Have they always been here?

Dear readers

It's a Spring 28 degrees Celsius today, ahead of a cooler change coming through tomorrow. There are a number of sayings associated with Spring, one being "In spring every young man's thoughts, turn to love!" My Spring question is "Have they always been here?"

A number of UFO researchers argue that the UFO phenomenon started in 1947 with the Kenneth Arnold sighting in 1947.

Other researchers believe that the phenomenon has a slightly longer history, citing events such as the "foo fighters" of the Second World War.

Still others push it back to the late 19th century "airship" reports in the U.S. (Many today, say that these reports are not part of the true UFO phenomenon, being composed of hoaxes, tall stories and media "beat ups."

Back beyond this, a range of researchers have argued that the UFO phenomenon has always been with us, in one form or another.

Long time readers of this blog will know that I value highly the writings of Jacques Vallee. The other day I was pondering just what his views were on this topic? So, out came my copy of his book "Dimensions: A casebook of alien contact" published back in 1988 by Contemporary Books of Chicago. ISBN 0-8092-4586-8.

I'll quote from Vallee's work.

1. "All the traditions of mankind carefully preserve accounts of contact with other forms of life and intelligence beyond the animal realm..." (page 5.)

2. "In other accounts abductees of both sexes have described having intercourse with the aliens. Many researchers speculate that such accounts prove that intruders from space are experimenting with human genetics, but they fail to point out that these modern stories are consistent with perplexing accounts that come to us from earlier times, from the oldest records we have." (p9.)

3. "We have just established that a close parallel exists between modern claims of UFO contact and age-old traditions that involved alien spiritual entities." (p31.)

4. "I am also tempted to accept as a working hypothesis that in times remote contact occurred between human consciousness and another consciousness, variously described as demonic, angels or simply alien." (p37.)

5. Is the mechanism of UFO apparitions, then, an invariant in all cultures? Are we faced here with another reality that transcends our limited notions of space and time? I see no better hypothesis at this point of our knowledge of UFO phenomenon." (p42.)

6. "...we have a pattern of manifestations, opening the gates to a spiritual level, pointing a way to a different consciousness, and producing irrational, absurd events in their wake." (p42.)

7. "For the time being, let me simply state again that the modern, global belief in flying saucers and their occupants is identical to an earlier belief in the Good People. The entities described as the elves, sylphs and lutins of the Middle Ages." (p81.)

8. Superficially, the most appealing of the theories proposed is the extraterrestrial theory which would regard the UFOs as probes from another planet. Yet it falls short of explaining the phenomena in their historical development. Present day saucers cannot be evaluated without reference to the 1897 airships or to earlier sightings of similar objects. Then too, the theory of simple visitation must be compared with the assumption that the visitors know far more physics than we do...A second major flaw in all the theories proposed so far is found in the description of the entities and their behaviour. As we will see below, any theory can account for some of these reports, but only at the expense of arbitrary rejection of a much larger group." (p136.)

9. To put it bluntly, the UFO phenomenon does not give evidence of being extraterrestrial at all. Instead it appears to be inter-dimensional and to manipulate physical realities outside of our own space-time continuum. " (p136.)

10. "What we have here is a a complete theory of contact between our race and another race, non-human, different in physical nature, but biologically compatible with us. Angels, demons, fairies, creatures from Hell or Magonia; they inspire our strangest dreams, shape our destinies, steal our desires...But who are they?" (p149.)

11. "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? I would strongly argue that it is - for one simple reason - the mechanisms that have generated the various beliefs are identical." (p158.)

12. "The phenomenon has stable, invariant features, some of which we have tried to identify and label clearly. But we have also had to note carefully the chameleon-like character of the secondary attributes of the sighting; the shapes of the objects, the appearance of the occupants and their reported statements vary as a function of the cultural environment into which they are projected." (p159.0

13. "The real question is, does the "spacecraft" hypothesis explain to our satisfaction the facts of the UFO phenomenon as we know them today? The answer is a definite and resounding no!" (pp256-257.)

Vallee's arguments are:

1. There are too many landings.
"The theory of random visitation does not explain it. Either the UFOs select their witness for psychological or sociological reasons, or they are something entirely different from space vehicles. In either case, their appearance is staged. " (p258.0

2. The super physics of the UFOs.
"It simply vanished on the spot, or it slowly faded away." (p259.)

3. The absurd humanoids.
"...visitors from outer space would not be human in shape..." (p260.)

"...we have a bewildering multitude of 'revelations' of the saucers' point of origin." (p264.)

4. Pitfalls in abduction data.
"The parallel between these modern claims and the medieval legend is closer than ever." (p267.)

Fairy tales are full of stories of stealing human babies; changelings, and abductions of male and females for procreation. Witches have scars, as do abductees.

"In my view, the interaction remembered by the witnesses, if it was a real occurrence, should be treated at the symbolic level. It does not tell us anything about the extraterrestrial origin of the bein gs and the idea that they must perform such experiments to enrich their race is merely another contribution to the absurd character of the entire phenomenon." (p269.0

My comments.

Vallee undertook a great deal of research in original source material written by earlier authorities. I see great parallels with the mythology uncovered. I particularly see the abduction phenomenon reports of scars, stolen foetuses, and sexual intercourse with "alien" entities, as paralleling the earlier accounts from "fairyland." Today alien abduction accounts have all but dried up, compared to the heady days of 1970-2000, perhaps a forty year time span. A brief period of time.

One wonders what form the phenomenon's next appearance will take? Will we perhaps recycle back to the "Good People?"

Readers, what do you think about this concept that they have always been here?