“Should the Archangel –
dangerous, masked by the stars – should he tread
but a step lower and closer we should be struck down
by our hammering heart.”
- Rainer Maria Rilke, 1922
For thousands of years, mankind has told stories about strange visitors from the sky. Whether they are spoken of as gods, angels, or extraterrestrials, these mysterious and sometimes terrifying interlopers remain a constant in legends and myths around the world. In modern culture, the “alien” appears in many guises, both serious (see the revival of the television miniseries “V”), and not-so-serious (the premier episode of the animated series South Park, “Cartman Gets an Anal Probe”). Anyone with a few hours to spare can immerse themselves in “ancient astronaut” theory, made accessible by any number of programs on the History Channel. In the midst of this media storm, one simple question has been lost in the shuffle – what does it all mean? While we may never have a definitive answer as to the physical reality of these incidents, the psychic reality can and should be investigated. By studying cases of possible alien interaction throughout human history, we can begin to understand why it takes its present form, and how this may reflect the modern psyche.
While it is hard to pinpoint exactly when the “modern myth” of UFOs and alien abductions entered mass consciousness, a handful of major episodes seem to have shaped general public perception of the phenomena. In his book UFO Religion: Inside Flying Saucer Cults and Culture, Gregory L. Reece gives an overview of some of the most important founding events. Reece explains that the term “flying saucers” originated in June 1947, originally appearing in a newspaper article describing the observations of pilot Kenneth Arnold. While flying over Washington State, Arnold witnessed nine “flat and highly reflective” objects moving in a pattern “reminiscent of a saucer skipping across the surface of water” (qtd. in Reece 50). One month later the famous “Roswell Incident” occurred, in which an extraterrestrial craft supposedly crashed in the New Mexico desert – and according to some, was subsequently recovered by the US government, along with its interstellar occupants. National and global attention remained on “craft” incidents in the following years, with thousands of men and women reporting sightings of unexplained objects in the sky.
Focus on the UFOs themselves abruptly stopped in fall of 1961, with the well-publicized abduction of Betty and Barney Hill. While driving to their Vermont home, the Hills saw strange lights in the night sky which then resolved into some sort of craft. Upon arriving home, they realized that they had somehow “lost” two hours. Through hypnosis, both Betty and Barney later recalled what has become the prototype for what we now call alien abduction: bright lights, missing time, short and somewhat threatening creatures, medical examinations focused on the reproductive organs, and a “message” to be delivered to the rest of humanity (Reece 79-82). Most of these elements reappeared in Whitley Strieber’s autobiography Communion, first published in 1987. Prior to realizing his status as an abductee, Strieber was a modestly successful fantasy and horror author (best known for his early novels The Wolfen and The Hunger, both of which were later made into feature length films). After a particularly traumatic experience on December 26, 1985, Strieber began to recall, in flashes, memories of his abduction. Just like Betty and Barney Hill, Strieber’s memory of this, along with many other abduction experiences, was “recovered” via hypnosis. Unlike the Hills, he was very interested in the philosophical and theological revelations of his experience, devoting nearly the entire last quarter of Communion to metaphysical speculation. With the help of famed abduction researcher Budd Hopkins, Strieber came to the conclusion that his abduction experiences were just a small part of the “central archetypal and mythological experience of the age,” and that “something is out there, and it wants in” (245). Communion was a New York Times bestseller for months, and is considered by most to be the first truly modern and fully explored account of alien abduction. In the stories of Strieber and the Hills, we see three themes that have appeared in modern UFO/Alien accounts and in the legends of many cultures – the physical appearance of unexplained craft, abduction by otherworldly creatures and the sexual components of these experiences, and the spiritual/prophetic revelations gained thereby. In looking further into these themes, perhaps a pattern will emerge that will inform the larger picture.
One of the most well-known craft sightings appears in the Old Testament book of Ezekiel. In verse 1:4, Ezekiel describes a “whirlwind [that] came out of the north, a great cloud” which soon comes close enough to reveal “living creatures” (verse 5). As this object retreated, Ezekiel says of the beings inside of it that “where those went, these went…for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheel” (verse 21). While this encounter is one of the most cited Biblical UFO encounters, it is certainly not the only one. The pillar of fire that led the Israelites out of Egypt, which was only visible at night, along with the Star of Bethlehem which led the Wise Men to the birthplace of Christ are also frequently questioned for their possible extraterrestrial connection. Independent anthropologist Graham Hancock reminds us that it is not only in the Bible that such tales appear; UFOs also manifest as the “winged discs of Sumer and ancient Egypt, the Vimana “aircraft” references in Hindu texts, the flying carpets of Arabia, and the ‘sky-rafts’ used by the ‘star spirits’ of ancient China” (363). These historical and mythological sightings are the focus of much modern speculation, thanks largely to the popularity of a certain “Swiss former hotel manager, bartender, and waiter,” Erich von Daniken. Released in 1970, Daniken’s first book, Chariots of the Gods? looked at the strange lines on the plains of Peru (which are only visible from the air), claiming that they functioned as “landing strips” for extraterrestrial craft. Quickly becoming a bestseller, Chariots of the Gods? remains in print today despite what independent researcher and journalist Keith Thompson correctly defines as the logistical errors and “metaphysical assumptions” that are contained therein (111-112). Even without the addition of direct human-alien contact, there is something timeless and fascinating about the appearance of these crafts in our skies.
In his 1964 study Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies, C.G. Jung attempted to get to the psychological root of this repeating motif. Unsurprisingly, he made little effort to deny or justify the belief that UFOs are physical objects. Primarily relating UFOs to mandalas (circular diagrams that are heavily present in Buddhist and Hindu religious artwork), Jung saw UFOs as psychic representations of wholeness. To him, our fascination and fear of these craft reflected a fear of the unknown parts of ourselves. Believing that the world had entered a period of massive changes resembling those that took place around 1000 C.E., Jung felt that the basic archetype of psychic wholeness had received an “additional charge of energy.” And because this archetype cannot present itself directly the conscious mind, it “is forced to manifest itself indirectly in the form of spontaneous projections” (29). Whether UFOs are completely a result of this archetypal manifesting, or if they are simply the object of an unconscious force, Jung remained undecided. It is unfortunate that Jung passed away in 1961, mere months before the Betty and Barney Hill abduction incident took place; he surely would’ve had much to say on the matter, and much to debate with Freudian analysts in regards to the medical and sexual nature of their experience.
Medical procedures are the norm in almost all accounts of alien abduction scenarios. Skin samples are taken, reflexes are tested, and most interestingly, egg and sperm samples are frequently harvested from the abductees. Shockingly enough, these samples are not always obtained by force. Such was the case in the 1957 abduction of Brazilian farmer Antonio Villas-Boas. Taken on board a UFO, Villas-Boas was stripped naked and introduced to a “small, nude female with the ethereal looks of a fairy – thin blonde hair, large slanted eyes, [and] high cheekbones” (Hancock 347). This meeting quickly led to two bouts of sexual intercourse, during which the female performed normally, with the exception of some harsh, barking grunts. After the act was complete, the alien woman exited the room, pausing to put one hand on her belly and point towards the sky with the other – indicating to Villas-Boas that his sperm had a cosmic destiny. It is not only in modern alien abduction stories that we find such incidents. According to respected French scientist and UFO investigator Jacques Vallee, tales of breeding with non-human entities appear with some frequency in the fairy lore of England. His research, presented in his book Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact, shows that the fairy changelings of English tradition were well-known for their proclivity to not only have sexual contact with humans, but to occasionally marry them as well (141). Not one to shy from controversy, Vallee goes on to suggest that the incubi and succubi that so plagued medieval Christian scholars are possibly another manifestation of these same being. He even proposes that the devils of the colonial witch trials may have been aliens in disguise - note the emphasis on finding telling marks on the body of a witch, and the unexplainable scars and indentations often found on the bodies of supposed abductees (146). Vallee’s theories are scandalous, to say the least.
The psychological import of these claims generally goes unanalyzed, presumably due to their outrageous nature. Most abduction researchers are content to relate these stories of non-human sexual misconduct, with only a few even beginning to consider the deeper implications. In his study Angels and Aliens: UFOs and the Mythic Imagination, Thompson comes closest when he says that “the abduction motif entangles and intercrosses ominous and numinous, demonic and angelic, dark and light, placing portions of each within the province of the human shadow” (231). Assuming that these sexual scenarios are not literal, physical events – what then could they mean if not an expression of the human psyche approaching and crossing the ultimate boundary? Sex with the “other” has always been frowned upon; witness the Genesis stories of angels interbreeding with humans and producing a race of giants, and the destruction of Sodom after its inhabitants attempt to have sexual relations with visiting angels. Taken metaphorically, these accounts read as taboos against sexual/emotional experiments which could put one in touch with a primal power, something in the psyche which is both more elemental and more divine than the conscious mind – something which sounds suspiciously like Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “oversoul,” but which may be even nearer to Jung’s “collective unconscious.” Of course, once the divine has been accessed, the human mind is left to interpret exactly what it has experienced.
Not all abduction experiences begin with a sighting of a UFO; in more recent years the “bedroom visitation” has become exceedingly common. In this scenario, the abductee awakens sometime during the night to see strange lights appearing in his bedroom. One or more strange figures appear at the bedside, but the experiencer is paralyzed and unable to respond. The victim is then generally floated out of the room and onto a ship, often via an intense blue light; it is not uncommon for the abductee to pass through a wall or a windowpane during this brief flight. That in mind, consider the following quotes:
On a sudden a light like that of day, only of a far purer and more glorious appearance
and brightness, burst into the room; indeed the first sight was as though the house was
filled with consuming fire. The appearance produced a shock that affected the whole
body. In a moment a personage stood before me surrounded with a glory yet greater
than that by which I was already surrounded…
After this communication, I saw the light in the room begin to gather immediately
around the person of him who had been speaking to me, and it continued to do so,
until the room was again left dark, except just around him, when instantly I saw, as
it were, a conduit open right up into heaven, and he ascended until he entirely
disappeared. (qtd. in Vallee 210-211)
These are not the ramblings of a schizophrenic – these are the words of Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon religion. The “personage” that he refers to is the angel Moroni, who revealed to him the existence of golden plates upon which ancient records were inscribed. It was these records that became the basis of Smith’s claim that Native Americans are in actuality the descendants of an Israelite tribe that came to North America hundreds of years before the birth of Christ (Vallee 213). This connection to Native Americans is also claimed by the Hopi tribe, though they deny any connection to Israel. As related by Abenaki Elder Mali Keating, Hopi legend tells of previous world ages, each occupied by a different civilization. In the transition between each world it was the Katsina, or Star People, who brought humanity through the bottleneck. In our current age, the Hopi are the descendants of those who were rescued from the sinking continent of Atlantis by these extraterrestrial benefactors (qtd in RedStar 34). There is a rich history of abductees becoming prophets of doom or salvation from above. Since it is nigh impossible to access primary accounts from the founders of ancient faiths, researchers must look to modern-day abductees to understand the psychology of this trend. One of the most influential figures in early contemporary UFO-logy was George Adamski, whom Reece calls the “embodiment of the collaboration between Theosophy [an occult tradition rooted in Far-East mysticism] and pulp science fiction” (110). For years, Adamski claimed direct contact with extraterrestrials from Mars, Venus and Saturn. Privileged to multiple tours of the local Universe, he communicated the primary message of his intergalactic friends: “Inherent in all mankind, however deeply buried it may be, is the yearning to rise to something higher…man progresses from planet to planet, and from system to system to system toward an ever higher understanding and evolvement in universal growth and service” (qtd. in Reece 114). Alongside this very “New Age” ideology, Adamski claimed that the extraterrestrials were very concerned about the ecology of Earth, and the possible impact of nuclear technology. This combination of space age pleasantries and warnings of apocalypse became the norm for nearly every modern UFO-based religion.
Historically speaking, it seems that alien encounters may have been a key component, if not the entire basis, for many religions. With the exception of modern Paganism, one is hard pressed to think of any major faith which does not contain at least some component which could be attributed to interaction with extraterrestrial beings. Looking at both ancient and modern accounts, it is hard to deny that something is happening, be it physical, psychological, or a combination of the two – but what in the psyche urges mankind to place spiritual importance on these episodes? Perhaps this is due to what Jung, in Flying Saucers, calls “universal spiritual distress;” when mankind is at a loss and does not know how to affect its own salvation, “all sorts of signs and wonders appear in the sky…where human effort has failed, it [redemption] is expected from heaven” (136). While the ancients may have looked to the skies for assistance from the gods, modern man, steeped in scientific thinking, cannot accept such simplistic faith-based aspirations towards salvation. Instead, believers in “alien religion” take comfort in the fact that their faith is based in the firm “reality” of messages from entities who are clearly far more advanced than homo sapien sapiens. In North America, these sorts of religions have declined in recent years, especially after the Heaven’s Gate tragedy in 1997. But in Japan – a society even more obsessed with technological innovations than the US – the interest in alien messages has grown significantly in the last decade. In particular, the books and lectures of Lyssa Royal have become quite popular. Claiming to “channel” (receive psychic messages from) extraterrestrials, Royal combines her spiritual message and the need for physical affirmation. In her second book, Visitors From Within, she states that “To most, they [the extraterrestrials] are shadows, dream images, devas, and archetypes. They are all those, yes. But they are also sentient beings, some physical like ourselves. The claxon is sounding for all to hear. We all hear the same call of evolution” (168). Echoing the message of Adamski, Royal presents the alien message in a form that is at least somewhat easier for the modern mind to digest.
Sadly, to the best of my knowledge, there has been no major academic undertaking to understand what all of these elements could mean if taken as a whole. The overwhelming amount of source material seems to urge researchers into specialization, focusing on only one aspect of alien contact at a time. But just as the entire alien hypothesis seems to defy all logic, the most recent and potentially world-shaking revelations have come forward when they were not being actively searched for. From 1990 to 1995, Dr. Rick Strassman, a Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine was granted DEA approval to study the effects of DMT, a hallucinogenic compound which is naturally occurring (in very small amounts) in the human body. He presented his finding in his 2001 book DMT: The Spirit Molecule, which almost immediately became a crossover classic for those interested in biology, psychology, and mysticism. During the course of his studies, Strassman injected varying amounts of DMT into the bloodstream of his volunteers, to shocking results. The volunteers largely had similar experiences, regardless of age or cultural background - experiences that were very similar to those of alien abductees. In many cases, time was severely distorted, with volunteers having no sense of how long they’d been “tripping” – minutes became hours, hours became seconds. A number of subjects reported meeting strange entities, often described as small in stature, insect-like, and somehow soulless. This description eerily matches what contactees report in their dealings with that most popular of modern aliens, the Grays. After the study was complete, the majority of volunteers reported feeling “a stronger sense of self, less fear of death, and a greater appreciation for life” (274). Again, this is very similar to what many contactees feel after confronting the reality of their situation, and what may lead some of them to later assign spiritual overtones to their abduction experience. This is not surprising, for as Strassman points out, DMT is only “dumped” into the human body at birth and death, which may account for similarities between near-death-experiences, accounts of alien abduction, and ingestion of artificially-produced DMT (76). Here the territory becomes quite treacherous, as this brings up the question of whether or not these are, at root, spiritual experiences. Graham Hancock invests heavily in this theory, proposing throughout his book Supernatural: Meetings With the Ancient Teachers of Mankind that DMT may allow humans to “undertake rational, targeted, and repeated explorations of worlds that might hypothetically surround us in every direction though normally unseen” (454). Presented with these new interpretations, researchers must now contend with not just the difficult question of “are abductions real” but also with the perhaps impossible question of “how do we define reality?”
Even those researchers most fixated on the physical reality, or unreality, of the abduction issue readily admit that the psychological element cannot be ignored. In ancient times, visions of gods and chariots in the skies reflected the fact that as a whole, mankind was not well informed or even conscious of what we now consider the basic physical laws of the universe. Presently, we are confronted by extraterrestrial beings that perform strange and disturbing medical experiments on us, often dispensing prophetic advice in the process – perhaps mirroring our growing distrust of both our medical advisors and spiritual leaders? But it is the similarities between ancient and modern accounts that provide the greatest clues. The common factor across the ages is the instinctive fear of the unknown. While it can be terrifying to look deeper into what Jung calls “the ‘dark glass’ in which the dark myth takes shape” (108), it is useless to deny the presence of that ‘dark glass’ – for as Jung also reminds us, “We might exclaim with Faust: ‘Summon not the well-known throng’...But there is no need for this summons, because the fear that hangs over the world has already taken care of that” (66). Gregory Reece goes one step farther in stating that “ironically, fear of the alien is fear of the self” (199). This makes perfect sense, when one considers the highly individualized nature of alien abductions; one of the greatest arguments against the physical reality of these scenarios is the lack of consistency in abductee reports. If Reece is correct, it is the blending of perception and reality which causes this inconsistency. Contemporary science has demonstrated that there is no way to separate the observer from the observed, for literally everything we see is in some way skewed by expectations based on both our brain chemistry and the degree to which we have been culturally acclimated. Even the “particle/wave” conundrum of physics shows that is our perception of events that makes reality manifest as it does. Being that we must look at the world through this lens, why should investigations into UFOs and alien abductions be treated as an exception?
There does not currently seem to be any one answer to any of the questions posed by the abduction phenomenon. Physical evidence is unorganized at best, and research into the possible psychological root of abduction experiences has been conducted primarily by non-experts (the majority of whom have no credentials whatsoever). Popular media focuses heavily on ancient tales of gods, angels, and aliens, but tends to skim the surface of current accounts. And while it is important to understand that these sorts of events have happened for thousands of years, it must be looked at in the light of modern psychology. For the first time in history, we have tools to look observe these incidents through a non-anecdotal lens. It is now up to academia and the scientific community to put prejudice aside and look seriously into the reality, both physical and psychological, of UFO and alien abduction accounts. Simultaneously, spiritual leaders must open their minds to the possibility that their most cherished beliefs may have root in these very accounts – a tall order, certainly, but one which may be crucial to the spiritual development of mankind as we move further into the “Space Age”. There is no denying that something is happening; whether that something is a mental projection or the work of small gray aliens from a distant star system remains to be seen. The time has come to fearlessly confront Rilke’s “Archangel,” using all of the scientific and spiritual tools at our disposal. In learning more about these otherworldly encounters, we will learn more about ourselves – our past, our present, and possibly our future destiny as members of a much larger universal community.
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