Reason compels me to go over to the other side, the skeptic side, that is, on a few issues.What I am about to say is so obvious that I shouldn't have to say it. There are still quite a few people who insist on believing that there is a literal, physical underground city of Lemurians and/or ascended masters directly under California's Mount Shasta. Now, I am normally anything but a debunker and I am very open to the possibility (and only a possibility) that earthquake zones, volcanoes, and even high, isolated non-volcanic peaks (like Mt. Diablo, also in California) may be the centers of paranormal or Fortean phenomena. Maybe even they can sometimes be portals to other realms, although this is nothing but speculation. But there is no Lemurian city in a cave under Shasta.
First of all, the very word "Lemurian" derives from "lemur," a class of primates found in Madagascar and India. Before plate tectonics came to the rescue (the theory is that India migrated from southeast Africa to its current location), paleontologists speculated that lemurs migrated over a long, thin land bridge in the Indian Ocean, which they named, appropriately enough, "Lemuria." Occultists like Madame Blavatsky and others moved Lemuria into the Pacific, made it a continent, and peopled it with an advanced prehistoric civilization on the basis of no proven evidence whatever. This does not mean that there could not have been a civilization based on the many islands of the Pacific; there is some evidence that seems to point in that direction.
And then there is the problem of Mount Shasta itself. It is a volcano, part of the Cascade Range, which is in turn part of the Pacific Ring of Fire. And it is not extinct, but only dormant, having last erupted in the eighteenth century. When I climbed it in 1976, near the summit there was still an active fumarole emitting steam and sulfur dioxide. It is hot under Shasta, steaming, burning hot, and the rock layers are weak and unstable, and it has erupted before and will erupt again.
It is no place for a city.
William B Stoecker

