UFO CULTS



On November 20, 1952, George Adamski (1891–1965) walked into the night near Desert Center, California, and when he returned, he claimed to have communicated with the pilot of a Venusian spaceship through telepathic transfer. The entity was benign and seemed extremely concerned with the spiritual growth of humankind. He was what George Adamski called a "space brother." Just as the prophets of old had retreated into the desert wilderness to receive their inspiration from a higher source, so had Adamski, by some prearranged cosmic signal, gone to meet his space brother in the desert.

Adamski was the first of a long line of UFO contactees who would claim to have communicated with extraterrestrial intelligences. Many, like Adamski, became New Age UFO prophets, sharing the cosmic sermonettes that they said were given to them by wise beings from the stars. These men and women said they were not at all frightened by the extraterrestrial entities with whom they had come into contact. On the contrary, such a contact with the space brothers and sisters had enabled them to undergo a kind of cosmic consciousness experience. Throughout his career as a UFO prophet, Adamski's believers steadfastly declared him to be one of the most saintly of men, completely devoted to the teachings of universal laws.

After Adamski's contact experience in 1952, there were individuals like George Van Tassel (1910–1978), George Hunt Williamson, Truman Bethurum, Daniel Fry (1908–1992), Cedric Allingham, Orfeo Angelucci, Franklin Thomas, Buck Nelson, Gloria Lee (d. 1962), and Howard Menger, who claimed to have touched souls and, in some cases, bodies with space beings. Their accounts were circulated most often in privately printed books, which became scrolls of wisdom for thousands of questing seekers. The contactee literature ranges from reports of fanciful adventures in other worlds, in which the UFO contactee appears as some modern-day Gulliver being escorted through awesome alien cultures by a benevolent extraterrestrial guide, to works which concern themselves with more philosophical, religious, and moral information.

George Van Tassel (1910–1978) published his first booklet in 1952 and introduced the world to "Ashtar, commandant of station Schare." Those who visited Van Tassel's headquarters at Giant Rock, California, soon became aware that "Schare" was one of several flying saucer stations in Blaau, the fourth sector of Bela, into which our solar system is moving. "Shan" was the name that Van Tassel's space brother had given for Earth. Commandant Ashtar also decreed the universe to be ruled by the Council of Seven Lights, which had divided the cosmos into sector systems and sectors. Van Tassel found the Ministry of Universal Wisdom based on his revelations from the space brothers. This ministry teaches the universal law that operates in seven states: gender, male and female; the Creator as cause; polarity of negative and positive; vibration; rhythm; relativity; and mentality.

Daniel Fry (1908–1992) established Understanding Incorporated in 1955 as a means of better spreading the teachings of space brother A-Lan, whom Fry claimed to have met on his first trip in a UFO. In that same year, George King (1919–1997) claimed to have been named the "Primary Terrestrial Mental Channel" by Master Aetherius of Venus. King was later declared an agent for the Great White Brotherhood and a channel for both Aetherius and Master Jesus. Members of the Aetherius Society are earnestly engaged in the war being waged by the brotherhood against the black magicians, a group they feel seeks to enslave the human race.

By the 1960s, few people were claiming the direct kind of physical contact that Adamski had alleged he had experienced out in the California desert, and the psychic-channeling flying saucer groups were becoming increasingly popular among the faithful followers of the UFO prophets. Gloria Lee (d. 1962), a former flight attendant and the wife of aircraft designer William H. Byrd, sighted a UFO in the 1950s. In 1953, she began to receive telepathic communications from an entity on the planet Jupiter who revealed himself only as "JW." As she came to place more confidence in her space being, she became a well-known figure among UFO cultist groups as a lecturer and a channel.

JW revealed that on Jupiter vocal cords had gone out of use, so he began to channel a book through Gloria Lee. He also prompted her to found the Cosmon Research Foundation, dedicated to the spreading of his teachings and the bringing about of humankind's spiritual development in preparation for the New Age. Through JW's direction and the persistence of Gloria Lee on the lecture circuit, the foundation became a thriving organization.

Then, tragically, Lee starved herself to death after a 66-day fast instituted upon the instructions of her mentor from Jupiter. The fast was carried out in the name of peace, in a Gandhi-like effort to make the United States government officially investigate and study plans for a spacecraft that she had brought with her to Washington. On September 23, 1962, Lee secured herself in a hotel room. On December 2, with still no word from any government official—or from her extraterrestrial advisor—the 37-year-old UFO prophet died.

Shortly after her passing, the Mark-Age Metacenter in Miami, Florida, announced that they were receiving messages from the spirit of Gloria Lee. Her etheric form told the group that she was now able to discover how the method of interdimensional communication actually worked. As the Metacenter took notes for a booklet Gloria Lee's publisher would later issue to the faithful and the curious, Gloria's spirit spoke through the channel Nada Yolanda, explaining how her conscious intelligence had been transferred to another frequency and another body of higher vibrational rate.

The death of George Adamski on April 12, 1965, by no means stilled the heated controversy which had always swirled around the prolific and articulate founder of the Flying Saucer Movement, for his followers quickly resurrected him. In the book Scoriton Mystery (1967) by Eileen Buckle, a contactee named Ernest Bryant claims to have met three spacemen on April 24, 1965, one of whom was a youth named Yamski, whose extraterrestrial body already housed the spirit of George Adamski.

Often those men and women who join UFO cults are, by their own admission, individuals who have become disillusioned with existing religious institutions and dissatisfied by the manner in which the political establishment is dealing with social and economic injustices. As in the accounts of the prophets and seekers of old, the contemporary UFO cultists are looking for a more intimate relationship with a source of strength and inspiration outside of themselves. And they cannot seek much farther outside of themselves than outer space.

When such world-weary pilgrims encounter a charismatic man or woman who tells a marvelous story of having received direct spiritual enlightenment from beings from beyond the stars, the potential cultists feel that they have found a teacher who can now truly answer their questions. Their quest has come to an end. They, too, will now willingly become messengers for a new gospel from outer space, for the UFO prophet has not only made contact with a godlike being from another world, but he or she is offering a blend of science and religion that offers a theology that seems more applicable to the problems of modern humankind.

There is a New Age coming, the UFO prophets tell their followers. It will be an age wherein humankind will attain a new consciousness, a new awareness, and a higher state—or frequency—of physical vibration. The UFO beings themselves come from higher dimensions all around us which function on different vibratory levels, just as there are various radio frequencies operating simultaneously in our environment. The space brothers and sisters have come to Earth to reach and to teach those humans who will respond to the promise of a larger universe.

According to the UFO prophets, the space beings have advanced information which they wish to impart to their weaker cousins on Earth. They want humankind to join an inter-galactic spiritual federation. They are here to teach, to help awaken the human spirit, to help humankind rise to higher levels of vibration so that the people of Earth will be ready to enter new dimensions. Such a goal, according to the UFO prophets, was precisely what Jesus (c. 6 B.C.E.–c. 30 C.E.), the Buddha (c. 563–c. 483 B.C.E.), the prophets in the Bible, and the other leaders of the great religions sought to teach humanity. In fact, Jesus, known to Mark-Age and others in the Flying Saucer Movement as "Sananda," has been in orbit around the planet since 1885 and will take on material form as Earth's transition to a higher consciousness is made.

Humankind stands now in the transitional period before the dawn of a New Age, according to the UFO prophets. If earthlings do not raise their vibrational rate within a set period of time, severe earth changes and major cataclysms will take place. Such disasters will not end the world, but shall serve to eliminate the unreceptive members of the human species. However, those who die in such dreadful purgings of the planet will be allowed to reincarnate on higher levels of development so that their salvation will be more readily accomplished through higher teachings on a higher vibratory level.

For thousands of men and women throughout the world, the UFO has become a symbol of religious awakening and spiritual transformation. Some envision the UFO as their deliverer from a world fouled by its own inhabitants, and the presence of UFOs proves to them that humans are not alone in the universe. Because humans are not alone, then life does have meaning, for humans are therefore part of a larger community of intelligences. All humans have become evolving members in a hierarchy of cosmic citizenship.

Although certain UFO cults such as Heaven's Gate and Order of the Solar Temple acquired a dark side that eventually led to the mass suicide of many of its members, the great majority of these groups are benign; and as many scholars of contemporary religious movements have noted, may be the heralds of a New Age religion, a blending of technology and traditional religious concepts. Dr. Gordon Melton, director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion, has commented that such groups are best understood as "an emerging religious movement with an impetus and a life of their own."


DELVING DEEPER

Clark, Jerome. The UFO Book. Detroit: Visible Ink Press, 1998.

Godwin, John. Occult America. New York: Double day, 1972.

Steiger, Brad. The Fellowship: Spiritual Contact Between Humans and Outer Space Beings. New York: Doubleday, 1988.

Story, Ron, ed. The Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters. New York: New American Library, 2001.

Sutherly, Curt. Strange Encounters. St. Paul, Minn.: Llewellyn Publications, 1996.

DELVING DEEPER

Aetherius website. [Online] http://www.aetherius.org. 28 January 2002.

Godwin, John. Occult America. New York: Double day, 1972.

King, George, and Richard Lawrence. Contacts with the Gods from Space: Pathway to the New Millenni um. Hollywood, Calif.: Aetherius Society, 1996.

Steiger, Brad. The Fellowship: Spiritual Contact Between Humans and Outer Space Beings. New York: Doubleday, 1988.

Story, Ron, ed. The Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters. New York: New American Library, 2001.

DELVING DEEPER

Jackson, Forest, and Rodney Perkins. Cosmic Suicide: The Tragedy and Transcendence of Heaven's Gate. Dallas, TX: Pentaradial Press, 1997.

Heaven's Gate website. [Online] http://www.webcoast.com/heavensgate.com. 28 January 2002.

Steiger, Brad, and Hayden Hewes. Inside Heaven's Gate: The UFO Cult Leaders Tell Their Story in Their Own Words. New York: Signet, 1997.

Story, Ron ed. The Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters. New York: New American Library, 2001.

Wessinger, Catherine Lowman. How the Millennium Comes Violently: From Jonestown to Heaven's Gate. New York: Chatham House, 2000.

DELVING DEEPER

Ellison, Michael. "Cult Determined to Clone Humans," The Guardian. July 19, 2001. [Online] http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4224163,00.html. 28 January 2002.

Raelian Revolution website. [Online] http://www.rael.org. 28 January 2002.

Story, Ron, ed. The Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters. New York: New American Library, 2001.



User Contributions:

1
applebiter
You are leaving out Aum Shinrikyo and Falun Gong. You are shying away from the UFO cults and their relationship with the continued work of the Nazi mind scientists imported in Project Paperclip. Propagandists and psychiatrists, they had developed the "Space Opera" befor ethe end of the war. Following the end of WWII, such research was moved into Scientology, where it was safely removed from sight of the public. You also failed to mention that the Heaven's Gate mass suicide was triggered by something that happened on the Art Bell radio show. Prudence Calabrese, a so-called Remote Viewer (leads back to Space Opera mind control), went on the air and swore she had been given photographic evidence that there was a spaceship in the tail of the Hale-Bopp comet. Also, there is evidence suggesting that the Heaven's Gate cult was co-opted by mind-control researchers at about the same time they moved into the website-building industry and shacked up in a mansion, well-insulated fromt he outside world.

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