You'll surely enjoy reading the books listed in thisList of Best Mystery Novels...

1. The Complete Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle (Included in this are The Hound of the Baskervilles, A Study in Scarlet, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Sign of Four.).

2. The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett.


3.Tales of Mystery and Imagination, by Edgar Allen Poe (Includes "The Gold Bug" and "Murders in the Rue Morgue,").

4. The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey.

5. Presumed Innocent, by Scott Turow.

6. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, by John le Carré.

7. The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins.

8. The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler.

9. Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier.

10. And Then There Were None (aka Ten Little Indians or Ten Little Niggers), by Agatha Christie.

11. Anatomy of a Murder, by Robert Traver

12. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Agatha Christie

13. The Long Goodbye, by Raymond Chandler

14. The Postman Always Rings Twice, by James M Cain

15. The Godfather, by Mario Puzo

16. The Silence of the Lambs, by Thomas Harris

17. A Coffin for Dimitrios, by Eric Ambler

18. Gaudy Night, by Dorothy L Sayers

19. Witness for the Prosecution, by Agatha Christie

20. The Day of the Jackal, by Frederick Forsyth

21. Farewell, My Lovely, by Raymond Chandler

22. The Thirty-Nine Steps, by John Buchan

23. The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco

24. Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky

25. Eye of the Needle, by Ken Follett

26. Rumpole of the Bailey, by John Mortimer

27. Red Dragon, by Thomas Harris

28. The Nine Tailors, by Dorothy L Sayers

29. Fletch, by Gregory Mcdonald

30. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, by John le Carré

31. The Thin Man, by Dashiell Hammett

32. The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins

33. Trent's Last Case, by E C Bentley

34. Double Indemnity, by James M Cain

35. Gorky Park, by Martin Cruz Smith

36. Strong Poison, by Dorothy L Sayers

37. Dance Hall of the Dead, by Tony Hillerman

38. The Hot Rock, by Donald E Westlake

39. Red Harvest, by Dashiell Hammett

40. The Circular Staircase, by Mary Roberts Rinehart

41. Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie

42. The Firm, by John Grisham

43. The Ipcress File, by Len Deighton

44. Laura, by Vera Caspary

45. I, the Jury, by Mickey Spillane

46. The Laughing Policeman, by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö

47. Bank Shot, by Donald E Westlake

48. The Third Man, by Graham Greene

49. The Killer Inside Me, by Jim Thompson

50. Where Are the Children?, by Mary Higgins Clark

51. "A" Is for Alibi, by Sue Grafton

52. The First Deadly Sin, by Lawrence Sanders

53. A Thief of Time, by Tony Hillerman

54. In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote

55. Rogue Male, by Geoffrey Household

56. Murder Must Advertise, by Dorothy L Sayers

57. The Innocence of Father Brown, by G K Chesterton

58. Smiley's People, by John le Carré

59. The Lady in the Lake, by Raymond Chandler

60. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

61. Our Man in Havana, by Graham Greene

62. The Mystery of Edwin Drood, by Charles Dickens

63. Wobble to Death, by Peter Lovesey

64. Ashenden, by W Somerset Maugham

65. The Seven Per-Cent Solution, by Nicholas Meyer

66. The Doorbell Rang, by Rex Stout

67. Stick, by Elmore Leonard

68. The Little Drummer Girl, by John le Carré

69. Brighton Rock, by Graham Greene

70. Dracula, by Bram Stoker

71. The Talented Mr Ripley, by Patricia Highsmith

72. The Moving Toyshop, by Edmund Crispin

73. A Time to Kill, by John Grisham

74. Last Seen Wearing, by Hillary Waugh

75. Little Caesar, by W R Burnett

76. The Friends of Eddie Coyle, by John V Higgins

77. Clouds of Witness, by Dorothy L Sayers

78. From Russia, with Love, by Ian Fleming

79. Beast in View, by Margaret Millar

80. Smallbone Deceased, by Michael Gilbert

81. The Franchise Affair, by Josephine Tey

82. Crocodile on the Sandbank, by Elizabeth Peters

83. Shroud for a Nightingale, by P D James

84. The Hunt for Red October, by Tom Clancy

85. Chinaman's Chance, by Ross Thomas

86. The Secret Agent, by Joseph Conrad

87. The Dreadful Lemon Sky, by John D MacDonald

88. The Glass Key, by Dashiell Hammett

89. Judgment in Stone, by Ruth Rendell

90. Brat Farrar, by Josephine Tey

91. The Chill, by Ross Macdonald

92. Devil in a Blue Dress, by Walter Mosley

93. The Choirboys, by Joseph Wambaugh

94. God Save the Mark, by Donald E Westlake

95. Home Sweet Homicide, by Craig Rice

96. The Three Coffins (aka The Hollow Man), by John Dickson Carr

97. Prizzi's Honor, by Richard Condon

98. The Steam Pig, by James McClure

99. Time and Again, by Jack Finney

100. A Morbid Taste for Bones, by Ellis Peters

ATLANTIS, mystery unfold

Nearly twenty-four hundred years ago, the Athenian philosopher Plato penned one of the most controversial and tantalising stories ever written. Once upon a time, he said, there had existed a magnificent seafaring civilisation which had attempted to take over the world, but had perished when its island sank into the sea – the result of an unbearable cataclysm of earthquakes and floods. This civilisation had been called Atlantis, and it had heralded from the Atlantic Ocean, taking its name from the god Atlas who presided over the depths of the sea.


Its main island had sunk some nine thousand years before the time of Solon, circa 9600 BC by our modern-day system of reckoning.

The puzzle of Atlantis is this. On the one hand, Plato was adamant that the island had sunk in the Atlantic Ocean, and equally adamant that the story was absolutely true. And yet, on the other hand, modern scientists have mapped the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, using echo sounders, ‘Geosat’ radar and multibeam sonar, and found no trace whatsoever of any sunken island. The result is a deadlock on how to decipher the story. Some argue that it is a myth, of uncertain meaning. Others argue that it is a moral and political fable. And others, still, continue to argue that it is pure history, and that Plato simply got his geographical facts wrong.

The story of Atlantis – or strictly speaking the story of the war between Ancient Athens and Atlantis – was an allegory for the myth of the creation of the Universe. Or, in other words, an encrypted account of a secret tradition which had been preserved for millennia by the mystery schools of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece.

In this way, Plato’s story of Atlantis may be seen as a ‘true story’. For the ancients sages believed that the myth of creation was an absolutely true account of how the Universe had been brought into being.

Problems with the Popular Conception of Atlantis

Problem 1: Plato

As much as Atlantis-hunters would wish Plato to have been a historian in the mould of Herodotus or Thucydides, he was not. And nor was he a geographer in the mould of, say, Hecataeus. On the contrary, Plato was a philosopher and a part-time mythologist. Moreover, he was not even an ordinary philosopher; rather, he was a ‘true philosopher’, whose interests lay primarily in metaphysical, otherworldly matters. Therefore, if there is any truth behind Plato’s account of Atlantis, it is unlikely to have anything to do with history or geography; rather, it should be rooted in myth, mysticism, esotericism and the metaphysical world.

Problem 2: Herodotus

It is highly significant that Herodotus, the so-called ‘father of history’, said nothing at all about any war between Athens and Atlantis. Writing almost a century before Plato, Herodotus was widely travelled (he had visited Egypt where the Atlantis story supposedly came from) and very knowledgeable about military history. But as far as he was concerned, the greatest wars of history had been those between Greeks and Persians, notably the battle of Marathon (490 BC), the battles of Thermopylae and Salamis (480 BC), and the battle of Plataea (479 BC). Moreover, in regard to the battle of Plataea, Herodotus tells a highly revealing story of a bragging contest between the Athenians and the Tegeans in which each side listed their greatest military accomplishments. Here, the Athenians recited their heroism at the battle of Marathon, but spoke also of their achievements in ‘ancient times’ – their intervention in the war of ‘the Seven against Thebes’, their repulsion of the Amazonians who had invaded Attica, and their instrumental role in the Trojan War. But as for the idea that their ancestors had repulsed the invasion of Atlantis, the Athenian soldiers said nothing at all – a very strange omission if Plato’s account contained any historical truth.

Plato’s story is also called into question by several other statements made by Herodotus. The greatest danger ever faced by the Athenians, he said, was when the Persian army had invaded Attica and instigated the battle of Marathon (490 BC). The biggest armed force ever assembled, he said, was that of the Persian king Xerxes (480 BC). The biggest island in the whole world, he said, was Sardinia. And the earliest sea empire in the Mediterranean, he said, had been forged by king Minos of Knossos. All of these claims fly in the face of Plato’s claim, nearly a century later, that Atlantis had been the biggest island in the world and had assembled the largest army ever, to forge the first sea empire of the Mediterranean.

Thus spoke the historian Herodotus who, had he lived a century later, would have been highly sceptical of the historicity of Plato’s story.

Problem 3: Socrates

Socrates was one of the greatest intellectuals of his day, and yet when Critias introduced the story of Athens’ heroic victory over Atlantis, he responded by saying: “Tell me though, what was that ancient deed our city performed...? I’ve never heard of it.” If the Athenian victory had been magnificent in a historical sense, or even in an orthodox mythical sense (as in their involvement in the Trojan War or the earlier epic battle ‘the Seven against Thebes’), then Socrates certainly would have heard of it. QED. We must be dealing here with a myth and, moreover, with a new myth – perhaps a variation on a theme.

Problem 4: The Saite Calendar

That a cataclysm could have instigated the beginning of a calendar nine thousand years before the time of Solon (c. 9600 BC) is not implausible. Nor is it implausible that such a calendar could have been preserved for nine thousand years and handed down for posterity via the Egyptian Saites (compare the Hebrew calendar which is today nearly six thousand years old). It is therefore possible that Solon (or perhaps Plato himself) learned the date of the Atlantis cataclysm from the Egyptian priests at the town of Sais. But the important question is this: is it really likely that the date of the cataclysm originated in this way?

In fact, everything we know about ancient Egypt argues against the possibility. Archaeologists have found no evidence at all for a calendar of this ilk. Nor is there any such evidence in the Egyptian texts, which generally refer to ancient events in the vaguest of terms. Moreover, even when we do find numbers in these texts, they usually turn out to be sacred, symbolic or rounded, the latter suggesting some imaginative ex-post rationalisation by the priests. To presume, as some researchers do, that the Saites possessed a calendar dating back nine thousand years (to a time one thousand years earlier than the foundation of their own state) is to go far beyond what can be justified.

There is more. Why is it that the Saite tradition preserved only the date of the Atlantis cataclysm? After all, Plato had the Egyptian priest claim that several cataclysms had occurred after the sinking of Atlantis, including the famous flood of Deucalion. And yet nowhere in Egypt, nor in Plato, nor anywhere else in the Greek writings, do we find any record of the dates of these subsequent cataclysms. If Solon (or Plato) really did receive the date of the Atlantis cataclysm from the Egyptian priests, why did he not also receive the dates of the other, more recent events?

There is another problem, too. Why is it that only the Egyptian Saites preserved the date of the Atlantis cataclysm? If the event was historical and as dramatic as Plato suggests, then it would have affected much of the world and would have been recorded in other ancient traditions. But, despite the prevalence of worldwide flood myths, no record has ever been found pointing to the date 9600 BC.

In summary, it is a leap of faith to suppose that the Egyptian Saites had access to the purported date when no-one else in the world did; it is a further leap of faith to suppose that the Egyptian records were entirely destroyed (from an archaeological perspective); it is a further leap of faith to suppose that Solon had access to these records when no-one else did; and it is a leap of faith, too, to suppose that Solon’s testimony fell into the hands of Plato and no-one else. To go with all these suppositions is to hop, skip and jump into the land of improbability. And there still remains the awkward problem of explaining how Plato (or the Egyptians, if one prefers) knew the date of the Atlantis cataclysm but not the dates of the three, more recent cataclysms that followed it, including the well-known flood of Deucalion.

Problem 5: Lost Civilisations

The implication of the historicist argument is that two highly advanced civilisations – Atlantis and Athens respectively – existed c. 9600 BC. And yet, according to archaeologists, civilisation began much more recently, c. 4000 BC (in the lands of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia). How, then, could the two fantastic civilisations described by Plato have existed more than five thousand years earlier, during what archaeologists call ‘the neolithic period’? The idea is controversial, to say the least.

As regards Atlantis, Plato placed the former island in the Atlantic Ocean. On this point, his language is unequivocal. Atlantis had been in the great Ocean, in the Atlantis Ocean, in the realm of Atlas, opposite the Pillars of Heracles (the straits of Gibraltar) and, fully consistent with this, the Atlantians had directed their hostilities against Europe and Asia. To look for Atlantis anywhere else but the Atlantic Ocean is to totally ignore what Plato actually wrote. Unfortunately for Atlantis-hunters, this leads to a fundamental problem, namely that scientists have nowadays mapped the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, in outline, using echo sounders, ‘Geosat’ radar and multibeam sonar, without discovering any trace of the sunken island or continent as described by Plato. The historicist interpretation of Plato’s Atlantis is thus strongly contradicted by scientific evidence.

Moreover, there is equally strong evidence against the idea of a 10th millennium BC civilisation in Athens in Greece. The earliest temples in Athens, for example, have been dated archaeologically to only the 8th century BC; below their foundations there is only virgin soil.

On the face of it, then, as we enter the 21st century AD, the notion of two highly advanced civilisations fighting a worldwide war c. 9600 BC would seem to be a complete fantasy.

Rather, the date of ‘nine thousand years ago’ is surely idiomatic for ‘an infinitely long time ago’, as suggested earlier.

Moving the Goal Posts

The reaction of Atlantis-hunters to the non-discovery of Atlantis on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean has been to suggest that the story was garbled at some point or else expressed in poetic terms, thus causing Plato to cite an incorrect geography. This assumption means that the lost island can be moved from the Atlantic to any other alternative location, preferably one that has not been mapped by sonar! The problem with this approach is that, once one presumes Plato to have made one mistake (with the location), it becomes tempting to take a little licence with the text, and then some more licence still, and thus the situation arises where Atlantis-hunters produce ‘solutions’ that owe little to what Plato actually said.

What we should be looking for is an island of circular shape, larger than Libya and Asia Minor combined (!), fringed by mountains, with a rectangular plain and a six-ringed, circular city within. But what we get is the mountains alone, or the plain alone – and always of the wrong dimensions – with the other features conveniently ignored. At the extreme, some researchers have even staked their reputations on islands that have not yet sunk. To which one must retort that if an island isn’t sunk, then it aint Plato’s Atlantis.

The Creation Myth Theory

Here we reject the historical interpretation of Plato’s story and suggests instead that the Atlantis story – or rather the story of the war between Ancient Athens and Atlantis – was ‘true’ in a mythical sense in that it allegorised the creation of the Universe. The validity of this theory stems from the ancient axiom that the myth of creation was a true story.

The four keys to this theory are as follows:

1 Atlantis was a metaphor for the primeval underworld (the interior of the earth).

2 The invasion of the known world by Atlantis allegorised the eruption of the underworld. (Note: this is a key aspect of the creation myth).

3 Ancient Athens, which represented the ideal, or archetypal, city, first existed in the sky in the form of a celestial body, i.e. a metaphorical city. (Note: the lowering of cities from the heavens to the Earth is a feature of Mesopotamian and Hindu mythology.)

4 The defeat of Atlantis by Ancient Athens allegorised the fall of the sky and the war between Heaven and Earth. (Note: this is another key aspect of the creation myth, and parallels Hesiod’s tale of the cataclysmic battle between the gods and the Titans.)

The Merits of the Creation Myth Theory

1 The theory accords with the most important facts of Plato’s story. By identifying Atlantis with the underworld, it allows Atlantis to be in the Atlantic Ocean (which symbolised the subterranean sea); it allows Atlantis to be sunk; and it allows Atlantis to be larger than two continents. These are fundamental points, and yet all other Atlantis theories reject the legitimacy of either one, two, or all three, of these statements and suppose, instead, that Plato somehow, like an idiot, got things cockeyed.

2 The theory decodes Atlantis in the context of its invasion of the world and ensuing war with ancient Athens. The worst thing a researcher can do is to study either one of these cities in isolation from the context of the war. So, the inter-relationship between Athens and Atlantis a fundamental basis of the interpretation.

3 The theory accounts for all of the bizarre elements in Plato’s story. It explains how the six-ringed city of Atlantis came out of Clito’s primeval hill. It explains why the island was a perfect circle (code for a sphere). It explains the unknown metal oreichalkos (meteoritic iron). It explains how the island was transformed into a shallow sea of mud. It explains why the Athenian army sank suddenly into the Earth. And it even explains the opposite continent which, bizarrely, was said to completely surround the true Ocean.

4 The theory is able to resolve a crucial perceived anomaly in Plato’s text. By proposing that Athens descended from Heaven against Atlantis, it verifies Plato’s statement that the war between the two sides coincided with the foundation of Athens in the Earth ‘nine thousand years ago’, and it thus exonerates Plato from the accusation that he made a careless chronological error. The supposed error, in fact, turns out to be a linchpin to understanding the story.

5 The theory improves substantially the reading of the story. By proposing that the Athenian army descended from Heaven, it explains why the warriors sank, all at once, beneath the earth. The Athenians, far from suffering a tragic accident some time after the war (as the badly mistranslated text suggests), rather died a heroic death at the climactic moment of the war. This, surely, was Plato’s intention, given that the story was told, ostensibly, to depict Socrates’ ideal state in action (“I’d love to see our city distinguish itself in the way it goes to war and in the way it pursues the war...”).

6 The theory vindicates Plato’s claim that the story of the war was absolutely true. By proposing that the story was a re-telling of the creation myth (the war between Heaven and Earth variant), it allows that the story be true in the mythical sense.

7 The theory takes into account the wider aspects of Platonic philosophy. It must be emphasised (no doubt to the great disappointment of many Atlantis-hunters) that Plato was no historian or geographer, and thus we are hardly likely to find an account of a lost civilisation at the heart of his works. On the contrary, both Plato and Socrates were ‘true philosophers’, who were obsessed with cosmogony and the theory of the soul. In their way of thinking, something important had indeed been lost, but it belonged to myth rather than to history, and to Heaven rather than to Earth. Here, the Theory of Forms is the key, for it presupposes a fall of the archetypes from Heaven to Earth, including, most significantly, the archetype of the ideal state, which was, after all, the subject of Plato’s story.

8 The theory sets Plato’s story of Athens and Atlantis against the broader context of ancient Greek myths, and the older Near Eastern myths from which the Greek ones were largely derived. In these myths, important parallels are found for ideas such as: the birth of the Universe in a cataclysm; the fall of the sky; the fall of the golden age; the wars of the gods of Heaven and the underworld; the fall of gods, islands and continents from Heaven into the underworld or subterranean sea; the birth of all things from the Earth or subterranean sea (impregnated by the seed of Heaven); and the idea that mythical peoples dwelt in Heaven, the Earth and the underworld. Most importantly, these creation myths enshrine the principle of personification, with the poets using human-like gods or heroes to personify the falling sky and the erupting underworld.

Summary

In summary, there is no archaeological evidence for the historicity of the war between Athens and Atlantis (quite the opposite); that there is no evidence whatsoever for a sunken island-continent on the Atlantic Ocean floor; that Herodotus and Socrates had never heard of the Athens-Atlantis war; that Plato did insist on the poetic (i.e. mythical) nature of Solon’s story by comparing Solon to the great poets Homer and Hesiod; that Plato did place the war in a pre-diluvian era (predating the creation of mankind!); and that Plato was not a historian, nor a geographer, but a true philosopher, whose interests lay primarily in metaphysics, myths and mysticism.

It therefore makes sense that Atlantis signified the ‘true myth’ of the creation of the Universe, encapsulating ideas such as the antediluvian paradise lost, the fall of the sky, the mystery of the underworld, and the mystery of the soul, or spirit, that had brought everything to life.

Thus Atlantis becomes a symbol for a spiritual quest – the quest for knowledge of the origins of the Universe, the quest for knowledge of the origins of life, and the quest for knowledge of what life truly is.

Alas! To search for Atlantis here on Earth, in the form of a lost civilisation, is the veritable antithesis of Plato’s philosophy. The great man would be grieved indeed to witness such materialistic folly.