Mount Shasta Legends
A California volcano credited with sheltering survivors of a lost continent beneath it. The belief has a traceable paper trail: the book usually blamed for it barely mentions Lemuria, and the one that invented the connection came out in 1931.
Field Guide Entry
Where the Lemurians came from
The story is that refugees from the sunken continent of Lemuria live inside Mount Shasta, in a city called Telos. It is usually traced to Frederick Spencer Oliver's A Dweller on Two Planets, written in the 1880s and published in 1905 after his death, and presented as dictated to him by a spirit called Phylos the Thibetan.
Read it and the attribution falls apart. The book is about Atlantis. Lemuria appears six times in the whole text.
The connection was made in 1931, by Harvey Spencer Lewis, founder of the Rosicrucian order AMORC, writing as Wishar Spenle Cerve in Lemuria: the Lost Continent of the Pacific. That book put the survivors under Shasta and is the reason anyone associates the two. It is a work of occult publishing from a named author with a known organization behind him, and it is 94 years old, not ancient.
Ballard, and 1987
In 1930, Guy Ballard, a mining engineer, said he met the Count of Saint-Germain on the slopes of the mountain and was given teachings. With his wife Edna he built that encounter into the "I AM" Activity, a movement with a large following through the 1930s. Shasta became its sacred mountain.
In August 1987, the Harmonic Convergence brought thousands of people to the peak for a globally coordinated meditation. Contemporary coverage called it a spiritual Woodstock. The town's identity as a New Age destination dates largely from that week.
Lenticular clouds form over Shasta regularly, a standing wave effect of moist air over a high isolated peak, and they are disc-shaped, sharp-edged, and stationary. They are photographed as craft constantly.
Whose mountain it is
Shasta is sacred to the Winnemem Wintu, whose relationship with it long predates any of the above and is ongoing rather than historical. Practices brought by visitors, including leaving crystals and objects in springs and streams, conflict directly with how the tribe holds specific sites on the mountain should be treated.
That tension is the live issue at Shasta. The Lemurians are the part that gets written about.
Visiting Information
The city of Mount Shasta sits at the foot of the peak with the visitor center, outfitters, and the bookshops that are a large part of the experience. Everitt Memorial Highway climbs to Bunny Flat, which is the usual trailhead and is plowed in winter, and gives the closest easy view of the mountain.
Climbing above 10,000 feet requires a summit pass and a wilderness permit, both obtained from the ranger station or self-issued at the trailhead. This is a serious glaciated mountain with rockfall and rapidly changing weather, and it is not a hike, so anyone going above the treeline should be equipped for it.
Panther Meadows, high on the mountain, is a spring site of particular significance to the Winnemem Wintu. Leaving offerings, crystals, or objects there causes real harm, and the request from the tribe and the Forest Service is to visit quietly and take nothing and leave nothing.
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