Mount Shasta: Portal to Another Dimension?

There are some places on the planet where mysterious borders converge, where the air seems charged with something “other”, where maybe the veil between this plane and the next is just a touch thinner than anywhere else. One of these places is Mount Shasta in Northern California, a volcanic mountain which has drawn people to it for thousands of years, many of whom disappear forever. Rumours swirl like the clouds above it, telling of strange people, creatures and underground tunnels that lead to cities of light.

Whole occult movements have sprung from the experiences and tales told of the mountain and spiritual rituals are frequently held there. Let’s find out about the stories linked to Mount Shasta and see whether there is actually something to its reputation as some sort of interdimensional gateway after all. This episode is also known as the Decoding the Unknown motherlode.

Shasta Facts

Here’s the lowdown on the stats of Mount Shasta. It’s part of a whole string of volcanoes running up the western side of North America called the Cascade Volcanoes which form a section of the Pacific Ring of Fire. Mount Shasta is the second highest of the cascades, at an elevation of 14,179 ft (4,322 m), making it about half the height of Mount Everest, two thirds the length of the Las Vegas strip or about 2916 Danny Devitos all stacked up neatly.

It’s 10,000 feet (3,000 m) higher than anything surrounding it. It has also erupted in the past, around the year 1250. It’s a stratovolcano, meaning it’s built up of many layers, also known as “strata”, of alternating ash, hardened lava and other stuff from previous eruptions.

It’s steep sided with some satellite cones attached and looks pretty cool as there’s usually snow on the top, which is kind of funny for a volcano that is classified as active, according to Nasa’s Earth Observatory website. It’s also the largest volcano by volume in the Cascades range so basically, if this thing blows, it’s going to be a biggie.

Mount Shasta is located in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, California’s largest forest covering over 2 million acres which is more than twice the size of Rhode Island, and I’m not even going to guess how many Danny Devitos could get lost in there. It sits about 50 miles south of the Oregon border and can be seen from many, many miles away, a powerful presence for thousands of years. Its dominance over the surrounding landscape means that Mount Shasta has long been a focal point for native American tribes, and there are plenty around the area such as the Klamath, Winnemem Wintu, Modoc and Shasta tribes that have legends relating to the mountain as well as rituals and ceremonies that are regularly carried out in the area to this day. So let’s get into the stories surrounding this mountain.

Native American Folklore

Myths and legends are cool because everyone reads them as fiction, or alternative, creative ways that things came into being, allegorical, fantastical but definitely not actually 100% true. As a child I had a book called “Norse Gods and Heroes” and also enjoyed reading greek myths and legends but even as a kid I didn’t think any of these things had actually happened, like the goddess Athena being born out of Zeus’s head, fully grown and already wearing armour. Some of these legends are ways of explaining what we now know are natural phenomena so some people today might flippantly say that thunder is god bowling or something, but in the past, it might have been Thor rumbling through the sky in his chariot. Anyway, there are some native American legends linked to Mount Shasta so I thought we could mention these first before getting into the absolutely insane stuff as this is firmly in the camp of people understanding that it is not real.

The main legend associated with Mount Shasta is from the Klamath tribe. The story goes that there was a spirit of the Below-world called Llao and a spirit of the above-world called Skell. Even though Llao was supposed to stay in the Below-world, he’d frequently hop up to the top of Lao-Yaina, currently known as Oregon’s Mount Mazama, for a look around.

One day, he fell in love with the daughter of a Klamath Indian chief. Why is it always a chief’s daughter or a princess and not some random normo like 99.999% of the population is? Anyway, she didn’t fall for his advances because he was apparently ugly so he got mad and swore revenge by fire on her tribe.

The chief asked the spirit Skell for help and so he descended from the Above-world and took up a spot on the top of Mount Shasta. From there, Llao and Skell hurled fireballs and rocks at each other, the ground trembled and the skies turned black. More and more spirits joined the battle and in the end, two men from the tribe offered to sacrifice themselves to stop the fighting.

Skell didn’t let them but it gave him the impetus to fight harder and he eventually won, driving Llao back under the mountain and caving in the top to trap him below ground forever. He then filled the crater with water, and it’s now what’s known as Crater Lake in Oregon. This is a fun origin story for the lake, and probably also has roots in people having actually witnessed Mount Shasta erupting in 1250 or probably before, as per the Nasa Earth Observatory site again: “Mt.

Shasta is an active volcano that has erupted at least once per 800 years for the past 10,000 years”.

So yeah, godlike spirits hurling flaming rocks at each other is a good explanation for a volcanic eruption when you have no idea what a volcanic eruption is. But what excuse do these next lot have for the bonkers stories about the volcanic mountain? Let’s get into it.

Lemuria

In the contest of lost continents, Atlantis takes first place by a nautical mile. We’ve all heard of it and the name is still used today for various things like a resort in the Bahamas, a casino in Reno and a water coaster ride in SeaWorld. That’s not to mention all the books and films that are directly about or reference the mythical island that sank into the sea. There is another competitor in this field, however, the continent of Lemuria.

Have you ever wondered how lemurs got to Madagascar but fossils have also been found in India, although none have been found in Africa or the Middle East which would make more sense, geographically? I’m sure it really keeps you awake at night. Well, according to Philip Sclater, a 19th century zoologist, there used to be a large area of land that acted as a land bridge from the Indian subcontinent to what became Madagascar.

This area later sank into the Indian Ocean. Because he was talking about lemurs, this sunken continent was dubbed “Lemuria”. Ok, that’s one thing, but what’s a sunken landmass in the Indian ocean got to do with a volcano in California?

What indeed. We need to take a little leap of faith here, or rather, a huge and jarring jumpcut to reorient the story back to Mount Shasta. So, kind of forget the whole Indian Ocean and lemurs thing for the time being cos this train’s about to go off the rails, baby.

And don’t worry, we will, of course, circle back to crap all over this later, we’re just presenting the stories for now.

What if I told you that there is a whole hidden city deep inside or underneath Mount Shasta and that enlightened beings, contemporaries of Atlanteans, have been living there for thousands of years? Would you roll your eyes and say “oh, not this again” or would you continue to listen, which I hope you do as I’ve only just started writing this bit and there’s a lot more to go. Let’s hear this story out.

Lemurians, i.e. people living on the now lost continent of Lemuria, managed to find a new home for themselves after their previous homeland of Lemuria sank below the waves. This may or may not have been to do with a thermonuclear war the Lemurians were having with the Atlanteans which resulted in the destruction of both places but anyway, moving on. Eventually, they decided that instead of living on the surface of the earth among the stupid normal homosapiens, they would start their civilization again, somewhere out of sight of dull old human kind.

They actually already knew of the destruction of Lemuria before it happened so about 12,000 years ago, they started creating a city under Mount Shasta in what became Northern California. Using existing tunnels and caverns as well as creating their own, this city became home for the Lemurian refugees and became what is now known as “Telos” and is lit by an artificial sun deep underground.

According to the website “lemurian connection.com”, it consists of five levels, including acres of hydroponic gardens, a pyramid-shaped temple with a capstone from Venus and schools for children and adults alike. The Lemurians are much taller than average people, around 7 feet or 2.1 metres or one whole Danny Devito plus two fifths more, so like maybe his head and shoulders again on top. They are described as wearing robes and sandals, having glowing skin and long, flowing hair which really just sounds like your bog-standard Californian hippy type but they also have very long necks adorned with jewelled collars and, of course, they are also known to have very strong psychic powers such as telepathy, telekinesis and the ability to disappear.

But how has this story come about? It starts with an influential book written at the end of the 19th century called “A Dweller of Two Planets”. While it was finished in 1886, it wasn’t actually published until 1905, several years after the author’s death.

He was one Frederick Spencer Oliver, a young Californian man, but the story he wrote was almost entirely channelled through him from a spirit named as “Phylos the Thibetan”. And what a wild ride it is. Well, it probably was in the early 1900s, it’s kind of weird and quite boring reading it now.

This was also the time period when Theosophy was starting to make waves in the US. Theosophy has been classified as a religion, although Helena Blavatsky, the Russian woman who founded it in 1875, denied it should be one and people could be Theosophists and, for example. Buddhist or Christian as well.

It seems more of a spiritual and philosophical movement but has also been referred to as “occult” which makes it seem more interesting than it probably is. From The Theosophical Society In America’s website, it states that to join, all you need to do is agree to the Three Objects:

1. To form a nucleus of the universal brotherhood of humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, or color.

2. To encourage the comparative study of religion, philosophy, and science.

3. To investigate unexplained laws of nature and the powers latent in humanity.

To give you more of an idea, here are a few theosophical ideas, again from the official website:

• Behind everything seen or unseen there is an eternal, boundless, and immutable absolute Reality, which is beyond the range of human thought. Both matter and consciousness (or spirit) are the two polar aspects of this Reality.
• The visible universe is only its densest part of this Reality. Invisible dimensions or planes of extremely subtle kinds of matter-energy interpenetrate the physical world. Knowing this truth helps us to understand many things in the universe that are otherwise baffling.
• There are no mechanical laws. The universe is pervaded by an immense intelligence, which is both present in the world and beyond it. Therefore intelligence is at the basis of all laws of nature. What most people consider “supernatural” is a manifestation of these otherwise unknown laws.

So hopefully you get the idea. It seems that Frederick Spencer Oliver was well acquainted with his local Theosophical group, even sharing the teachings Phylos has been telling him before later writing them down in his book “A Dweller on Two Planets”. Because his book mentions Lemuria and the Lemurians and was apparently dictated to him by some alien, this is somehow proof in the “Mount Shasta is hiding an underground city theory” that Lemuria existed rather than “Frederick Spencer Oliver had a vivid imagination and should probably have been checked out by a doctor theory”.

I’ll leave this here for now and move on to the next link in the Lemuria chain, which is J.C. Brown.

In 1904, J.C. Brown was apparently prospecting for gold in them thar hills around Mount Shasta when he found a hidden tunnel in the back of a cave. This tunnel went underground for about 11 miles and Brown eventually found a subterranean city full of wonders, gold and jewels.

There were also mummified bodies of beings over 10 feet tall, although they could equally have been two Danny Devitos wrapped up together. This seems to tally with the whole Lemuria myth - had Brown stumbled upon the city of Telos? He seems to have kept this discovery to himself for a while but 30 years later, he told someone called John C.

Root who hastily gathered a large team of prospectors to go and find this treasure. On the day they were supposed to meet to start the expedition, Brown failed to show. Weird, that.

I can just imagine him whistling away nonchalantly wherever he was, trying to pretend he hadn’t just wasted a lot of peoples’ time and money.

1931 is where this Lemuria thing really took off. As if we’re not deep enough in the weeds with Theosophy, here’s another esoteric slash occult movement to throw into the mix, the Rosecrucians. While Rosicrucianism has been around in Europe since the 1600s, a man called Harvey Spencer Lewis established the first order in the US in 1915, giving himself the admittedly pretty cool title of first “Imperator of the Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis”.

This was shortened to “AMORC” for everyone’s benefit. Anyway, Lewis wrote a book in 1931 called “Lemuria: The Lost Continent of the Pacific” under the awkwardly anagrammed pseudonym of Wishar Spenle Cervé. This book was published by AMORC and the publisher’s preface contains one of the best disclaimers I’ve ever seen:

We have just stated that our desire has been to make this book free from ponderous, scientific quotations, and for any to take advantage of this by criticising the lack of such evidence will be a sign of insincerity. If the self-evident and indisputable facts to be found in this book are given proper consideration, there can be no doubt left in the mind of any critic that most of the entire story of Lemuria as recorded herein must be true.

Here are some of the chapter titles to give you an idea of the facts you’ll learn in this book: “The Mental and Psychic Development of the Lemurians”, “The Community Life of the Lemurians” and “Remarkable Achievements of the Lemurians”.

This book takes us on a wild ride through the history of the world, including this banger from the chapter “The Colonies and Descendants of the Lemurians”:

Considering the Lemurians were the first definite races of man known to history and that the continent of Lemuria was the real cradle of the civilization of man, we are confronted with the interesting fact that from Lemuria and its people came all of the present day races of man.

Eyyyyy, we’re descended from Lemurians, everyone! Awesome.

Lewis later writes of many instances of Lemurians being seen out and about the Mount Shasta area: “Occasionally one of these oddly dressed individuals would come to one of the smaller towns and trade nuggets and gold dust for some modern commodities. These odd looking persons were not only peculiar in their dress and different in attire from any costume ever seen on the American Indian, and especially the California Indian, but distinctive in features and complexion; tall, graceful and agile, having the appearance of being quite old and yet exceedingly virile. They gave every indication of being what one would term a foreigner, but with a larger head, much larger forehead, a headdress that had a special decoration that came down over the center of the forehead to the bridge of the nose, and thus hid or covered a part of the forehead that many have attempted to see and study.”

Just wondering, how can you tell if someone is “exceedingly virile” just by looking at them? Guess they must give off some specific BDE or something. That stands for “big dick energy”, Simon, in case you didn’t know. And that covered-up bit on their foreheads is supposedly the centre for their psychic powers, by the way.

This book contains many of the examples of Lemurian stuff happening around Mount Shasta that pop up on any more recent websites you can find so we can say with some certainty that it has been the biggest influence on the whole Lemurian story as we know it today.

At around the same time this book was published, or actually just before, in 1930, another weird Mount Shasta moment was happening. Guy Ballard was taking a hike as one does when he bumped into the Count of Saint-Germain as one doesn’t because he had been long dead by that time. He was a huge figure in theosophy in his day and actually, loads of other people have claimed to have seen the Count centuries after his death.

It has also been claimed that the Count was an Ascended Master, and had been through various incarnations throughout history including being Joseph, i.e. Jesus’s stepdad, Merlin, Christopher Columbus and Sir Francis Bacon. In case you’re interested, Guy Ballard himself had apparently previously been Richard the Lionheart and George Washington.

Not bad, but I guess he must have then done something a bit wrong to end up as old Guy Ballard. His wife Edna, incidentally, had previously been Joan of Arc, Elizabeth the First and Benjamin Franklin which I call bullshit on because I was totally Benjamin Franklin in a previous life and we can’t both have been him.

Anyway, after this meeting on the slopes of Mount Shasta, the Count of Saint Germain inspired Ballard to start his own offshoot of theosophy called the I AM Activity movement.

This was quite a success at the start, claiming around a million members in its heyday but Ballard died in 1939 after the I AM group had only been going for a few years. This group really went hard into the “ascended masters” area of new age religions, which is all about reincarnation, karma and ascending up the ranks of humanity. Which again begs the question, how did someone who was formerly such heavy hitters as Richard the Lionheart and George Washington stoop so low as to be reincarnated as Guy Warren Ballard?

Anyway, they still have a presence today, especially around the Mount Shasta area. A look at google maps shows an I AM temple, school, reading room and “university of spiritual psychology” all within about a mile of each other so they’re obviously still intrinsically tied to the mysterious mountain. Speaking of mysterious, what other weird stuff has happened on Mount Shasta?

The Usual Suspects: Mount Shasta Edition

After spending so long on this Lemuria thing, I think we can take a bit of a broader approach with the rest of the claims about Mount Shasta, so here goes:

Guess who has also apparently been spotted roaming the mountainside and forests in the Mount Shasta area? Our old pal, Sasquatch or Bigfoot. There’s no need to go into this very much as we’ve done a whole episode on this cryptid in the past. Basically, there’s no good proof, evidence, photo or video of anything but as Mount Shasta is in prime squatch territory, of course he’s going to make a cameo in here somewhere.

Moving on to our other favourite topic: aliens. This one is a bit more interesting than the Bigfoot stuff as UFOs have been seen over and around Mount Shasta on multiple occasions over the years. It makes sense, (in as much as this thing can make any sense), as Mount Shasta is a huge presence that dominates the surrounding area for many miles around. It is also one of a few “power centres” on the planet where spiritual energy is supposedly extra strong.

If extraterrestrials were going to check the place out, why not start there?

Brian David Wallenstein published a book in 2012 called “Mount Shasta Sightings - A Local and Regional Chronology of UFO Sightings and More”. It runs to over 600 pages so there’s got to be something good in there, right? On the back, part of it reads: “The clear, refreshing and grounded approach Brian takes to address the UFO conundrum in a town mired with mystical chatter, a reputation of cosmic muffins, Lemurians, Ascended Masters, religious extremes and airy fairy fantasy, can and will hopefully restore a level of respectability to UFOlogy and spirituality in our town and beyond.”

At the end, for this is a very long jacket blurb, it says: “Not one sighting in this book lacks credibility, possibility or value. They all stand on their own, valid and amazing.”

Wow, big claims there, Brian. By the way, I had not come across any mentions of “cosmic muffins” during my research into this so I did a quick search and it might refer to a radio astrologer called Darrell Martinie, or Howard Hughes’s Boeing 307 Stratoliner that was repurposed and turned into a houseboat before being donated to a museum. Or maybe there’s just a really good muffin shop in Mount Shasta.

The book has several very positive reviews and a couple of less complimentary ones, such as: “This started out as a promising read. THEN the book devolves into very DRY and BLAND reporting of ufo sightings. I can’t tell you how tired I got of reading ‘silvery disk observed’ in very clinical and emotionless terms. I had to put the book down. Sorry.”

A three star review mentions: “Some statements made in the book could be considered a little far out and hard to substantiate and more in the realm of the author’s opinion” but, to be fair, most of the reviews are 4 and 5 stars.

Getting back to UFO sightings around Mount Shasta in particular, as usual, what we do not have are any decent photos of actual alien craft. What we do have, however, are lots of great snaps of lenticular clouds, which can definitely look like flying saucers. Because of the conditions needed to form this type of cloud, Mount Shasta is a great place to see them. There was a particularly good, alien looking one in February 2020 which ignited hot debate online, leading the US Forest Service for the Shasta-Trinity National Forest to post an explanation on social media downplaying the cloud with absolutely no mention of UFOs, even as a tongue-in-cheek reference.

Any slightly odd people you might meet around Mount Shasta might be Lemurians - or just slightly odd people - but are unlikely to be extraterrestrials. We’ve covered this kind of thing a lot in the past, and will probably again in the future, sorry, but it’s not the most interesting thing about this story and apart from some cool photos of a bunch of condensed water vapour, there’s not much to the UFO thing.

Disappearances

Let’s get back to real life again for a minute, ahhh, such a relief. But now we’re talking about mysterious disappearances from the Mount Shasta area, a large number of unsolved cases. As of 2022, 11 people have vanished over the space of 10 years, never to be seen again.

Now you might think that this is not unusual in a national park area, people go missing all the time. But, I looked at the US National Park Service’s cold cases page and there are 10 missing persons listed for Yosemite National Park, but some of the cases stretch back to the 70s and 80s. This indicates that people are going missing at a much faster rate in Mount Shasta or at least are completely dropping off the grid.

What is going on? Are they meeting Lemurians and deciding to hang out in Telos for a bit? Is Bigfoot eating them?

Are they being beamed up by UFOs? As they haven’t been found, there’s no way to tell what exactly has happened but let’s break it down a bit.

First off, these people aren’t all disappearing off the mountain itself. It’s not like they’re hiking up Mount Shasta, turn a corner and vanish into thin air. When you read the stories, many of the cases were people passing through the town and the area they disappeared in is actually Siskiyou County, not merely the area immediately surrounding Mount Shasta. Siskiyou County is very large, apparently three times the size of Connecticut, so unfortunately it’s not that surprising to have a few missing persons cases in an area that big.

Looking through the details of the missing people, there are a mixture of probable outcomes, from accident to suicide to murder. None of them have eyewitnesses saying that anything weird was happening just before the person went missing so I guess we can just put them down as yet more unsolved cases that are unfortunately very much of this realm.

Also, although the whole “11 in 10 years” thing sounds impressive, when you look at the dates, the earliest given is 1986 and the most recent is 2020, which is substantially more than a span of 10 years.

There might be more than 11 missing people though, as I found other names bandied about that are real cases but aren’t listed in the official lists I’ve found. The example of Carl Herbert Landers is one. In this case it does sometimes say that he vanished after going round a bend but other sources say that he had gone on a hike ahead of his friends, so there wouldn’t have been anyone to witness what happened to him. From what I could tell, he was supposed to be climbing Mount Shasta and said he was feeling ill the morning of the climb.

He then went off by himself and is presumed to have died as his body has never been found. As he had gone off on his own, it’s not even 100% clear if he went up the mountain or not.

I did also come across a couple of things like a boy vanished on the trail and reappeared hours later saying a robot clone of his grandmother had kidnapped him and kept him in a cave full of spiders and his actual grandmother woke up with a spider bite on the back of her head but you know…come on.

Alright, now we’ve hauled ourselves to the top of this volcanic mountain that could potentially blow at any time, let’s grab a sledge and whizz back down, shitting on a few things while we go. Oh, I purposely forgot to mention that another group of beings is also rumoured to live in the tunnels and caves beneath Mount Shasta - the lizard people! Let’s quietly tiptoe back down the tunnel we came from and pretend we didn’t see them.

Debunking Time: With Added Lemurs

Right, back to the whizzing. So to speak. It’s time to head back to Lemuria, sorry folks. First off, the whole “lost continent” thing is just not real. The people proposing Lemuria as a lost continent originally were thinking it was some bit of land that connected Madagascar to India as lemurs, which are now only found on Madagascar, were apparently historically found in India but not in Africa which is a lot closer to Madagascar than India is. Well. This was a confusing thing for me to research.

As far as I can tell, there haven’t been any confirmed fossils of lemurs in India until recently, and only then, it was only bits of teeth that were found that were extrapolated out to be relatives of the lemur. It seems that there are two theories for how lemurs got to Madagascar. The first is that they started in Africa and floated across somehow to Madagascar.

I’ve seen the term “rafts of vegetation” used which seems like they crafted little personal rafts out of leaves, added a jaunty flag and set sail all by themselves but I think what it actually means is that there was a lot of stuff like logs and large masses of vegetation that they could have used. According to the National Geographic, ocean currents modelled for around 50 million years ago, which is when lemurs were supposed to have reached Madagascar, could definitely have carried them from southeastern Africa to Madagascar so this seems like a plausible explanation for how they got there.

What makes this extra confusing, however, is that some sources say there are no lemur fossils in Africa and some say there are. What Philip Sclater, the 19th century zoologist proposed, was a land bridge between India and Madagascar which he named Lemuria. This was how the lemurs got to Madagascar before the land bridge eventually broke off and sank beneath the waves. This was a good theory for a while, until geologists started finding out more about how our current continents were formed, the supercontinent Pangea and plate tectonics, and came to the conclusion that there could have been no Lemuria per se, and there was no large sunken landmass beneath the Indian ocean.

The article in National Geographic by Ker Than published in 2010 says “One weakness of the land-bridge theory is that today only four major groups of mammals live in Madagascar. These animals are distantly related to mammals in mainland Africa, and they are all relatively small.” It goes on to quote paleoclimatologist Matthew Huber who points out: “If there was a land bridge between Africa and Madagascar, why didn’t large animals like elephants or lions cross?” Great point, Matthew, well done.

The lost continent of Lemuria as somewhere that explains why lemurs are found in Madagascar has been widely debunked which makes its reappearance elsewhere on the globe as an underground city for 7 foot tall psychics even more confusing. I am happy, however, to not have to research the evolution of lemurs any more.

Philip Sclater did not mention advanced civilizations in his theories about Lemuria, that all came later. Let’s start with “A Dweller on Two Planets” by Frederick Spencer Oliver. First of all, this is touted everywhere as one of the main sources about Lemuria being underneath Mount Shasta. I have scanned through it though, and there are literally 6 mentions in the whole thing and two of those are using “Lemorus” as an alternative spelling.

Thank god for Ctrl F that’s all I’ve got to say. The book is mainly about Atlantis, not Lemuria at all. This is the main thing the book has to say about it:

Wouldst learn of the destruction of Lemorus, that great people who were in the Earth before the Age of Ice, when the world knew no cold, nor snow, nor frost; who antedated Poseid by countless ages? Turn to the book of Job and read of how the ‘deep boiled like a pot,’ and reading, thou shalt learn that Lemuria perished of fire from out the interplanetary depths. So one cycle of mankind dieth of fire, and the next of water.

That’s the most salient bit. The first mention is too boring to have you read out and the last goes into a weird story about a “fair girl” being attacked by a “swarthy” man, although I think he actually sacrifices himself in the end instead of killing her? It’s a bit confusing. Anyway, this hardly goes into any great detail about anything Lemuria related, the examples just seem to be thrown in to act as some other example to bolster the Atlantis one.

There was a sequel published called “An Earth Dweller’s Return”, however, it seems that this was not written by Oliver and was in fact just written in a similar style by the Lemurian Fellowship which had since sprung up. It was much more Lemuria-centred and many people dismissed it as just being fodder to join their movement. I haven’t bothered reading that one as I was fed up with Lemuria by this point so I’ll just have to take the word of an Amazon reviewer who said: “This is supposed to be the sequel to ‘A Dweller on Two Planets’ by Phylos the Thibetan. We’re talking about channelled material and, while no one could easily doubt the authenticity of the first book, I cannot say the same about this one.”

Fair enough, but honestly, how anyone could consider the first book authentic is so strange. It’s just like a stream of consciousness, mixing Biblical stuff with total fantasy. This convinced many people that Oliver was, in fact, channelling the spirit of Phylos the Thibetan, but if he was, Phylos is not a great storyteller.

So this leads us on to the more influential work by Harvey Spencer Lewis: “Lemuria: The Lost Continent of the Pacific”. Note that he said “Pacific” here, not “Indian Ocean”. Somehow, over the course of the years, the whole notion of a fallen land bridge between Madagascar and India morphed into a sunken continent of superbeings in the Pacific.

The only thing connecting the two was the name “Lemuria” but I don’t think Lewis’s book makes any mention of lemurs. Anyway, thanks to the incredible disclaimer in the publisher’s preface, just because there’s absolutely zero evidence of this underground city or race of psychic megaminds, that doesn’t mean it’s not all true. I think we can safely say that Lewis just made all this shit up or just swapped out the word “Atlantis” for “Lemuria” off the back of Frederick Oliver’s book.

Unfortunately, a lot of people still believe it even now. We’ll get to the modern day stuff in a minute.

People have searched for entrances to Telos for decades and there was that one man who might have found it, remember? J.C. Brown who then sneakily failed to show when a large expedition was gathered at someone else’s expense. I have no idea if this story is true or not but the fact that he didn’t appear to take any souvenirs the first time and the expedition was stymied from the beginning the second time, it’s probably just a folk tale.

Guy Ballard also probably didn’t meet the reincarnated version or astral projection of the Count of Saint Germain on the mountain that day either. Either he just met some inspirational hippy, or he just made it up. While the I AM movement was quite a hit back in his day, after he died, his wife and son were charged with fraud with the case being that they had got millions of dollars from followers but didn’t actually believe in their own teachings.

A jury found them guilty which was overturned on appeal but later reinstated. Eventually, the Supreme Court dismissed their conviction and I AM still exists to this day, with an especially strong presence around Mount Shasta.

Mount Shasta Today

OK, let’s get on to some more modern Mount Shasta news. Now, I know we’ve been ragging on it for the whole episode but it does hold a sacred place in the hearts of many native American tribes and it is roundly thought of as a mystical place where weird things happen. There are reddit stories galore about people having weird experiences when hiking around the forests and mountains, although to be fair there are an equal amount of people saying things like “you’re so lucky, I’ve lived here all my life and never experienced anything weird”. If you’re in some woods that are notoriously spooky, it’s going to make you a bit more susceptible to being spooked.

In August 1987, something that was described as a “spiritual Woodstock” called Harmonic Convergence took place at power centres of spiritual energy, one of them being Mount Shasta. This was supposed to be an auspicious lining up of planets and also the end of a Mayan calendar cycle, although I believe that there was a bit of tweaking to get these two things to converge and also the planetary alignment thing wasn’t a particularly big deal but there you go, spiritual Woodstock! Apparently during this Harmonic Convergence, an angel appeared on someone’s tv in Mount Shasta and someone then channelled the angel, claiming it said: “I shall be appearing in many third dimensional guises.

Look for me on your computer screens, your television sets, and beaming down from your satellites.” I don’t believe anything came of that.

People still flock to Mount Shasta today, some just for the scenery and nature, but there is definitely a large New Age contingent - there are a lot of crystal shops in Mount Shasta. There are also very, erm, interesting tours and retreats you can take, such as this one called “The Arcturian Healing Retreat”. For the odd amount of $944, which does not include accommodation, you will experience “Nakura activations, connection with Arcturian light ships above Mount Shasta, quantum field activations, making contact, healing, enter pure reality, find out your cosmic origin, connect to stargates on Mount Shasta, Stargate heart activation, activations at high frequency portals and vortex on Mount Shasta, 1 Arcturian healing massage activation and 3 organic meals”.

Simon, put it on your to-do list. Go for the Nakura activations, stay for the cosmic muffins.

Arcturians are highly advanced extraterrestrials, by the way.

There is also a website that I mentioned earlier called LemurianConnection.com. This gives a very thorough history of Lemurians and all their spiritual stuff but as always, it really seems to skew the whole thing towards Christianity. Look, if Jesus was born about 2000 years ago, why are these beings that you state have been in existence for hundreds of thousands of years retaining their “Christ Consciousness”? They wouldn’t have had a clue who he was and have been under a mountain for at least 12,000 years so his little blip in the timeline would have completely passed them by.

The Lemurian Connection also states: “Lemuria still exists in a fourth and fifth dimensional frequency, not yet visible to our third dimensional vision and perception. As the veil between the dimensions becomes increasingly thinner, Lemuria, in Her new Splendor and Glory, will reveal Herself to us in a very physical and tangible way.” Oh, we can’t actually see it yet? How very convenient.

Honestly, this stuff is all a bit bonkers. On Telos UK.co.uk, yes, there’s a UK site about it too, here’s a bit about what they have to say about Mount Shasta: “It is a focus for angels, spirit-guides, spaceships, masters from the Light Realm, and the home of the survivors of Ancient Lemuria, which sank under the waves of the Pacific Ocean a little over 12,000 years ago. For those gifted with clairvoyant abilities, Mount Shasta is embraced in a gigantic, etheric purple pyramid whose capstone reaches far beyond this planet into space, and connects us intergalactically to the Confederation of Planets for this sector of the Milky Way Galaxy.

This awesome pyramid is also created as an inverted version of itself, reaching far down to the very core of the Earth. You can call Mount Shasta the entry point of the Light-Grids of this planet, where most of the energy comes first from the galactic and universal core before it is disseminated to other mountains and into the grids.”

So yeah, TelosUK.co.uk - go and find your people.

Conclusions

While myths and legends continue to swirl around Mount Shasta, the strange stories of underground cities are just pure fiction, made up from mashing together various stories of lost continents with a big spiritual twist.

The Bigfoot and UFO sightings are also just hearsay until we see some actual evidence, and anecdotal stories of feeling weirded out or seeing things in the woods isn’t exclusive to Mount Shasta, that can happen anywhere. I don’t believe that people are going missing at a vastly different rate than anywhere else, or in more mysterious circumstances, it’s just tied in with the existing reputation of the area.

Tribes such as the Winnemem Wintu regularly hold ceremonies around Mount Shasta and probably get annoyed with all the tourists poking about looking for entrances to non-existent underground cities.

While Mount Shasta is a special place, it’s not a portal to a fifth dimension or a hideout for reptilians, it’s just a big ass volcano covered in snow that has the potential to blow its top at any time which would not be good news for the crystal shops.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Mount Shasta?

Mount Shasta is a volcanic mountain located in Northern California, part of the Cascade Volcanoes. It is the second highest peak in the Cascades, standing at 14,179 feet (4,322 meters). It is known for its steep sides, satellite cones, and frequent snow cover, despite being an active volcano.

What are some of the myths and legends associated with Mount Shasta?

Mount Shasta is associated with various myths and legends, including stories of underground tunnels leading to cities of light, occult movements, and spiritual rituals. Native American tribes like the Klamath, Winnemem Wintu, Modoc, and Shasta have their own legends and rituals related to the mountain.

What is the legend of Llao and Skell?

The Klamath tribe’s legend involves Llao, a spirit of the Below-world, and Skell, a spirit of the Above-world. Llao fell in love with a Klamath chief’s daughter but was rejected. In revenge, Llao swore to destroy her tribe with fire. Skell intervened, leading to a battle where Llao was trapped beneath Mount Shasta, and Skell filled the crater with water, creating Crater Lake.

What is the story of Lemuria and the Lemurians?

The story of Lemuria involves a lost continent that sank into the Indian Ocean. Lemurians, who were said to be contemporaries of Atlanteans, supposedly found a new home under Mount Shasta, creating a city called Telos. They are described as tall, psychic beings with glowing skin and long hair.

Who is Frederick Spencer Oliver and what is his connection to Mount Shasta?

Frederick Spencer Oliver wrote the book ‘A Dweller on Two Planets,’ which mentions Lemuria and the Lemurians. The book was dictated to him by a spirit named Phylos the Thibetan and is often cited as a source for the underground city theory related to Mount Shasta.

What is the I AM Activity movement?

The I AM Activity movement was started by Guy Ballard after he allegedly met the Count of Saint-Germain on Mount Shasta. This movement is an offshoot of Theosophy and focuses on reincarnation, karma, and ascending up the ranks of humanity. It has a strong presence around Mount Shasta.

Have there been any UFO sightings around Mount Shasta?

Yes, there have been multiple UFO sightings around Mount Shasta over the years. Brian David Wallenstein’s book ‘Mount Shasta Sightings’ documents these sightings, although many can be attributed to lenticular clouds, which often resemble flying saucers.

How many people have gone missing around Mount Shasta?

As of 2022, 11 people have vanished over the space of 10 years in the Mount Shasta area. However, the actual span of these disappearances is more than 10 years, and many of these cases are likely due to accidents, suicide, or murder rather than supernatural causes.

What is the Harmonic Convergence?

The Harmonic Convergence was a spiritual event that took place in August 1987 at various power centers of spiritual energy, including Mount Shasta. It was supposed to coincide with an auspicious planetary alignment and the end of a Mayan calendar cycle.

What is the current status of Mount Shasta?

Mount Shasta continues to attract visitors for its natural beauty and spiritual significance. It is a popular destination for hikers, New Age enthusiasts, and those interested in its mystical reputation. The mountain is also home to various spiritual retreats and tours.

Sources

• Original Decoding the Unknown video: Mount Shasta: Portal to Another Dimension?
• Hero image source by Cullen328 photo by Jim Heaphy / openverse, by-sa.