Macusis
The survivor, together with his wife, of a great flood that destroyed the world and from whom an Indian tribe in British Guiana derived its name.
Madolenih-Mw
The eastern half of Ponape, which features the island’s largest state. The Micronesian location is the site of Nan Madol, an extensive megalithic ceremonial center which resembles the Indus Valley cities of Harappa and Mohenjo Daro. Madolenih-Mw suggests the name of the lost Pacific civilization that gave rise to both Nan Madol and the Indus Valley cities.
Maeldune
A legendary Irish voyager, he was actually a poetic device to epitomize pre-Celtic and early-Celtic knowledge of the sea. In one adventure, Maeldune sails to an unknown, mist-shrouded, abandoned island with tall mountains and a strange city laid out in concentric circles of alternating land and water connected by canals. Each ring of land was surrounded by walls decorated with gold, silver, and an unfamiliar precious metal —bath, which gleamed brighter than shiny copper or bronze.
Maeldune’s nameless island is doubtless the same as Atlantis, from its mountains to the circular city plan and richly covered walls. Bath is Plato’s orichalcum, the gold/copper alloy he said the Atlanteans delighted in displaying. That the island was depicted as hidden by mists and uninhabited are metaphors for its disappearance.
Mag Meld
An island in the Atlantic Ocean from which the Family of Partholon immigrated to pre-Celtic Ireland before the “Pleasant Plain” disappeared in a “storm.”
Magog
Cited in the Old Testament (Genesis 10: 2) as the grandson of Noah, who led his family and followers in post-Deluge times. Magog is also mentioned in the New Testament (Revelation 20:8). Gog and Magog appear to have been less formal than descriptive names referring to mighty kingdoms at either ends of the world—”in the four corners of the Earth.” They “went up over the breadth of the Earth” before a “fire from heaven came down out of heaven and devoured them,” together with their “beloved city.” The Atlantean implications of these lines seem inescapable, especially in view of the “og” appellation identified with Atlantis in Celtic traditions in Ireland, Britain, and the European Continent. Gog and Magog may be associated, respectively, with Lemuria and Atlantis.
The 17th-century Swedish savant, Olaus Rudbeck, concluded that the tribe of Magog was the biblical name for Atlantean survivors of the Second Cataclysm who arrived in Scandinavia during the mid-third millennium b.c.
Sacred gateway, Machu Picchu.
Mahabalipuram
In ancient Indian scriptures, “City of the Great Bali” was copied after the palace of the gods, which its architect and ruler, Bali, visited. For this impropriety, Mahabalipuram was entirely swallowed by the sea in a terrible flood.
The cataclysm was commanded by Indra. Like Zeus in Plato’s account of the Atlantean destruction, he was a sky-god, who convened all the other deities of heaven to call down a watery judgement on the blasphemous inhabitants. Bali was described as a “giant,” just as the first ruler of Atlantis, Atlas, was a Titan.
Mahapralaya
“The Great Cataclysm,” among the oldest surviving Hindustani legends, describes the rapid approach of a comet as it grows in size:
By the power of God there issued from the essence of Brahma [the sky] a being shaped like a boar, white and exceedingly small; this being, in the space of an hour, grew to the size of an elephant of the largest size, and remained in the air. Suddenly [it] uttered a sound like the loudest thunder, and the echo reverberated and shook all the quarters of the universe. Again [it] made a loud sound and became a dreadful spectacle.
Shaking the full-flowing mane which hung down his neck on both sides, and erecting the humid hairs of his body, he proudly displayed his two most exceedingly white tusks. Then, rolling about his wine-colored eyes and erecting his tail, he descended from the region of the air, and plunged head-foremost into the water. The whole body of water was convulsed by the motion, and began to rise in waves, while the guardian spirit of the sea, being terrified, began to tremble for his domains, and cry for mercy. (See Asteroid Theory)
Maia
An Atlantis, daughter of Atlas by Pleione, called “Grandmother,” because she is the oldest of the Pleiades. In Greek myth, Maia’s husband, Hephaestus, crafted the golden and silver dogs in front of King Alkynous’s palace at Phaeacia, in the Odyssey. “Alkynous” is a male derivation of another Pleiade, Alkyone, further establishing Homer’s Phaeacia as Atlantis. Her son is perhaps the most Atlantean of all the gods, Hermes-Thaut, who carried the Emerald Tablets of Civilization to the Nile Valley after the Flood, which he memorialized in building the Great Pyramid. Our month of May, the birthstone of which is still the emerald, derived from Maia, whose name means “the Maker.” Her feast-day, the first day of May, continues to be celebrated around the world, as the workers’ international holiday.
In Hindu myth, Maia is also known as “the Maker,” the personification of civilization. She was likewise worshiped by the Guanches, the ancient inhabitants of the Canary Islands, off the northwest coast of Africa. A Guanche statue of Maia was of such high caliber workmanship, the Christian Spaniards preserved it in the mistaken belief that it represented the Virgin Mary. To them, the statue was “our Lady of the Candalaria.” Its original location was in a seaside cave or grotto on Tenerife, and featured an inscription at its base. Leading Latin scholars for four centuries struggled and failed to translate it, concluding that the words belonged to a wholly unknown written language. The statue portrayed a nude female, so Catholic priests draped the figure with specially sewn garments. Interpreted as a representation of the Catholic Blessed Virgin, it stood 3 1/2 feet tall and was carved in light red wood, the hair arranged in plaits of beaten gold hanging down to the shoulders.
To the female figure’s right, holding a little bird of gold, was seated a small, naked boy, identified by Church officials as the Infant Jesus. He might just as well have been Herupkhart, “Horus the Child,” the sun-god usually appearing as a naked youth. His Egyptian myth told how he first crossed the sky from east to west in the company of Maia, the goddess of truth and embodiment of the eternal order of the universe. The golden bird, a common solar symbol, held by the boy of the Candalaria statue was probably a falcon, the avatar of Herupkhart. In any case, the statue’s close resemblance to Maia and Horus the Child rendered it more Egyptian than Christian, especially in view of the Guanches’ name for the image: Maia.
In November, 1826, a monstrous tidal wave crashed over Tenerife, and swept the Lady of the Candalaria and her boy into the sea, never to be seen again. The statue may have been a local Guanche creation, or perhaps it had been preserved as a holy image from lost Atlantis. The boy accompanying her was an appropriate addition, considering the function of each one of the Pleiades as the ancestors of post-deluge founders of new kingdoms.
It is tempting to see in Maia the eponymous ancestress of the Mayas specifically and Mesoamerican civilization generally. The female progenitor of the Aztecs was Coatlicue, “Our Grandmother,” the same title given to the eldest Pleiade, Maia. The Ge-speaking Indians of Brazil’s northern coasts worshiped Maira, their ancestress. In the ancient past, she was said to have set fire to a beautiful city on an island far out at sea, then sank it to punish its sinful inhabitants. Interestingly, “Maira” is the European gnostic name for the Star of Isis, later used as a title for the Virgin Mary. The Greeks knew Maia similarly as “The Grandmother of Magic.” In Hindu tradition, Maya is the mother of Buddha, in keeping with the role of the Atlantean Pleiades as the mothers or grandmothers of great men.
The goddess of the Canary Islands, Egypt, Greece, India, and the Americas was one and the same deity: the Atlantis, Maia. In the Atlantean Empire, Maia was the name of an allied kingdom or colony including Lowland Yucatan and Guatemala. It is here, at the Maya city of Tikal, that the Austrian archaeologist, Teobert Mahler, discovered a sculpted frieze representing the destruction of Atlantis on the front facade of the Acropolis.
Maidu
A California Indian tribe, whose deluge story tells of Talvolte and Peheipe, the only survivors of a natural catastrophe that destroyed their earthly paradise after its inhabitants, grown corrupt, had offended heaven, the same cause presented in Plato’s account of Atlantis.
Mai-Ra
Still venerated by the Ge-speaking Indians as the “Walker,” or “Maker,” Mai-Ra was the last and former king of the “Land Without Evil.” Its inhabitants did not live up to his high standards of morality, however, so he set the island on fire, then sank it beneath the sea. Before these calamities, Mai-Ra left with a small fleet of survivors chosen for their goodness. In time, they landed on the shores of Brazil, where they interbred with native peoples to sire the present Indian race.
The story of Mai-Ra is a clear folk memory of the final destruction of Atlantis.
