14.7: Snake Priests of Atlantis

Robert E. Howard's “The Shadow Kingdom” sits at the nexus of two realms of occult lore: the canon revolving around an Atlantean Root Race established by Helena Blavatsky in her Secret Doctrine in the late 1880s and the reptilian conspiracy theory most closely identified with former sportscaster David Icke. The Shadow Kingdom tells the story of an Atlantean warrior, Kull, who becomes a Valusian king. The ambassador Ka-nu reveals a secret plot of shape-shifting serpent men hiding in Kull's own palace and the blunt warrior king swings into action in opposition to the conspiracy which reaches a terrible climax in the cursed chamber of a king murdered a thousand years before. Although “The Shadow Kingdom” is a work of fiction—in fact, it is arguably the earliest example of the “Sword and Sorcery” fantasy genre most popularly associated with Tolkein's Lord of the Rings—it both drew on and introduced elements into occult and conspiracy lore that have been accepted by believers as absolute truth.