Lost Lands

A subterranean kingdom of nineteenth-century French occult literature, ruled by the King of the World, its tunnels spanning continents; Ossendowski's 1922 travelogue spread the tale worldwide.

Plato's mighty island empire beyond the Pillars of Heracles, destroyed by earthquake and flood and swallowed by the Atlantic in a single day and night.

The isle of apples of Arthurian legend, where Excalibur was forged and the wounded Arthur was carried. First recorded by Geoffrey of Monmouth, later tied to Glastonbury.

Born of the Muisca "gilded man" rite at Lake Guatavita, the tale swelled in Spanish mouths into a golden city that drove three centuries of South American expeditions.

A phantom island west of Ireland, wrapped in mist and said to show itself one day in seven years; charted from about 1325, it haunted maps for over five centuries until the 1870s.

The Greek far-northern paradise beyond Boreas the north wind, whose people knew neither sickness nor old age; Apollo wintered there. Described by Pindar and Herodotus.

The holy Russian city that, as Batu Khan's army closed in around 1238, vanished into Lake Svetloyar through prayer; the pure of heart can still hear its bells.

An Indian Ocean land bridge proposed by zoologist Philip Sclater in 1864, recast by Theosophy as the sunken home of the Third Root Race and later tied to Mount Shasta lore.

A "sunken land" conjured from a nineteenth-century mistranslation of a Maya codex, relocated to the Pacific by James Churchward in 1926 and adopted by esoteric lore.

Chief of the three spirit-mountains in the Bohai Sea, home of immortals and the elixir of life, its palaces of gold and silver; kings and emperors sent fleets that the winds always turned away.

The hidden kingdom of the Kalachakra tradition in Tibetan Buddhism, shaped like an eight-petalled lotus behind snow mountains, ruled by a line of dharma kings who will ride out at the end of the age.

The hidden village a Wuling fisherman stumbled into in Tao Yuanming's tale, settled by refugees from Qin who never heard of the Han; once he left, the path could never be found again.

The far-northern island reported by the Greek navigator Pytheas around 325 BCE, six days' sail beyond Britain, where the midsummer sun barely set; "Ultima Thule" came to mean the edge of the known world.

The splendid Breton city built below sea level, drowned in a night when princess Dahut stole the key to the sluice gates; its bells still toll beneath the Bay of Douarnenez.