AFuturaBook

First published in Great Britain in 1971

by Neville Spearman Limited.

Fint Futura Publications edition 1975

Copyright © John A Keel 1971

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired oat or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN o 8600 71537

Printed in Great Britain by

Cox&WymanLtd,

London, Reading and Fakenham

CONTENTS

Introduction 7

1

PART ONE

Chapter One: 'You Can't Get There From Here' 13

Chapter Two: The Continent That Vanished 22

Chapter Three: If's a Nice Place To Visit But… 29

Chapter Four: Towers of Glass and Theories of Putty 40

Chapter Five: Strong Men and Stupid Enterprises 45

Chapter Six:

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Extinction 56 Chapter Seven:

Scientists in Collision 6$

FART TWO

Chapter Eight; Mimics of Man 79

Chapter Nine: Men-in-Black Lore and the CIA 90

Chapter Ten: Rendezvous with the Damned 101

Chapter Eleven: Not One of Them, Etc____ 113

Chapter Twelve: The Demise of the Gods 125

' 'tTb» Secret of the A^es 137

PART THREE Chapter Fourteen:

'HeUoj Central. Give me Ganymede' 155

Chapter Fifteen:

Where Is Everybody Going? X71

^Jüfipfer Sixteen ¦

TheRerohitioaoftieMind 184

INTRODUCTION

In September 1953,1 spent right hours inside the Great Pyramid in Egypt producing a radio programme which was aired throughout Europe over the American Forces Network (AFN) the following month. Egypt so impressed me, and archaeology so fascinated me, that I returned to Cairo the next year and lived there for several months, wading through the musty libraries and museums, prowling the desert, and visiting the ancient tombs. During a trek to Aswan and the Upper Nile I saw my first flying saucer, a metallic looking disk, with a rotating outer rim, which hovered for several minutes above the Aswan Dam in broad daylight. I had written and produced a radio documentary, Things in the Sky, in 1952, and my earlier researches into unidentified flying objects had already convinced me that such things not only existed, but that they had been present in our skies since the dawn of man.

Eventually my travels took me to Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad and a thousand places in between. I walked among the ancient ruins and puzzled over man's illustrious but forgotten past. In India I wandered alone into the Himalayas and crossed the border of Tibet (which has since been sealed by the Chinese). As I travelled, I interviewed archaeologists, historians, and assorted experts and spent endless hours in remote libraries poring over rare old books. I was puzzled at first to discover that none of the leading authorities seemed to agree on anything. Indeed, a large part of the scientific literature is devoted to theorization and incredibly vicious attacks on the theories of other theorists. Most perplexing of all was the fact that some of the literature about the ruins I had visited smacked of pure fiction, because the authors had not visited the sites but laboured instead to couple fictitious theories with dubious facts. This led, of course, to conclusions that bordered on the imbecilic.

An offshoot of this process is, understandably enough, an enormous quantity of crank literature created by unqualified researchers who attempted to interpret the scientific material in their own ways. In many areas of the less popular sciences the crank material outweighs the scientific because few if any scientists have tackled those subjects. So 98 per cent of all the available literature on Atlantis, flying saucers, Tibet, and prehistoric ruins falls into the crank category. The task of sotting all this out and developing a valid synthesis is a formidable one - one which I have undertaken with great trepidation.

In his book, In the Name of Science, Martin Gardner defines the characteristics of the common crank or pseudoscientist. He lists the four chief attributes as being:

(1) The crank considers himself a genius… even a towering genius who is years ahead of his time.
(2) He considers his colleagues and fellow researchers 'ignorant blockheads', largely because they fail to recognize his genius. He assaults his opponents by impugnation, questioning their honesty, intelligence, and motives. They respond in kind, naturally, and so great storms are whipped up in the trivial teacups of the scientific and pseudo-scientific journals. Controversy is the lifeblood of crankism.
(3) The pseudoscientist is paranoid and feels he is the victim of a vast conspiracy designed to suppress his brilliant work. In many instances these imagined conspiracies become a vital part of the subject itself, as for example, the endless literature discussing how the U.S. Air Force has been keeping the truth about flying saucers from the public.
(4) The crank delights in focusing his attacks 'on the greatest scientists and the best established theories'. He goes after big game. He is wiser than Einstein, knows more about astronomy than Fred Hoyle, and is better informed about the moon than Neil Armstrong.

The crank also invents his own terminology: a jabberwocky understood only by him and his closest allies. So, we find the literature filled with confusing and complicated terms which are merely displays of pseudo-erudition, or what psychiatrists call neologisms.

Over the years I have met the leaders of many peculiar cults and pseudoscientific factions of belief. With very few exceptions, they have all lived up to the above criteria. Most were friendly and co­operative with me until they realized that I did not share their beliefs in Atlantis or visitors from Andromeda. Then they turned on me with wrathful vengeance and launched such campaigns of unfounded slander that I could only be amazed and amused. I have now been accused of being everything from a Communist con man to a secret agent for the Central Intelligence Agency; from a religious fanatic (I'm a lifelong agnostic) to a pawn of the devil. Typographical errors, over which I have no control, in my many articles and books have been lovingly dissected by these groups and prompted countless letters and essays reviewing their sinister implications. After twenty-five years as a writer and reporter dedicated to collecting the facts as objectively and as honestly as possible, my integrity has been attacked from all angles.

For these reasons this book is written in a style which discusses known facts with the popular and unpopular beliefs they have inspired. I am not supporting any of these beliefs, I am merely discussing them. It may be that the great civilizations of Atlantis and Lemnria once actually flourished on this planet. In this book I am only weighing the evidence pro and coo. It may be that little green men from Mars really are visiting housewives in Nebraska. I am only reporting the claims of the housewives, not trying to prove that Martians are really dropping in. The believers in Atlantis will undoubtedly hate me. The believers in Martians already despise me.

Parts of this book are so obviously tongue-in-cheek that it shouldn't be necessary to mention it. Yet I know from bitter experience that some of my humorous comments will be taken seriously and will prompt new venom. I am not attacking any specific individuals or cults. I am attacking man's abysmal ignorance and his impassioned effort to hide that ignorance from himself. I have seen a large part of this world and its mysteries. Wonder and curiosity have always been an integral part of my life. I am only trying to share that wonder with the reader.

This book is based upon countless interviews, endless correspondence, many in-depth personal investigations, and hundreds of books covering everything from alchemy to zoology. Wherever possible, I have tried to include key source references for the benefit of those readers who might be interested in pursuing some of these matters further. It has been impossible, however, to list all my sources. Some of the books used in my research were privately published and are quite rare.

Although unidentified flying objects are mentioned frequently in these pages, the UFO controversy is not the main theme. Some of the major UFO cases discussed are drawn from reports which appeared originally in England's Ftying Saucer Review, the only truly scientific publication devoted to the subject.

I do not pretend to know any answers. After a lifetime of travel and study I am still learning the questions. This is a journey into man's past and the curious manifestations which have always surrounded them, and which have directed the human race upwards from the caves to the moon itself. It is a Journey into a jungle of myth, legend, and belief, and hopefully, it is another small step towards the larger truth that man has always sought but never really found.

John A. Keel


PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

'YOU CANT GET THERE FROM HERE'

While hairy, beetled-browed cavemen were labouring to invent fire and the wheel, there already existed on this planet a highly de­veloped civilization of intelligent beings, they built massive cities of stone, many of which are still standing. They methodically con­structed giant mounds of earth all over this planet for some purpose which still escapes us. They scattered peculiar artifacts of stone and metal across every continent, and they sailed every ocean, map­ping the entire globe systematically.

Then they vanished.

Cavemen inherited the earth. They regarded the ancient cities as sacred places. As the centuries ticked off, they became conscious of other life forms around them. Life forms that seemed to possess die power of invisibility, of life and death itself. They invented names for these forms. They worshipped them. They recorded the mani­festations of that invisible world in myths and legends handed down from generation to generation. Eventually they perfected sciences .based upon their observations of those manifestations. In time those sciences developed new myths. The original owners of the earth, the builders of those great cities, were forgotten. But as men spread across the face of the planet, the traces of those lost Elders were rediscovered Man's new-fangled sciences couldn't fit such traces into their new concepts, however, so the evidence was ignored. As a result, the earth has two histories: the history taught in our colleges and schools, and the real but ignored history of a very ancient people and of strange forces which have often supervised human events.

Ten thousand years ago that unknown civilization carefully mapped the entire surface of the globe. Their maps were copied and recopied and passed along from one age to the next. Finally, copies of them were rediscovered by Capt. Arlington H. Mallery in, of all places, the library of Congress. Known as the Pin Re'is maps, they were originally found among the relics in the former imperial palace of the Sultan of Constantinople in 1929. Eventually they ended up in the archives in Washington DC. At first glance these mapss which

are dated a.d. 1513, appear to be nothing more than a hopelessly garbled view of the ancient world. No one paid much attention to them until Captain Mallery came along. Working with the U.S. Hy-drographic Office and the Weston Observatory of Boston, he de­veloped a grid system which suddenly brought the maps into focus. The modern Mercator grid system was not invented until 1559, so the ancient surveyors had to develop a method of their own. Once Mallery had unscrambled that method, he could hardly believe the results.

These maps were incredibly detailed and as accurate as the latest charts. Antarctica, for example, was not discovered until Captain Cook reached it in 1773, and it was not fully explored until the 1950s. But the frozen continent is laid out with almost pinpoint accuracy on the Pi'ri Re'is maps, including mountain ranges that were not even known to us until 19521

Even more astonishing, these maps outline glaciers and land areas which are known to have existed in the Ice Age… before the last great shift of the earth's crust an estimated ten thousand years ago. This fact led Mallery to conclude that tbe,origjnal on which the Piri Re'is maps were apparently based had to have been drawn before the Ice Age.

Professor Charles Hapgood, a science historian, heard of Mallery's woik and turned the maps into a class study project at Keene State College. His students painstakingly compared each detail with modern charts and found that the ancient maps were never more than five degrees off… and those errors were probably due to land movements that occurred after the originals were drawn. Many of the details of the early maps correlated precisely with modern surveys. The results of Hapgood's studies, together with full-colour reproductions of the maps, were published in a book titled Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings,

Modem scientists can't seem to agree on the age of mankind. Each year produces a new bit of bone and new controversy. Some claim man might be half a million years old. Others offer more con­servative estimates ranging between thirty to seventy thousand years. But all seem to share the notion that our ancestors were embarrassingly primitive ten thousand years ago. They certainly were not developed enough to sail and chart the earth.

It would have been impossible for anyone to contrive the maps in 1929, the year they were found in Constantinople, It would have been even more impossible for someone to hoax them in 1513. And it is downright ridiculous to think that someone could have surveyed

the earth before the Ice Age. Modern scientists have a very scientific method for coping with such humiliating discoveries. They put them in the basements of their museums and forget them.

The museums are filled with such erratics, as they are called. A cube of metal, carefully machined, notched, and rounded on one side, was found in the centre of a block of coal in Austria in 1885. It's still in a museum in Salzburg and no one has ever come up with an explanation for it. Basing their conclusions on the age of the coal bed. various experts have estimated it to be three hundred thousand years old. That makes it quite a bit younger than the piece of gold thread that workmen found imbedded in eight feet of rock at a quarry in Rutherford Mills, England. The London Times announced the discovery on June 22nd. 1844… and the experts mumbled that it had to be sixty million years old. Who could have dropped a gold thread in England sixty million years ago ? Or who could have manu­factured that iron and nickel cube three hundred thousand years back? Maybe these things were the handiwork of the same people who ma^e the strange pieces of very ancient pottery which have been found in rock quarries and coal mines around the world along with steel nails, perfect glass lenses, and even - believe it or not -bones of prehistoric animals with bullets in them. Giant chains have been found imbedded in great rocks in both North and South America. Not merely imbedded but actually passing through the rocks. They seem to predate the arrival of the Europeans by thousands of years.

Electric batteries have been found in ancient Egyptian tombs. A huge slab of perfect green glass weighing many tons was found in a cave in Israel a few years ago. It ranks as the largest piece of glass ever cast and is very ancient. Who made it, how, and why are still unsolved mysteries.

Science tells us one thing: these artifacts put the lie to all the scientific theories. Take man's earliest records - the cave paintings. Scientists assert that the great saurians were extinct long before man arrived on the scene. Yet cave paintings have been found de­picting dinosaurs. Other cliff carvings in the south-west show men hurling weapons at gigantic creatures that look like elephants or mammoths.

Captain Mallery created a stir when he first revealed his work with the Piri Re'is maps on a broadcast from Georgetown University in 1956. He dared to suggest that the maps may have been the product of an aerial survey. Professor Hapgood was more cautious, however, and merely implied they were the work of some lost sea­faring culture. The aerial survey hypothesis would have necessarily

been dependent upon a highly advanced technological society. Not only would flying machines have been required, but photography would also be needed for such a survey. Did the Elders have cameras, too?

A mere forty-seven thousand years ago somebody carved an intri­guing picture on the side of the Hunan Mountains in China. A pic­ture of cylinders in the sky with strange beings standing on them. Russian and Chinese archaeologists could date it. but they couldn't explain it Nor could they explain the drawing they found carved in a cliff at Fergana in Central Asia in 1961. A Reuters dispatch de­scribed it as resembling a man wearing an 'airtight helmet' with some kind of mechanical contraption on his back. It has been dated at 7000 b.c. Other peculiar cave and cliff carvings have been found in South America, Japan, and the Sahara Desert. Some of these pictures show giants with round heads towering over ordinary hunters. Others depict circular objects with, odd creatures coming out of them. These drawings were apparent; attempts to record highly unusual and significant events, but today they are open to all kinds of interpretation and speculation.

Scattered throughout France there are many ancient caverns heavily decorated with carvings and paintings dating back ten to thirty thousand years. More than two thousand animals are de­picted, including 610 horses, 510 bison, 205 mammoths, and 176 ibex, according to a study published by H. Breuil in 1952. Alongside this impressive menagerie there are scores of other designs which are far more mysterious. They show oval- and disk-shaped objects some apparently standing on tripod legs with ladders extending down from them. Archaeologists can't account for them, but they look uneasily like the modern descriptions of flying saucers. The leading French authority, Aime Michel, goes so far as to suggest that that is exactly what they are.

Ancient records in China describe flying saucers and mysterious lights in the sky. They were usually regarded as dragons, and the early Chinese noted that these things flew regular routes year after year, century after century. Other early manuscripts preserved in India mention vimanas, 'aerial cars", as if they were commonplace. Five thousand years ago a sage named Mahaüshi Bharadwaj wrote a thorough description of these vimanas. telling how they could move in all directions silently, cover vast distances, and even become in­visible. They were supposedly propelled by 'tunes and rhythms'… perhaps a poetic way of describing the humming and whirring of intricate and little-understood machinery. In appearance they re-

sembled the flying cones which have been frequently described in the reports of modem UFO witnesses around the globe.

Although this sort of evidence is superabundant, it has never been systematically studied by trained scholars. Instead, this material has fallen into, the hands of assorted cultists and students of fringe pseudoscienccs. It has been used to advance belief in everything from lost Atlantis to extraterrestrial visitants from some distant planet. To subscribe to any one of these multitudinous beliefs is to exclude all other possibilities. We should consider every possibility, avoid belief, and accept only the hard facts.

Two key facts are already clear: (1) There have always been strange objects in the skies above this planet. They were seen by early man and have been seen constantly ever since, as the Bible and other available records still firmly attest. (2) Somebody mapped the earth before the Ice Age. We have no way of knowing who they were or how they did it. If the Piri Re'is maps were the product of an aerial survey, then perhaps there was an advanced civilization somewhere in the Americas or the Pacific, removed from the random clusters of primitive men. But occasionally the advanced culture dropped in on the cavemen or at least flew overhead. Thus, two cultures may have existed simultaneously. One highly advanced and purposely aloof from the other - the animal-like cave dwellers. It was inevitable that the two cultures should occasionally cross and that the higher group should affect the lower in many ways. At some point in early history the higher culture was either destroyed by a monumental catastrophe or withdrew in some fashion, leaving hardly a trace behind. Sp, our entire record of that superculture comes from the observations of primitive man. Our only evidence is the flimsy overlapping that took place: the residue of the effect of the superculture upon the subculture.

Primitive man was profoundly influenced by the sapetculture and guided by it. There are even indications that members of the super-culture actually appeared before primitive man and took over as kings and god-kings to direct his early development Such ap­pearances helped to generate many of man's first religious beliefs.

Some 2,500,000 people believe in the Book of Mormon, the Mormon bible, which is purportedly a record of life in North Am­erica thousands of years ago. As with all such records from all cul­tures and all religions, there are frequent descriptions of events in which some unknown benevolent group supplied man with direct help in an hour of need. For example, here is how a compass was introduced, presumably, to those long forgotten North Americans:

And it came to pass that as my father arose in the morning and went forth to the tent door, to his great astonishment he beheld upon the ground a round ball of curious workmanship; and it was of fine brass. And within the ball were two spindles; and the one pointed the way whither we should go into the wilderness. (1 Nephi 16:10) «

One of the most popular theories bandied about in cultist circles is that man was seeded on this planet by some inter-planetary group and that that group has kindly, but remotely, observed and guided our progress ever since. If this were true, they have been doing a lousy Job in recent centuries. We need a lot more help than they have been giving us.

In H. G. Wells' prophetic Things to Come there is a vision of a world ravaged by war and divided into fiercetribes ruled by warlords. A handful of surviving scientists and thinkers band together and begin the task of restoring civilization by flying over the planet. They call their organization Wings over the World (WOW). Much of the UFO evidence suggests that a real WOW has always existed. Maybe one of their members handed a caveman the first flaming brand and the first wheel, just as some unknown party allegedly deposited the first compass outside that Mormon tent.

A friend from WOW could have handed the original Ptri Re'ts map to some ancient Egyptian. After him it may have passed from the library at Alexandria to the palace in Constantinople. The key to the grid system was lost, so the map became useless. However, it is known that Christopher Columbus did have some strange maps when he set out for his short-cut to India.1

It is easy to speculate and even easier to leap to mind-blowing conclusions. We must try instead to assemble the many fragments of tantalizing evidence and attempt to construct the whole. To do this, we must first recognize some very unpleasant facts. We must admit Just how stupid we really are.

In recent months several different scientists attached to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have issued humble public statements admitting that our space programme has produced data which invalidates many of the most coveted con­clusions and beliefs of our learned astronomers. Ideas which have been accepted as fact for many years have suddenly been proved completely false. The more we find out about the moon, the less we

1 See Arlington H. Mallery. Lost America.

know about it. Space probes to Mars and Venus have tossed in­numerable astronomical theories into a cocked hat Recent radar probes to the planet Mercury discovered that that planet is actually rotating slowly on its axis, even though millions of school children have been taught for generations that Mercury does not rotate. Leading astronomers are now arguing over the status of Jupiter. Some now suspect that it isn't a planet at all but is really a cold star.

For the past two centuries astronomers have been peering through telescopes, counting stars, and making mathematical calculations to account for the motions and fückerings they have observed. They hare published and taught their learned conclusions as the gospel. Now we know that they have been wrong in many key areas. Before the end of this century all the text-books will have to be scrapped. All of the old ideas will be discarded.

'We used to think of the universe as nothing more than abundant fields of stars arranged in galaxies,' Dr Frank Drake, Chairman of Cornell University's astronomy department, said recently. "But we underestimated the variety and quantity of matter in space by a factor of about one trillion. Which means that we were about as wrong as we could be.*

In the early 1960s deep-dished radio telescopes discovered a maze of radio signals pouring in from outer space. At first there were wild speculations that we had made contact with some superdvifeation in some other galaxy. But further study discounted this fascinating notion. Instead, it was found that interstellar space is filled with invisible objects which don't emit light rays but which do give off powerful radio waves. These things have been dubbed quasars and pulsars. They constitute one rather trivial aspect of a broad and complex phenomenon. Our haunted planet has always been bathed in mysterious electromagnetic propagation and radio waves, some of them intelligent signals of unknown origin. We have been aware of these signals ever since the invention of the radio receiver, but we still can't account for them. All of this will be discussed in depth in another chapter.

Just as those funny flying isaucers seem to be an environmental mystery which has always existed on this planet, it also seems that the earth's atmosphere has always been charged with unidentified radio signals - some of which seem to radiate from the planet itself … as if the earth were beaming signals into space in response to the signals being received. Of course, the cultists contend that WOW has established secret transmitters in underground caverns.

Even gravity is a mystery. Newton discovered the hard way that if you sit under an apple tree, you are apt to get hit on the head by a falling apple. But we still don't know why. Recent experiments indi­cate that gravity is really a slowly pulsing wave pouring across space, beating about once per hour. The source of this wave and its true nature are a puzzle. We thought we knew something about ic until our astronauts went into space and fumbled around in weight­lessness. They found that even friction disappears in space.

R. Buckminster Fuller, the great thinker and designer, has said, "Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines.'

Everything is up for grabs. We don't know anything about the universe or outer space. We have in all likelihood constructed a totally false history of our own race. And most humiliating of all, although we have lived on this planet for at least forty thousand years, we really don't know much about it. Worse still, we haven't even explored it!

Vast sections of this planet encompassing hundreds of thousands of square miles have never been surveyed. There are enormous regions that still have not been visited by a single scientifically trained man. Seasoned travellers are wearily familiar with the prob­lem of locating accurate maps. In many countries in Africa, Asia, and South America detailed maps are simply unobtainable because no surveys have ever been made. Those maps which are available often have the rivers and mountains in the wrong places. Here in the United States precisely detailed maps of many areas just don't exist. There are blank spots in Maine and even in New Jersey. The average road map doled out by service stations includes only the major high­ways and the larger towns. Unincorporated villages - and they number in the thousands - can't be found on any map anywhere. The regional maps distributed by the Geological Survey in Wash­ington are often based upon surveys made in 1880 or 1920, so many of them are virtually useless. New highways are being built so rapidly that the average road map is two to five years behind.

Travellers to inland Brazil find themselves trying to cope with maps based on sketches drawn by missionaries a hundred years ago. Visitors to the Himalaya Mountains have to deal with maps drawn by amateur cartographers and guesswork. Vast sections of the earth's oceans have not been adequately charted. There are count-

less islands everywhere that have never been visited, named, or mapped. If WOW actually exists, they could occupy a large island in the Pacific or Antarctica and nobody would ever he the wiser.

We have, of course, flown over a great part of the earth. Back in the 1930s Charles Lindbergh flew over Brazil and reported seeing an enormous stone wall deep in the jungle. A wall that stretched for miles. No explorer has ever penetrated to that wall overland. We still don't know anything about it. Other flieis in other parts of the world have reported similar oddities and most of them remain unex­plored mysteries.

In 1970 the United Nations issued a report which stated that four-fifths of the earth's surface was inadequately surveyed and charted and that tremendous areas remain unexplored altogether. The car­tographers who drew up the original Piri Re'is maps probably knew more about our planet than we do.

Despite all these facts, most of us like to pretend that our planet is fully explored and that all of its many mysteries have been adequately solved. We believe our history books. In fact, many millions of people still cling to the thoroughly discredited religious belief that mankind is only four thousand years old. Science labours to ignore the mounting evidence that we may not be the only intelli­gent life form on this planet. Yet historians have always carefully recorded the events which indicate that a parahuman race does exist alongside us. Millions of people have encountered them and thou­sands of books have been written about those encounters.

Now that we are zooming headlong into the Age of Aquarius, it is time for us to take a new look at the world around us; time for us to study those despicable erratics of archaeology and history; time for us to think about the unthinkable. Our much-touted technology has led us down the road to ruin, poisoned our environment, and given us the implements for destroying the earth itself. If there was a great superculture thousands of years ago, perhaps it followed the same tragic course. Perhaps even the Abominable Snowmen of the Him­alayas and their North American counterparts, the Sasquatch of Canada, will inherit the earth, and ten thousand years from now their descendants will be studying a frayed copy of an old road map and speculating about us. Naturally, there will be scientists among them who will sneer at the whole thing… and they will get back to the business of trying to split the atom.

CHAPTER TWO

THE CONTINENT THAT VANISHED

Every two or three years some adventurous scientist or peripatetic deep-sea diver discovers lost Atlantis. He usually announces Ms find during the summer silly season when news is slow, and the papers are filled with yarns about the Loch Ness monster and bathing beauty contests. Atlantis has now been located in the Mediterranean (many times), west of the Azores, south of the Azores, in the -Car­ibbean, off the west coast of South America, off the east coast of South America, in the North Pacific, in the South Pacific, oE the coast of Florida, and even in the Indian Ocean.

Recently the ruins of an ancient temple of unknown origin were discovered in the blue waters off the Bahamas. The newspapers soberly revealed that Atlantis had been found at last. A year of so later a mysterious stone pillar was spotted by divers deep in the ocean off the coast of Peru. Atlantis rose again.

This game has been going on for a very long time. Researchers wading through fifty-year-old newspapers have found them sprinkled with wondrous tales of Atlantean finds. Professors and PhD's nave frequently joined the clamour, bidding for publicity (and the often sizable foundation grants that follow such publicity), keep­ing alive one of the great fantasies of human history. It isn't even a myth or legend; there isn't enough evidence of any kind to give Atlantis such stature. Nevertheless, Atlantis has become an import­ant part of our folklore. Even the famous prophet Edgar Cayce dis­cussed the lost continent with the spirit world and passed along the prediction that it would rise again in the stormy Atlantic in 196S-9.

While the reality of Atlantis can be viewed with considerable scep­ticism, the persistence of the belief in it provides some interesting farts about the weird mechanisms employed by the earth's phantom inhabitants to generate myths and camouflage their real existence. Atlantis is no more real than visitors from Mars. Yet there are millions of people who have believed wholeheartedly in both. The members of WOW have carefully sowed the seeds of such myths in their wake and have worked across the generations to nurture them.

First, how did the story of Atlantis begin? It was launched by a single man named Plato (427-347 B.C.). In his two dialogues Timaeus* and 'Critias'. he offers a description of Atlantis and its demise nine thousand years earlier. His source, he states, is a man named Critias, who had heard the story from his great-grandfather Dropides, who had heard it from a sage named Solon, who had heard it from an Egyptian priest. So the whole foundation of the Atlantis fantasy is based upon what a ninety-year-old man told a ten-year-old boy (those are the ages given by Plato) about a tale spun by Solon years before. Rather like having your great-grand­father tell you the plot of a novel that someone else described to him after having heard it from someone else in a far-off land. And that someone else hadn't read the novel but had only heard about it, since the novel was nine-thousand years old.

Incidentally, the final pages of Plato's discourse are missing, so even his record of this hearsay is incomplete.

Scholars have devoted their lives to pondering Plato and search­ing for archaeological evidence to support the existence of Atlantis. Visit any library and you will find shelves of books on the subject. New pro-Atlantis volumes appear each year. A small, inde­fatigable cult of Atlantean believers has existed for a century or more, pouncing upon each new archaeological discovery as proof of Atlantis. Ruins throughout Central and South America have been credited to the Atlantis culture. Everything from Stonehenge in Eng­land to the Great Pyramid in Egypt to the monasteries in the Him­alayas has been accepted by the believers as further evidence of Atlantis.

In Chapter One the premise was stated that mankind could be an offshoot of some earlier superculture. The Atlantophiles have recog­nized this partially and think of Atlantis as that superculture. The psychic world has supported this contention for years by passing along endless messages about the past glories of Atlantis through mediums, Ouija boards, and the like. Many of these messages have served as the basis for some of the peculiar books that have ap­peared. Surprisingly, some of the data in this torrent of gibberish can be authenticated historically, but a pattern is hard to estab­lish.

There are people around the world who claim to have actually met the Atlanteans themselves. These percipients (witnesses) de­scribe stately men and women dressed in colourful robes and head­dresses, who appear suddenly like ghosts or apparitions. People who have never given Atlantis any thought at all are suddenly confronted

by these entities. Such visits can last for hours according to the percipients. The Atlantean takes great pains to describe the history of Atlantis in detail and when the witness scurries to a library, he or she finds some of the things mentioned in the literature. Eventually the percipient may write a book or pamphlet himself, combining what he has read with what he has been told by the entity. His work is entered into the literature and quoted again and again in new books by others.

This same phenomenon occurs constantly in religion, spiritualism, and ufodom, In the latter the entities claim to represent some other planet and they pass along convincing (to the percipient) descrip­tions of life on other worlds. like the Atlantean entities, the UFO pilots share the disturbing ability to appear and disappear in thin air. The tall, bearded Atlanteans with their high cheekbones and Oriental eyes are undoubtedly close brethren of the picturesque spacemen who, incidentally, are most often described the same way.

In occult lore these entities have been described for centuries and are called elemental. The phenomenon take many forms and un­doubtedly inspired the massive folklore on fairies and leprechauns, vampires, and demons, and the multitude of ghouls, goblins, and banshees who' have always occupied our haunted planet. They appear to have the ability to assume any shape or disguise. Some, if not all, seem to be the product of some complicated hallucinatory process which is able to feed false images into the minds of the percipients. Thus, a group of people in a room can sometimes come up with contradictory descriptions of an apparition. Some of the people might not see it at all

There are, of course, all kinds of psychological factors which could explain some of these hallucinations and apparitions, too. But it is quite remarkable that some of the messages passed along by our elusive Atlanteans are identical to messages passed along to un­related witnesses who have chatted with spacemen from Ganymede (a satellite of Jupiter). The same mechanism, be it psychic or psychological, is clearly at work in all these cases.

The phenomenon utilizes many other frames of reference. An apparition might pose as an ancient Greek philosopher or as Abraham Lincoln or a deceased pope. There are cases of all these. The folklore of all cultures also takes into account apparitions which pose as exact duplicates of living persons. In Germany such entities have long been known as doppelgangers.

The manifestations have also led to the creation of many minor

cults, such as the believers in Lemuria (which is supposed to be another lost continent) and Mu, Here again, we find that a large part of the literature is based upon the alleged experiences of those who have encountered Lemurians. In the Middle Ages many people insisted they had visited the underground palaces of the fairies, and volumes were written about the secret commonwealth of the little People. In modern times the Dero (detrimental robots) myth has blown up around the stories of people who claim they have been taken to the secret caverns occupied by the ancientj secret Dero culture.

In 1944, Amazing Stories, a science fiction magazine, published Richard Shaver's *I Remember Lemuria'. Editor Ray Palmer was amazed when he was swamped by thousands of letters from people who swore they had experiences with Deros and Lemurians. They often described things identical to the flying saucer phenomenon (which did not explode on the American scene until 1947).

The myth-making machinery of WOW has always been in oper­ation and the earliest thinkers and scientists recognized it. Strange illusions and purposeful distortions of reality have always haunted the human race. Some cults have defined the culprits as Masters of Illusion, the Black Mentalists, and the X Group. For centuries it was popular to accuse the devil, witches, and warlocks for these be­wildering manifestations. Whole religions sprang up around the etfi dence supplied by the phenomenon.

In Sweden the great mathematician Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) wrote huge tomes about his experiences with the ele-mentals and offered solemn warnings such as:

When spirits begin to speak with a man, he must be aware that he believe nothing that they say. For nearly everything they say is fabricated by them, and they lie: for if they are permitted to narrate anything, as what heaven is and how things in the heavens are to be understood, they would tell so many lies that a man would be astonished. This they would do with solemn affirmation j,, Wherefore men must beware and not believe thems.«

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), the famous novelist, made a serious study of these matters, and in 1830 he published a series of essays summarizing his conclusions. He noted that when trained psychics encountered fairies and visited their splendid palaces 'the illusion vanished1. He explained;

The young knights and beautiful ladies showed themselves as wrinkled carles and odious hags… The stately halls were turned into miserable damp caverns - all the delights of the Elfin Elysium vanished at once. In a word, their pleasures were showy but totally unsubstantial - their activity unceasing, but fruitless and unavailing - and their condemnation appears to have consisted in the necessity of maintaining the appearance of industry or enjoy­ment, though their toil was fruitless and their pleasures shadowy and unsubstantial. Hence poets have designed them as 'the crew that never rest'. Besides the unceasing and useless bustle in which these spirits seemed to live, they had propensities unfavourable and distressing to mortals.

Educated theologians and scholars attached to the Vatican made a sober investigation into the burgeoning fad of spiritualism in the 1850s. This examination led to the issuance of a Papal Bull which warned Catholics that spiritualism was dangerous and the 'work of the devil'.

Despite all these warnings, millions of people were gripped in the hopeful effort to communicate with the spirit world, and the ele-mentals played the game with relish, implanting a whole new lore about life on other worlds or planets. New cults were spawned and dozens of frames of references were established, all based entirely on the seemingly sincere messages of these characters.

We were guided from beliefs in fairies and their secret commonwealth to new, more scientific beliefs in interplanetary visi­tors and their great Intergalactic Councils. The flying saucer phenomenon generated a whole new set of theories and beliefs as more and more people had encounters with Venusians and Martians in the back hills of Kentucky and the deserts of Arizona. The crew that never rest* were up to their old tricks in a new guise.

Once the skilled investigator recognizes just how intangible the manifestations really are, he is catapulted into the more esoteric world of philosophy. He struggles with the task of interpreting these unreal events, trying to understand their hidden purposes. This is unfortunately the route to madness. The phenomenon is fond of creating allegorical situations which can not be interpreted without excessive scholarship. The problem is to sort out the meaningful from the rubbish and to search for the hidden consistencies buried in the mountains of communications from the past and present.

The scriptures of all the great religions do contain a number of subtle correlations. Much of this literature deals vaguely with

rumours of some great past civilization. Isolated Indian tribes in North and South America have legends and myths very similar to the stories found in the Bible, including tales of a great deluge which destroyed most of mankind thousands of years ago. The Toltec Indians, for example, even had a tradition about a zacuaü, a very high tower they erected, and according to Ixtikochit], "Presently their languages were confused, and, not being able to understand each other, they went to different parts of the earth.'

Atlantean scholars have laboured to assemble all this lore as further proof that Atlantis did indeed exist as a real continent, which was destroyed by some great natural catastrophe. However, much of the information passed along by the Atlantean elementals states that Atlantis was an evil place, dominated by a warlike tech­nology very similar to our own, and that the Atlanteans eventually destroyed themselves - or were deliberately destroyed by some greater force which took a dim view of their militarism.

In flying saucer lore we have tales passed on by the spacemen of a great planet located between Mars and Jupiter and identified vari­ously as Maldek, Clarion, and a dozen other names. The inhabitants of this planet learned to smash the atom and soon succeeded in smashing their entire planet. It was broken into thousands of bits and pieces and those fragments now constitute the asteroid belt.

So, one important thread runs through all this Kterature: a great civilization once existed prior to the appearance of modern man, and it was either destroyed or destroyed itself. The surviving physical evidence, which will be discussed further on, indicates that such a civilization did exist on this planet and that its inhabitants vanished before, or soon after, man crawled out of his caves.

It may be that the elementals are actually a part of the human psyche and that they have been presenting us with some scrambled racial memory of the distant past. like the Garden of Eden, Atlantis may be nothing more than an allegory designed to give us a clue about our own history. In flying saucer lore there is elaborately detailed literature asserting that Venus was actually the Garden of Eden and that Adam and Eve were Venusians planted here to colonize Earth. Another variation on the Noah's Ark theme.

Even more interesting are the contiguous activities of the para-human group which has remained in constant touch with us throughout history and has greatly influenced our theological and philosophical ideas. They are proven liars and mischief makers, but it is also possible that they have been slyly trying to tell us some­thing about ourselves. In recent years the flying saucer occupants

have passed along innumerable warnings about how we have been upsetting the balance of the universe with our atom bombs. They have laced these warnings with bloodcurdling tales about Maldek.

A controversial UFO report from Mendoza, Argentina, is rather typical of these warnings. On September 1st, 1968, Carlos Peccinetti, twenty-six, and Fernando Jose Villegas, twenty-nine, were driving home from their job at the Mendoza casino at 3:30 a.m., when their car suddenly stalled. They got out to look under the hood and dis­covered a huge circular machine hovering nearby. Three beings in coveralls appeared, they said, and they found they were paralysed, unable to move. A foreign-sounding voice rang in their heads. 'It was as though they had put into our ears the tiny earplug speakers used with transistors,* Peccinetd said.

'We have just made three journeys around the sun,' the voice told them, 'studying customs and languages of the inhabitants of the system… Mathematics is the universal language.'

Then a circular screen, similar to a television screen, appeared next to the object, and the two men were treated to a series of images. The first was a waterfall in lush country; the second, a mushroom-shaped cloud; the third, the waterfall scene again but without water.

After the entities clambered into the machine and flew off. the two witnesses were able to move again. Their story contains all the fam­iliar ingredients of thousands of other UFO contact tales. First, their automobile stalled, then they were paralysed, next they heard a telepathic voice, and finally they were given a simplified message… and the meaning of that message is quite obvious.

Police officers, doctors, lawyers, college professors, government officials, and just plain folks by the thousands have shared similar experiences in recent years. The members of WOW have really been engaged in an all-out effort to convince us of some impending dis­aster. It is not unusual that they should relate their warnings with tales about past civilizations that followed the same woeful path.

The Atlantis story seems to acquire another meaning in view of all this. Atlantis could be a part of our future instead of our past. Perhaps we are the Atlanteans.

CHAPTER THREE IT'S A NICE PLACE TO VISIT BUT…

Soon after be became president of the United Arab Republic, the late Gamal Abdel Nasser ordered a giant eighty-foot statue moved from the desert to a park in Cairo. The statue had been standing for uncounted centuries near the famous Steppe Pyramid. A battery of engineers and workmen descended on it, equipped with buildfaers. tractors, and monstrous cranes. They struggled with the project for weeks, first perplexed, then annoyed, and finally humiliated by the discovery that modern technology simply could not budge the mam­moth piece of stone. This raised the even more troublesome ques­tion: how had the ancient Egyptians moved the statue into place to begin with?

Archaeologists have been arguing for years about the methods employed by the ancient stone masons. Some quite moronic theories have not only been suggested but have been widely accepted as the answer. These theories are, as usual, taught to schoolchildren. The mystery is regarded as solved. Nobody asks questions.

There are over ninety pyramids in Egypt alone. (There are dozens of others all over the world, the largest of all is located deep in China.) Most of the Egyptian pyramids were once used as the burial places for pharaohs, but the Great Pyramid at Giza was never em­ployed for this purpose, and no one has an inkling why it was built. Some of the gigantic stones in these structures and in the great temples spotted, around Egypt were apparently taken from quarries hundreds of miles away. The popular archaeological theory is that these stones were floated up the Nile on rafts and then moved into place on wooden rollers. Since some of these blocks weigh as much as five tons, this means that in order to float them, the Egyptians would have had to build huge rafts capable of displacing over five tons of water. Otherwise, they would just sink to the bottom with their load. The Egyptians didn't amount to much when it came to building ships. No evidence of these super-rafts has ever turned up.

There are other flaws in these theories. We are told that hundreds of thousands of slaves were pressed into pyramid building during

certain seasons of each year. This leads us to the problem of logis­tics. It would take a complex organization to feed these hundreds of thousands daily and administer to their needs. Various modern en­gineers and experts have applied their slide rules to the problem, and the most liberal estimate of the time required to construct the Great Pyramid is six hundred years.

Strangely, although the ancient Egyptians left profusive records of everything else, no one has ever turned up even a single piece of papyrus describing the planning or building of these massive monu­ments. The stones were cut and dressed with such perfection that a piece of paper cannot be inserted between them. Obviously those early stonemasons were superb craftsmen. And obviously there were a lot of them in order to undertake and complete such enormous tasks.

When there is a mystery which can't be logically explained by science, cults develop which create explanations of their own. Our Atlantophiles naturally agree that the Egyptians didn't build the pyramids at all. Our UFO buffs claim they were built by the wonder­ful space people.

Morris K. Jessup, an astrophysicist and an early student of urology, reviewed the question and suggested:

Levitation is the only feasible answer. I believe that this lifting machine was a spaceship, probably of vast proportions; that it brought colonists to various parts of the Earth, probably from other terrestrial areas; that it supplied the heavy lift power for erecting great stone works; and that it was suddenly destroyed or taken away. Such a hypothesis would underwrite all of the move­ments o£ stone over which archaeologists and engineers have pon-, dered.

This presents us with a splendid contradiction. If some super-society in the sky had the technology to build a spaceship 'of vast proportions' and fly it all the way to our humble planet, why would they have the need to play around with stone blocks? If they wanted to leave behind evidence of their visit, they did a poor job of it, for we never have figured out the real meaning of these monoliths. Couldn't they have engraved a nice little message for us inside the Great Pyramid, explaining the whole thing in seventy-five languages? The only carvings found inside the Great Pyramid are a few little scratchings in the roof of the upper chamber which archae­ologists regard as stonemason marks. Similar marks have been

found in other structures. Maybe they are just the ancient equivalent of "Kjlroy was here".

For centuries the spirit mediums and the percipients who have chatted with ghostly Atlanteans have told us that the Great Pyra­mid really contains a hidden chamber which is crammed with goodies that will explain everything to us when the proper time comes, fjot wishing to be left out, many flying saucer contactees have repeated the same promise. An anthropologist named George Hunt Williamson wrote in the early 1950s:

The builders of the Great Pyramid buried one of their great spaceships near the structure. It wiU be revealed - no doubt within a comparatively short time - that there are many secret chambers within the Great Pyramid and that its true entrance lies under the silent object that is like a lion and yet like a man… the Sphinxl It will not remain silent much longer.. -1

On February 9th, 1960, a fertilizer salesman named Reinhold Schmidt was picked up by a flying saucer and flown to Egypt, ac­cording to his pamplet. Edge of Tomorrow. The friendly space people conducted him on a tour of those hidden chambers where he saw, among other things, the true cross on which Christ had died. He was also shown 'thirty-two tablets of a heavy-quality paper, rather dark in colour… imagine my surprise when I found the events of the past, present, and future there described in modern day English, in black ink, and written in beautiful longhand.'

These records indicated, Schmidt claimed, 'The end of this present Earth cycle will be 1998.'

So after the endless discussions of the hidden chambers in the pyramid, we finally had a genuine eye-witness who had been there and seen them. Unless, of course, Schmidt's adventure was just another variation of the classical visits to the underground fairy palaces of yesteryear.

Science took over. In 1969 a group of American scientists beaded by Dr Luis W. Alvarez travelled to Egypt and set up expensive cosmic ray detectors around the Great Pyramid. Their theory was that any cosmic rays penetrating the pyramid and passing through hidden chambers would be recorded as moving slightly faster than ray par­ticles travelling through solid stone. They fiddled with their gadgets for months and did get some very eccentric readings at first. But

* Neville Spearman Limited, London.

finally, in the February 6th, 1970 issue of Science, Dr Alvarez glumly announced that no hidden chambers had been detected with his sophisticated apparatus. The cuttists all nudged each other and winked knowingly. Obviously it was all a cover-up… part of the great conspiracy to keep the truth from the public.

Men have been scratching their heads over the Great Pyramid for at least four thousand years. It has never really been dated, and it could be considerably older. Whoever built it was so clever that countless efforts to find an entrance met with failure for thousands of years. Finally, in a.d. 820 the Caliph Al Mamaun launched a full-scale attack on the structure, expecting to find it filled with treasure. His men chipped away at it, heating the stones with fires and then cooling them suddenly by pouring vinegar over them. Slowly the stones cracked and they worked their way into the pyramid until they came upon a passageway. It was completely empty.

They found a larger passageway, now known as the great gallery, which leads upwards to two small chambers. The lower chamber's entrance is so small a man must enter on his hands and knees. The upper chamber contains nothing but a crude stone tub which really doesn't resemble the elaborately designed sarcophagi used by the ancient Egyptians to entomb deceased royalty. The total absence of artifacts and hieroglyphics has given archaeologists plenty to specu­late over. Some have suggested that the pyramid was used as a kind of grain elevator and that wheat was measured out in that tub. Others have tried to find astronomical significance to it.

In the mid-nineteenth century the pseudoscience of pyramidology was bom. A writer named John Taylor published a book in which he concluded that the whole purpose of the structure was to preserve andent Egyptian measurements. He was followed by an astronomer, Charles Piazzi Smyth, who extended this notion to include proph­ecies of the past and future. He measured every inch of the pyramid, inside and out, and every angle. In 1864 Smyth published a six-hundred-page book expounding his theories, and it caused an uproar in archaeological circles for years afterwards. A small but devoted cult still exists, still trying to validate his now thoroughly dis­credited concepts. Most of the literature on lost Atlantis also dis­cusses Smyth and pyramidology. The UFO cults also have their pyramidologists. Just as the pyramids are a cornerstone in human history, they also serve as key evidence to many cults with widely diversified causes.

Aside from the few major population centres, ancient Egypt was a

mud hut culture. Then as now the masses lived under-nourished lives in grinding poverty. Technical skills were rare. Yet somehow they managed to quarry those gigantic stones, transport them, and put them into place with geometric precision. We know that the Egyp­tians did build the ninety odd pyramids (the village of Meroe on the Upper Nile contains dozens of pyramids alone), plus numerous great temples and tombs which are still standing. But why did they build the Great Pyramid?

The Plain of Jars in Laos has been frequently mentioned in the war dispatches from Indochina. Did you ever wonder how it got its name? The answer is obvious: it is strewn with jars… huge stone jars. Some of them are over six feet high. Some are so large they can hold six men. There are over a thousand of these peculiar artifacts scattered around a high plateau surrounded by mountains. They were apparently carved out of limestone and granite boulders, and they've been there forever. No one seems to know who carved them, when and why. Why would anyone bother to spend weeks carving a giant stone jar in such a remote place?

Mysterious stone masons have left the fruits of their labours all over our haunted planet. Many of these fruits make no sense at all. In Costa Rica giant stone balls have been found deep in the jungles. Some of these are as big as eight feet in diameter and weigh more than sixteen tons. They are amazingly round and smooth. Scores of smaller ones, some only a few inches in diameter, have also been found. Scientists have been unable to come up with an explanation for their purpose, although they are obviously man-made. Similar stones have been found in Mexico and Guatemala.

"One thing the scientists agree on is that the spheres must have been very important to the communities of people that made them * Science Digest observed in June 1967. "Using the tools they had, it must have taken many years to make just one ball, even with many men working on it.'

like the jars of Laos, these balls are made of granite and lime­stone.

The United States is covered with strange artifacts and stone ruins of unknown origin. Every state boasts of several mysterious sites. In West Virginia there are the remains of huge circular stone structures apparently predating the Indians. In many states there are rums which archaeologists have muttered about being of Roman origin. Some of these sites have become minor local tourist attrac­tions. Others are marked only by brief highway signs. A random few.

such as Mystery Hill in North Salem, New Hampshire, have attained some celebrity.

Mystery HUl features several chambers - or tombs - topped by a gigantic Sacrificial Table weighing over four tons. It is supported on stone legs and is carefully grooved. In 1969 the New England An­tiquities Research Association conducted carbon 14 tests2 around the site and concluded that it was probably built around 1000 b.c. Recent investigations have demonstrated that some of the huge stones on Mystery Hill are carefully aligned with certain stars. Each year the sun sets directly over the Winter Solstice Monolith on the first day of winter, December 21, when viewed from the centre of the site, the Sacrificial Table.

The Delaware Indians have a tradition that a race of giants once inhabited the region east of the Mississippi, living in enormous cities and fortifications. There are innumerable references to giants in other Indian lore and in ancient literature all over the world, in­cluding, of course, the famous There were giants in the earth in those days' biblical statement {Genesis 6:4). South American Indians also have many legends about giants and their special civilization. Most of the tales, no matter what the source, assert that the giants were unfriendly and even hostile to normal men. Bones of giants (who must have been eight to twelve feet tall) have been found in the mounds of Minnesota and several other places. So it is entirely possible that a race of giants did exist in earlier times, and some of these huge stone constructions may have been their handiwork. Un­fortunately, science doesn't believe in jiants, so all this evidence has been ignored.

There is also considerable evidence that Christopher Columbus was a rather late arrival to the New World. He was probably preceded by the Vikings and maybe even the ancient Phoenicians. Chinese arti­facts have been found in Mexico and California, so perhaps even the Chinese beat Chris by several centuries.

A knight from the Orkney Islands left a carving in Massachusetts in the fourteenth century. Near Heavener, Oklahoma, there is a stone twelve feet high, ten feet wide, and sixteen inches thick, covered with ancient Scandinavian runic symbols. It was discovered by Choctaw Indians in 1830, and archaeologists have been arguing about it ever since. Several other ninestones have been found, the

1 Organic material contains radioactivity which deteriorates at a known rate. The carbon 14 test is a universally accepted method for measuring such deterioration and determining the age of the material. The test does not work on inorganic substances such as stone, of course.

most famous being the Kensington Scone, found by a farmer sear Kensington, Minnesota, at the turn of the century. Two more run-estones have been found in Oklahoma in recent years. The last one was discovered by two school boys neat Poteau, Oklahoma, in Sep­tember of 1967. As usual, the archaeologists are sharply divided over the validity of these discoveries. One group cries hoax, even though it would requite an expert archaeologist and linguist to perpetrate such a hoax. Others, such as Frederick Pohl, a noted Norse scholar, seem to think these stones may be authentic.8

Fifty years before Columbus conned Queen Isabella into financing his expedition, someone drew up a rough map of North America. A copy of this map was discovered by Laurence Whitten, a rare book dealer from New Haven, Connecticut, in 1957, It is now part of the rare document collection in the Beinecke library of Yale University and is known as the Yale Vinland Map. Scientific investigators have dated it at a.d. 1440, and as usual, the leading experts have been arguing about it ever since. Some have branded it an out-and-out hoax, while others regarded it as further evidence that the Vikings were frequent visitors to the New World.

More substantial evidence has been found in the form of ruins of a Viking longhouse on the Ungava Peninsula in northern Canada. A team from Laval University has dated it between the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Numerous other ruins and artifacts have been found all over North America. For example, two remarkably similar axes, both apparently of medieval European origin, have been dis­covered in Beardmore, Ontario, and Rocky Nook Point, Mass­achusetts.

Archaeologists from the Smithsonian Institution uncovered a small slab of stone covered with ciphers in 1SS5 near Bat Creek, Tennessee. They decided it was probably the work of Cherokee Indians, but modern specialists such as Dr Joseph B. Mahan of the Museum of Arts and Crafts at Columbus, Georgia, have taken a second look at it and disputed the old Indian theory. Dr Mahan knows Cherokee and he persuaded the Smithsonian to re-examine the Bat Creek stone. You simply can't ignore evidence,' Dr Mahan stated, "just because it doesn't fit current theory."

A similar stone was found by Manfred Metcalf at Fort Benning, Georgia, in 1968. Metcalf was looking for stones to build a barbecue griU in his backyard when he unearthed the stone. It is nine inches square and covered with triangles, circles, and straight and wavy lines. He passed it on to Dr Mahan, who thought the markings

* See Frederick Pohl, The VMng Explorers.

appeared to be characteristically Mediterranean. Another scientist, Dr Cyrus H. Gordon, chairman of Mediterranean studies at Brandeis University, agreed. There were strong similarities between the Met-calf stone and sampled of Minoan writing dating back three thou­sand years to the Bronze Age civilization which flourished on the Mediterranean island of Crete from 3000 to 1100 b.c. Dr Gordon became the centre of another controversy a few years ago when he announced that a sample of Phoenician writing found on a stone in Brazil was authentic… after other archaeologists had denounced it as a fraud. After all, it was hardly possible that the ancient Pho­enicians could have visited Brazil. Or was it?

As for the Bat Creek stone, Dr Gordon thinks it might have been the handiwork of Hebrews from Palestine during the Bronze Age. Both scientists speculate that ancient Semitic tribes from the Middle East may have visited North America thousands of years ago. This, of course, revives memories of the lost tribes of Israel. Could they have somehow found their way to this continent: and become that-lost American culture described in the Mormon Bible? Dr Mali an believes that some Indian tribes can be traced back to seafaring Mediterranean peoples. The Yuchi, he points out, are racially and linguistically different from other North American tribes. Their legends state, 'We came as the sun came, and we went as the sun went.* Dr Mahan interprets this to mean that the YucM came from the east, across the Atlantic Ocean, and then moved northwards from Florida to Georgia.

Some archaeologists tend to lump runestones together with the stones bearing Indian petroglyphs. Petroglyphs are designs carved into rocks as pathmarkers, and thousands have been found all over the Americas. Although innumerable isolated Indian tribes were ob­viously responsible for them, there are many interesting similarities in the symbols used. Some of these same symbols have been found carved on other ancient rocks in other parts of the world, suggesting that this form of writing was universal at one time… even though the races and tribes responsible could not understand each other's languages and in most cases had little or no contact. Archaeologists studiously try to overlook the fact that some of these pictographs can be traced to ancient Mediterranean cultures. But the runic writ­ing is quite distinct from the Indian petroglyphs. The runestones carry alphabetic symbols, while petroglyphs bear picture writing loosely related to the Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The Kensington stone, as translated by Frederick Pohl, describes how 'eight Goths and twenty-two Norwegians' established a camp.

One group went fishing, and when they returned, they found the ten who had remained behind 'red with blood and dead'. The year is given as 1362. Indian petroglyphs. on the other hand, were cus­tomarily devoted to traU information, where to find water, and the like.

One Indian pictograph of particular interest is a complex design which has been found throughout North, Central, and South Am­erica. It depicts a series of squares inside one another. The Hop! Indians call this the Mother Earth Symbol. To the Pimas it is the House of Teuhu: to the Cunas in Panama it is the Tree of life. Anthropologist Harold Sterling Gladwin saw something else in it when he studied this symbol carved on the wall of Casa Grande, Arizona. In his book, Men Out of Asia, he noted that the Mother Earth symbol isidentical with the Minoan labyrinth depicted on coins from Knossos, Crete, circa 200 b.c. The famous labyrinth was said to have been built by Daedalus to hide the half-man, half-bull Min­otaur. Dr Gladwin and Dr Clyde Keeler of Milledgeville, Georgia, both seem to think that the Indians' use of the ancient labyrinth symbol is evidence of the influence of the early Minoan culture.

In the eariy 1960s Angelos Galanopoulos, a Greek scientist, pro­posed still another theory for Atlantis. He suggested that sunken Minoan cities of Crete might have supplied the basis for the Atlantis legends. According to his theory, Plato got his dates wrong. Atlantis may have disappeared only a thousand or so years before the his­torian heard the tale, not nine thousand years before. It may have been one of the Greek islands, possibly Thera, Divers and archae­ologists working in the waters there in recent years have uncovered all kinds of evidence indicating that the Minoan culture came to a very abrupt end. So abrupt that craftsmen left their tools next to unfinished works and fled. The explanation currently in vogue is that a sudden volcanic eruption destroyed the islands. Dr Galanopoulos has been partially successful in matching Plato's description of At­lantis with what is now known about Thera. Dr Bruce C. Heezen, an oceanographer, believes that the eruption occurred around 1400 b.c. Needless to say, other scientists and schools loudly dispute this date.

We do know that early Crete was the centre of an impressive culture, that great cities and temples were built there, and that it was a major naval power. It is not likely, however, that Crete and Thera could have lived up to Plato's description of the super-civilization of Atlantis.

Still we have all the perplexing evidence of the runestones and

other artifacts scattered around this continent, wMch demonstrate that men from Europe and possibly from Crete and Thera did visit America in pre-Columbian times. It is even possible that groups settled here and built forts and temples, the remnants of which have served to augment the beliefs of dozens of cults and fringe so­cieties.

In a learned dissertation on petroglyphs published by the Smithsonian in 1937. Julian H. Steward frowned on the arguments that attempt to prove that "Egyptians, Scythians, Chinese, and a host of other Old World peoples, including the Ten Lost- Tribes of Israel, invaded America in ancient days'. He noted that 'devotees of the subject have written voluminously, argued bitterly, and even fought duels'.

Now, over "thirty years later the Smithsonian is slowly changing its tune. They have stopped blaming the Indians for all these carved slabs. The Indians have been denying credit all along, of course.

"When the white men first arrived here [in British Columbia, Canada] in I860, the West Coast Indians had already incorporated the carvings in their legends,1 Phil Thornburg, a petroglyph expert in Victoria, Canada, said recently. They showed them to white ex­plorers and explained they were left by an ancient civilization and were the hub of creation."

Thomburg points to what appears to be a carving of a Chinese dragon, known in Indian legend as a sisutl. There does seem to be an Oriental background to them," he observes. 'Being carved in sand­stone, it*s virtually impossible to say what age they are. I've found some that were buried under more than a foot o£ topsoil.

"Now this wasn't the kind of topsoil that would have washed over them. This was formed there, placing the age of the carving around five to seven thousand years - which is really ancient for this country.*

Thomburg found one petroglyph on Vancouver Island that had a hole worn completely through it by dripping water - proof that it had been there for a very long time. At another site he found a carving which had crumbled when a massive tree grew straight up through it.

Petroglyphs which were definitely the work of Indian tribes often tell interesting stories about hunts and battles, and in several in­stances, encounters with the little people and other phantom inhabi­tants. Some contain solemn warnings that the valley or mountain ahead is the abode of these sinister phantoms.

The Cherokee Indians have legends about the strange entities who

resided around Chimney Rock. North Carolina. White people have also seen them occasionally. In 1806 the Rev. George Newton re­ported to the Raleigh Register *a very extraordinary vision of thou­sands of beings in the air. They possessed a glittering appearance resembling the human form and were seen on or about Chimney Rode on the thirty-first of July last* Researcher Angelo CappareHo found this testimony by a Mrs. Reaves, one of the alleged wit­nesses:

I looked towards the Chimney. I was absolutely amazed, for south of Chimney Rock and floating along the side of the moun­tain was a huge crowd of white, phantomlike beings. Their cloth­ing (and filmy as it looked, I can only call it 'clothing*) was so brilliant a white it almost hurt my eyes to look at them… Al­though I felt weak, somehow, it left a solemn and pleasing im­pression on my mind.

Chimney Rock is only one of the countless haunted places on this haunted planet.

CHAPTER FOUR

TOWERS OF GLASS AND THEORIES OF PUTTY

Vitfify is a ten-dollar word meaning to change into glass. Glass is made by heating sand (silica) and/or various oxides of silicon, boron, phosphorus, and other materials, then cooling the result rapidly to prevent crystallization. The process is fairly simple, and men have been manufacturing glass for thousands of years. When the first atomic bomb was exploded in New Mexico in 1945, it not only left a big hole in the ground, but the tremendous heat melted the sand and fused it together in glasslike fragments. These scorched particles were identical to the objects known as tektites. Tektites have been found all over our haunted planet and have baffled science for years. One recent expedition found tektites scattered over an area six thousand by four thousand miles from Tasmania to north of the Philippines and from the East Indies to the east coast of Africa. These were analysed as being approximately seven hundred thousand years old1.

Like nature, science abhors a vacuum. So most books on mineral­ogy blandly assert that tektites are of 'meteoric origin*. It is a nice little theory, and everybody seems to believe it. However, a majority of all meteorites are made out of solid iron, and most are vapourized by the intense heat of friction when they enter our atmosphere. Substances capable of melting into glass would, of course, burn up before they hit the surface of the earth.

In 1969 a group of NASA scientists dished up a delicious new version of the meteorite theory. They announced that tektites were from the moon. Aeons ago, they speculated, a huge meteor plum­meted into the moon, striking with such force that its impact hurled tons of moon dust into space. This lunar material attained escape velocity and passed into an orbit around the earth, where it grad­ually was sucked downwards by gravity, entered the earth's atmos­phere, melted, and fell into the Pacific Ocean. So another mystery was solved… unless you happen to have an eighth-grade education, a slide rule, and a basic knowledge of the mechanics involved. Then

1 See Tektites and Geomagnetic Reversals', B. P. Glass and Bruce C. Heezen, Scientific American, July 1967.

you would find that the impacting meteor would have to be of enor­mous size and be travelling at fantastic velocity in order to ac­complish the first step - casting debris beyond the moon's gravity. Such a meteor would, in all probability, affect the moon in other discernible ways - such as changing its orbit. Next, a long series of spectacular coincidences would be necessary for the debris to enter the proper orbit at the proper time so that it would lapse into a retrograde orbit around the earth. Finally, since tons of tektites are scattered in paths across the Pacific floor, and since we know that less than 5 per cent of a mass entering the earth's atmosphere is likely to survive and hit the surface, the quantity of lunar material necessary to produce those tektites must have been larger than the original impacting meteor.

Hunks of glass have fallen from the sky, however. In fact, since ancient times all kinds of odd junk has been dropping on us, ranging from stone pillars and metal wheels to huge blocks of ice and vast quantities of real blood and even raw meat. Science conveniently ignores everything but the iron lumps which, they presume, are pieces of old planets drifting around in space. To astronomy's credit, we do know that there are groups of this debris in the earth's orbit around the sun, and we can predict annual meteor showers which occur as we pass through this mess.

One chunk of glass and metal crashed into a driveway in Can-nifton. Ontario in September 1968. Wesley Reid looked at it and saw that it was too hot to handle. After it cooled, he found he had a brownish object weighing about twelve ounces. When it was tested by experts, they found it was made of glass laced with a small quantity of pure zinc. Whatever it was, it didn't seem to be a part of a man-made satellite (which contain very little glass anyway), and it definitely fell out of the sky.

Earth's phantom inhabitants are always dumping their garbage on us. Flying saucer enthusiasts have been collecting and analysing this junk for years and have found pieces of pure aluminium, mag­nesium, tin, copper, slag, and endless varieties of silicon. Un­fortunately for them, none of this aerial debris seems to support their contention that UFOs are space ships from another planet. Nor has any known meteorite strewn such materials or tektites in its path.

The discovery of tektites and vitrified stones among the ancient ruins of Baalbek has inspired another popular ufological myth: that Baalbek once served as a spaceport for rocket ships from another world. A Soviet ethnologist. Professor M. Agrest, proposed the

theory in an article in Moscow's Uteraturnaya Gazeta in 1959. He also suggested that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by an atomic bomb. Lot's wife, he asserted, did not turn into a pillar of salt but was actually reduced to a pile of ashes when she ignored a warning not to linger behind Lot's fleeing party.

Baalbek is located in Lebanon, east of Beirut and north of Dam­ascus, Syria. In ancient times it was a thriving city filled with great temples dedicated to Baal, the sun god. The pillars and stone slabs (some weighing many tons) still standing are impressive… but no more impressive than the scores of other similar ruins scattered throughout the Middle East, Enormous ruins of this type can be found deep in the heart of inhospitable deserts, raising once again the question of how the ancient peoples managed to quarry, trans­port, and erect these monuments with crude tools and a minimum of mechanical aids. Yet, quite obviously, they did manage… and man­aged well.

In 1948 an expedition from the University of Chicago unearthed the remnants of an ancient village thirty miles east of KMuk, Iraq. Dr Robert J. Braidwood estimated that the village had been settled some eight thousand years ago. Baalbek is, in comparison, a modern city.

Professor Agrest's theories were a bombshell to the assorted cults, particularly the flying saucer believers. He regarded the presence of tektites as evidence that atomic powered rockets had once used the vast stone platforms at Baalbek as launching areas. Apparently he did not know that vitrified ruins are a common phenomenon all over the world. Forts and towers so old that there are no legends to account for them can be found throughout northern Europe and the British Isles and the walls of many of these are vitrified. At some point in the distant past these structures must have been subjected to tre­mendous heat, though not necessarily from the blast of some nuclear powered rocket.

Lightning is the explanation most frequently offered by science. But there is no evidence to indicate that lightning bolts vitrify stone or even sand, although we really know very little about lightning and its effects. It would take dozens of lightning bolts all striking the same spot to produce these vitrified monuments. In some parts of the world, such as an area of eighteen thousand square yards outside of Cuzco, Peru, whole hillsides have been vitrified. Theories of vol­canic activity and glacial movements have been offered to account for these, but none of these theories really wo*.

There are legends describing how the planet was once bathed in

fire. Maybe more than once. So this vitrification could be the product of some nearly forgotten natural catastrophe.

On October 8th, 1871, a gigantic fireball or meteor roared over the Midwest, causing a rash of disastrous fires in several states, including the famous Chicago fire. Thousands of people were killed in Illinois and Wisconsin, and vast areas were ravaged by flames that night, A similar fiery visitor from space could have caused the vitrifications.2

Another strange phenomenon could be to blame. From time to time overpowering waves of heat from an unknown source are con­centrated in specific areas. Figueira, Portugal, suffered one of these mysterious blasts of'heat for two minutes on July 6th, 1949. The temperature soared to 158 degrees. Hundreds of people collapsed in the streets, while thousands of chickens and ducks keeled over dead, and the Mondego River dried up suddenly in several places, killing countless fish, We don't understand this phenomenon at all, and it is possible that even more intense heat waves of this type have oc­curred in the past.

The followers of Agrest were not about to accept such mundane explanations for the vitrification of Baalbek, however. A young as­tronomer, Dr Carl Sagan, presented a paper before the American Rocket Society on November 15th 1962, in which he repeated Pro­fessor Agrest's speculations and urged that ancient myths and legends be re-examined for possible clues to an early visit by an extraterrestrial -civilization. Other researchers scoured the ancient records of India and found things such as the Mahabharata, a docu­ment dating back more than three thousand years, which describes a 'blazing missile* that hurtled out of the sky into the midst of an attacking army, producing 'a radiance of smokeless fire' which flat­tened chariots, ignited forests, boiled rivers, and produced dark clouds of death. All of this sounded uneasily like an atomic attack. In the Mausala Parva, another ancient historical account, there is a vivid description of some kind of death-dealing ray which began as a small, bright glow, grew into a shaft of brilliant light, and then consumed its target. This phenomenon was accompanied by violent winds, peals of thunder in cloudless skies, and earth tremors. Terrible rakshasas, shaped like huge mounds, attacked another Indian army from the sky and fired 'weapons winged with gold', thunderbolts, and hundreds of fiery wheels.

Even in the Bible we are told how the prophet Elijah was saved by

a See Mysterious Fires and lights by Vincent Gaddis foe a fully docu­mented description of the 1871 catastrophe.

balls of fire which wiped out a hundred soldiers and their captains (Kings II:i). That would have been around $96 b.c. There are in­numerable stories of this type from all cultures indicating that WOW is armed with spectacularly advanced weapons and doesn't hesitate to use them against mortal men. So, one cultist conclusion about the vitrified forts is that they were attacked by flying saucers which focused deadly heat rays on them and their occupants. How­ever, the entire desert between Damascus and Baghdad is littered with blackened cocks. Thousands of square miles seem to be charred, not by the sun but by some long forgotten holocaust. Did WOW lay waste to all of Mesopotamia? Or did some horrible natural disaster wipe out the great civilization that once thrived there?

CHAPTER FIVE

STRONG MEN AND STUPID ENTERPRISES

Four thousand years ago Great Britain was populated by a small group of people barely out of the Stone Age. They had a few primi­tive tools made of bones, and they probably eked out a living with only the greatest difficulty. Anthropologists estimate that there were probably about three hundred thousand of them. They were un­doubtedly divided into warring clans and factions, since factionalism is a natural state of man. Yet somehow, thousands of these people managed to get together to spend many generations quarrying huge stones (some weighing thirty tons) in the Prescelly Mountains of Wales and hauling these enormous blocks 240 miles to Salisbury. There they systematically arranged these stones in a circle, following measurements so precise that they were able to construct a math­ematically correct astronomical computer,

It's called Stonehenge.

Like the Great Pyramid, Stonehenge appears to have been a point­less and impossible exercise. Thousands of workers had to be fed, clothed and housed for generations as they laboured on the profitless project. Top-flight administrative talent must have been necessary to plan and organize the work and supervise its execution. Architects had to design the monument with care before the first block of stone was chipped out of the hillside. Above all, we are asked {by the archaeologists) to believe that these early primitives had the motivation necessary to dedicate themselves to such an awesome task. We are also asked to believe that they pushed and hauled these monstrous stones up and down hills, across rivers, through forests and soupy bogs on sledges and wooden rollers. Then somehow, they managed to stand the slabs on end, lifted other stones on top of them, and built the whole thing so securely that it would last for four thousand years.

Plainly, the whole thing is quite absurd.

In his definitive book. Stonekenge Decoded, astronomer Gerald S. Hawkins catalogues these absurdities and offers the educated esti­mate that the construction of Stonehenge required at least 1.5 million man-days of physical labour. He calculates that it took three

centuries to build. That's ten generations. Ten generations of primi­tive people who were somehow convinced that it was worth while to arrange a pile of giant stones in a circle on an English plain.

'For generations the work on Salisbury plain must have absorbed most of the energies - physical, mental, spiritual - and most of the material resources of a whole people," Hawkins observed.

There are others, of course, who prefer to believe that the early Britons didn't build Stonehenge at all. To them, it is obviously the work of the Atlanteans or even the wondrous space people.

If Stonehenge were the only existing megalithic monument of this type in Britain, Hawkins' work would be more acceptable. Un­fortunately, there are several hundred of these stone circles scat­tered about the British Isles, many of them just as mysterious as Stonehenge. We must therefore assume that all the Stone Age Britons were frantically engaged in monument building for at least a thousand years. If the scientists have dated Stonehenge correctly, then its construction occurred around the same time that the Minoan culture blossomed on distant Crete. The Great Pyramid had already been built or was in the final stages. So far as we can tell, the Indians had not yet appeared in North and South America.

On Lewis, the northernmost island of the Outer Hebrides, many hundreds of miles north of Stonehenge, there is another group of giant standing stones arranged in a circle. Called Callanish, this ring consists of thirteen blocks set around a large central stone. It is erected in a desolate, hard-to-reach place, again posing the ques­tions, how and why did the early builders put it there? Since Cal­lanish is somewhat cruder than Stonehenge, Hawkins speculates that perhaps it was built first, and the builders applied what they had learned from that effort to the later construction on the Sal­isbury plain. But the two sites are separated by a vast distance and expanses of water. In order for the theory to work, we need evidence that the early Britons were also great travellers and had a society developed enough so that they could travel in large groups. The small, wandering tribes couldn't meet these criteria.

Astronomers and scientists have been measuring and studying these sites for centuries, and the general conclusion is that the stones were arranged in such a way that they deliberately aligned with certain stars and phases of the moon to form a crude computer which acted as a calendar. Hawkins fed his own calculations into a modern electronic computer and produced numerous charts and tables demonstrating such correlations. In essence, when a man stands in the centre of the Stonehenge circlej specific stars (or the

sun or moon) appear directly over specific stones at specific times of the year in a manner which had to be planned by the builders. Hawkins noted:

Some 240 Stonehenge alignments translated into celestial-de­clinations. For whatever reasons those Stonehenge builders built as they did, their final, completed creation was a marvel. As intri­cately aEgned as an interlocking series of astronomical observing instruments {which Indeed it was) and yet architecturally perfectly simple, in function subtle and elaborate, in appearance stark, im­posing, awesome, Stonehenge was a thing of surpassing Ingenuity of design, variety of usefulness, and grandeur - in concept and construction an eighth wonder of the ancient world.

Considering the enormous amount of effort that must have gone into its construction, Stonehenge ranks as the costliest calendar in the world.

Earlier investigators tried to explain Stonehenge as the work of the Romans, the Danes (similar constructions stand in Denmark), and the Druids, as esoteric priesthood which entered Britain from France in 500 B.C. Stonehenge had been around for at least one thousand years when the Druids arrived, but nevertheless, Druidism has become closely allied with Stonehenge. Even today, members of the Most Ancient Order of Druids make an annual pilgrimage to the site to perform their rites - rites which they claim date back to the days of Atlantis, incidentally.

Hawkins discovered that a significant cycle occurs every 18.6 years at Stonehenge. He cglls it midwinter moonrise, for the moon rises over one particular stone every 18.6 years. Then he points out with some glee a statement by the ancient historian Diodorus (circa 50 b.c): The Moon as viewed from this island appears to be but a little distance from the Earth and to have on it prominences like those of the Earth, which are visible to the eye. The account is also given that the god visits the island every nineteen years, the period in which the return of the stars to the same place in the heavens is accomplished.'

What god visited the British Isles every nineteen years? Could Stonehenge have been constructed to predict the appearances of some alien being? This would have given those ancient stonemasons a strong religious motive for constructing it,

Whoeverplanned Stonehenge had to have a knowledge of math­ematics and astronomy. Did the Stone Age Britons possess such

knowledge ? Or was the information passed along to them somehow? Were they following orders, just as Moses followed the specifications given to him by Jehovah for the construction o£ a gold ark (Exodus 25)? The gods and demons of all cultures have always had a pen­chant for ordering men to build huget seemingly useless temples, tombs, and artifacts.

Soon after Gerald Hawkins published a summary o£ his findings in Nature, October 26th, 1963, he became the centre of controversy. Mathematicians, astronomers, and archaeologists who had never been near Stonehenge assaulted his thesis and dissected his sem­antics. He did leave many unaswered questions - largely because they were unanswerable.

Twenty miles from Stonehenge there is another ancient wonder ». > the mammoth mound at Silbury. This is a man-made mound of earth 130 feet high, covering over five acres. Scientists estimate that it was constructed around 1800 B.C., which means that while thou­sands of early Britons were starting work on Stonehenge, other hun­dreds or thousands were pointlessly hauling baskets of dirt to Silbury to build one of the largest mounds on Earth. In 1S48 a group of investigators burrowed a tunnel into it, going from the top to the bottom in hope of finding some clue. All they discovered were some picks made from red deer antlers. Recently these objects were given the carbon 14 test and were found to be from around 800 B.C. This was most upsetting to the theorists who believed the mound was at least a thousand years older than that. At the present time a team of American and British archaeologists are busy digging new holes in the Silbury mound, searching for new clues.

Man-made mounds of unknown origin and purpose number in the thousands all over this haunted planet. In Ireland they are called sidhe, or fairy mounds, and are purportedly the homes of the little people. St Patrick is supposed to have stood on Croagh Patrick, a mound in County Mayo, when he ordered the snakes out of Ireland. Hundreds of these mounds are scattered throughout the United States, where they are popularly called the Indian mounds, even though the Indians have no legends to account for them. Some of the mounds in Ohio, Minnesota, and in the Southwest are skilfully laid out in geometric patterns which can be seen only from the air. When viewed from above, they represent elephants, birds, snakes, and other animals. Whoever laid these things out apparently intended them to be seen from the air. From the ground they appear to. be nothing more than symmetrical hills with flat tops.

Aerial surveys of South America have revealed elaborate, ridged

fields and earthwork (some covering fifty thousand acres and some as long as a thousand miles) in at least five scattered locations. The ridged field at Lake Titicaca in the Andes covers two hundred thou­sand acres and is spread over 160 miles. These man-made ridges and mounds may have been part of a complex agricultural and irrigation system.1

Other mounds and ridges of this sort are spread throughout Europe and Asia. Stone chests found in mounds in the Mississippi Valley are identical to chests dug up in mounds in Yorkshire, Eng­land. But most of the mounds have yielded little or nothing to patient diggers. Yet the presence of these mounds everywhere is an indication of a worldwide culture in prehistoric times which re­garded mound building as an important activity.

We do know that mound building persisted as part of the burial rites of ancient peoples. Early historians such as Homer and Her­odotus describe these rites. Alexander the Great is supposed to have spent a fortune to erect a huge mound over the grave of his friend Hephaestion. The kinds of ancient Scythia on the Black Sea were buried under mounds. Archaeologists assume that this mound build­ing practice led eventually to the development of the Egyptian pyra­mids. The desert sand was. a poor mound-making material, so the Egyptians switched to stone blocks. But how did mound building spread to the Americas in the pre-Indian epoch?

Flying saucer cults read great significance into the fact that many modern UFO sightings seem to congregate around the old 'Indian1 mounds. Strange lights, bobbing and weaving and blinking in intelligent patterns, periodically cavort above the mounds of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys. Since UFOs have a tendency to appear in the same geographical locations year after year, century after century it is possible that ancient peoples saw them too and erected the mounds for them. Some flying saucer writers have borrowed a page from Professor Agrest's Baalbek theory and suggested that the flat-topped mounds were intended as UFO. airports.

If the great mounds were merely monuments to the dead, they were costly ones. Even with modern bulldozers and steamshovels, it would take much time and money to construct, a mound 130 feet - high and five acres square, like the Silbury mound. It is difficult to visualize tribes of prehistoric people engaging in this activity for months or years. It is even more difficult to think of them planning

1 See "Pre-Columbian Ridged Fields', J. J. Parson and W. M. Denevao, Scientific American, July 1967.

the mounds so they would present specific symbols when seen from the air.

Now. it has been established that while the early Britons were simultaneously erecting Stonehenge and piling dirt for the Silbury mound, they were also carving giant figures in nearby hillsides. The figure of a great white horse is cut into the summit of a hill in the Berkshire Downs. At Ceine Abbas a giant caveman is traced upon a hillside. He carries a club, and his male genitalia are prominently displayed. A similar figure, the Long man at Wilmington, was emas­culated by early Christians. There are many others spotted from Australia to Africa to the United States, all obviously meant to serve as landmarks for unknown pilots cruising the virgin skies. The tra­dition for making these landmarks survived until at least fifteen hundred years ago, for that is the apparent age of the famous Naze a lines found in the Peruvian desert. Nobody paid much attention to these lines until the early 1940s. Since then they have become an important facet of Atlantean and,flying saucer lore.

From ground level the Nazca Lines are merely a jumble of paths made by brushing aside the stones and pebbles of the desert. There is little rain or natural erosion in the area, so the lines have remained intact for at least seven hundred years and possibly even for fifteen hundred (estimates vary}. Seen from the air, the clearances form the outlines of spiders, birds, fish, assorted monsters or unknown animals, and numerous squares and rectangles… some longer than two football fields. Dr. Maria Reiche, a German astronomer, has lived at Nazca for twenty years, carefully charting all the lines by viewing them atop a high ladder. Daniel Cohen remarked in Science Digest, May 1970:

In spite of such devotion to her work, she is regarded by some scientists as a woman obsessed with a theory, rather than a care­ful scientist. Dr Reiche had produced all sorts of correlations be­tween the lines and the positions of the sun, moon, and stars. She postulates a gigantic "desert calendar' with which the ancient Per­uvians could mark the passing of the years. Her opponents argue that with so many lines and so many astronomical bodies with which to make alignments, it,is possible to work up many cor­relations, but that they are~meaningless. •

The Inca-Nazca people who created these lines were massacred in the wars which followed Francisco Pizarro's invasion of Peru in the 1500s. The Inca civilization destroyed by Fizarro apparently came

along centuries after the lines were laid out An ancient Inca road slices across the desert, ruthlessly severing the lines. It would seem that the Incas regarded the lines as insignificant. Nevertheless, hun­dreds of people must have worked for years, if not for generations, in planning these lines and scratching away the topsoil to render them. The Nazca lines remain as another of early man's energetic but seemingly pointless enterprises.

On Easter Sunday, 1722, Dutch admiral Jaakob Rogeveen landed on an island in the Pacific some twenty-two hundred miles from the coast of South America. The first things he saw were hundreds of giant statues squatting near the water line, staring out to sea. They were huge, eyeless heads mounted on small stone bodies. Some were as high as thirty-six feet.

Admiral Rogeveen had discovered not Atlantis but Easter Island ».. a pitifully barren volcanic island with an area of forty-five square miles, with almost no trees, and with no wild-life except for hordes of bothersome insects. It was populated by cannibalistic tribes of Polynesian origin who had apparently migrated there cen­turies before. The current population is 270, but at one time it was considerably larger. Intertribal wars and raids by early slave traders whittled the population down.

The aku statues were quarried from volcanic rock. Some weigh as much as thirty tons. Since wood is practically non-existent on the island, the statues must have been hauled out of the quarries with ropes and sheer muscle power, dragged down to the beaches and raised "upright with more muscle power. Many of the monuments were topped with a hat, or pukao, made out of red Tock. Some of these pukaos weighed five tons. How the natives raised these five ton carvings to the tops of the erected statues is another puzzle.

like the builders of Stonehenge, the Easter Islanders had to ac­complish their task with the crudest kind of tools. Each statue must represent months or years of labour. There are over six hundred on the island. The statue building came to an abrupt end for some reason. So abrupt that the workers dropped their stone chisels on the spot. Their tools have been found in the quarry, next to two hundred unfinished statues, some of which measure sixty-six feet long.

Various expeditions have visited Easter Island and tried to piece together the story of the a hv builders, but the surviving natives have only the vaguest legends. During the tribal conflicts of the eight­eenth and nineteenth centuries, many of the statues were overturned

and destroyed rather contemptuously. Remnants of the island's cul­ture were erased by the wars, slavers, a smallpox epidemic, and missionaries who ordered the destruction of pagan artifacts. The latter included ancient wooden tablets covered with an unknown form of writing. Only a few samples of these tablets remain in scat­tered museums.

Scientists who have conluded that the Easter Islanders are Poly­nesians blithely overlook the fact that megalithic structures are virtually unknown in Polynesia and that the Polynesians never de­veloped a form of writing. One Easter Island legend stresses that wars were waged between a tribe of long-eared people and a tribe of short ears. The short ears won and presumably ate all the long ears. Perhaps the long ears were the ahu builders.

Easter Island is so isolated that the early settlers must have been marooned there, and lacking wood.for boat-building, remained out of touch with the rest of the world for centuries, while they de­veloped their own peculiar culture. They did have a complicated religion, and it is possible that the statues were some part of it. The red hats could have some meaning, for even the American Indians have legends and prophecies about gods in red hats. But there are also intriguing legends of red-haired beings in such distant and iso­lated places as Borneo, and the ancient gods of Europe and Asia were often described as having red or blond hair. Modern UFO contactees claim that the space people who ride around in flying saucers have long red or blond hair, too. So it is not surprising that some cultists speculate that members from WOW may have visited Easter Island and that the ahu statues are tributes to them, each statue sym­bolizing one appearance of a god.

Scores of giant red-haired mummies have been found in a cave twenty-two miles from Lovelock, Nevada, in the Ust sixty years. The first ones, discovered in 1912, were between 6.5 and 7 feet tall. Arti­facts found in the same cave have been dated by carbon 14 tests. Apparently, the cave had been occupied as far back as five thousand years. The local Piute Indians have legends about these giants, de­scribing them as being cannibalistic. In her book, Life Among the Piutes (1882), Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins wrote that the last of the red-haired giants were exterminated by the Piutes in the nineteenth century. They would dig large holes in our trails at night,* Mrs Hopkins reported. 'Our people would fall into these holes… That tribe would even eat their own dead. Yes, they would even come and dig up our dead after they were buried and would carry them off and eat them.*

Atlantis lore also describes giant red-haired cannibals who behaved almost like traditional vampires. Some authors have specu­lated that the red-haired giants invaded Easter Island from South America, and the cannibalistic rites of the Easter Islanders were inherited from them.

There is now an American military base on Easter Island, and recently the workmen and heavy equipment constructing an airfield were diverted to raise one of the flattened statues. It took a heavy crane to do the job that was once done by hundreds of dedicated natives engaged in another of early man's impressive but pointless enterprises.

Easter Island has been a favourite of National Geographic for years, and the cultists have had a field day inventing explanations for the mystery. But there are many other Pacific islands even more remote and very rarely visited which pose far more baffling ques­tions. The city of Metalanim on the south-eastern shore of Ponape Island in Micronesia is now in ruins, but it once could have housed two million people. No one knows who built it or when. Some of the stone blocks in those ruins weigh fifteen tons, and the stone nsed in the city is not from the island. Gigantic waterways or canals intersect the city, some of them large enough to float a battleship. Who built this enormous place, and how did they move those huge stone blocks across the Pacific to the island? Whatever happened to the two million residents?

Three thousand miles to the south-east of Fonape Island, on tiny Maiden Island in the line Island chain there are the ruins of forty Stone temples whose architecture is identical to that of Metalanim, Basalt roads lead from these ruins straight into the Pacific Ocean. The island is uninhabited and covered with guano (bird droppings). But if we draw an imaginary line southwards from Maiden for twelve hundred miles, we arrive at Rarotonga in the Cook Islands. Here another ancient road of basalt blocks rises out of the ocean.

Innumerable other hard-to-reach islands scattered throughout toe Pacific are dotted with enigmatic ruins, canals, and roadways from some long lost culture. They all seem to be interrelated, as if they were all once part of some great civilization. It would be pro­hibitively expensive to organize a proper scientific expedition to visit and study all of these far-flung ruins systematically. Besides, their existence doesn't fit in with any of the current anthropological theories. Suppose some scientist should find that they date back ten thousand years or more and are the remnants of some super-civilization of the past? No matter how substantial Ms evidence

might be, he would be immediately crucified by his colleagues and drummed out of all the scientific societies.

Obviously. Metalanim was built by cannibals with stone chisels, and those canals served their religious rites to the water gods.

Believers in the lost continents of Mu, Pan, and Lemuria (which may have been one place) noisily embrace these tidbits as evidence that a great land mass did exist in the Pacific at one time and that it was populated with a highly advanced race while the Egyptians, Britons, and Cretans were all fashioning stone axes. One cultist tra­dition, passed along by talkative elementals and members of WOW, is that Lemuria preceded Atlantis. After temuria sank into the Pacific, the Atlantis culture got underway and flourished for 14,000 years before it, too, sank 10,500 years ago.*

A mystical archaeologist named James Churchward is largely re­sponsible for the modern revival of interest in Mu. In the early part of this century he travelled through Central and South America probing into ancient ruins and trying to decipher stone carvings and petroglyphs. Then he published a series of books which combined scientism and sciolism (that is, he applied the scientific method to dubious fragments of evidence) to support his contention that a supercontinent once existed in the Pacific. la his view, Easter Island served as a kind of factory, and the great stone heads manufactured there were shipped off to other parts of Mu. The poorly investigated ruins of the Pacific islands and the great island mounds (yes, huge man-made mounds are found on many of these islands) were all a part of that ancient civilization, he said. He leaned on scrambled translations of stone carvings and vague legends of undefined origin. These were mixed in with the flat statements of elementals and strange Vise men."

Churchward also saw evidence or traces of Mu in the ruins of the Mayan civilization in Central America and the Aztec and Incan cul­tures further south. He compiled charts which compared the writing of Maya with the hieroglyphs of Egypt, and he constructed the an­cient alphabet of Mu. Ultimately, he produced precise maps of Mu and tried to demonstrate how the mysterious ruins found in the United States were linked to that remote continent. Sciolists every­where leaped on to his bandwagon, and an enormous body of Mu literature has developed, but science remains unconvinced.1

2 See Eklal Kueshana, The Ultimate Frontier.

8 See The Lost Continent of Mu. The Sacred Symbols of Mu, Cosmic Forces of Mu, The Children of Mu, Cosmic Forces of Mu~Book 2, all published by Neville Spearman.

Actually, there is considerable merit In Churchward** evidence, even though his conclusions and his bold statements about Mu his­tory can be questioned. A fantastic culture of stone builders and mound builders, predating modern man by centuries or even thou­sands of years, obviously did exist all over this planet The only possible explanation for the many Pacific ruins, such as the huge stone arch found on the coral atoll of Tonga-Tabu (two upright columns weighing seventy tons each, topped by a crosspiece weigh­ing twenty-five tons), is that these islands must have somehow been linked together by a land mass in the distant past. The culture of this mysterious land spread throughout the world. Then an un­thinkable catastrophe occurred. A catastrophe which altered the face of the whole earth and wiped out everything but the most durable constructions of that doomed race. In effect the slate was wiped dean. The ancient world was destroyed and a new race slowly emerged. But we are still haunted by racial memories of our planet's .past. Every race and every culture has preserved - and even guarded - memories of that earlier epoch. Unfortunately, modern science has boxed itself in and dedicated itself to proving Darwin's theory of evolution and other theories which supply a rational, but not nec­essarily valid, explanation of man's origin and past.

CHAPTER SIX

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO EXTINCTION

Want to discover a lost city and be entered in the annals of archae­ology? It's easy, according to James Randi, the famous magician and escape artist who has spent considerable time probing into the ruins of Asia and South America. Just visit an out-of-the-way place and ask the natives for directions to the nearest lost city, Randi explains. There are thousands of these structures an every continent, and only a comparative handful have been recognized by archaeology. Those prehistoric stonemasons were ubiquitous, and they left their works everywhere.

A young geologist named Karl Mauch found the lost city of Zim­babwe in southern Rhodesia in 1871 simply by asking an ivory trader for directions. Mauch's story is filled with high adventure. The trader, a German-American named Adam Renders, rescued him from a tribe of hostile natives and led him to the site of the ancient ruins. Mauch decided Zimbabwe was actually the biblical gold centre of Ophir, where the fruits of King Solomon's mines were col­lected. But all he and Renders found were a series of granite struc­tures on top of a steep bill, filled with winding passageways and tunnels. The largest was the Elliptical Building roughly 830 feet in circumference and thirty-three feet high. Nearby were two towers. A cave on a cliff some distance away has proven to have unusual ac­oustics. When someone speaks in the cave, his voice can be heard in the Elliptical Building but nowhere else. 'Doubtless, the native priests put this phenomenon to nefarious use,' L Sprague de Camp, a reformed science fiction writer, notes.

Archaeologists have been arguing about Zimbabwe for one hun­dred years. The ruins have been dated variously from a.d. 700 to 1500. They have been credited to everyone from the Phoenicians and the Egyptians to the naked Bantu tribesmen. Their workmanship is rather crude when compared with the far more impressive structures of Asia, the Pacific, and South America. Nevertheless, someone -we'll probably never know who - went to the trouble of dragging thousands of granite bricks to the top of a hill deep in the African

jungle twelve hundred years age and building an elaborate fortress-temple filled with labyrinths and passageways whose only apparent purpose is to drive archaeologists mad,

The city of Timbuktu wae little more than a legend until the closing years of the nineteenth century, when French adventurers crossed two thousand miles of the Sahara wasteland and found it on the banks of the Niger River in what is now the country of Mali. It was settled in ajo. 1087 and was once a large, thriving trade centre. Today it has a population of about eighty-five hundred.1 The archi­tecture of Timbuktu is not particularly Impressive, and the city is most noted for the hundreds of storks who reside there,

Since a prominent city Uke Timbuktu could become lost In modem timesj it is not surprising that even larger and more impressive cities,' such as Angkor Wat could get lost altogether. Angkor was pnly a myth until explorers stumbled on to it in Cambodia in 1857. It contains enormous temples and pyramid-like structures appar­ently related to the mysterious structures of the Pacific islands. The walls are covered with statues and bas-reliefs, and the origins of the city are lost in a welter of half-remembered legends. Local natives still speak of the great godlike beings who built the place. Hard facts are rare, One story popular soon after Angkor's discovery is that the city was abandoned suddenly (probably around a.d. 1300} in the same way that the Easter Islanders threw down their tools in their quarries and fled. At least it is obvious that Angkor was the product of an advanced culture of engineers and stonemasons and that their culture vanished rather suddenly<

History demostrates that men have often built imposing, elabor­ate cities, flourished in them for hundreds or even thousands of years, then deserted them to live in simple grass huts on their peri­meters. Wars and natural calamities often played a part in this pattern, of course. Great cultures have risen and then died out. Men returned to simpler ways of life. It is a natural order of things. A thousand years from now people may be living in thatched shacks in New Jersey and on Long Island within full view of the decaying towers of Manhattan. They may tell the children about the peculiar ancients who built the towers as part of the strange reEgion which worshipped the great god Money.

In the Middle East the little country of Jordan is filled with Roman

1 Population figures for most parts of tie world are debatable. The figures used in this book ate up-to-date estimates from the official statistics of the United Nations and sources such as the Hammond World Attas.

ruins predating the Christian era. A large Roman theatre with a seating capacity of four thousand can be found near Amman. There are great temples and triumphal arches and countless stone columns lining dead streets paved with large stone blocks.

Far to the south of Amman, in the midst of the unfriendly desert, the traveller enters a narrow, gorge which leads through the cliffs to an ancient city right out of the Arabian nights. This is Petra, carved out of the red sandstone cliffs and filled with stately columns and temples. This Arab Shangri-la was constructed around 700 b.c. and must have housed thousands of people. Food, water, and supplies had to be brought in through the gorge - the only approach - from miles away. Thousands of men must have laboured for generations, hacking these monuments out of the walls of this hidden valley. Some of the ruins are pre-Roman. There are ancient tombs, and a narrow stone staircase leads to an area on top of a cliff where two twenty-foot obelisks are located on 'the high place' - a platform measuring forty-five by twenty feet. Perhaps Professor Agrest would regard it as another launching platform for nuclear rockets.

The culture that built Petra is lost in legend and archaeological confusion, but in the city's final days it was used as a hideout by desert bandits.

For the most part, believers in Mu, Atlantis, and flying saucers have ignored the ruins of the Middle East and Africa, concentrating instead on the lost cities of Central and South America. The fairly recent Mayan, Inca, and Aztec civilizations cannot account for all these ruins. There is evidence that another, possibly far more ad­vanced, culture thrived in the Americas in earlier times. Remnants of that civilization may have been handed down to the Indians who followed.

Tiabuanaco, a fabulous stone ruin high in the Andes Mountains, has inspired more curiosity, speculation, and nonsense than any other. It has been the subject of countless books and articles and has been used to support the beliefs of nearly every outlandish cult going. In recent years there have been innumerable flying saucer sightings and appearances of little glowing green men around Lake Titicaca, which is 12,644 feet above sea level, Tiahuanaco is at the south-east end of the lake. Although the ruins cover only about one sixth of a mile, they feature impressive tumuli (man-made mounds), a fifty-foot high pyramid, and a number of stone platforms and underground chambers. The famous Gateway of the Sun is an arch weighing nearly ten tons. Archaeologists believe that the Tiahuana-cans were part of an empire that preceded the Incas by two thou-

sand years, but they left no -written record, and there are no local legends about them. When the Incas latet conquered the Lake Titi-caca region, they found Tiahuanaco abandoned.2 '

While many of tie structures in Petra were carved from the sand­stone cliffs in place, same of the walls in Tiahuanaco were whittled out of huge blocks weighing as much as sixty tons and then some­how moved into place. Giant statues also stand around the site. One weighing twenty tons has been moved to a museum in La Paz. In their book, The Great Idol of Tiahuanaco, Hans Bellamy and P. AlJan offer an interpretation of the symbols found in a huge statue dis­covered in a Tlahuanacan temple. They claimed the symbols re­corded astronomical knowledge of a very advanced order.

Erich Von Daniken, author of Chariots of the'Gods, visited the Andes is his search for evidence that spaceships had visited the Earth in prehistoric times. He describes seeing a twenty-thousand-toa stone block near the ruins of the Incan fort of Sacsahuaman. Danikcn explains:

It is a single stone block the size of a four-storey house. It has been impeccably dressed in the most craftsmanlike way; it has steps and ramps and is adorned with spirals and holes… the whole monstrous block stands on its head. So the steps run down-ward from the roof; the holes point in different directions like the indentations of a grenade; strange depressions, shaped rather like chairs, seem to hang floating in space. Who can imagine that human hands and human endeavour excavated, transported, and dressed this block? What power overturned it? What titanic forces were at work here? And to what end?

The fortress of Sacsahuaman is surrounded by a wall sixty-feet high, containing stones weighing as much as two hundred tons. Two hundred tons! Morris K. Jessup, a qualified investigator, viewed the fortress and described these stones.

AH of them crudely rough quarried and were then ground into their designated niches in the structure by pushing them back and forth in situ, until they fitted so closely, completely, and accu­rately that a knife blade can not be inserted between them. This is a logical and practical shortcut to effective stone fitting, which we have not qualified in modern engineering.

z See Road in ike Sky by George Hunt Williamson, Neville Spearman.

Science writer Joseph Goodavage questioned Jessup's theory in Flying Saucers - UFO Reports, No. 4. The stones, he pointed out,

… had to be lifted into the air. placed roughly into their proper positions, and then by some force inconceivable to us, shoved back and forth, grinding down the roughly hewn surfaces until they fitted smoothly and perfectly into their proper niches. To lift, swing into position, then rub the massive weight back and forth (against enormous friction) without loosening its snugly fitting neighbours was no job for simple aborigines or even for an ad­vanced Inca culture; the fact is that Sacsahuaman was ancient long before the Incas appeared on the scene.

To add to the mystery, some of the larger stones found in the Andes ruins were quarried in a valley two hundred toiles away. Somehow these enormous blocks of stone had to be transported up and down mountains to their final resting place. Those fond archae­ological inventions, wooden rollers and rafts, couldn't have been used. So how did the ancient builders accomplish this task?

A possible explanation taken seriously by some scientists - and loudly berated by others - is that these monuments were built in a time when the surface of the earth was actually different from what it is now. A time when the Andes were level with the rest of the land. Hans Schindler Bellamy prowled around Lake Titicaca and claimed that he found traces of marine sediment indicating that the Great Deluge had once engulfed the area. This of course was evidence that the ruins had been built before the deluge and were many thousands of years old.

Two Frenchmen, Louis Pauwels, editor of the magazine Planite, and Jacques Bergier, a nuclear physicist, seem to go along with Bell­amy in their book, The Morning of the Magicians. They propose that the Earth was once inhabited by a giant race which built the mounds and monoliths and maintained a worldwide civilization with key centres in the Andes, New Guinea, Mexico, Abyssinia, and Tibet. They were the true Atlanteans and were destroyed by some great cosmic disaster.

The evidence reviewed thus far does indicate that this planet was once occupied by a single great culture or a series of intertwining cultures which possessed secrets of engineering and stone building beyond anything known by the ancient Minoans, Romans, had Britons. They constructed their monuments in isolated places, such as the islands of northern Scotland, the Pacific, and the Andes Moun-

tains, demonstrating an incredible sense of purpose as well as awe­some perseverance.

Our anthropologists and archaeologists have been struggling to uncover and understand the history of the past four thousand years. They have steadfastly refused to consider the possibility that man­kind may be only the latest race to infest the Earth, that other races and other civilizations may have thrived here and died here. One of the increasingly popular themes in science fiction is the notion that an earlier super-race built space ships and sent their members off to visit the stars. Now those space travellers are returning to home base in their flying saucers, and they're looking around in unhappy confusion, asking, 'Where did everybody go? Who are all these piti­ful little ants shooting at each other?'

Alfred Wegener, an obscure German meteorologist, died in 1930 after suffering fifteen years of ridicule, slander, and contempt at the hands of his peers and colleagues. He was branded a fool because he believed that the earth once contained two large land masses which had gradually split up and drifted apart to form the six continents. Every schoolboy who has ever studied a map of the globe has reached the same tentative conclusion, for the great land masses do seem to conform like the pieces of a massive jigsaw puzzle. Wege-ner's evidence was a bit more complicated than that, however. He considered fossils from different continents, climatic changes, and specific geological formations, such as mountains which seem to dis­play marked similarities on the different continents. But science was not ready to consider the theory of continental drift in 1915. It was easier to denounce Wegener, dissect his ideas with more popular theories, and consign Ms books to the scrap heap. When Wegener died in 1930, his theory seemed to die with him.

In the late 1950s, the Wegener controversy long forgotten, a new crop of scientists began to explore the oceans, and new data were fed into computers. Mountain ranges were discovered under the oceans, laid out in ways which confirmed Wegener's earlier speculations. Almost overnight the continental drift theory became a new scientific fact. The National Science Foundation has now committed $5.4 million for new tests and studies. Alfred Wegener may soon have the last laugh.3

Rock layers at specific levels in South America have been found to'

*Se<f The Confirmation of Continental Drift*, Patrick M. Hurley, Scientific American, April 196S. Also, 'Jigsaw of the Primeval World", Life, January 30th, 1970.

match identical layers in Africa, indicating that both land masses were once a single unit. The current guess is that 150 to 200 million years ago thete were two supercontments. They broke apart and drifted away from each other slowly. They are still moving slowly, almost imperceptibly, and their movements have been measured by satellite photos and other means. North America is moving away from Europe at the rate of an inch per year.

New instruments are able to measure the magnetic fields of rocks on the ocean's bottom. These measurements indicate that the Earth's magnetic field has frequently shifted, the North Pole be­coming the South Pole and vice versa. Such magnetic shifts have occurred at least 171 times in the past seventy-sfac mil Bon years -further proof that the Earth's crust is wriggling about.4

What all this means is that, about two hundred million years ago during the age of the great reptiles - the Paleozoic age - this was an entirely different planet. Perhaps it harboured life forms now unim­aginable to us. Then it broke up, and new continents were formed, new climatic changes occurred, the physical environment itself may have changed. These changes could have brought about the sudden or gradual change of the life forms as they altered to adapt to the new conditions. Some of the puzzling erratics discussed in Chapter One could have been produced by a form of intelligent life now lost and forgotten. But a lot of other changes can occur in two hundred million years. It is doubtful if even the most advanced civilization could produce any quantity of monuments and artifacts which could withstand millions of years of erosion and geological change.

The Atlantophiles are not too happy with the continental drift theory because it virtually excludes the possibility that any large land mass could have existed between North America and Europe. It might not rule out Mu or Lemuria, however. Other stubborn cultists are already leaping on to the continental drift bandwagon and claiming one of those two land masses as their favoured lost con­tinent.

Our flimsy knowledge of the very ancient past is based entirely upon the discovery and interpretation of fossils found in the various lock layers of the Earth's crust. This inexact science called pale­ontology is only two hundred years old. We haven't dug deeply enough or studied things thoroughly enough to reach reliable con­clusions about the distant past So many of the facts commonly accepted today are only educated guesses.

4 See "Reversals of the Earth's Magnetic Field'. Allan ^px. Scientific American, February 1967.

If the Earth has suffered truly cataclysmic changes in the past two hundred million years, we must first know of and understand those changes completely before we can accurately assess the meanings of rock formations. It seems unlikely that we will ever be able to de­velop methods for collecting evidence that will give us conclusive truths about the Earth's past. Astronomers and mineralogists were astounded and upset by the rocks our astronauts scooped up ofi the surface of the moon, because they indicated that the moon was four billion years old or even older, and it may be even older than the Earth itself. Some astronomers had been pushing the theory that the moon was really just a chunk of the Earth that had been scooped out of the Pacific Ocean area and tossed into space somehow. That theory and many others went down the drain when our first space module dropped on to the Sea of Tranquillity.

Geologists and paleontologists have developed reasonable evi­dence that the Earth has passed through several glacial periods, or ice ages. These seem to be cyclic, with minor ice ages occurring every twelve thousand years or so and with major glacial periods taking place over longer periods. These ice ages suggest a really major catastrophe - a sudden shift of the Earth's entire axis.

If you lived on the planet Uranus, the seventh planet from the sun, you would be exposed to a pseudo-ice age every 21.5 (Earth) years. Our knowledge of Uranus is admittedly flimsy, and when and if we ever manage to visit it we may find that many of the currently accepted facts about the planet are erroneous, just as our moon landings disproved many of the previously accepted facts about our own satellite. In any case, the best astronomical information indi­cates that Uranus has a very wobbly axis and that it flips over about four times for each of its circuits around the sun. (A Uranus year is 84 Earth years.) A resident living on a fixed point on Uranus would find himself shifting drastically away from or towards the sun every 21.5 years. If the planet were closer to the sun, these shifts could produce dramatic changes of climate.

It is possible that the Earth's orbital mechanics include similar fluctuations of the axis over longer periods. Scientists have figured out that there are minor climatic changes on Earth every 170 years due to minor axis shifts. The magnetic polarity of our planet is quite unstable. The magnetic South ^ole is not a fixed point but moves steadily in a two-hundred-mile circle. As already noted, the poles reverse themselves every few million years. Studies of the rock levels of the last Ice Age have produced evidence that major shifts of the Earth's crust or the planet's entire axis occur every 12,000 years or

so. Such shifts would change the climate completely; frigid areas would suddenly be in the tropic zones, water would inundate land areas, and of course, all life would be affected. Sea shells and fossils have been found in the heart of the Sahara desert, indicating that it was once covered with water.

In a stimulating article in the Saturday Evening Post of January 16th, I960, zoologist Ivan T. Sanderson documented the amazing results of one of these planetary inversions. Prehistoric mammoths found preserved in the frozen muck of Siberia had mouthfuls of un-swaltowed plants, as though they had been quick frozen while munching happily on their feeding grounds. Sanderson pointed out that the only way these animals would have been so splendidly pre­served was to have been exposed to an incredible drop in tempera­ture. TMs could have occurred in several ways, he pointed out cautiously. The earth's crust could have shifted very suddenly, carrying the animals farther north very rapidly, the entire axis could have tocked over, or some cloud of frigid gases from space could have suddenly engulfed the entire planet. Whatever the case, the discovery of these animal carcasses is solid evidence that some unexplained calamity took place with fierce suddenness thousands of years ago.

Decades earlier an Austrian mining engineer named Hass Horbiger had developed a fanciful theory to explain the Earth's early history. He envisioned huge spheres of ice crashing into the planet and talked of captive moons, which predate our present moon, entering retrograde orbits, their gravity tearing up our seas and reshaping the Earth's surface. His eight-hundred page Glazial Rosmogonie, published in 1913, enraged the astronomers and scientists of Germany and Austria. The late Willy Ley, the German rocket authority and science writer summed it up when he said. To pick flaws in this theory is about as easy - and as pleasant - as gathering Japanese beetles from an infested flower bed.'

But Horbiger found a pow'erful ally, another Austrian named Adolf Hitler. In 1925 Horbiger delivered this ultimatum to the scientific world:

The time has come for you to choose - whether to be with us or against us. While Hitler is cleaning up politics, Hans Horbiger will sweep out of the way the bogus sciences. The doctrine of eternal ice will be a sign of the regeneration of the German people. Bewarel Come over to our side before it is too late!

Powerful backers materialized, and Horbiger set up offices and

recruiting campaigns for his doctrine of eternal ice - Wei fWef-teislehre). His scientific critics were soon subjected to horrifying har-assmeat and cringed in terror as Wei took on all the dimensions and power of a poetical party. Every good Nazi had to declare, 1 swear that I believe in the doctrine of the eternal ice.'

With the disintegration of Nazi Germany Wei also seemed to melt away. But recently Horbiger's concepts were resurrected by Pauwels and Bergier in The Dawn of Magic. There have been four geological epochs," they state flatly, 'because there have been four moons.' The earlier epochs were influenced by gravitational changes and factors which produced giant animals and plants,'… and in a world peopled by monsters there appeared this first man of immense size bearing also no resemblance to us and possessed of a different kind of intelligence.' Cosmic rays became stronger in those days, they tell us, and produced a vulgar mutation. Survivors of this race of giants overlapped into the modern epoch and are mentioned in the folklore of many races, usually being described as evil and vio­lent characters.

One of Horbiger's disciples was Hans Bellamy, who sifted myth and legend to find farther proof for the doctrine of eternal ice. It is not unusual that the Wei believers turned to the Atlantis literature and found in it some of the evidence they sought. The Atlantophiles had also scoured folklore and uncovered innumerable references to earlier global disasters.

Although scientists sneer at the use of myths as evidence, it is obvious that all the isolated races of mankind managed to preserve the same kind of stories. Of all the bits and pieces assembled from these ancient tales, the most common is the universal account of a great flood which occurred simultaneously over the entire planet (if the assorted legends have been dated correctly). Many Indian tribes in the Americas have myths about arks and Noah-like personalities who survived the flood. If we take these things at their face value, we can assume that the Earth did experience a phenomenal rising of the waters in fairly recent times, that a large part of the land sur­faces were inundated, and that some human beings escaped because they had been warned in advance and had fled to high places or had constructed ships which were sufficiently seaworthy to withstand the torrents.

The flood legends form the cornerstone of the Atlantis myth. A colourful politician named Ignatius Donnelly was responsible for the revival of interest in AOanris in the late nineteenth century. He collected hundreds of fragments of archaeological erratics and wrote

a number of best selling books. He also managed to find time to serve as a U.S. congressman and state senator and even ran for vice-president on the Populist ticket in 1901. Donnelly's Atlantis: The Antediluvian World is still in print and makes some sense, even though it fails to prove the existence of Atlantis. It does prove that other civilizations existed before the present epoch. Donnelly also advocated a theory claiming that a visiting comet had upset the balance of the Earth in earlier times and produced catastrophic effects. Hdrbiger carried the theory several steps further.

Comets have always served as a kind of scientific catchall. Al­though we actually know very little about these celestial objects (since we've never managed to catch one), astronomers like to be­lieve that these fireballs are made of ice and that the huge chunks of ice that have crashed out of the sky for centuries were really from the tails of comets. In recent years many prominent scientists have seriously explained flying saucers as being the debris from comets* tails. During the UFO flap of 1966 the late Senator Robert F. Ken­nedy sent out form letters stating that, 'One explanation of this phenomenon connects the lights that are seen with the gaseous tails of comets.'

If a comet ever did strike the Earth, it might make life here rather uncomfortable. Scientists have estimated that if a solid meteorite only a mile in diameter should strike the planet intact, the impact and concussion could destroy a large part - or all - of life here. There are a number of large meteor craters, all very ancient, which prove that such collisions have taken place.

Ancient civilizations could have been destroyed by any one of these potential catastrophes as well as such things as enormous earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Our planet is really unstable. Mountains are always blowing up. The crast is constantly shifting, generating earthquakes which take a frightening toll in lives and property every year. Rivers overflow and floods occur with appalling regularity. Enigmatic fireballs can sweep down oat of the sky sud­denly and unexpectedly and burn up whole cities like Chicago.

On top of all these hazards, we have the most dangerous factor -man himself. He has made war an economic and political necessity. The ruins of the Middle Hast and Europe stand as testimony to his ability to destroy whole civilizations by himself without any outside help.

Among the traditions of the Hopi Indians is the story of Kuskurza. the third world or epoch, which lay 'in the east' (Atlantis again!). They developed flying machines called patuwn>otast according to

Frank Waters in his Book of the Hopi: 'Some of them made a patu-wvota, and with their creative power made it fly though the air. On this many of the people flew to a big dty, attacked it, and returned so fast no one knew where they came from. Soon the people of many cities and countries were making patuwvotas and flying on them to attack one another. So corruption and war came to the Third World as it had to the other.*

With present day inflation, theories are the cheapest commodity around, costing less than a penny a gross. It is better to stick with the available facts. Those facts are that one or more civilizations preceded early man and left behind magnificent megaliths as proof of their artistic and engineering abilities. Something destroyed those civilizations, or perhaps they destroyed themselves. Great civi­lizations have risen and died within the past two thousand years alone. Our own civilization may be following the same unhappy route, and two thousand years from now the Earth may again flip over on its axis. Great sheets of ice may bury the rubble of our cities. Silt and stones will wash over our towers and fortresses. And some­where a handful of beings, reduced to savagery by necessity, will tell tales around their camp fires about us and how we even dared to reach for the moon. Thousands of years after that, a new breed of anthropologist will collect those tales and scoff, even though all the tribes from all parts of the planet will have the same tales to tell. It is plainly impossible, those scientists will say, that any super civi­lization could have existed in prehistoric times. And primitive man could hardly have flown to the moon. It is folly to even listen to such nonsense. It's far more fruitful to measure and study those giant faces carved into Mount Rushmore… faces that are obviously rep­licas of ancient gods. Probably they were carved by the same primi­tives who erected that great ring of stones in the British Isles, they will observe sagely.

Mankind is like a broken record repeating the same refrain over and over again.

CHAPTER SEVEN

SCIENTISTS IN COLLISION

In 1950 a new meteor raced across the horizon, spewing a long trail of crisp ideas that left the scientific establishment sputtering in rage. The meteor was a book dealing with history, astronomy, and archae. ology. It was written by a psychiatrist and published by a major Madison Avenue bouse. Science editors and book reviewers across the country greeted it with awe, comparing its author with Galileo, Newton, Darwin, and Einstein. The public responded by making the book a best seller. It was titled Worlds in Collision and written by Dr Immanuel Velikovsky.

Dr Velikovsky tore at the delicate underpinnings of modern science, applying excessive scholarship to the problems of how the planets were formed and what forces may have wrought changes in the Earth. Along the way he was obliged to invent new theories based upon the flimsy (by scientific standards) evidence of mytho­logy. He dared to throw out some of science's most coveted con­cepts, substituting Ms own cosmology.

The explosion followed almost immediately. The biggest names in astronomy and physics organized and fulminated. They set out to destroy this upstart by flooding his, publisher's office with vicious letters threatening to boycott the firm unless Velikovsky's book was withdrawn. Since the publisher also had a profitable sideline of text­books and was heavily dependent upon the academic community for support, this ugly campaign had some effect. An assistant editor who had first suggested publishing the book was fired, and pub­lication rights were turned over to another publisher who did not have a textbook business.

Leading scientists gave public lectures denouncing Velikovsky. The scientific journals were filled with critical anti-Velikovsky letters and articles. It was modern science's darkest hour. There was a response which for intensity and hostility was unequalled in twentieth cen­tury scientific history,' the Los Angeles Times later noted.

What triggered this emotional outburst? Velikovsky's main theme was that the planet Venus was really a comet hurled out of the planet Jupiter. It had brushed part the Earth, he said, on its way into

orbit around the sun and had been observed by all the existing races and recorded in theL mythology.

Immanuel Velikovsky was born June 10th, 1895, in Vitebsk, Russia. He studied medicine and law at same of Europe's best uni­versities (he couldn't go to a Russian college because he was a Jew), received his medical degree in 1921, and settled in Palestine in 1924. He knew.Freud personally and corresponded with the great man in the last years of his life. In 1939 Velikovsky and his family moved to New York, intending to stay only eight months. But he was already toying with his theories, and he spent the next nine years in libraries conducting the exhaustive research which finally resulted in WOrids in Collision. Today he lives quietly in Princeton, New Jersey, rarely appearing in public. He has been more fortunate than Wegener and his continental drift theory in that Velikovsky has Eved to see his critics silenced and many of his seemingly far-out concepts confirmed.

Ever since the invention of the printing press, publishers have been flourishing on best selling books covering the whole spectrum of pseudoscience. Volumes of profound nonsense, such as the works on pyramidology and Atlantis, have sold in amazing numbers gener­ation after generation. Nearly every major publisher has books of astrology and flying saucers on his lists. A large part of the endless stream of theses, papers, and learned studies by establishment scien­tists has in time proven invalid and more crackpot than even the cultist literature. It was incredible that Velikovsky's contemporaries singled out his work - a book that had taken nine years of careful study and research - for their venom. In retrospect many of the anti-Velikovsky critiques read like the work of deranged lunatics who had not even bothered to read the book they were attempting to criti­cize. They were against the book simply because it propounded ideas that were contrary to the accepted theories of the day. They re­sented the fact that a psychiatrist dared to speculate on astronomy and archaeology. He was an intruder. Above all they resented the fact that his book was very well written (most scientists are mis­erable writers).

'If I had not been psychoanalytically trained, I would have had some harsh words to say to my critics,' Dr Velikovsky said loftily in the early 1950s.

Orthodox scientists have always sneered at the works of Charles Fort, an American humorist who published four books of oddities and scientific anomalies, primarily because Fort delighted in attack­ing the scientific establishment. Now they tried to lump Velikovsky

together with Fort. Scientists and the untutored followers of sden-tism spent years denigrating Velikovsky and generating the legend that be was just another crackpot, The ageing psychiatrist just ignored them and went on writing books expanding Ms central thesis.1 In a rare attempt at self-defence2 he stated that he hoped that future generations of scientists would understand his work more dearly. He wrote off his contemporary critics, and this prompted Martin Gardner to observe in 1952 that:

Dr Velikovsky is an almost perfect textbook example of the pseudoscientist - self-taught in the subjects about which he does most of his speculation, working in total isolation from fellow scientists, motivated by a strong compulsion to defend dogmas held for other than scientific reasons, and with an unshakable conviction in the revolutionary value of his work and the blind­ness of his critics.

One of the favourite points of the anti-Velikovsky critics was that he relied upon ancient myths and traditions for his evidence. Actu­ally, in Worlds in Collision, he devoted many pages to this problem. Since he was trying to reassemble events which transpired in pre­historic times (before the advent of written records), he was obliged to perform a comparative study of early legends. He recognized that the problem of interpreting such material correctly was monu­mental.

'Traditions about upheavals and catastrophes, found among all peoples,* he wrote, 'are generally discredited because of the short­sighted belief that no forces could have shaped the world in the' past that are not at work also at the present time, a belief that is the very foundation of modern geology and of the theory of evolution.'

Those were fighting words to the scientific establishment. Vel­ikovsky compounded his felony by suggesting that numerous events and catastrophes long accepted in religious lore as miracles and acts of God were in reality observations of astronomical phenomena which could be explained. This was totally unpalatable to the scientific community and to many others as well.

In 1950 the staid American Journal of Stience ranted that Vel-Ikovsky's book was 'best described as burlesque of both science and history'. Seventeen years later Yale Scientific Magazine devoted an entire issue to vindicating the good doctor.

1 Among these are: Earth in Upheaval, Ages in Chaos, and Oedipus and Akhnatnn.

2 Harper's. June 1951.

What had happened in those seventeen years? For one thing, the Old Guard had changed to a degree, and many bright young men had emerged, clutching their slide rules as they rode the tails of man-made comets to Venus and Mars. For another, the stupefying and stultifying atmosphere of the McCarthy Era of the early 1950s had ended. Professor Lloyd Motz of Columbia University scented the tide of change, and in a letter in Harper's in October 1963. he cau­tiously admitted, 'I do not support Velikovsky's theory, but I do support his right to present his ideas and to have those ideas con­sidered by responsible scholars and scientists as the creation of a serious and dedicated investigator and not the concoctions of a charlatan seeking notoriety…'

Scientists and professors live in the uncomfortable atmosphere of the academic rule, Publish or Perish. They grind out interminable re­search papers and studies, not because they have something to say, but because their livelihood often depends upon their ability to put their names into print. This unfortunate system has spawned an army of men whose academic credentials are sound enough but who indulge in quasi research. Some even manage to acquire a con­siderable reputation by publishing a steady stream of unread books. Professor Mote's remark about 'the concoctions of a charlatan seek­ing notoriety1 is revealing, because scientists are painfully aware of the many charlatans in their own midst who thrive on such notori­ety. Over and over again in the past, leaders of the scientific com­munity have proven mere charlatans or, at best, competent organizers and administrators, while their less notorious con­temporaries made the real contributions to their field. This spills over of course into other fields such as literary criticism, where a man will write a critical essay of a famous author, and then others will write critical essays of the original critique. Soon the little liter­ary magazines are actually feeding upon themselves, and the profes­sors are quarrelling about their interpretations of said famous author.

Velikovsky became the most prominent victim of this system. If he had written a book about psychiatry {his own field) or sex and sold a million copies, no one would have cared. But when he invaded the turf of others, presented unpopular ideas in a logical and successful manner, and got the book published… well, he had gone too far. To the scientists of the 1950s he had to be a 'charlatan seeking notori­ety", like Herr Horbiger of another era, they chanted, 'Ether you believe in us, or you must be treated as an enemy.*

A decade later the main dish served at many a scientist's table was crow.

Astronomers were dead certain in 1950 that both Jupiter and Venus were elderly planets, and after much peering through their telescopes, they had constructed some fanciful facts about both bodies. These facts were taught, as usual, to generations of school students as. the gospel. Assorted studies had "proven* that the sur­face temperature of Venus was somewhere between 25° C, and 30° C making it a relatively cool planet and possibly an inhabitable one. Dr Velikovsky's theory was that Venus was actually an ex-comet and had been in solar orbit for only thirty-four centuries. If he was right, the surface of Venus would have to be considerably hotter.

In 1961 Dr Frank Drake and other radio astronomers turned their equipment on Venus and discovered that its temperature based upon its radio emissions was at least 600° F, or 315° C. later the United States and the Soviet Union sent unmanned space probes to Venus and confirmed that it was a mighty hot place and that there might be some source of surface heat other than solar radiation. Venus is the second planet from the sun after Mercury. Even the side turned away from the sun radiates considerable heat. Another interesting discovery was that Venus rotates slowly in a retrograde - that is, clockwise - direction and has movements, which are in sharp con­trast to the other planets in the solar system.* 'Maybe Venus was created apart from the other planets,' scientists at the Goldstone Tracking Station muttered in 1962, 'perhaps as a secondary solar explosion or perhaps in a collision of planets.'

There were other factors, such as the heavy hydrocarbon atmos­phere of the planet, which seemed to confirm Dr Velikovsky's 1950 speculations. Venus is definitely an oddball among the planets, but the astronomers of 1950 didn't know any of this.

Turning to the ancient records for his evidence, Dr Velikovsky pointed out that early peoples had recorded Venus as an excep­tionally bright object trailing smoke. The Chinese, Mayas, Toltecs, and Aztecs also recorded its motion… and the early Venus appar­ently followed a mtich different orbit, or trajectory, than the dim­inished orb now visible in our skies.

The people of Mesopotamia did not even record Venus in their astronomical records. Later the Chaldeans described it as a 'bright torch of heaven' that 'illuminates like the sun* and 'fills the entire heaven*. Other far-flung cultures preserved similar comments, all of which suggest that Venus began as a comet which roared very close

* See 'Radat Observations of the Planets', Invin I. Shapiro, Scientific American. July 1968.

to the earth at one point - close enough perhaps to cause tidal waves and spew burring fragments on to the earth's surface.

Another part of Dr Velikovsky's evidence consisted of the stories of the 'rain of fire' which encompassed the earth, and he quoted from Mexican texts as well as the records of the Assyrians. If he was right then some of the oil deposits on earth were a result of that celestial shower. But geologists have always assumed that oil is cre­ated by a process which takes millions of years. Since Worlds in Collision was written, deposits of liquid hydrocarbons have been found and dated in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere, giving every indication they are only a few thousand years oldl

The ancient texts described the comet Venus as coming from the fifth planet, Jupiter. Was this possible? This was the flimsiest part of the Velikovsky theory, and the most widely attacked. Ironically, the very men who advocate the theory that tektites are the result of meteor impacts on the moon (Chapter Four) are the same ones who deny that a Jovian comet could come into being, perhaps by the same process. Velikovsky proposed a collision of planets as a possible source. The asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter could be made up of surviving fragments from that awesome event Our ideas about Jupiter itself have been revised considerably since 1950. We used to think of it as a gigantic planetary body composed of gases and liquids, but in recent years powerful radio waves have been detected coming from it. Apparently, there are great electrical storms on the surface, and some of these storms affect earthly radio waves as much, or more so, than sunspots, Studies of all this have led to a new theory, now quite popular among astronomers, that Jupiter may not be a planet at all. It may be a cold star! Maybe one planet could not give birth to another, but a star, even a cold star, could.

Jupiter's diameter is approximately eleven times the diameter of the earth - about eighty-six thousand miles. As nearly as we can determine, it revolves very rapidly on its axis; a Jovian day is less than ten Earth hours long. Through the telescope it appears to be ringed with cloud-like bands, the most interesting feature of which is the famous red spot. This is an elliptical spot some forty thousand kilometers long and thirteen thousand kilometers wide - roughly equal in area to the entire surface of the Earth. This spot was first observed by Robert Hooke in 1664. Astronomers have been watching it ever since. It also rotates with the planet but at different speeds. And it always remains in approximately the same latitude, wander­ing only slightly.

Morris K Jessup and other ufologists have advanced the notion

that the ted spot is actually a great spaceship, a monumental Ark from outer space, which transported the survivors of some dying world into our solar system. Some modern flying saucer contactees even claim that the spacemen have taken them to Jupiter and shown them this Ark. Other contactees have been told stories about the ark by the spacemen. It is waiting for the day when the Earth will be evacuated by the kindly space people. Then we will all fly to the stars aboard it. Well, not all of us. Just those lucky humans who have been chosen by the space people. Several dry runs have already been held in recent years with the chosen contactees closing down their homes and businesses to sit on a hill or raountaintop and wait for the evacuation to begin. A number of these dry runs are docu­mented in the author's book, UFOs - Operation Trojati Horse. Ju­piter's Ark is an integral part of modern flying saucer lore.

Stanley Kubrick's epic motion picture, 2001, added to this lore by having astronauts head for Jupiter after a mysterious monolith was discovered on the moon. The monolith, a faceless grey slab, is used throughout the film as the symbol of some extraterrestrial force guiding man's destiny. In the dosing scenes of 2001, scenes which have thoroughly baffled many moviegoers, an astronaut arrives on , Jupiter only to enter into a new phase of evolution: a kind af rebirth. Shorn of its cinematic mysticism, the film is a restatement of what many cultists have been saying all along.

The flying saucer buffs have been misled by astronomical termin­ology. Although the red spot is usually termed an 'object', it could be almost anything. Bernard M. Peek, an amateur astronomer, called it a raft and suggested it could be some form of water floating like an iceberg in the Jovian atmosphere. Professor Raymond Hide, of the British Meteorological Office, proposed in Scientific American in Feb­ruary, 1968 that it could be the visible part of a phenomenon known as a Taylor column - a stagnant cylinder of liquid centred above some depression or topographical feature on the planet below. The late Frank Edwards, a radio news commentator and author of UFO books, poetically equated it with a giant eye always turned towards (he earth. Some followers of Velikovsky have asserted that the red spot is really the hole left behind when Venus was catapulted out into space.

In order for a body the size of Venus, which is only slightly smaller than the earth, to be successfully hurtled out of Jupiter, it would have to attain an incredible escape velocity to overcome the great mass and gravity of the planet. Achieving this velocity would require a tremendous amount of energy, or as Professor Motz put it3'… to

eject a planet like Venus, Jupiter would have had to release in a manner of seconds or minutes as much energy as the Sun emits in more than a year. Jupiter would therefore have appeared as bright as a nova [an exploding star], which is about a million times as luminous as the sun…'

Dr Velikovsky attempted to explain this by theorizing that a large mass on a near collision course with Saturn and Jupiter may have set the cosmic machinery in motion.

Whatever may have happened, Velikovsky's main premise is that Venus is a young planet. He predicted in 1950 that Venus would prove to be hot and that it would display orbital eccentricities. The claims have now been verified. He claimed that the ancient records stand as proof that Venus was not even present in the skies until fairly recent times, that it first appeared as a comet hauling a tail and followed a course somewhat different from its present one. Its passage through our solar system caused massive disturbances on earth and probably wholesale destruction. There are written records of those disturbances and archaeological and geological evidence of that destruction.

In relatively recent times Venus posed a new mystery. Today's astronomers agree that our sister planet has no moons. But a sat­ellite was observed orbiting Venus in 1672 by a prominent astrono­mer named CasdnL He saw it again in 1686. Other well known astronomers, using primitive but adequate instruments, sighted it in 1740, 1759, 1764, and 1791. They all noted that it seemed to be about one fourth the size of Venus itself (giving it a diameter of two thousand miles) and that it was very bright, almost luminous. It's very hard to lose something two thousand miles across… even in space. But no astronomer has seen this object since 1791. Hying saucer cultists have taken Venus* vanishing satellite to their bosom, claiming naturally that it was really a gigantic spacecraft But the object's extreme luminosity could mean that it was a fragment of the Venus comet itself, following a retrograde orbit which eventually sent it into the planet's surface.

We have followed a long and bizarre trail from the ancient rumours of massive catastrophes to the Atlantis-bound theories of Donnelly to the Ice Age notions of Horbiger's Wei and finally to the carefully researched and thought-out conclusions of Dr Immanuel Velikovsky and his still controversial concept of colliding worlds, These men and their many followers were probably mostly wrong… but there is always a chance that they might also be partially right. While their peers and colleagues have fumed, fussed^ fought.

ridiculed, and attacked their body syntheses, a new generation of scientists has steadily uncovered substantial scientific evidence which seems to support them. New theorists will undoubtedly seize upon this new evidence and construct concepts which will make them seem pikers.

We are beginning to realize that the Earth's crust is in constant motion, that the continents are adrift. The whole planet may flip-flop on its axis every few thousand years, causing water to bury land areas, bringing new land areas to the surface, and thrusting tem­perate zones into the Arctic cold to be smothered by ice. And if we can accept Velikovsky, our little mudball is running the constant hazard of encountering objects and forces in space which can wreak unbelievable havoc in hours or days. The moon could even fall on us one day, or the sun could suddenly explode. Our whole technological civilization could be wiped out in a flash.

It would not be too surprising, therefore.if other great civilizations might have flourished on this planet many thousands of years ago. Other great races, not necessarily linked to us biologically, could have existed here. The supergiants of Pauwels and Bergier could have been real. All that has survived of that ancient race are the puzzling stone monoliths and the great mounds and ridges. It was a logical step for a super-civilization to move from the construction of mounds and earth-works to the building of the more permanent pyramids of Egypt, China, and South America. Their culture, or rem­nants of it, survived and were imitated by early man. For thousands of years superb stonemasons laboured all over this planet, erecting pyramids, then temples, then great cities. Our sciences have timidly attempted to reconstruct the history of the past three or four thou­sand years, never daring to look beyond. And woe to anyone - such as Velikovsky - who does dare.

PART TWO

If the religious projections of man correspond to a reality that is sapecfaoitoan and supernatural, tfeen ft seems logical to look fcr

CHAPTER EIGHT

MIMICS OF MAN

The animal world is filled with incongruous redundancies. There are insects that resemble twigs and sticks, fish that look like harmless underwater plants, animals that appear to be rocks and ferns. Some non-poisonous snakes imitate the colouring and appearance ol their deadlier cousins. Numerous tasty insects discourage their enemies by imitating poisonous centipedes and scorpions. The animal and insect world is thronging with fakers and imitators and cunning masters of camouflage. One insect is so cleverly disguised that it can march along with formations of fierce army ants unnoticed. It even imitates the scent of the anny ants.

Man, the most vicious and wanton killer of the animal world and the natural enemy of all wild things, has his imitators, too. Overt contacts between man and paraman have numbered in the millions throughout history. Legend and lore are rich with such incidents of contact. Our great religions are founded upon encounters with angels and demons. The annals of psychic phenomena are filled with accounts of seemingly chance meetings with these ultraterrestrials. Some of them seem dull and inconsequential and even easily explain­able; others are witnessed by groups of reliable people and produce testimony that would have been written by a drunken science fiction author.

'Living among us undetected may be creatures (not necessarily alien) with all the outward appearances of human beings,' urologist Alex Saunders wrote in Quest magazine. October 1969. The mimic would of necessity be a "lone wolf", likely living in a large, bustling city where the eccentric and the odd may flourish unhindered. For it is a curious fart of nature that that which is in plain view is often best hidden.*

Another famous ufologist, Ainte Michel, has also commented on these mysterious mimics. "Certain cases have been checked and found to be perfectly authentic. But they are so absurd (because they are mimetic) that folk donot dare to talk about them. Nouseful research can ever be done so long as absurdity produces complexes in us.'1

1 The Humatwüs. Neville Spearman.

Early man was very aware of the existence of these mimics and tended to separate them into two groups - gods and demons. All religions have always warned their followers to be cautious of false angels and demigods. The Bible repeatedly discusses these entities and their influence upon man, always describing them as humanlike beings usually travelling in threes and possessing remarkable super­human powers.

"Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares,' we are warned in Hebrews 13:2.

Three men, usually of Oriental countenance and dressed in sombre black clothing, play important roles in both flying saucer and re­ligious lore. For years the (lying saucer researchers who encountered these Men In Black (MIB) believed they were secret agents of the CIA seat to harass them. These MIB have been seen most often riding about in large black automobiles, usually Cadillacs, and they have engaged in frightening tactics, harassing amateur UFO sleuths. There are hundreds of reports from all over the world in which these mysterious gentlemen have approached UFO witnesses and inves­tigators, warning, even threatening, them to be silent about what they had seen. Since these entities and their big black automobiles have an uncanny talent for disappearing into thin air, investigators examining the stories of their victims have tended to dismiss such accounts as lies and hallucinations. Then, as has happened in so many cases, when these sceptical investigators had MIB encounters of their own, they have panicked in confusion. There has been an appalling number of sudden deaths, suicides, and nervous break­downs among UFO investigators in the past twenty years.

On the religious level these same MIB, answering the same de­scriptions of the UFO harassers, have always been regarded as1 agents of the devil - or the devil himself. The antics of these characters have kept the devil myth ah' ve into modern times, and there are still numerous religious cults hopelessly engaged in battling and trying to outwit them… but they alwaysmanage tostayone jump ahead of their pursuers. Most of their deeds and manipulations appear to be nothing more than mischievous games.

The activities of these parahumans are largely confined to specific areas of this planet, where they appear and reappear century after century. The angels keep their ancient places," poet Francis Thomp­son wrote. Thus there are many 'haunted' places all over the world, shunned by andent man or made sacred by him. These are precise geographical locations, and anyone digging into the history and lore of such locations will find thousands of accounts of ghosts.

demons, monsters, and flying saucers pinpointed within a few square miles and covering a thousand years or more of time. To UFO cultists such places are Windows: entry points for spaceships front some distant planet. Occultists teach that these are Gateways: weak spots in the Earth's etheric envelope through which beings from other space-time continuums seep through into our reality. • Sussex County in England is one Gateway, as are the Mississippi Valley, the Ohio Valley, and parts of our western states, such as the area around Frescott, Arizona. There are literally thousands of these weak spots all over our planet. Paranormal and supernatural activi­ties in these areas seem to be controlled by complicated cyclic factors. Periodically, all hell breaks loose in all these places simul­taneously, and then we have a flap, or wave, of UFO sightings, ap­paritions, poltergeists, sudden inexplicable disappearances of animals and human beings, mysterious fires, and even a form of mass madness.

Researchers are only now beginning to untangle the cycles in­volved. For some unknown reason a high proportion of all these activities seems to occur on Wednesday and on the twenty-fourth of the month. This has been a stable factor throughout history. The biblical prophet Zachariah reported (Zachariah 1:7) an angelic visitation Upon the four and twentieth day of the eleventh month', circa 520 b.c. The most famous flying saucer sighting of modern times, that of private pilot Kenneth Arnold near Mount Ranier in Washington, occurred on June 24, 1947. Note that many of the events discussed throughout this book took place on the twenty-fourth of the month.

Paranormal events also seem to duster around the tenth of the month- Early peoples were aware of these factors and linked them with the phases of the moon. They thought the full moon influenced human behaviour and produced lunacy. Appearances of DFOs and assorted apparitions do seem to increase during specific periods of the lunar cycle, and as noted in Chapter Two, the human mind does seem to be involved. Many of these things have been carelessly dis­missed as hallucinations because only certain people can see these things at certain times. However, a great many factors are involved. Recent studies indicate that persons of high psychic potential, who experience prophetic dreams and flashes of extrasensory perception (ESP), are more prone to see these things than people with little or no psychic ability. Polls and tests conducted over the past century by assorted scientists indicate that about one third of the population possesses active or latent psychic abilities, They constitute our main

body of TOO witnesses. The other two thirds have never had any personal experiences of tins sort and so. naturally enough, dismiss afl of this as utter rubbish.

Two independent statistical studies of available UFO reports were conducted in 1970 and confirmed that the highest number of UFO sightings took place on Wednesdays. An amateur group, the Am­erican Flying Saucer Investigating Committee of Columbus, Ohio, ran a study of 929 UFO reports from the year 1968 and found that Wednesdays produced the greatest number - 152. A more elaborate professional computer study of 7,025 sightings from tie years 1921 to 1969 was carried out by Dr. David Saunders of Colorado University. He too found that the greatest number of sightings (1,077) occurred on Wednesdays. The lowest number in the Ohio study was 117 for Sundays; the lowest number in the Saunder's study was 903 for Saturdays. Although these are only pilot studies and much more work along this line will be necessary before any definite conclusions can be reached, it is obvious that these things are not random and sporadic but are governed by a definite time cycle of some sort. Factors of coincidence, innocent errors, misinterpretations of ordi­nary aircraft and mundane natural phenomenon, weather balloons, and so on must be filtered out.

Another computer study of twelve hundred anomalies and unusual occurrences, sifted from the works of Charles Fort, was recently carried out by C. L Mallows of the Bell Telephone Laboratories. Here it was found that a broader cycle of 9.6 years was seemingly involved. The conclusion is inescapable that these cycles of activity, which pass through our world like radio waves of enormous length, must have a common cause,' Damon Knight explained in his book, Charles Fort: Prophet of the Unexplained. The cause of the cycles, the controlling force that keeps them in synchrony, must lie outside the earth.'

The Bell study includes such diversified phenomena as sky falls (odd objects dropping out of the sky) unusual storms (rains of frogs, etc.), things observed in space, and things seen in the sky. All of these phenomena tended to duster - to occur simultaneously in specific months and specific years. The waves or cycles of these events were repeated approximately every 9.6 years. The study dealt largely with data from the nineteenth century.

Ancient magicians and seers were quite familiar with these cyclic factors. The earnest religious and occult lore discusses rays which periodically sweep our planet from some extraterrestrial source and cause everything from miracles to sadness and catastrophes.

Strangely, the Australian Aborigines, the South American Indians, and the tribes of Africa, as well as the ancient Babylonians and other early cultures, all pinpointed the Pleiades (a cluster of seven stars), and the constellation of Orion as that source of these rays. Rays from outer space are an integral part: of all human folklore.

In time all of these intangibles will be puttied down by courageous scientific investigators (studies of this kind are still very unpopular among scientists). Already we know (or have relearned) that all paranormal manifestations have a tendency to occur in the same places year after year; that they follow specific patterns within our own time scale; that only specific people can witness or become involved in these events. The logical jumping off place for any future investigation is to study the witnesses in depth and to explore these Gateways carefully and methodically. Small groups of psychiatrists, para-psychologist, geologists, and physicists are now engaged in studies of this type.

One significant factor, which is hardly a secret to the occultists, is that the Window areas tend to be places where peculiar magnetic faults exist. Our haunted planet is covered with magnetic faults, and interestingly enough, many of them are grouped around the ancient mounds, temple sites, and spots where flying saucers are seen most frequently. Psychically oriented people living in these regions tend to have extraordinary experiences with elementaJs, angels, MIB, and spacemen (numerous examples will be given further on).

A leading authority on mythology and mysticism, poet Robert Graves, recently stated: There are some sacred places made so by the radiation created by magnetic ores. My village, for example, is a kind of natural amphitheatre enclosed by mountains containing iron ore, which makes a magnetic field. Most holy places in the world -holy not by some accident, like a hero dying or being born there -are o£ this sort. Delphi was a heavily charged holy place.*

Back in the Middle Ages the Vatican pointedly ordered that new churches should be constructed on the sites of old temples whenever possible. The tradition of sacred places runs deep and seems to be largely based upon the continuous observations of paranormal mani­festations. The entities who allegedly approached human beings in miraculous events frequently ordered a church or temple to be built on^Jie spot. But we didn't need an order to erect tie great churches at Lourdes and Fatima after the entities appeared there. Remember the legendary nineteen-year cycle of Stonehenge, when the god was supposed to appear? Multiply the Fortean cycle of 9.6 years by 2.

A magnetic survey of the United States was carried out by the

government in the 1950s. Maps detailing magnetic variations in nearly every state can be obtained from the Office of Geological Survey in Washington. Comparisons of the concentrations of para­normal manifestations with these maps show unique clusters around the magnetic aberrations. Could it be that periodic sweeps of those rays from outer space set up some kind of physical or psychic reac­tions in these fault areas? This is a question that could be answered scientifically, if only someone would put up the money, equipment, and personnel to make a study.

We are only reobserving the things which awed early man and inspired his superstitions and beliefs. Electro-magnetic energy plays a key role in these manifestations. We are still learning about it. Our planet may be constantly interchanging energy with some outside force. This exchange of energy is an important part of occult belief. It occurs we are told, on every level. Chinese philosophers of long ago contended that man was moon food (i.e., the energy of indi­vidual souls was drained off and absorbed by some extraterrestrial force which needed such energy to replenish itself). Later, theo­logians extended this to form the classic explanation that we were the subjects of a war between God and the Devil… a war to win the souls of man and thereby control the planet. Thus, the demons and MIB who appeared in earlier times were supposed to have been after souls. They made lavish promises, according to the records, and offered fanciful philosophies and cosmologies, but as Sweden-borg figured out, they always proved to be nothing but splendid liars.

Early investigators and thinkers soon realized they were dealing with magical beings who could imitate man and his works. Instead of being solid physically stable assemblages of cells and matter, these entities were apparently temporary manipulations of energy. So the word 'transmogrification' was used to describe them. These transmogrifications, according to the lore, could assume any form… from a wolf or a cat to a house, ship or iridescent god of awe­some proportions. They could appear clothed in rags or in gold crowns and expensive velvet robes. Worst of all, they had a penchant for playing all kinds of games with us, manipulating our fears and beliefs and even conning us into going to war against each other.

One alarming facet of their countless messages to percipients and contactees is their preoccupation with spreading racist propaganda. The messages recorded throughout history are filled with such propaganda. If the percipient was an Indian, the propaganda was aimed at a nearby tribe. If he was Hindu, it was directed at the

Moslems. The elementals are purveyors of bate, and perhaps much of the racial prejudice blighting the human race was originally the product of their teachings.

Even those wonderful space people and Brothers from other planets manage to play this game. Long John Nebel, a New York radio personality, has spent thousands of hours interviewing con-tactees and UFO burls on the air over WNBC and in his book. Way Out World, he offers this comment:

A bit that has always bugged me is the racist propaganda which keeps cropping up from one group to another. In this area, regrettably, I'm unable to name names and cite occasions, since the allusions are always so carefully phrased so that the offenders could easily deny the intentions of their remarks. But the meaning is there, never doubt it. As is usually the case, the unfavoured parties racially speaking are the Jews and Negroes, and the themes of both Fascism and Communism seem to echo from behind the scenes on more than a few occasions. But it's all part of the action.

Some contactees who claimed to have visited Mars blandly point out that the planet is divided into zones with the Negro and Jewish Martians carefully segregated from the others.

Even contactees of liberal persuasions repeat with some dismay the nastily racist remarks of the Venusians. The Jews are a favourite target of this outer space propaganda, as if they haven't got enough trouble already.

Until the past five or six years racial prejudice was actually a basic part of all the Western religions. After digging down to the source of these racist beliefs, there are always the ancient teachings of dubious messengers. They have kept the human race stirred up and at each other's throats for thousands of years. Now finally the Catholics are beginning to soften their traditional anti-Semitism, and the Mormons are beginning to face the fact that Negroes ate also human beings.

Aside from their inveterate racism, the mimics are also fond of exploiting tense political situations. A band of phantom Indians plagued the settlers of Gloucester. Massachusetts, back in 1692. They appeared night after night, skirmishing with the English and firing bulletless guns. Although the Indians never killed or scalped anyone, the colonists were understandably upset and heavily fortified their positions, the English became convinced that they

were not real Indians,* Sir Walter Scott reported, 'but that the devil and his agents had assumed such an appearance.'

The North American Indians have innumerable legends about an entity they called the Trickster because he would turn up occasion­ally and play wild and vicious pranks.

Earth's phantom inhabitants play many other roles, especially in the widely accepted sphere of psychic phenomena. Telly Savalas, the famous character actor, told Hollywood reporter Dick Kleiner a weird story involving a black Cadillac. It happened when Savalas was young and flat broke. His car ran out of gas on Long Island, and after he started walking, a black Cadillac 'seemed to appear from nowhere', and the driver offered him a lift. The driver was dressed entirely in white - a refreshing switch - and said very little. But at one point he offered Savalas a dollar to buy some gas. The actor insisted that the nun write down his name and address on a slip of paper so he could be repaid. They found a gas station, and the driver waited while Savalas bought a can of gasoline. Then they drove back to his own car in silence.

1 know Harry Agannis,' the driver said suddenly. Savalas asked who Harry Agannis was. 'He's a utility infielder on the Boston Red Sox,' the man answered. That was the end of the conversation.

The man waited while Savalas poured the gasoline into the car, gave him a push to get him started, and then drove off with a wave. The next day Savalas was shaken by newspaper headlines announc­ing the sudden death of Harry Agannis. He decided to call the phone number on the slip of paper given to him by the man in the white suit. It was in Massachusetts, and a woman answered. Savalas told her he wanted to speak to Bill, the name on the paper, There was a pause, and another woman came on the lire.

1 fust met Bill last night,' Savalas began, "and something hap­pened, and I wanted—'

"You met him last night?* she interrupted, choking on sudden tears. Then she told him that her husband Bill had been dead for three years. Later she met with Savalas in New York and told him that her husband had been buried in a white suit. She showed him the last letter her husband had written, and ha was startled to see that the handwriting exactly matched the handwriting on the slip of paper given him by the Cadillac driver.

The whole fabric of psychic belief is woven from such stories, which number in the many thousands and are accepted by millions as proof of survival after death. But investigators informed in the antics of the ultraterrestrial mimics are obliged to look deeper.

These entities labour to cultivate belief in various frames of refer­ence, and then they deliberately create new manifestations which support those beliefs. Savalas rode in a physically real Cadillac and spoke with a seemingly real man. If the incident was only a joke of some land, it was a very complicated and pointless one.

Phantom campers, vehicles with built-on trailers, have been widely reported in the western states in recent years. And we have reports of phantom airplanes and helicopters by the hundreds. In the 1930s thousands of people in northern Europe saw formations of mysterious aeroplanes over Norway, Sweden and Finland. Despite extensive searches by the military forces of several countries, the source of these ghost fliers, as they were called, was never deter­mined.* During World War n military intelligence groups collected a number of phantom aeroplane sightings from pilots returning from missions. Crews of several bombers from the Ninety-Second Group reported the following over Germany:

Four P-47s, thought to be friendly American aircraft flown by the enemy, were observed on the approach to the initial Point at 22,000 feet, heading 120° magnetic. These aircraft flew out to the side and parallel with the combat wing formation in the manner of fighter escort. They suddenly executed a 90° turn in towards the head of the combat wing formation. These aircraft were orig­inally at 800 yards on port beam. They approached to 300 yards, when they nosed up and away, showing a full-plan view of them­selves. Positive identification is claimed. The aircraft had brown fuselages, and the wings were a very dark colour, almost black. No white cowling and no white tail markings were observed. No insignia was observed, and the aircraft did not open fire. Several B-17s fired on them. The last P-47 escort had long since departed, and the enemy aircraft had been attacking for some time at this point.

The opening theory expressed in this intelligence report - "Four P-47s, thought to be friendly American aircraft flown by the enemy' -was proven invalid. The mystery planes did not fire at the American bombers, but were fired on instead. If the Germans had attempted such a ploy with captured aircraft, they certainly would have painted appropriate insignia on the planes. And after having suc­ceeded in getting within 300 yards of the bombers (which is very 2 For a full account of this interesting sequence of events see John A. Keel, VFOs-Operatitm Trojan Horse.

dose), the pilots, if they were German, would certainly have opened fire. Instead, they scooted away, never to be seen again.

Low-flying mystery aeroplanes reported in 1969-70 were most often described as resembling P-38s, the twin-engined, dual-fuselage fighters used in the Pacific in World War II. They were fast, noisy aircraft, but our mystery planes move very slowly and in complete silence. They execute impossible manoeuvres, such as sudden right angle turns, and disappear as mysteriously as they had come. Only 3 handful of P-38s are still operational, and they were not the culprits in these cases. like the ghost fliers of 1934, they are a dull grey and violate all regulations by failing to show any licence numbers or insignia.

Could these phantom aircraft be part and parcel of the same phenomena which produce phantom automobiles and campers? Could they also be apparitions and transmogrifications of energy that can be properly categorized with the disappearing Indians of Gloucester? The evidence suggests that this could very well be the case.

In other ages flying ships were sometimes reported. Flying Saucer Review, May-June 1970, reprinted a fascinating story from 1743. A farmer near Peibio, Wales, claimed he had seen a flying sailboat that year. He estimated that it was about 1,500 feet in the air and could have been about ninety tons. The keel of the ship was plainly seen (thus ruling out mirages of ships far out to sea). Similar phenomena had been reported in the same area about ten years previous.

Fairy lore is also filled with alleged sightings of fairy ships com­plete with billowing sails.

Our problem is compounded by these amazing, confusing, and alas, scientifically inadmissible subjective observations. The UFO cults have solved this dilemma by simply throwing out this Idnd of material and concentrating only on those reports which describe circular of cigar-shaped objects. We must, however, consider all the forms reported with equal care if we are to arrive at any valid conclusions.

There is no way to investigate a flying saucer after it has flown. But it is possible to study the people who saw it and the terrain over which it appeared. If we are dealing with clever mimics and trans­mogrifications of energy and if man has been observing these things throughout his history, then the real clues may be found in the thousands of volumes in all languages describing those observation.; and encounters.

One basic fact should be obvious from the foregoing: these enti-

tics and things are not necessarily from some other planet. They are actually closely tied to the human race, are a part of out Immediate environment in some unfathomable fashion, and to a very large extent are primarily concerned with misleading us, misinforming us, and playing games with us. These mysterious members of the Well' sian Wings Over the World are oat benefactors and our enemies. They educate us and they torment us. They have given us hope, guided our religions and philosophies, and watched us crawl out of the cares and build rockets to the moon.

They may have watched other civilizations come and go. They may have sincerely helped us to preserve the memories of those lost ages and those past mistakes. Or it all may be rubbish, and we may be nothing more than the pawns with which they play their mis* chievous games. Theologians and philosophers have always been troubled by the nearly impossible task of sorting the real from the unreal, the truth from the false. Perhaps the only workable criterion is the ancient one of judging them by their works.

CHAPTER NINE

MEN-IN-BLACK LORE AND THE CIA

There is no truth to the rumours that the flying saucers are from Spain, or that they are piloted by Spaniards,' Gen. Carl Spaatz, Air Force Chief of Staff, told a press conference in 1948. This was an astonishing statement since a review of all the UFO literature and the fan magazines of the period has failed to uncover such a rumour. It suggests that .people must have been reporting slight, dark-com­plexioned pilots to the Air Force back in 1948, long before the UFO buffs started taking flying saucer occupant sightings seriously.

In his detailed report on the Maury Island UFO 'hoax' of 1947, Kenneth Arnold also describes meeting a small, dark foreign-looking man who was tinkering with the motor on a beat-up boat in Tacoma harbour. Ray Palmer, editor of Amazing Stories in Chicago, had commissioned Arnold to investigate the puzzling Maury Island affair, which began when a 'doughnut-shaped object' had rained 'slag' on to a boat near Maury Island. Pieces of that slag had killed a dog aboard the boat and slightly injured a boy, the son of Harold Dahl, who was piloting it. Early the next morning, according to DaH's story, a 1947 Bulck drove up to his home and a black-suited man of medium height visited him. This man, Dahl said, recited in detail everything that had happened the day before as if he had been there. Then he warned Dahl not to discuss his sighting with anyone, hinting that if he did there might be unpleasant repercussions which would affect him and his family. Since Dahl and the others had not yet told anyone of their sighting, and since UFOs were still publicly unknown {Arnold's sighting over Mount Rainer and the attendant publicity did not occur until three days later), Dahlwasnaturallynon-plussed by his strange visitor. This was the first modern MIB report.

Dahl's boss, Fred L. Crisman (he also owned the boat), became a central figure in the mystery. Dahl himself vanished soon after his interview with Arnold, and efforts by later investigators {such as Harold Wilkins, a British author) have failed to locate him. Crisman had been a flier in World War II, and he was suddenly recalkd into the service in 1947, flown to Alaska, and later stationed in Green­land, In recent years the amateur sleuths engaged in investigating

the alleged conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy have tried to implicate Crisman. District Attorney James Garrison of New Orleans subpoenaed one Fred Lee Crisman of Tracoma, Wash­ington, to testify before the Grand Jury listening to Garrison's evi­dence against Clay Shaw, according to wire service stories in November, 1963. Crisman was identified as a radio announcer, but Garrison's investigators implied that he was either a member of the CIA or had been 'engaged in undercover activity for a part of the industrial warfare complex'. He allegedly operated under a cover as a preacher and was 'engaged in work to help Gypsies'. These stories caused a chain reaction in UFO circles, since UFO believers have long accused the CIA of being somehow connected with the flying saucer mystery. Of course, the CIA was in its infancy in 1947 at the time of the Maury Island case and was then largely staffed by naval personnel from World War n intelligence units.

Clay Shaw was tried early in 1969, accused by Garrison of having conspired to murder President Kennedy. He was found innocent and freed. The exact nature of Crisman's testimony before the Grand Jury is not known. He did not testify at the actual trial.

When Ray Palmer, one of the best-informed urologists extant, summarized his own theories about the Maury Island mystery in the book he coauthored with Arnold, The Coming of the Saucers, he asked pointedly, "Was the Tacoma affair a hoax? Whose?*

In recent years many seemingly solid flying saucer cases have dis­solved in confusion under close investigation. Often they appear to be outrageous hoaxes perpetrated by some mysterious third party, although the general tendency is to blame the innocent witnesses. These bizarre hoaxes are often identical to the mischievous fairy hoaxes and games of an earlier epoch.

The Maury Island case fell apart in Arnold's hands. The slag samples given to him by Dahl and Crisman were switched by some­one; two investigating Air Force officers, Brown and Davidson, were killed when their plane crashed shortly after leaving Tacoma; Dahl vanished; Crisraan was literally exiled to Greenland for two years; Tacoma newsman Paul Lance, who helped Arnold in his inves­tigation, died suddenly a short time later. Palmer claims that a cigar box filled with original slag samples was stolen from his Chicago office soon afterwards.

At one point Ted Morello of the United Press took Arnold aside and told him:

You're involved in something that is beyond our power here to

find out anything about. *. We tried to find out information at McChord Field [the Tacoma Air Force base] and drew a Wade, and we have informants there who practically smell the runways for news… We've exhausted every avenue attempting to piece what has happened together so it makes some sense… I'm just going to give you some sound advice. Get out of this town until what> ever it is blows over.

Arnold ¦got into his private plane and headed for home. He stopped in Pendleton, Oregon, to refuel, and shortly after he took off again, Tüs engine stopped cold. Only quick thinking and expert flying saved him from a serious crash.

Despite the statements of General Spaatz and Kenneth Arnold in 1947-8, slight, dark-skinned men did not really begin to appear in published UFO reports until around 1954. (There were, however, descriptions of dark - or heavily suntanned - UFO occupants as far back as 1897.) The Men in Black phenomenon did not really grip the UFO field until the early 1950s.

A pioneer ufologist, Albert K. Bender of Bridgeport, Connecticut, gave the MIB mystery new impetus when he suddenly closed down his International Flying Saucer Bureau in 1953, vaguely hinting that three men in black suits had terrorized him into abandoning his research^ Other UFO researchers studied his guarded remarks and concluded that he had been pressured out of business by sinister agents of the government. Three years later Gray Barker, a UFO investigator in West Virginia, published They Knew Too Much about Flying Saucers, a book which dealt with numerous MIB stories from as far away as Mew Zealand. The Bender case was the cornerstone of Barker's theory that the MIB either represented some governmental authority employing 'questionable methods' to 'silence' UFO re­searchers, or that a more "fantastic sponsorship is responsible far their deeds'. Many of these dark-skinned. Oriental-featured gentle­men visited UFO witnesses wearing Air Force uniforms. This fact and tHe vast quantity of reported visits quickly led the UFO buffs to believe that their enemy was indeed the U.S. Air Force. Soon the UFO believers and their organizations were devoting most of their time, energy, and money to investigating the Air Force and, as the paranoia mounted, to investigating each other. The popular books of Donald E. Keyhoe, a retired Marine Corps pilot, were largely con­cerned with the alleged Air Force and governmental conspiracy to hide the truth about flying saucers from the public. Other UFO writers of the late 1950s followed Keyhoe's example, and this monu-

mental conspiracy became one of the main 'facts* of nfology.

Ten years after he suddenly withdrew from UFO research, Albeit K. Bender released his full story. Flying Saucers and the Three Men, which was privately published by Gray Barker. It proved to be far more unbelievable than any of the speculations. He claimed that he had been visited by dark-skinned gentlemen with glowing eyes, who materialized and demateriaUzed in his apartment. On one occasion, he said, he had been transported to a secret UFO base in Antarctica, where he had been told the secret. The UFOs were here to collect a rare and valuable element from the Earth's oceans. The project would be completed in the early 1960s, he was told, and then the flying saucers would leave our planet, and he would be tree to write about his experiences.

Bender's revelations made no sense to the UFO coterie, since few; of them were acquainted with demonology and the fairy myths of the Middle Ages. They did not realize that his purported experiences followed classic patterns. In addition to Ms interest in flying saucers. Bender had also been involved in a study of black magic, and black magic, as we shall soon see. has always been a major method for conjuring up elementals. He had been plagued by odours of sulphur and strange poltergeistic manifestations during the period of the visitations. He also suffered certain medical effects, such as chronic headaches and lapses of memory, which are common symptoms of the contactee syndrome. The UFO buffs quickly branded Bender a nut who was trying get rich from flying saucers (actually, his book sold only a few thousand copies to the UFO hardcore and made him the subject of considerable criticism and ridicule).

Countless MIB-type stories have now been collected and published by UFO investigators all over the world. Even the stuffy anti-UFO report of Colorado University, a study which had been com­missioned by the Air Force in 1967, discussed a few cases. Case Number 52 of the report occupies eighteen pages and discusses in detail the strange experiences of a Santa Ana, California highway inspector named Rex Heflin who took a series of Polaroid photo­graphs of a circular object near a Marine Corps air field on August 3rd, 1965. He had copies made of these pictures, fortunately, and turned over the originals to two men who claimed to represent the North American Air Defence Command (NORAD). Later NORAD officials emphatically denied that any of their personnel had visited Heflin, and the original photos have never been located.

Two years later, soon after scientists front Colorado University began their investigation of the Heflin case, he received another

group of strange visitors. They appeared at his home at dusk on Wednesday, October 11th, 1967, dressed in Air Force uniforms. Because of his earlier experience, Heflin inspected their credentials carefully and wrote dowa their names and other information. They questioned him about the photos and asked him if he knew anything about the Bermuda Triangle (an area where many planes and ships have vanished). 'During the questioning, the witness says he noted a car parked in the street with indistinct lettering on the front door,' the Colorado report states. 'In the back seat could be seen a figure and violet (not blue) glow, which the witness attributed to instru­ment dials. He believed he was being photographed or recorded In the meantime his FM multiples radio was playing in the living room and during the questioning it made several loud audible pops.*

Dr James E. McDonald, a meterologist from the University of Arizona, and other investigators later tried to check out the identity of these visitors. Again, they drew a complete blank. Despite their credentials and uniforms, these men were apparently imposters. Nu­merous other witness have also reported visits from men in big black cars, usually Cadillacs, with peculiar purplish glows lighting their interiors. There are even a number of witnesses who claim to have been temporarily kidnapped in such automobiles. They have de­scribed strange psychedelic lights on the dashboards which caused them to fall into hypnotic trances.

Some of these phantom vehicles have a special insignia printed on their doors - a triangle with a bolt of lightning passing through it. In other cases witnesses said the symbol was the classic triangle with an eye - the ancient symbol for the deity — and the MIB identified themselves as 'agents for the Nation of the Third Eye." Such stories are rarely given wide circulation and are almost never published. So it is quite interesting that so many far-flung witnesses manage to come up with the same identical details.

One of the first clues that a UFO flap was about to break on Long Island in the spring of 1967 was a series of random reports de­scribing strange Oriental or Gipsy-like entities parading across people's lawns in the middle of the night. One man living on an isolated farm near Melville, New York, said he saw a metallic disk hovering a few feet above one of his fields in broad daylight. A ladder was hanging down from it, he said, and as he watched, it was retraced into the object, and the whole thing flew off sound­lessly. A few days later he answered a knock on his door and was surprised to see a Gipsy lady standing there. She was dressed in a long grey gown and wore sandals. Her skin was a deep olivej and

her eyes had an Oriental cast. She was about 5 feet 4 Inches tall, and her hair was long and 'so black that it looked dyed*.

'I have travelled a long way,' she said in a low, accented voice. 'May I have a glass of water? I must take a pill.'

He gave her the water, and she took a round green pill, thanked him, and left. He was puzzled that there was no car in sight. He lived on an isolated back road, and visitors, especially visitors travelling by foot, are very rare.

'I have travelled a long way' is an old Masonic pass phrase and is frequently used in these contacts. Sometimes the simple phrase, "What time is it?" or "What is your time?" is substituted. The pill-taking ploy is also a common procedure. When a most peculiar being visited a family on Cape May, New Jersey, early in 1967, be also took a pill. He too had 'travelled a long way*, and after conducting an inane interview with the family, he stepped into the night, got into a black Cadillac, and drove off with the lights out. A full summary of this case was published in Flying Saucer Review's second special issue.

A woman living in an old house on the summit of a high hill in the Melville, New York area had a visit from a strange quartet around the same time that the Gipsy lady dropped in on the farmer. Four Indians appeared on her doorstep after a heavy seasonal rainfall. Three of them were stately, dark-skinned, with pointed faces and Oriental features. They were dressed in expensively cut grey suits. The fourth man looked different, more normal, she said, and was poorly dressed in a frayed black jacket. They told her that their tribe had originally owned her property, and they were going to try to get it back.

What frightened the woman most - and she was frightened she admitted later - was that there was no mud on their neatly shined shoes, and they had no car in sight. The road and her lawn were soupy with mud at the time. After they left, she realized they had left no footprints on her lawn.

In case after case amateur UFO investigators have rejected the testimony of sincere witnesses who claimed to have seen UFOs land and entities dismount, because no footprints could be found on the site afterwards.

At 1.30 a.m. on Wednesday. March 1st, 1967, a man named Dewitt Baldwin was hunting near Eden, New York when, according to his story, he heard a funny noise and saw a circular gold-coloured object land.

"I was scared. I didn't know what to do,' Baldwin said. "While I was watching it, a door opened - like a sliding elevator door - and a

man walked out and down the incline of the machine. He was dressed in a sort of black tight-fitting suit like a flier and had on some sort of helmet and goggles.

'He asked me what I was doing. He wasn't white, and he wasn't a Negro. He talked very plainly with no accent. I told him I was hunt­ing. He asked me if I was born here, and I said no, that I was bora in Georgia. He took my gun, looked at it, and handed it back to me. He told me he would be back, walked up the saucer, got in, and seconds later zipped out of sight."

Mr Baldwin found a crack in the muzzle of Ms shotgun after the man had examined it. Neither the object nor the pilot left any marks in the fresh snow. Local UFO investigatorsregarded this as proof that Mr Baldwin bad fabricated his story and was merely seeking notorü ety, i

An Iowa college professor who writes popular books under the pseudonym of Brad Steiger has been investigating Men in Black cases in the Midwest for several years. In his book, Flying Saucer Invasion, he disclosed another common MIB tactic which i j being widely employed these days to discredit investigators. Steiger wrote:

*In the summer of 1968 Brad Steiger received a long distance telephone call from a journalist friend who was covering a UFO flap for his local newspaper* [Steiger wrote in the third person.] "Blast Brad Steiger and Joan Whritenour [a Florida researcher who col­laborated with Steiger] and down with John Keell" he thundered.

'Steiger, recognizing his friend's voice, asked him what the trouble was.

' "I'm trying to cover this flap over here - my lordl Everyone has seen these UFOsl - but everytime I try to dig deep, the eyewitness clams up and says. 'I won't say more. Brad Steiger says awful things will happen to me if I tell too much!' One lady said that John Keel had told her that she would be carried off by the saucer people if she talked to anyone about her sighting."

'Steiger knew that neither he nor Keel were in that particular area at that time and that neither he nor Keel would say such things in even a jesting manner if they had been in the locale, so he pressed his friend for details.

' "Well, damn near everywhere I go the witness has been given a copy of one of the Steiger-Whritenour books or a magazine with an article in it by you or Keell"

"

"And the books and articles are supposed to frighten them?** Steiger questioned. "Whoever is delivering these things must be

adding their own interpretation. * > Who are the deEvery boys? Have you seen themf"

1 "Not until this afternoon," the newsman answered, "I guess I arrived at this farmhouse just a few minutes after they did. Damn unfriendly little monkeys . *. I was trying to talk to the farmer's wife, while they were chattering at the fanner and waving a copy of this magazine in their hands and telling the man how Brad Steiger was.warning all UFO sighters not to talk."

* "Could you describe them? "

' "They were short men in dark suits. All three of them had deep suntans… I can't recall even seeing their eyes. Come to think of it, they all wore dark glasses."'

Small wonder there's so much paranoia in the UFO field. These mystery men have posed as Air Force officers, well-known inves­tigators, and members of the amateur UFO organizations, delib­erately sowing confusion and fear in their wake. There are even reliable reports describing entities who resembled exactly the men they were imitating (doppelgangers). On several occasions these doppelgangers have visited witnesses who had been previously interviewed by the author, creating considerable confusion. The Col­orado University study tried to shrug off the Heflin photos because of the 'internal inconsistencies* in his story: his visits from nonex­istent military officers. Similar episodes have led to extended feuds between amateur investigators and groups, each believing that the other has been warning witnesses not to talk to them*

In many of these episodes the MIB appear on the scene immediately after the sightings, before the witness has had a chance to report it to anyone. They often flourish an identification card and announce they are from Washington or the CIA (any real CIA agent who went around openly identifying himself as such would soon be standing in an unemployment line). When they use the Air Force ploy, they have the uncanny ability to use the name of an existing officer, but they change their rank. Thus a Colonel Higgins may turn up in a flap area where an actual sergeant named Higgins is stationed nearby.

Adding to the nonsense and confusion, we have the dreary face that ufology has alway attracted eccentric personalities, and a few (very few) of these situations have proven to be their doing. One quasi-scientific UFO group maintains an office in Washington, D.C., and some of their members are fond of waving their membership cards about authoritatively, giving the false impression that they represent a government agency.

The whole mess began in Tacoma in 1947. Since then the MIB manifestations have created a body of myth and lore fingering the federal government as the sinister silencer of UFO witnesses and censor of UFO news in the press. (There is no UFO censorship, as the publication of this hook attests.) The hardcore UFO buffs maintain these myths, however. They ignore the massive evidence found in the other frames of reference which points to the puzzling existence of the parahuman mimics of man who have always been engaged in mischievous - and sometimes malicious - shenanigans.

Mrs. Coral Lorenzen, who has been running the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) since 1952, devoted a chapter of her book VFOs over the Americas to the CIA's purportedly sinister interest in the subject. Her evidence was a combination of hearsay, speculation, coincidences, classic MIB manipulations, and the uneasy feeling that APRO was being watched. It is cot surprising, of course, that some of the UFO organizations have occasionally been moni­tored by the FBI and other agencies, since the leading proponents of UFO beliefs have made a habit of publicly attacking the government and the military establishment on radio and television. Some UFO publications do border on the subversive. In the 1950s a strong Com­munist influence was visible, and some major groups collapsed when they turned more political than ufological. In the 1960s ufology swung in the other direction as members of the extreme right wing embraced the flying saucer cause. In 1969 the long-suffering Air Force got out of the UFO business by closing down Project Blue Book, its halfhearted flying saucer agency, thus eliminating the favourite target of the UFO cultists* wrath.

Another group of CIA-baiting researchers is now overlapping into ufology. They are the comparatively small teams of amateur sleuths dedicated to investigating the assassination of President Kennedy. Here the black Cadillacs and the slight, dark men in black suits are viewed as Cubans and CIA agents. Paranoia runs high because now over fifty witnesses, reporters, and assassination investigators have met with sudden death, some under the most suspicious circum­stances. The full story of Kennedy's murder in Dallas in 1963 is filled with incredible details, many of them similar to things found in the most mysterious of the UFO incidents. Photos and physical evidence have vanished or been tampered with just as in so many UFO cases. A wide assortment of mystery men have been involved; including doppelgangers of the late Lee Harvey Oswald,1 This other Oswald even turned up at a public rifle range before the assassination,

1 See Richard PopMn, The Second Oswald;,

making a nuisance of himself (so the witnesses would be sure to remember him?} as he fired an unusual gun which spat out balls of fire at the target. He also visited an automobile showroom and went for a demonstration ride in a new car. The real Oswald could not drive. His whereabouts at the time of these incidents are known. ¦ .-and he was nowhere near the rifle range and auto agency.

The huge Warren Report contains numerous pieces oi sworn tes­timony describing MIB-type men in the vicinity of Dealer Plaza and the School Book Depository building immediately before and after the assassination. Long-haired men were seen. This may not sound extraordinary, but remember that long hair was most unusual in 1963. The Beatles did not begin to make an impression until 1964, and the long-hair fad did not get underway until 1965-6.

Elemental hair styles have always been on the longish side, as we have already noted. The UFO lore is filled with accounts of pilots with angular faces and long, shoulder-length hair, usually blond, just as the gods, demons, and angels of earlier times sported long hair, Another interesting consistency is the unnatural colour of their hair, „. so unnatural that witnesses often comment on it. The late Mrs Mary Hyre, a newspaper reporter in Point Pleasant, West Vir­ginia, received visits from strange personages soon after she began to write about local UFO sightings. Two of these strangers had long, silver hair, she said; They were young men, and I couldn't under-! stand why they had dyed their hair such a funny colour.'

Mrs Hyre also claimed encounters with darkly tanned, soberly dressed gentlemen who rode up to her office in black Cadillacs. One of them askofl her what she would do if someone ordered her to stop publishing UFO reports,

I'd tell them to go to hell," was her reply- v

Jerome Clark, one of America's leading ufologists, has his own theory about the present trend towards long hair. 'For a long time . contactees and their followers talked freely of the New Age, while the rest of us . *, merely sneered,' Clark wrote in Flying Saucer Review, September-October, 1970< 'Now there is considerable talk, even a popular song, about the coming of the Aquarian Age. One of the features of the New Age, as contactees predicted years ago, is the revival of interest in the occult: astrology, the Tarot, palmistry, telepathy, spiritualism, magic, witchcraft, the ouija board, and so «n. Also involved, of course, are such obvious features as changes in clothing and hair styles… On,basic strategic grounds it is easier now for "them" to walk in our midst unnoticed (a long-haired blond malej for example, would now attract little if any attention in the

streets of most good-sized Western cities, nor would "strange" be­haviour patterns be any particular cause for alarm in a culture born of nonconformity). -

There are millions of people today who do believe that Venusians, Martians, angels, and demons are walking among us unnoticed, their long hair and peculiar dress and manners no longer attracting atten­tion. Strange men in black turtleneck sweaters and wrap-around sun glasses (a favourite garb of our MIB) are being reported everywhere The black Cadillacs are on the prowl.

Have we been invaded by beings from outer space or from some other space-time continuum as so many now believe, or is it that we are just beginning to notice the funny folk who have been in our midst all along?

In any case it is understandable that so many researchers and investigators double bolt their doors at night and spend their days peering fearfully over their shoulders.

CHAPTER TEN

RENDEZVOUS WITH THE DAMNED

Sometime around the year a.d. 421 a group of artisans from a now lost civilization painstakingly engraved a series of gold leaves or plates with cryptic symbols and buried them in a stone box on the west side of a hill near what is now the village of Manchester. New York. They remained there, unknown and untouched for fourteen hundred years. Then on Friday, September 21st, 1821, an eighteen-year-old farm boy named Joseph Smith awoke to a vision in his bedroom near Palmyra, New York, A personage appeared, he said later, '… standing in the air, for his feet did not touch the floor1. This being was dressed in a long robe 'of most exquisite whiteness', was surrounded by light, and 'his countenance was truly like light ring'. He identified himself as Moroni, a 'messenger sent from the presence of God", called the youth by name, and announced that he had been chosen for a special task. In subsequent appearances Moroni gave Joseph Smith the exact location of the box and told him that he was to dig it up when instructed to do so.

Six years passed before Smith received word to unearth the tablets The date was September 22nd, 1827. That night the skies were aflame with a spectacular display of meteors, falling stars, and lu­minous spheres. One of the many witnesses was another young man who lived in northern New York but was unacquainted with Joseph Smith. His name was Brigham Young.

Smith dug into the hillside, found the box exactly as Moroni had said, pried ofi the Ed, and discovered the gold plates along with crystalline devices which became known as the Urim and Tkammim. He spent the next three years translating the strange writing - al­though he had little formal education - purportedly with the aid of the lens-like objects. Eleven of his friends and neighbours signed formal affidavits swearing they had viewed the plates. But once they had been translated, the gold plates vanished. *The messenger called for them,' Smith explained.

In March 1830 the translation was published by a local printer. It was the Book of Mormon, a history of ancient North America. The following month the Mormon Church was officially organized with

six members in Fayette, New York. Today it has over 2.5 million followers,

Joseph Smith was murdered by a hostile mob in Carthage, Illinois, in June 1844. Brigham Young became the leader of the harassed' band of Mormons who worked their way across the country until they arrived at the rather inhospitable wasteland around the 'Great Salt Lake in Utah. In 1848, many of the Mormons were dismayed by Young's choice for the site of their future city. But a year later the California Gold Rush began and the gold-mad hordes charging west­ward all paused at Salt Lake Oty for supplies. Within a short time the city was prospering, and many of the Mormons became rich overnight.

This is essentially the history - and the legend - o£ the Mormons. The controversy which raged around the authenticity of the Book of Mormon and its teachings is too complicated to discuss here. The point is this: there is enough evidence to believe that a spectre, a vision, or an angel visited Joseph Smith, or else he ascertained the location of those plates by some psychic ability - or by pure acci­dent. And wouldn't it be interesting if the story were entirely true? If the elementals, ultraterrestri^ls, or some other force did select Joseph Smith, passed along the information about the platesj and engineered the formation of the Mormon religion?

All of our great religions were founded in almost the same way. Muhammad (a.d. 570-632) was just an Arab tradesman until at the age of forty he began to have visions and conversations with mess* engers, which led him to organize the Muslim religion and write the Koran. More recent religions, such as the Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses, were established by men who claimed com­munication with supernatural beings and often issued amazing prophecies which came true. Throughout history common men have had uncommon experiences which have changed them instantly and in many cases even changed the whole fabric of the period in which they lived. A Jewish tentmaker named Saul was once on the road to Damascus to help suppress the rise of Christianity when, according to tradition, a blinding light appeared in the sky, and a voice con­verted him on the spot. He became St Paul.

Two groups or forces have always been involved in this cosmic charade. Early man quickly learned to separate them into the good (prehuman) and evil (antihuman) and gave each new god and demon a name. In the interests of clarity, we shall label the good guys the Alpha Group and the bad guys the Omega Group. The Alpha Group gave man a set of ethics and moral principles, while the

Omega Group fostered racism, greed, and violence. As time passed, the two groups began imitating each other's tactics, and the task of discriminating between them became impossibly difficult. In his con­fusion man soon began to associate everything that happened around him to one of the groups. Natural catastrophes and acci­dents were automatically blamed on the Omega Group. This led to the development of pure superstition and the awesome, irrational fear of all ultraterresrrials. Things reached a peak in the Middle Ages. Then every new and radical invention was regarded as an invention of the Devil, and men such as Galileo, who came up with new scientific discoveries running contrary to the accepted cos-mological view, were jailed or burned at the stake.

The Omega Group delighted in spreading false interpretations of the universe and false religious teachings. For every Buddha and Muhammad there were ten thousand CyrusTeeds.

Who was Cyrus Teed? He believed that the universe was a sphere and that the earth was hollow and that we live on the inside of it. Born in 1839, Teed took up the study of alchemy in IMca, New York, and at the age of thirty he received his first visit from a beautiful female entity who materialized in his laboratory. Following the pat­tern of such contacts, she first informed him of his past incarnations, He had been mighty kings and great men in past lives, naturally. (No one ever approached by these entities has ever been identified as of lesser station.) Then she proceeded togive him a detailed history of the cosmos, complete with her own special terminology which, of course, he adopted. He began to write pamphlets and books on this new Cellular Cosmogony, became a powerful public speaker, and gradually built a following for his profitable Koreshan cult (he used the pseudonym Koresh). He settled finally in Fort Myers, Florida, where he established his New Jerusalem with about two hundred followers. He died in 1908 of injuries resulting from an altercation with the local sheriff.

Teed had promised that he would rise again after death. He was buried in a concrete tomb on the island of Estero, and a violent hurricane carried his tomb off in 1921. His body was never recov­ered. This event gave the Koreshan cult new impetus, and it survived into the 1940s.

Teed-Iike ideas permeate the thousands of books written in every language by percipients and contactees. He proposed, for example, the existence of a supersun which served as the ultimate source of the universe. Albert K. Bender claimed that the space people -.described this central body to him also. Many variations of this

concept exist in the literature. Long before Albert Einstein published his famous theory of relatively in 1905. Einsteinian ideas were being expounded by the ultraterrestrials and published by enthused per-dpients. The Big Bang Theory currently in favour with leading as­tronomers is that the universe began when all matter condensed into a single enormous body, which then exploded. The fragments of that explosion, including our own solar system, are now hurtling outwards from the centre at tremendous velocity, but eventually they will follow the curvature of space as envisioned by Einstein and return to reform a new central body. Then the whole cycle will start over again. Teed and his ilk have been talking about this same thing in their own peculiar way for centuries.

Scientists and doctors who have examined people claiming visions and visits with ultraterrestrials have been puzzled by their apparent normality. In many cases the percipients have seemed too unintel­ligent, unimaginative, uneducated, and too sincere to have simply invented the complicated, profusely detailed stories they relate. The contactee syndrome is not a form of insanity, but insanity - par­ticularly paranoid schizophrenia - frequently develops after the con­tacts begin. Investigators, however, are still debating which came first in some cases - insanity or contact.

The first complete psychological study of a percipient took place in the 1890s, when Theodore Flournoy, a professor of psychology at the University of Geneva, investigated the strange phenomena sur­rounding a girl known as Helene Smith. Beginning in March 1892, Miss Smith started to receive messages through automatic writing {a process in which the percipient merely holds the pen, and some other force moves it). Soon she was going into trances and speaking in a man's voice with an Italian accent. He identified himself as Leopold and proved to be something of a rascal, prefacing his com­munications with phrases such as, 'I am here. I wish to be master of this sitting.* Then all kinds of poltergeisttc activity would begin. Later, however, Victor Hugo, the deceased author, came through the medium and offered advice on how to handle the evil Leopold.

The clash between Leopold and Victor Hugo escalated into a classic ultraterrestrial game, just as the modern UFO contactees are caught up in the games waged between the spacemen and the evil Men in Black. Then at 3.15 ajn. on the morning of September 5th, 1896, Helene woke up and had a strange vision. She viewed, she said, a foreign landscape with a 'beautiful blue-pink lake* whose shores were, joined by a transparent bridge. A crowd of 'peculiar people' approached the bridge. A man 'of dark complexion, carrying an in-

strument somewhat resembling a carriage lantern in appearance, which, being pressed, emitted flames and which seemed to be a flying machine* stood on the centre of the bridge. Using this instrument, he flew off the bridge, touched the water, and flew bade again.

By the end of that September the dark compksioned man had become a part of Helene's life. He appeared and disappeared sud­denly when she was alone and fully conscious. Often he spoke to her in a strange unknown tongue. His name was Astane, and he was from Mars, he told her soberly. He looked more Wee an Oriental or last Indian. On a number of occasions he guided her to Ms home on Mars (at least in her visions and hallucinations). Usually he was dressed in beautifully embroidered robes. Miss Smith described at length the vehicles on Mars, stating they had neither wheels nor horses, and people seemed to fly about in them.

Helene quickly learned to speak the strange Martian language. Her automatic writing also developed a new twist. She began writ­ing in unknown symbols but was able to decipher them and translate Martian into French. These symbols had the Oriental characteristics which have been so often described by modem flying saucer con-tactees who claim to have been aboard the craft. In later periods Helene would sometimes lapse into this language in the course of normal conversation without realizing she was doing so. It was not, Hournoy noted, the kind of gibberish that children make up when they are playing at being Chinese ot Indian. It was an actual - language which could be broken down and studied.

Other Martians turned up answering to the names of Ramie and Esenale. Soon Helene's world was peopled with strange beings with long hair and long fingers (both common characteristics of the UFO entities described by contactees) who led her off on spiritual trips to other planets.

On November 2nd, 1898, Helene reported rising at 6.15 am and feeling an invisible arm clasp itself about her waist. *I then saw myself surrounded by a rose-coloured light which generally shows itself when a Martian vision is coming,' she said. She found herself suddenly in 'a section of country people by men altogether different from those who inhabit our globe. The tallest of all were three feet high, and the majority were an inch or two shorter. Their hands were immense, about ten inches long by eight inches broad; they were ornamented with very long black nails, Their feet were also of great size."

These little men of 1898 resided in simple houses 'all low, long, without windows or doors; and each house had a little tunnel about

ten feet long running from it into the earth. The roofs were flat, supplied with chimneys or tubes.*

All of the things described in Flouraoy's 447-page study, From India to the Planet Mars, published in 1900, have been repeated endlessly in the occult and UFO literature in other cases. The little men have since earned a special place in flying saucer lore. Flournoy speculated that Leopold and Astane could have been the same entity in different guises. Perhaps he was aware of Swedenborg's warning centuries earlier that the ultra-terrestrials could assume any ident­ity, and more interestingly, if the percipient accepted their identity, they would eventually believe themselves that they were Moses, Napoleon, or Astane. Joseph Smith and his friends were treated with visits not only from Moroni but also from entities claiming to be John the Baptist and the apostles Peter, James, and John.

Our ultraterrestrials are ham actors who delight in assuming roles and adopting names from ancient mythology. Early theologians were kept busy recording the endless names of angels and demons. Numbers are also flourished indiscriminately in both religious and contactee literature. The Bible contains long chapters giving elabor­ate but seemingly meaningless measurements. In Oahspe, a book produced by automatic writing in 1880, we learn that Egypt had a population of thirteen million at the tune of Moses birth; four milhon of these were enslaved Hebrews. (Today Egypt's population is about forty million - not much of an increase in two thousand years.) Page after page in Oahspe lists the total number of spirits and angels and druks (the Oahspe word for the Oraega Group). This numbers game has been extended to the modern UFO phenomena. 'On August 7,1965, three prominent men in Venezuela were present at a UFO landing and had a conversation with two tall (seven to eight feet) beings with long yellow hair, large penetrating eyes, and one piece metallic coverall-type garments. The witnesses, who in­cluded a well-known Venezuelan doctor, claimed they communicated through telepathy, and among the questions they asked was. 'Are there any beings like you living among us?*

*Yes,' came the reply. Two million, four hundred and seventeen thousand, eight hundred and five.'

That's a very predse answer. But many other contactees have thought to ask the same question, and the answers are wildly vari­able… from seventy-five to ten thousand (in the city of Los Angeles alone) to up in the millions. Our long-haired friends also indulge in nonsensical prophecy on a grand scale. Asked when the world is going to end, they are apt to give a precise date in the near future,

Some people have actually started building arks on their say-so. One group in Denmark erected a hasty atom bomb shelter in 1967 and settled down to await Armageddon that December. Who is going to be elected President in the next election? The elemental announce with grave authority that Frank Sinatra or Mae West is in line for the job.

The study of glossolalia has had a small group of scholarly fol­lowers for years. This is the attempted translation of the mysterious languagc(s) spoken by the ultraterrestrials, mediums, and church groups who indulge in speaking in tongues. It seems to be a con­glomerate of many languages, both ancient and modern, and Flour-noy wasn't the first to try to unravel it. There are books filled with symbols and translations similar to, but never exactly like, Helene Smith's Martian language. Dozens of these phoney alphabets have been published in dead seriousness* A retired teacher named John W. Dean collected the testimony of flying saucer contactees and the elaborate information passed along by the space people for his book, Flying Saucers Close Up. The project must have taken years. He devotes many pages to listing unknown planets far out in the cosmos {as described by the ultra terrestrials), and giving encyclopedic data about each one. Here's a sample from one of his tables:

Planet Colonized,

Name Indigenous, Population Day Length Diameter Year

Uninhabited in Billions in Hours in Miles Length

Wamovaldam Un. — "36.6 9,810 0.95

Tarmandre Col. 1.2 23.7 10,480 1.88

Ophianche lad. 3.62 28.0 7,188 3,21

Salumandran Lid. ' 4.23 24.1 9,170 5.66

Dean lists hundreds of unknown planets in this fashion. The group in this particular table happen to be from the star system of Alpha Tauri, 53.6 light years away. But anyone with) a basic knowledge of orbital mechanics and a slide rule can check the mass of figures and discover that many of these alleged planetary systems are quite im­possible. The cosmos of the ultraterrestrials must be filled with col­liding planets weaving and spinning in defiance of all the known laws of motion.

In Flying Saucers Close Up Mr Dean also presents a complete vocabulary and the written language of the folks from the planet called Korendor. Some of the symbols bear a striking resemblance to runic ciphers. His book is only a minor example of the privately

published material circulated to about two thousand hardcore flying saucer believers. Over the past twenty years the ultraterrestrials have constructed a whole fantasy world through the contactees - a cosmos which includes great Intergalactic Councils (as soon as we grow up, we may be permitted to join).

On other levels, in different frames of reference believers speak in terms of other planes. The most common belief shared by every culture on this planet is that there are seven distinct worlds or realities. We Hve on the lowest rung of the ladder. If there is a hell, we must be living in it

Numerous religious sects are concerned with Holy Ghost appar­itions and the speaking in tongues phenomenon, which they accept as verification of their beliefs. The United Pentecostal Church, for example, finds great meaning in such manifestations… and they occur constantly within the church. Church bulletins and pub­lications are filled with accounts of these events. The newsletter, Global Witness, June-July 1970, described the following, as reported by a group in Peru:

On April 28th as they were praying, the ten-year-old daughter suddenly went into what they thought was a "fit of convulsions*. She began to jerk and shake all over. Her terrified mother rushed to her side to attempt to help her daughter, but an unseen hand restrained her, and a voice urged her to leave the girl alone. In just a few moments this little girl, who did not know what the Holy Ghost was, began to speak in a strange but lovely new language. The following Tuesday night the oldest boy was mar­vellously filled with the Holy Ghost. He rejoiced in the Spirit and spoke with tongues for over an hour^

Convulsive seizures are common to all the frames of reference. Many UFO contactees suffer chronic headaches, muscular soreness, and other symptoms of such seizures after their experiences. These fits could be caused by some disorder of the frontal lobe. Primitive peoples usually regarded such fits as demonic possessions.

One of the world's foremost psychologists, the late Dr Carl G. Jung, examined the sodoreligious aspects of the UFO rumours and published a shrewd analysis. Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky in 1959. He correlated the UFO reports with psychic manifestations and suggested that the phenomena were pro­ducts of the collective consciousness of mankind. The psychic aspect plays so great a role that it cannot be left out of account,' Dr Jung

stated. 1he discussion of it leads to psychological problems which involve just as fantastic possibilities or impossibilities as the ap­proach from the physical side.*

Another scientist, Dr Jacques Vallee, an astronomer and computer specialist, spent several years sifting UFO accounts and comparing them with the earlier fairy lore of Europe. He felt that the two phenomena shared a single cause. In Passport to Magonia1, Vallee offered a catalogue of 923 flying saucer landings from 1868 to 1968, many of which included the classic characteristics of the ntore uni­versal psychic manifestations. Is it reasonable to draw a parallel between religious apparitions, the fairy faith, the reports of dwarf-like beings with supernatural powers, the airship tales in the United States in the last century, and the present stories of UFO landings?" he asks. 'I would strongly argue that it is - for one simple reason: the mechanisms that have generated these various beliefs are ident­ical.'

The crux of the problem is to reach beyond the endless reports of varied manifestations and seek out the source: the physical, psychic, of psychological mechanism which has inspired these beliefs. All of these incidents ar* subjective; that is, we have only the testimony of the witnesses that these peculiar events occurred. Although millions of people have claimed encounters with the ultraterrestrials in the past two thousand years, many millions of others have not had such experiences. Astronomers and physicists are neither trained nor equipped to deal with a purely subjective phenomenon*

Only a few examples have been given, but it is apparent that Joseph Smith, Cyrus Teed, Helene Smith, and even John Dean were all confronted by the same basic phenomenon. Each approached it in a different, individualized way, and each received information structured to support Ms own beliefs. Albert K. Bender and Teed both explored black magic and alchemy. Both claimed they received complex cosmic theories from parahuman entities. Dean asked for and received elaborate facts and figures about extraterrestrial beings and the planets they supposedly inhabited. like Swedenborg and the biblical prophet Enoch, Helene Smith was shown other worlds and led to believe that she was visiting other planets. Reinhold Schmidt was transported to the centre of the pyramid; Bender was taken to underground bases in Antarctica; others have visited the under­ground palaces of the fairies and the subterranean cities of the Deros. It is not likely that any of these places exist in reality. It is more likely that these people made hallucinogenic excursions, or

1 Published by Neville Spearman.

mind trips, guided by some force which is capable of manipulating the electrical circuits of the brain.

The only, alternative explanation is that all these people were liars, hoaxsters or lunatics. None of the scientists, psychiatrists, and theologians who have investigated these matters have been able to accept such a simple explanation.

A remarkable man named Aleister Crowley, born in 1875, became known as the wickedest man in the world through his work in black 'magick'. He too claimed to receive visits from an angel, and he was the centre of a large cult around the turn of the century. He was noted for sexually liberating Ms female followers, and he published a number of books expounding on his personal cosmology. Those books are currently enjoying a revival of popularity among the youth subculture.

In 1939 a young rocket fuel scientist, John Whiteside Parsons, joined the Crowley cult and burrowed into the dark world of 'magick* and the occult. Another practitioner of the mysteries crossed Parsons' path in 1946, and the two became close friends, combining their efforts to conjure up demons and elementals. The newcomer, Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, claimed he had a personal angel, a beautiful red-haired entity whom he called the Empress. The two men donned robes and engaged in secret mystical rites. Accord­ing to Parsons, they had some success. On the night of January 14th, 1946, the electric power failed as they were mumbling incantations, and Hubbard was struck by something on the right shoulder, knock­ing a candle from his hand, *He called me,* Parsons wrote, 'and we observed a brownish-yellow light about seven-feet high. I brandished a magical sword, and it disappeared. Ron's right arm was paralysed for the rest of the night.*

During one of their rites, Parsons was given this prophecy: "Bab-alon [the whore of Babylon] is incarnate upon the earth today, awaiting the proper hour of her manifestation. And in that day my work will be accomplished, and I shall be blown away upon the breath of the father…'

A rocket fuel explosion at a laboratory in Pasadena in 1952 did blow away the ill-fated Parsons.

Lafayette Ronald Hubbard went on to bigger and better things. Born in Tilden, Nebraska in 1911, he served in the Marines, studied engineering, and became a prolific science fiction writer. Sometime around 1948 he began to develop a form of pseudopsychiatry which he labelled Dianetics. John Campbell, Jr., editor of Astounding Science Fiction, served as one of his first patients and was so imi

pressed by Hubbard's concept that he persuaded him to write an article about it for Ms magazine. The article caused such a stir among the science fiction fans that Hubbard quickly churned out a full-length book, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Healing. It became an instant bestseller, and a new movement was born.

Teed's neologisms (such as 'planets are spheres of substance aggregated through the impact of afferent and efferent fluxions of essence*) were nothing compared to Hubbard's new vision oi the human mind and soul. All our troubles, he decided, were caused by 'engrams': traumas stored in the unconscious or reactive mind. Patients were guided by auditors - people who have already under­gone the process, unearthed their own engrains, and reached the exalted state of 'clear'.

The American Medical Association, the U.S. Food and Drug Ad­ministration and other authorities took a dim view of Dianetics, and Hubbard's career had many ups and downs throughout the 1950s. At one point he publicly claimed that he had even visited Venus, Apparently the friendly Venusians were 100 per cent behind Dia­netics. But even with their support, Mr Hubbard suffered many set­backs and his movement went into limbo for a, few years, reappearing in the late 1950s as the Church of Scientology.

Inside newsletters and publications distributed to the operators of the Scientology offices or "org" (short for organization) are written in Hubbaid's own unique jargon with emphasis on the magic word sell. In 1962, the Food and Drug Administration raided the Founding Church of Scientology in Washington, D.C., and seized literature and a number of E-meters. The E-meters are a simple electrical device similar to a lie detector and are used by auditors in counselling sessions. On August 30th, 1971, Federal District Court Judge Ger­hard A. Gesell in Washington ruled in favour of Scientology and ordered the return of the confiscated materials because the FDA failed to prove that the E-meters were being sold as healing devices.

In the 1960s Hubbard's movement spread throughout the world despite the opposition of medical societies and legal authorities from Great Britain to Greece. Hubbard now spends most of his time cruis­ing outside the twelve-mile limit aboard his magnificently appointed yacht. The Church of Scientology is now a franchise operation with Hubbard receiving a small percentage of the take. He has come a long way since those days when he and Parsons were drawing circles on the floor and praying to unseen demons.

The games of the ultraterrestriat never end.

The latest entry is an outfit called Koscot Interplanetary, Inc. of Orlando. Florida, who have 'had difficulties with law enforcement agencies in several states', according to the Better Business Bureau. Koscot has been pushing *Dare To Be Great', a motivational course consisting of a series of four tapes which will tell you how to get rich. The four tapes cost only seventy-seven hundred dollars, but the investment can be quickly recouped by selling the course to others. The whole scheme is based upon a pyramid plan with each student peddling the course to new seekers of truth. Unfortunately, {he population of a state can not support an indefinite selling plan that depends upon recruiting other sellers and students, and the Better Business Bureau has labelled the whole enterprise 'doubtful and un­realistic'. The tapes deal largely with the same philosophy and cos­mology found in all the occult lore.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Not one of them who took up in his youth with this opinion that there are no gods ever continued until old age faithful to his con­viction.

Plato

A New Jersey sign painter named Howard Menger experienced a most revealing flying saucer vision in August 1956, when he came face-to-face with a godlike being. But according to his book From Outer Space to You. Menger's story began years earlier. As a boy he had encountered a beautiful female entity in a wood and was told that he would one day serve the illustrious space people. As a young man in,' the Army he was again contacted, this time in Juarez. Mexico, by a man with long blond hair and suntanned skin, riding in a taxicab. Then in the mid-1950s, Menger's real adventures began. Strange aerial objects haunted the area around his home near High Bridge. New Jersey, frhere were innumerable witnesses, including lawyers, physicists, and reporters.) The space people began to drop in on him for coffee and friendly chats about the state of the uni­verse. They asked him to buy dark sunglasses with red lenses, and on several occasions they even pressed him into service as a barber, inviting him to chop off their long blond tresses so they would look even more human. He was rewarded with a flight to the moon (he brought back some strange rocks which were, he said, moon po­tatoes). Finally, in August 1956, he met the boss spaceman.

A saucer landed in a field near Menger's home, and two men stepped out of it. Then a magnificent sight appeared in the door­way,' Menger wrote. 'A tali, handsome man with long blond hair over his shoulders stood towering at the entrance… Then he came toward me. But he seemed to float or glide rather than walk." This being was dressed in 'a radiant white ski-type uniform… the sleeves were full and loose; the neckline was high, similar to that of a turtleneck sweater.' He wore a light blue, fluorescentlike cape fastened to his shoulder with a gold pin in the shape of a wheel. His skin was white, and his eyes 'were the colour of goldenrod when it is ripe.' His fingers were long and tapering.

This superbeing gave Menger a message of love and truth in the

grand tradition of the elemental's, then returned to his flying saucer, and Sew oil to the stars.

When Howard Menger courageously published his story (it was privately printed in 1959), he was roundly cheered by one group of cultists for having solved the UFO mystery and roundly condemned by the equally fanatical scientific ufologists who believed in the exist­ence of extraterrestrial spaceships but could not believe that anyone had ever been close to one. His business collapsed as he gained a reputation for being a crack-pot, and his family fell apart.

If Howard Menger had lived in another age, he might have been looked upon as great prophet and visionary - one of those privileged individuals who consorted with the gods. Sculptors would have been commissioned to carve mighty replicas of the superbeing. Poems and songs would have been written about his experience and handed down from one generation to the next.

Unfortunately, Menger lived in 1956. He was laughed out of business. His book earned a few hundred dollars from sales to the hardcore cultists and was then forgotten. But it is a revealing record of the mechanism of belief which is at work in these cases. If such things could happen in 1956, then they may also have happened in 1056 and 556 B.C. There are in fact extensive legends suggesting that this sort of thing has been happening to men since the beginning of history. The long-haired, long-fingered ultraterrestrials have been walking among us forever*

Before we can understand this tangled maze, we must attempt to understand something of the origins and complexities of human his­tory. We must try to ascertain how it all began, how the ultra-terrestrials have influenced our course, and where it is all leading us.

Our scientists can only guess at how the universe itsejf came into being. The two most popular theories are the Big Bang concept, already discussed, and the Steady State theory that matter is con­stantly replenishing itself and that the cosmos really has no beginning or end. The beginning of the solar system and the birth of the planets are a little easier to deal with. The commonly accepted theory is that the planets are cooling masses of material ejaculated from the sun.

Two independent scientists, Dr C. J. Hyman and C. William Kins­man, have developed a new Geocosmic theory based upon the new discoveries outlined in earlier chapters, coupled with Velikovsky-like evidence and speculations. They suggest that Earth once pursued the orbit now occupied by Venus and that Mars was in the present

Earth oibit. This would explain the legends of early man, which claimed that Earth days and years were once shorter than they are now and that the human life-span was once considerably longer. Ancient calendars carved in stone also indicate important differences in the early Earth years. If the Earth began as a lump of matter cast off by the sun, it may have first passed along the orbit of Mercury before spiralling outward and settling into the orbit of Venus. This could have happened five billion years ago.

The cooling planet Earth could have reached the life support stage hundreds of millions of years ago. and it could have been inhabited while it was in the Venus orbit. If Mars was then in the Earth orbit, it too could have supported life. But as it was pushed further into space by the approach of Earth, the Martians either died out or were forced to make radical biological adjustments to their new environ­ment.

In a recent letter Kinsman also proposes that there was some efforts to crossbreed Martians with earthlings. He states:

If Mars was 'pushed' out there in our Permian times to make way for Earth in our present orbits, its environmental change in climate in this some three hundred million years would surely modify its humanoids, because of the scarcity of air, water, and warmth, into presumably a more scrawny physique no longer adapted to normal life on Earth… Presumably for millions of years they have been trying to hybridize their fauna and flora with ours and to develop some sort of humanoid to whom they could bequeath the advances which their dying civilization had long since acquired. Success in this seems to have finally come with the sudden hybrid appearance of Cro-Magnon man some fifty thousand years ago. They may have visited us frequently and openly for such time as they could stand it, until a few millennia ago (when men were still few and fearful).

If the Earth did begin in another orbit and did undergo the changes postulated by these scientists, it may have been even more unstable than it is now and cataclysmic occurrences would have been logical. Velikovsky pointed out that human folklore has re­corded many such cataclysms, including a period when the entire earth was bathed in total darkness for three or more days. The Earth may have followed an elliptical orbit which carried it so far away from the sun that it was plunged into darkness. Then it looped back and fell into the present orbit.

Elemeatals have constantly tt>Id occultists and UFO contactees that mankind began on Ventis and that orbital changes have taken place in the past and will recur in the future. On April 24th, 1964, a farmer named Gary Wilcox allegedly had a two-hour conversation with a pair of faceless little men from a flying saucer in a field near Newark Valley. New York. Among other things, he said, they told him that the Earth would soon be where Mars is now.1

Many flying saucer books have followed the premise that the Earth was originally seeded by beings from outer space. Man has always assumed that the frequently observed parahumaus had to originate from beyond our planet or even from beyond our solar system or space-time continuum.

Science writer Otto Binder's Flying Saucers Are Watching Vs dealt at length with the theories of an engineer named Max H. Flindt. Flindt proposed 'that man is a hybrid from the union of ancient spacemen and some earthly species of man-ape who existed, accord­ing to recent anthropological finds, as long as two million years ago.

More orthodox scientists have struggled for the past hundred years to find a provable system of evolution to account for man's appearance. The commonly accepted view is that man was a mere animal for thousands of years, and he somehow suddenly developed intelligence and consciousness and quickly evolved from a low hairy animal to his present exalted status of low hairless animal. The mythical missing link of the Sunday supplements is supposed to be the animal that bridged the two orders of life. Is the movie, 2001, Arthur C. Clarke solved the problem by having a sudden outside influence - the slab-like monolith - appear in the midst of a group of apes. It led them to discover tools, namely clubs, and they began bashing in each other's heads.

There are really only three primary theories for the origin of man:

1. The religious theory: man was created by some greater intelli­gence through the manipulation of physical matter and energy.

2. The cultist theory: man migrated to Earth from some other planet, or he was seeded here by some other race, or he was pro­duced when some other race crossbred with earthly animals and produced the present strain of Homo sapiens.

3. The theory of evolution: a series of random chemical and bio-1 See Dr. Berthold SchwarzTs psychiatric study of Mr. Wilcwt in UFO

Percipients.

logical accidents took place over a period of millions of years, and man slowly evolved from lower life forms.

Billions of people have believed and still believe in supernatural creation. A few million accept Darwin's theory of evolution, and only a few thousand are even willing to consider the seeded idea. The real truth may be a combination of all three, Of the three, evolution is actually the weakest and the most difficult to support. Evolution adequately explains the development of living species, the process of natural selection, and the other things, but it fails to provide a rational and provable explanation for the process of creation itself. Scientists shrug this off with limp statements about how bolts of lightning struck puddles of chemicals and induced life. But if such a lightning process were true, it should be still continuing, and it should be easy to duplicate in our laboratories. The fact that it is not a discernible continuing process (new species are not constantly ap­pearing) and that we have not managed to duplicate it weakens the concept…

The Japanese have myths and legends which claim that their islands were first settled by beings who descended from the sky. These stories are a part of the Japanese culture. The Eskimos believe they were somehow flown to die Arctic circle in andent times. The natives of the Sahara desert have folklore about blue-skinned people from the sky who had such impact that certain tribes still dye their skins blue in emulation of these andent cosmic beings; Deep in the Bayan-Kara-Ula Mountains of China there is a tribe of diminutive people about four feet high. Hieroglyphs have been found in that region (on the border of China and Tibet) by Russian archaeologists. When translated, these records describe how members of the Dropa tribe came to Earth in some kind of flying machine. The stone disks bearing these inscriptions have been dated at about twelve thousand years. Ancient graves have also been found there contain­ing small human bodies with huge craniums and underdeveloped skeletons.

There is, in fact, a staggering amount of historical and archae­ological evidence to support the seeded notion, while the evolution­ists are obliged to fall back on a few fragments of fossils and a mountain of conjecture.

The concept of supernatural creation is wholly dependent upon the religious texts and the testimony of the ultra terrestrials. The story of Adam and Eve can be found in the ancient writings of the Greeks, Syrians, Egyptians, Abyssinians, Hebrews, and many other

ancient peoples. like the tales of the deluge and the Ark, the Garden oE Eden is a universal myth. Unlike the deluge stories, it seems to be largely allegorical. Archaeologists digging in the Middle East have found artifacts which indicate that Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon, and modern men all existed during the same period. This not only shoots down the theory of evolution, but it suggests that modern man - a creature with a conscience and a consciousness - was separate and distinct from primitive man.

If we ever manage to assemble a more accurate history of Earth, we may find that modern man is the descendant of the survivors of some earlier civilization which existed thousands, even millions, of years ago, and that he has no direct biological linkage with the lower animals at all. We must not ignore the possibility that the Earth was originally colonized by beings from some other point in space. Historians and archaeologists are troubled by the fact that mankind seems to have appeared quite suddenly on this planet Ether we were placed here, even stranded here, at some point be­tween thirty and seventy thousand years ago. or we were created in some fashion millions of years after the Earth itself had been created and had passed through many ages during which it supported different kinds of non-human life.

The process of creation is explained somewhat in the religious and occult texts. We are told that the first man, Adam, was an androgynous being directly linked with the supermind of the universe. He was a temporary transmogrification of energy -an ultra-terrestrial who became locked into a physical form. Once this descent occurred^ he was given a mate so that he could reproduce,

The Earth was already inhabited by two distinct life forms. There were primitive animals, which might have included cavemen as well as lower beasts. Perhaps the cavemen were an earlier experiment which was failing. There were also thousands, if not millions, of nonphysical beings from the world of higher frequencies, who occu­pied the Earth by sharing the same space with the planet. These beings may have been free from the greater intelligence (fallen angels), or they may have been under the control of a lesser intelli­gence. In any cases, the Earth was their personal playground. They owned it.

Now suddenly, a group (or several groups) of ultraterrestrials from a higher plane descended to Earth. They were forbidden to do certain things. We can't even guess what those things were. In the scriptures Adam and Eve were forbidden to eat the fruit of the Tree

of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This was probably more sym­bolism, and the true meaning is lose.

A British scholar, Brinsley Le Poer Trench, has studied the ancient scriptures carefully and produced two important books, The Sky-People and Men Among Mankind.2 to explain his thories. He de­scribes and defines the people of the Serpent. These people may have been the fallen angels or devils who later plagued Adam and Eve. If they felt they were owners of the Earth, they may have greatly resented this hew flock of ultraterrestrials, and they may have con­spired to lead the Adam and Eve group to destruction by getting them to violate the orders of their overlord.

A battle now takes shape. A lesser group of ultraterrestrials (UTs) is in possession of the Earth. A bunch of newcomers invades the planet, and perhaps their ruling intelligence has a plan - a very long range plan - to wrest the earth from the owners. Masses of energy can not fight with bombs, bullets, and arrows. They need a physical battlefield and physical armies. The whole thing must be played out like some gigantic chess game.

The first step is to create the necessary physical army. Tactics must be invented so that the physical army can overthrow the non-physical owners. The game becomes incredibly complex.

If several different superinteUigences were involved, then one group of ultraterrestrials would descend or be materialized in Japan and China, bearing the specific racial characteristics imposed upon them by their overlord. Another overlord would plant his soldiers in Africa; another would create Indians in North and South America; and so on.

In the beginning one superintelligence may have tried to utilize the Neanderthal men as his physical army. Ultraterrestrials were sent down the frequency scale to help guide the cavemen. To facilitate communication between the UTs and the Neanderthal men, the tall, blond, normally sexless UTs were made to more closely resemble their primitive contacts. They were given sexes but were forbidden to ^rarticipate in the pleasurable rites of sex… the Tree of the Know­ledge.

The Serpent People were sometimes able to control groups of cavemen and managed to trick some of the TITs into breaking their chastity. The UTs engaged in sexual intercourse with the cave-women.3 This produced strange responses in their materialized

2 Both published by Neville Spearman.

* This crossbreeding between Adam (ultraterrestrial) types and lower animals is suggested in Genesis 25:19-34, and relates a miraculous birth,

nervous system. Emotions were born. Frequencies were changed. The direct control of the superintelligence was driven from their bodies. They were trapped on Earth, unable to ascend the electro-magnetic scale and re-enter their etheric world. With the loss of control they became animals, albeit highly intelligent animals.

Since the UTs memories were part of the greater intelligence.-the loss of contact meant also the complete loss of their former identity. They were locked on this planet, leaderless, in a totally strange and hostile environment.

The first UTs to be thus trapped became the first real men. They had to learn to hunt and kill, to build fires and huts. They were lost: the victims of the first battle between the Serpent People and the ultimate intelligence.

Now the Serpent People or Omega Group, attacked man in various ways, trying to rid the planet of him. But the supers intelligence was still able to look over man, and new, more tightly controlled UTs were sent to offer advice and assistance. Earliest man was told in carefully simplified ways of his origin and purpose. The superintelligence became God and early man worshipped Him. x. in many ways and under many names. God worked out new ways of communication and control^ always in conflict with the Serpent People.

Much is made of the fact that Adam and Eve were terrified fay the first night, indicating that they were unused to a world without light. Perhaps as ultraterrestrials they were accustomed to total vision or perception of all the frequencies; life on those higher planes would be bathed in continuous radiation, and there would be no night or day. No time. Now Adam and Eve were not only trapped on this miserable little planet, but they were also caught up in a world that moved in a single direction through the field of time. This would take some getting used to, even if they couldn't remember their previous existence as UTs.

Through intercourse with the existing cave people, the fallen UTs produced the new races of man. They were the missing link. And in

Isaac's barren wife Rfebekah suddenly conceived, and the Lord said to her. Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.1 Eebekah gave birth to twins and one, Esau, 'came out red all ovet like an baity garment^ Later Esau sold his birthright to Jacob.

many ways all three of our hypotheses for the origin of man became correct. Evolution is involved. Extraterrestrial descent is involved. Creation is involved.

In some parts of the world the Serpent People successfully posed as gods and imitated the techniques of the super-intelligence. This led to the formation of pagan religions centred around human sacrifices. The conflicts, so far as man himself was concerned, became one of religions and races. Whole civilizations based upon the worship of these false gods rose and fell in Asia, Africa, and South America. The battleground had been chosen, and the mode of conflict had been decided upon.

The human race would supply the pawns. The mode of control was complicated as usual. Human beings were largely free of direct control. Each individual had to consciously commit himself to one of the opposing forces. After that commitment was made voluntarily, the chosen force could possess the individual to some degree, The UTs very carefully explained this process to the early priests who interpreted it and tried to pass it on to their followers. The rites of baptism were born.

The main battle was for what was to become known as the human soul.

Once an individual had committed himself, he opened a door so that an indefinable something (probably an undetectable mass of intelligent energy) could actually enter his body and exercise some control over his subconscious mind. This soul was directly linked with the superinteHigence and with all similar souls, thus making possible mental telepathy, prophetic dreams, and other wonders. In those thousands of cases in which this subconscious force lapsed over into the conscious mind, we find destructive fanaticism and obsession. If the controlling intelligence was Omega (antihuman), the stricken individual suffers from insanity or commits criminal actions, social disorders, and so on.

If this soul abandons the living body, total disorientation could conceivably result. The body might enter a mindless catatonic trance. Persons with an advanced soul could consciously eject it frotn their bodies for short periods and indulge in astral projection. The body would appear to be dead, or almost dead, during this period of desertion. In astral projection literature we are told about a silver cord which seems to connect the free flying soul with the sleeping body. If that cord is cut or broken, the soul can*t re-enter the body, and it dies or is possessed by an evil force. Astral pro­jectionists claim that sometimes when they return to their body,

they find a dark elemental engulfing it, trying to possess it during their absence, and they have to fight the evil thing off.

The validity of astral projection is debatable, of course. But let's suppose for a moment that it is a genuine phenomenon. If some people can project themselves consciously and remember the experi­ence, then it is also possible that many others project their souls while asleep. They're never aware that they're doing it. The liberated souls fly about, perhaps rendezvousing with other souls to receive orders or some programming process. If the soul is some kind of ultxahigh frequency energy, then it could be visible to some sensitive people as a blob of faint light in the night sky. In other words, some UFOs could be astral travellers!

Flying saucer contactees usually end up talking about souls and reincarnation (Karma): The UFO entities try to convey the truth about reincarnation to the people they approach. Not many of these people are able to properly interpret what they have been told. Sev­eral major religions, particularly in the Orient, are based upon the principles of reincarnation. In Tibet when a Dalai Lama dies, the priests go out and scour the mountains searching for a small child who possesses specific birthmarks and other things which identify him as the reincarnated High Lama. Sometimes the search goes on for years. When a likely prospect is finally found, several religious and personal articles are spread before him. If the child goes un­erringly for those items which had been owned by the dead Dalai Lama, he is declared the new ruler. This system works and has been in use for centuries.

There are hundreds of carefully investigated and authenticated cases of reincarnation. As might be expected, a majority of these occur in India and other countries where belief in Karma runs high. Usually, small children are involved. Such children recall completely their previous life in a distant village, and when investigators take them to that village, they recognize everything and everyone, have a tearful reunion with their former family, and are even able to de­scribe in detail how they died.

Actually, true reincarnation is impossible. Memory is stored by an electrical system in the brain, and when the brain dies, all memories are also cancelled out. Our personalities, egos, emotional structure, and memories are all part of the brain's complex circuitry. The brain dies very quickly - as soon as the oxygen supply is cut off. All of this circuitry dies with it, like a radio being turned oS. If the soul is merely a mass of high frequency energy, then it would not retain either memory or personality. When the body, or host dies, this mass

of energy would be liberated either to rejoin the main intelligence of which it is always a part or to find and possess a new host. It would not carry along any memory of its previous body or life. However, the computerlike superintelligence would have a complete memory o£ that other life stored within it. It could feed that information to another brain by channelling it through any soul at random. A person recalling a past life under hypnosis (there are thousands of cases of this) might actually just be tuning his subconscious into the central computer. There may be some subtle need on the intelli­gence's part to bring about interest and investigation into a specific past life. So the hypnotized person is fed the information.

In Oahspe we are told that all cases of reincarnation are the work of mischievous spirits known as engrafters. An engrafter swoops down on an uncommitted soul and possesses it, feeding a complete memory of a past life into the brain.

The main information passed along to contactees is simply that the human body provides a host for a fragment of this undefinable soul energy. The major religions have been telling us this for thou­sands of years, pointing out that the human race supplies the shells for souls. Man's ego has demanded that he embellish this truth by adding the belief that his pitiful personality is worthy of preser­vation and that his memories and personality go along with the soul. The Omega Group has made a game of this belief at millions of seances, happily posing as myriad souls of the dear departed.

Two or more intelligences are playing a game with us, vying for complete control of our bodies and souls, according to all occult and religious interpretations. It's a seesaw battle, and every possible kind of deception and deceit is being employed by both sides. They caa make us believe anything they want us to believe, thanks to our swollen egos and flimsy brains. They can make us see anything they want us to see, thanks to our narrow field of vision (we can only see a. .fragment of the electromagnetic spectrum) and their apparent ability to manipulate energy and physical matter.

The parahuman Serpent People of the past are still among us. They were probably worshipped by the builders of Stonehenge and the forgotten ridge-making cultures of South America. They directed us to multiply and seed the earth. Their manifestations and manipu­lations have generated thousands of cults, religions, and frames of reference.

In recent years hundreds of UFO contactees have been warned by the long-haired Venusians that our atomic experiments will lead to disaster* Could it be, as some have said, that atomic bombs not only

KII cities, but that they alsokill or disintegrate souk? lithe soul ia a fragment of energy Bilked to some greatei massof totsffigerrt energy, Then this anti-atomic-bomb posture of the ultraterrestnak could be defensive. The bomb at Hiroshima may have blown a hole in some other world beyond out space-time continuum… and a lot of moon food may have been lost in tie baraain.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE DEMISE OF THE GODS

'If flying saucers are real,' the sceptics say, "why don't they contact us?"

The startling truth, as carefully recorded by the ancient histor­ians, is that the ultraterrestrials have always been in direct contact with millions of individuals and that they actually ruled directly over mankind for many years. In recent centuries their influence has become more subtle, but it is always there.

According to the traditions of many isolated peoples, the first great emperors in Asia were god-kings who came down from the sky, displayed amazing superhuman abilities, and took over. There was a veritable world-wide epidemic of these god-kings between 5000 and 1000 b.c. The mighty Osiris and Isis walked into the Egyptian valley out of nowhere and assumed command. The myths and legends of Greece, India, and South America describe their rule. They were taller and more imposing than the men of the time, with long blond hair, marble-like white skin, and remarkable powers which enabled them to perform miracles. They displayed brilliant judgement and wisdom and exercised remarkable organizational abilities. In most cases they chose to reside on the highest mountains and hills avail­able, commanding balls of fire and bolts of lightning and travelling about the skies in wonderful chariots.

In southern Europe Zeus and his court of phantom cohorts held forth for centuries. In India a multitude of gods and demons ap­peared and reappeared generation after generation. Others arrived on the scene and made lasting contributions to folklore from Iceland to Scandinavia. In Central America the legendary Quetzalcoatl ap­peared among the Toltecs. Me was a white man dressed in a long white robe covered with tiny red crosses. He wore a great beard and according to Toltec tradition introduced science and learning to the natives. After many years of benign rule he simply vanished, promis­ing to return again one day. When Cortes, the Spanish conquistador, landed in Mexico a thousand years later, the Indians greeted him with delight, believing that he was Quetzalcoatl. He took advantage of their superstition and sacked the Aztec empire.

Deep in the wasteland of western Australia the Aborigines still cling to the andent myths of the WonAjina and regard as sacred the petroglyphs carved into rocks depicting tall, robed figures. The Vfon-djina are supposedly a parahuman group who resided in Australia thousands of years ago.

Berosus, an ancient Babylonian priest, recorded the fascinating legend of Cannes, a remarkable creature who came up out of the waters of the Persian Gulf to educate early man. This legend "more nearly fulfils some of our criteria for a genuine contact myth', Dr Carl Sagan states in his Intelligent Life in the Universe. Berosus presumably 'had access to cuneiform and pictographic records dating back several thousand years before his time'. His work was translated into Greek and Latin and found its way into English in 1876. He quoted from Apollodorus, describing Oannes as a fishlike animal capable of speaking to men. The account explains:

This being in the daytime used to converse with men but took no food at that season; and he gave them an insight into letters and sciences and every kind of art. He taught them to consctruct houses, to found temples, to compile laws, and explained to them the principles of geometrical knowledge. He made them dis­tinguish the seeds of the earth and showed them how to collect fruits».. When the sun set, it was the custom of this Being to plunge again into the sea and abide all night in the deep; for he was amphibious.

Moses, of course, had another kind of encounter when he climbed to the summit of Mount Sinai and received orders and taws from the entity who settled there in a glowing cloud.

A central legend of the Hopi Indians concerns the Kachina Clan: a group of beings who were not people but 'spirits sent to give help and guidance, taking the forms of ordinary people*, according to Indian historian Frank Waters. The Hopi believe they came orig­inally from a Red City in the south and that their tribe was guided into what is now the southwestern United States by the Kachina Clan. These spirit beings taught the Hopis occult wisdom very simi­lar to the occult beliefs of the Europeans and Africans. Finally they departed, saying,

The time for us to go to our far-off planets and stars has not come yet. But it is time for us to leave you. We will go by our powers to a certain high mountain, which you will know, where we will await your messages of need… We are a spirit people,

and we will not be seen again by you or your people. But you must remember us by wearing our masks and our costumes at the proper ceremonial times. Those who do so must be only those persons who have acquired the knowledge and the wisdom we have taught you…

The indigenous natives of the Americas, Africa, and the Pacific all adopted ceremonial dress patterned after the garb of the ultra-terrestrials, Just as the robes and trappings of the early churches o£ the white man were patterned after the dress of the angels and gods who allegedly visited them. Traditionally, only the witch doctors and students of the arcane wisdom of the elementals were permitted to wear these garments and masks. The carefully laid out procedures for the ceremonies and rites of these early peoples were all dictated by these parahuman spirits. For thousands of years they quite literally had the entire human race dancing to their tunes. The impact of these beings upon the human race is indisputable. All human art began as part of our urge to pay tribute to them. The arts of painting and sculpture, the arts of drama and dance, and of course, the art of storytelling, were all products of that urge.

It has been impossible to adequately summarize even a fragment of this land of material here. Perhaps someday some scholar will systematically assemble all of these records and establish some order out of the chaos. The evidence is not as flimsy as this kind of sum­mary might make it seem.

Statues of strange. Oriental looking figures bearing a striking similarity to the appearance of our contemporary Men in Black have been found in the ruins of the Olmec civilization in Mexico. We really don't know very much about the Olmecs. The first traces of their'Iost culture were uncovered in 1939, when archaeologist Mat­thew Stirling found five gigantic basalt heads on the island of La Venta. These heads weigh from twenty to thirty tons each and are up to nine feet high. Each is wearing what looks like a football helmet. Since then, cities and irrigation systems dating back to at least 1200 b.c. have been discovered. An Olmec calendar carved into the stomach of an eight-inch jade statue begins with the year 3113 b.c. 'It is a masterpiece of mathematical and astronomical knowl­edge, and it was the Olmecs, not the Maya, who developed it," Jeanne Reinart noted in Science Digest in September 1967.

Archaeologists have come up with an interesting theory for the sexless Oriental-Eke statues. They suggest that the Olmecs worshipped deformed children and that the statues represent

Mongolian idiots. But would a people capable of creating a master­piece of a calendar worship abnortnal babies? The statues also fea­ture a distinctive cleft in their foreheads, and this falls in line with the third eye lore of European occultism, Tibetan beliefs, and even the mysticism of the Hop! Indians. The third eye is supposedly the part of the brain which is linked to ESP and cosmic consciousness -or direct communication with God.

The third eye symbol, an eye inside a triangle, is an ancient symbol for the deity found in many cultures from Egypt to Micron­esia. It appears on the Great Seal of the United States atop the pyramid (found on every dollar bill). The Kachina Clan taught the Hopis that an opening in the head existed so they could talk with God. At one time trcphination (cutting a hole in the skull was a common practice throughout the world, perhaps as part of some religious rite. Hundreds of trephinated skulls have been found in Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific islands. Many of them date back to 3000 b.c. Some show signs of healing, indicating that the patient must have survived what is even today an extremely delicate operation. Three hundred and seventy such skulls have been found in Europe, but the finest examples come from Peru. The very thought of thousands - or even millions - of early humans voluntary submitting to having holes bored in their skulls with primitive flint instruments is enough to make anyone's flesh crawl.

Some anthropologists speculate that trephination was used as a treatment to get rid of possessing spirits. But the universality of this very sophisticated operation makes this unlikely.

Were all those people seeking to open the door in their heads so they could communicate with the supernatural? If so, who or what taught the entire human race this process? And why?

In legend after legend from every part of the world we are told that early man was primitive and stagnant until the appearance of the god-kings. These mysterious beings introduced writing, laws, agriculture, and perhaps even the rudiments of stone building and medicine. The early peoples were so impressed and so grateful that they dedicated much of their time and effort to preserving images of the god-kings in great statues, temples, and monuments. In fact, many cultures left nothing behind except religious artifacts and carvings lovingly detailing their encounters wi£h the gods.

Identical beliefs appeared simultaneously in all parts of the world. Identical forms of writing suddenly came into practice among cul­tures completely isolated from each other. The Egyptians were not

the only ones who believed that the human body would one day be resurrected whole and that therefore all earthly possessions should be buried with it. Ancient tombs in China, Siberia, and South Am­erica were also filled with relics for a future life. How did this rela­tively complex concept spread to the four corners of the Earth?

Even the earliest of men were not so stupid that they could sustain a belief century after century without some kind of evidence to support it. Nor would they be so stupid as to expend their en­ergies, materials, and talents building great monuments to those beliefs without such evidence. Yet the reasonably sophisticated peoples of India and Greece believed wholeheartedly in their gods for thousands of years. Their records demonstrated that these gods ap­peared frequently before mortal men. taught them, tricked them, offered them hope and faith, and cultivated their religions and beliefs. Temples were erected on the spots where the gods had stood from Stonehenge to Delphi. Often the percipients were instructed to build a temple on this spot. Gold (atomic number - 79) has always • played an important role in all religions, and most religious build­ings are roofed with gold leaf from Buddhist temples to Muslim mosques and Christian cathedrals. Could it be that the mysterious rays of the ancients are somehow able to adjust more easily to the frequency of gold? On holy days a great part of the world's popu­lation gathers under these golden roofs to pray and meditate and perhaps to have their minds probed by some invisible concentration of energy,

The modern cults and sciences have seized upon the god-king legends to support their own beliefs and conclusions. Atlantologists prefer to thirik that Quetzalcoatl and his kin were really from At­lantis. The ufologists have churned out scores of books based on the premise that spacemen visited Earth and gave mankind a helping hand in those distant days. It is quite true that the Kachtea Clan and most of the other parahumans claimed some relationship to other worlds and far-off stars, particularly the Pleiades*

In all these legends there is another persistent theme: that the god-kings mated with mortal women, impregnated them and thus started a royal lineage. Tradition claims that the bluebloods of roy­alty actually had blue blood in their veins in early history, perhaps as a result of this crossbreeding. Even today some royal families suffer from haemophilia. The blood lacks the ability to coagulate and even a small cut becomes a serious wound.

The mating of ordinary women with supernatural beings is an integral part of all religious lore. It is emphasized in the Bible.

Some modern rulers such as the Emperor of Japan, still claim their family can be traced all the way back to a god-like ancestor. The phaiaoh system in Egypt could have begun in this fashion with the parahuman leader of the early Egyptians turning his rule over to a human offspring. By 1000 b.c. most of the god-kings had withdrawn, presumably going off to their legendary mountain hideways. Their followers assumed, however, that their human descendants were equally wise and possessed of magical powers. Being human, these fallible kings often exploited the fears and beliefs of their people. The later pharaohs successfully masqueraded as gods for centuries. The earth had been divided up by the god-kings, each ruling, even owning, a specific area. This ownership was passed on to the human heirs, and for thousands of years a few dozen families literally owned the entire planet. They intermarried and managed to keep the system going until modern times. Although the king system de­generated slowly, it did not really collapse until 1848.

The god-kings did not put alt their eggs in one basket. They estab­lished parallel systems of communication and control by establishing priesthoods and strange secret cults and societies whose main purpose was to perpetuate their esoteric teachings. But again the flaws in man's basic character eventually surfaced. Greed and the lust for power caused some of these groups to exploit the popu­laces. There were periods in history when some of these priesthoods and societies even gained political control in Egypt and elsewhere. It is probable that this happened in the burgeoning South American cultures and may even have led to the downfall of some of them.

A key claim of the early priesthoods was their purported ability to consult with the ultraterrestrials through the use of special plates, amulets, and crystals handed down to them. These artifacts were usually worn about the head and heart during religious ceremonies. In the apocryphal Protevangelion we are told that Joachim, father of the Virgin Mary, visited a priest and said,' "If the Lord be propitious to me, let the plate which is on the priest's forehead make it mani­fest." And he consulted the plate the priest wore and saw it and behold, sin was not found in him.' Such a plate is described In Exodus 28:36.

Early kings and dictators purportedly consulted with angels and supernatural beings who appeared frequently to advise them. His­torical records assert that everyone from Julius Caesar to Napoleon had meetings with mysterious parahumans who materialized and dematerialized mysteriously. The Sacred Crown of St Stephen is sup-

posed to have been delivered by an angel to a pope who permitted Stephen I to be crowned King of Hungary with it in 1001.

The mysterious Gipsies sometimes claim their amulets and crystal bails were given to them by ultraterrestrials. Numerous modern flying saucer contactees display tektites and pieces of quartz which they say were given to them by Vencsians, Mr Ralph Lael, a businessman in North Carolina who once ran for Congress, visited a cavern deep in Brown Mountain under the auspices of the space people, he says, and was later flown to Venus. He was given some chunks of crystal as proof of his claims.

When Joseph Smith dictated the Book of Mormon to his wife, he sat behind a screen with the gold plates, apparently translating them with the crystalline devices he had found in the stone box.

Modern UFO contactee writings are filled with enigmatic state­ments about crystals and how they hold some key to the mysteries of the universe. There are many interpretations of such statements, but no one has managed to crack their true meaning. In the past twenty years, however, crystals have suddenly assumed great im­portance to our technology. We call them transistors.

Although Fauwels and Bergier shrug off the UFO mystery in their The Dawn of Magic, they seem to subscribe to the cultlst belief that spacemen representing a superior technology once visited the Earth. They ofier their charming Cargo Cult Theory, speculating that early man's religious rites were actually based upon their observations of the strange behaviour of the god-kings. A god-king manipulated a radio and talked into a stick (microphone). Prestol A fleet of aerial vehicles soon arrived with supplies. After the departure of the god-kings, men tried to imitate them by chanting into sticks too, and so prayer was born.

This brings us full circle. The ultraterrestrials imitated the ap­pearance of man, and eventually man began to imitate them in his rites and ceremonies. We made masks and costumes duplicating their strange appearance. We hauled enormous rocks hundreds of miles and carved replicas of their features for our temples and cities. WhcJe civilizations of stone builders apparently committed them­selves entirely to the service of the god-kings and willingly sacrificed thousands of their own people in bloody ceremonies on the sacred hilltops in tribute to these beings. For many centuries human sacrifices played an important role in the religion of all the people of the Earth. In the Bible animal sacrifices are described. Even Ab­raham led his son to a mountain and prepared to kill him in sacrifice to the Etohim (the original biblical word, which is plural and means

gods; it has been given singular translation in the modem Bible).

The early priesthoods wielded considerable power. Oracles and mediums resided in the great temples, issuing accurate prophecies (and many inaccurate ones). It was a time of miracles and magic. The priests were the only educated men and as usual some were unscrupulous enough to turn a neat profit from the beliefs of the people. But gradually the old tried-and-true methods for com­municating with the ultraterrestrials began to fail. According to legend, there was great rivalry among the gods. False messengers betrayed the believers and caused all kinds of mischief. And around 500 B.C. a new force began to make its presence felt among men.

In India a wealthy young man named Siddhartha Gautama fell asleep under a tree, so the story goes, and when he awoke, he was filled with a great new philosophy - a new view of man's relation­ship to the cosmos. He renounced all his worldly goods and set forth to preach under the name of Buddha.

Around that same time a Persian named Zoroaster underwent a similar experience and founded a great religion. While in far-off China the great philosopher Lao-tse created Taoism and reshaped the thinking of the Orient along with another contemporary, Con­fucius. In the Middle East several of the biblical prophets, including Zachariah and Daniel, were conversing with supernatural entities and undergoing illuminating experiences. None of these men knew that the others even existed. Many centuries would pass before their independent ideas and teachings would spread and overlap. Yet in time these men, all contemporaries between 600 and 500 b.c, changed the philosophical and theological structure of the civilized world. Because of them that century stands as a landmark in the history of our planet.

So the old priesthoods deteriorated, some were slaughtered out­right, and new beliefs were born. These beliefs centred around the awareness that there was some force beyond the ultraterrestrials; that mankind was only part of a larger pattern; and that individuals were merely an extension of some distant, unknown intelligence. The stage was being set for a new conflict, a battle royal between the old gods and this Cosmic Consciousness. Muhammad appeared a thou­sand years later to lead the Arab people away from the old gods, rallying his people with the chant, There is but one God, and that God is Allah.*

Instead of simply disappearing under the wave of monotheism, the old priesthoods went underground, becoming secret societies de­voted to preserving the teachings of the clementals and the secrets

of communication. There was already a tangled maze of such so­cieties, such as the Druids mentioned earlier, so the ultraterrestrials had plenty of followers even into the newly enlightened age.

The Romans were still worshipping their gods on Mount Olympus, and the Hebrews were firm in their belief of Jehovah. Then one day three expensively robed gentlemen with Oriental features strode into the court of King Herod and informed him that a most remarkable child was about to be born somewhere in Judea. Meanwhile the angel Gabriel visited Mary and told her she was to bear this child. The three Orientals made their way to Bethlehem, accompanied by a brilliant glowing object in the sky.

Joseph left Mary in a cave, according to the Protevangelion while he went to seek a midwife to help with the birth. Then time stood still! Chapter Eight of the Protevangelion relates:

¦But as I was going, [said Joseph] I looked up into the air, and I saw the clouds astonished, and the fowls of the air stopping in the. midst of the flight. And I looked towards the earth and saw a table spread and working people sitting around it, but theit hands were upon the table, and they did not move to eat. They who had meat in their mouths did not eat. And they who lifted them up to their mouths did not put anything in; but all their faces were fixed upwards. And I beheld sheep dispersed, and yet the sheep stood stilt. And the shepherd lifted up his hand to smite them, and his hand continued up. And I looked unto a river and saw the kids with their mouths close to the water and touching it, but they did not drink.'

Unbelievable though it may be, this paralysis of time is common in UFO and psychic lore. It is almost as if the world is frozen like a frame of a movie film projected on a screen. Time continues to flow only for the percipient.

When Joseph returned to the cave with a midwife, they found it filled with blinding light. The Christ child was born.

The birth, hie, and death of Christ had been prophesied centuries earlier. Brethren of the Qumran priesthood even established a regu­lar nightwatch, scanning the skies of Judea in expectation of some sign of the heavens. Although the exact birthdate of Christ remains a controversy, most theologians and scholars believe that it was sometime in the year 4 b.c. That year, according to the astrological records of the Qumran priests, 'a comet produced a heavenly spec­tacle,' and there was a fiery conjunction of several planets in the

zodiacal sign of Pisces. Pragmatists naturally assume that the Star of Bethlehem was that comet, and to followers of Velikovsky, it might have been the comet Venus.

Jesus1 appointed role seems to have been to try to lure the Hebrews ayvay from Jehovah to worship the supennind of the cosmos, the God of the Oriental Illumined Ones. In this he failed. The Jew$ had had considerable experience with miracles and false angels, and they viewed Christ with great suspicion. The Romans who occu­pied Judea were still worshipping their assortment of long-haired deities, so they also frowned upon the activities of this strangely persuasive man. However, the sequence of events surrounding the death of Christ provided proof enough to sway many into Christian beliefs and lay the foundation for the great Christian religions.

An eclipse of the sun threw the land into darkness as Christ hung suspended on the cross, A violent earthquake which claimed many lives followed. Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, later collected the witnesses of these events and had them dictate to scribes what they had seen. This record was sent on to Rome. Pilate eventually committed suicide.

The body of Christ was placed in a cave, according to the histori­cal records, and a huge stone was rolled in place to seal the en­trance. Roman guards were stationed there to keep watch, They testified later:

There was a great voice in the heavens, and they saw the heavens open, and two men descend from thence with great light and approach the tomb. And that stone which was put at the door rolled of itself and made way in part; and the tomb was opened, and both young men entered in. When therefore those soldiers saw it, they awakened the centurion and the elders; for they too were hard by keeping guard. And as they had seen, again they see three men come forth from the tomb, and two of them were supporting one and a cross following them.

In other texts these two young men were described as wear­ing brilliantly white costumes, and the soldiers were reportedly paralysed 'like dead men", unable to move a muscle while the body of Christ was being removed. Later 'the heavens again were seen to open2 and a certain man to descend and enter the sepulchre*.

This certain man remained behind, for when the soldiers and fol­lowers of Christ approached the tomb, this being told them not to be

frightened and advised them that Christ had been taken or had risen.1

Here we have an extraordinary sequence of events and co­incidences. Natural catastrophes struck die exact area where Christ died, A group of witnesses heard a sound in the sky. saw a brilliant light, and were rendered immobile as two beings descended, entered the tomb, and removed the body. One entity remained behind to make sure that everyone knew what had happened. Later the ghost of Christ appeared before his disciples to further explain the concept of resurrection. A concept which, as has already been pointed out, can be traced back to the early Egyptian civilization.

Christ's ministry was brief, spanning only a few years. He travelled only a few hundred miles and spoke to only a few thousand people. Nevertheless, his impact upon human history is undeniable and immeasurable. Buddha and Lao-tse changed, the whole texture of life in the Orient, and then five hundred years later Christ wrought a similar change in the West.

A series of minor miracles, visitations, and supernatural mani­festations reforced the beliefs of the early Christians, and they wil­lingly died in Roman circuses for those beliefs. Then gradually the pure Christian concepts were absorbed into the established god-king system. A succession of religious wars swept the West, claiming the lives of millions. Opportunists and exploiters moved in as the Roman Empire collapsed (about a.d. 476), and the Dark Ages began. The biblical records were suppressed, censored, and distorted. Various churches openly controlled the kings of Europe and manipula