"The thought of the serpents is not so far-fetched when we remember that the Arab geographers always referred to Antilla, or Atlantis, as the Dragon’s Isle. Was the dragon the great King Thevetat, the mysterious spirit who ruled Atlantis from the air, unseen at any time, and according to the ancient traditions, whose agents upon the earth were the serpent-kings who carried his feathered scepter as a symbol of their regency? If so, then the natural symbol for this dragon-king, Lord of the Seven Cities or Nations, would be the seven-headed serpent which is perpetuated, as the seven-headed Naga of Cambodia. Similarly, the Atlantean empire is represented by a strange dragon whose heads represent the sources of the race and whose long coils reveal the migrations of the Atlanteans in their serpentine path across the world.
"The account of Atlantis being under the dominion of a great invisible being may have given rise to certain Celtic legends, particularly those dealing with the account of how Ireland was originally peopled by an invisible race and ruled over by an aerial king. These myths may have come to Ireland by way of the 'men from the sea,' accounts of whom have been preserved in their traditions. Their descendants, the Druids, were the 'snakes' whom St. Patrick is supposed to have destroyed."
--MANLY P. HALL, ATLANTIS: AN INTERPRETATION, 1946
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