Chris Snead - Atlantean Artifacts?

In The Magician's Nephew, Uncle Andrew crafts magical rings from a powder which comes from Atlantis. While it could be that Lewis was merely pulling from one of the most common “lost world” locales, I find it more likely given Lewis' propensity for well thought out metaphors that he chose Atlantis very specifically. The idea of Atlantis goes back at least as far back as Plato, and in fact many similar myths can be seen outside the Hellenic world. While the idea has been largely ridiculed in recent decades, there was a very avid belief in Atlantis and Lemuria immediately before the outbreak of World War I. It is very possible that C. S. Lewis makes mention of Atlantis in order to express his own belief in such a place – and to preserve its legend in the minds of the children who have inherited the existentially empty world that we presently inhabit. Before dismissing the idea out of hand, we would do well to remember that Troy was long considered to be purely a fantasy – until it was discovered at the turn of the 20^th Century. Lewis suggests that Atlantis is a world that we have lost contact with – a Faerie world. If this is true, it would explain much of the inconvenient inconsistencies in our present historical model, which is completely and totally devoid of spirit.