Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where everything is magical and sparkly and full of rainbows. At first I thought that Shirley MacLaine’s new claims about Atlantis put her squarely in the corner of unicorns and rainbows, but after reading a bit more about her magical mystery tour of the remnants of Atlantis it seems much more like the goofball claims are cover for deeper concerns that I have no real interest in exploring. This is, of course, not the first time that MacLaine has made unusual claims. She famously believes in past lives, and she has also expressed her belief in lost continents like Lemuria and Mu. MacLaine has a new book coming out next week called Above the Line: My “Wild Oats” Adventure, which is putatively a memoir of the making of her upcoming film Wild Oats. The Washington Post carried a review this week in which we can read about how MacLaine had a vision of Atlantis while undergoing hydrotherapy, which sparked memories of her past deaths: Plunging through her “memory terror,” she discovered that she had once co-created “a gigantic flying dragon who could move and travel anywhere.” She then glimpsed a vast island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. “The star people told me that it was the center of all energy for the Earth and was connected to each land mass, which would one day become countries.” When the island began to sink, “I found myself crying, desperate to understand what had happened and why. The star people said, ‘Every feeling has its season.’ I asked out loud, ‘Does God have both positive and negative polarity? Is all this destruction part of a plan?’ They said nothing.” This island, of course, is Atlantis, and MacLaine believes it to be identical with the Canary Islands, where Wild Oats was filmed. She apparently speculates that the love of money led to the fall of Atlantis, and she claims that she is profoundly impacted by ancient events: “The prehistory of the past affected me every day.”
The Star People are more of an ancient astronaut idea, popularized in the 1980s by writers like Brad Steiger, who argued that aliens known as star people are hiding secretly among us to inaugurate a new Golden Age of humanity. According to the review, MacLaine name drops “Madame Blavatsky and Edgar Cayce and Charles Berlitz,” all names associated with crazy fringe ideas, including Atlantis. Charles Berlitz was one the 1970s leading advocates of the Canary Islands as Atlantis, and this is undoubtedly the origin of MacLaine’s belief. He was, of course, not the first writer to make such a claim, and we can find it as far back as we care to look. It was a popular idea in the nineteenth century, and if we assume that Marcellinus spoke of the Canaries, it perhaps goes back to Greco-Roman antiquity. But perhaps most interesting is that the Canaries as Atlantis attracted the attention of the Nazis. The Ahnenerbe, the Nazi archaeology organization, planned to excavate the Canaries to prove that they were the remnants of Atlantis and the homeland of the Aryan race, but when they were prevented from doing so by the outbreak of war, they collaborated with Franco’s fascists in Spain to carry out the plan. Fascist archaeologist Julio Martinez Santa Olalla headed up the effort, and the Nazis provided funding in the hopes of exporting their Aryan view of prehistory to Spain. As always, even the goofiest of claims is never more than a few nodes away from a connection to something dark.
25 Comments
Time Machine
2/24/2016 11:18:11 am
Shirley MacLaine only has a romantic view of romantic fringe history
Reply
Uncle Ron
2/24/2016 11:39:07 am
A professional psychoanalyst would say the Ms. MacLaine is deluded but us regular folks who might wear tennis shoes or an occasional python boot would say she is just bat-shit crazy.
Reply
Time Machine
2/24/2016 11:58:37 am
But only a rational professional psychoanalyst that does not share her beliefs.
Reply
Bob Jase
2/24/2016 12:40:12 pm
Extremely early onset dementia.
Reply
DaveR
2/24/2016 11:55:14 am
A magical land filled with sparkly rainbows and dancing unicorns that poop cotton candy and pee soda pop.
Reply
V
2/25/2016 03:02:55 pm
No, no. Unicorns poop gummi bears. Mythbusters told me so.
Reply
Clete
2/24/2016 12:09:38 pm
I admire Shirley MacLaine.....as an actress. Whatever, fringe ideas she has, while interesting, mean very little. The star people have also contacted me, they asked me where they could buy some pot.
Reply
kal
2/24/2016 01:26:36 pm
She is over 80 years old and could very well have some form of dementia already, not just from old age, but here she is probably just being batty for attention.
Reply
2/24/2016 01:44:53 pm
She's made similar claims for decades, so I don't think it has anything to do with dementia.
Reply
DaveR
2/24/2016 02:10:07 pm
I think she claimed to have remembered past lives and have out of body experiences as far back as the eighties.
Time Machine
2/24/2016 02:15:59 pm
She appeared on the UK magazine programme "Nationwide" during the 1970s in a phone-in discussing paranormal issues.
Bob Jase
2/24/2016 02:22:44 pm
As I said above - extremely early onset dementia.
Pacal
2/24/2016 10:12:21 pm
Among Shirley MacLaine's claims was that she had been in a past life a fool at the court of Louis XV and executed for upsetting the king.
Ken
2/24/2016 03:16:56 pm
Keep in mind that actors, if they are educated at all, are rarely educated in such things as history, science, archaeology. Therefore most of their real world view comes from the movies they or their friends have been in. Furthermore, their daily interactions are not with 'common' people, so they usually lack 'common' sense.
Reply
Time Machine
2/24/2016 03:34:51 pm
Charlton Heston, Mysterious Origins of Man (1996)
Reply
Shane
2/24/2016 06:15:44 pm
That sounds reasonable, but it seems like for every aging actress who believes in Atlantis, there's a geologist who thinks the Sphinx is 12,000 years old, a neurosurgeon Creationist, or a mathematician who claims Jesus was a Russian who lived about a thousand years ago. I dunno if we can blame a lack of education for this one.
Reply
Pacal
2/24/2016 10:08:33 pm
That Mathematician wouldn't happen to be Formenko? His stuff is beyond nuts. In fact it is so extreme either he is really crazy or he is a shill writing in bad faith to sell a book and / or ideology.
Shane Sullivan
2/24/2016 11:01:46 pm
Yes, that's him. Even Garry Kasparov buys into his New Chronology, probably for nationalist reasons.
Pacal
2/26/2016 09:13:05 pm
Damn it! The Guy's name is Fomenko not Formenko!
Paul S.
2/24/2016 09:23:54 pm
I remember reading a book or two on the Bermuda triangle by Charles Berlitz back when I believed in that stuff.
Reply
2/24/2016 09:36:50 pm
I believe Berlitz argued that Atlantis stretched from the Canaries to the Azores and beyond, but certainly Edgar Cayce and others went for a western Atlantic or Caribbean Atlantis. It's pretty much anywhere anyone wants it to be!
Reply
anon
2/25/2016 04:30:14 am
"MacLaine had a vision of Atlantis while undergoing hydrotherapy, which sparked memories of her past deaths:"
Reply
lucky
3/16/2016 03:58:24 pm
No, I think it's the take-a-hot-bath kind.
Reply
anon
2/25/2016 04:40:49 am
"Also Formenko and his followers believe that Scientists, and scholars are engaged in a massive conspiracy to supress the truth by mass forging of evidence right to the present day. "
Reply
2/25/2016 03:40:08 pm
At least we should be thankful that she revealed her thought. How many known persons share such thoughts without revealing?
Reply
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorI am an author and researcher focusing on pop culture, science, and history. Bylines: New Republic, Esquire, Slate, etc. There's more about me in the About Jason tab. Newsletters
Enter your email below to subscribe to my newsletter for updates on my latest projects, blog posts, and activities, and subscribe to Culture & Curiosities, my Substack newsletter.
Categories
All
Terms & ConditionsPlease read all applicable terms and conditions before posting a comment on this blog. Posting a comment constitutes your agreement to abide by the terms and conditions linked herein.
Archives
February 2025
|