UFO Mythologies: Extraterrestrial Cosmology and Intergalactic Eschatology (original) (raw)
Related papers
Apocalypse in Early UFO and Alien-Based Religions: Christian and Theosophical Themes
Modernism, Christianity and Apocalypse Conference, University of Bergen, Hotel Solstrand, 18-20 July., 2012
UFO and alien-based religions crystallised as contemporary Western spiritual phenomena in the post-World-War-II era, and reflected both historico-political and moral anxieties about the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, and the atmosphere of paranoia and expectation of the “end of the world” that emerged as a result of the arms race between the United States of America and the Soviet Union. The theology of such religions drew upon two principal sources, one physical and the other spiritual. First, the hardware-oriented, proto-conspiracist sightings of “flying saucers” by Kenneth Arnold in 1947 and the Roswell Incident the same year, in which an unidentified object crashed in Roswell, New Mexico, and the United States Air Force cleared the site of debris, seemed to provide evidence that UFOs and the extra-terrestrials who travelled in them were real. Second, the Theosophical idea of Ascended Masters who could transmit occult knowledge to humanity by means of clairaudient mediums or “channelling” was extended to include aliens from distant planets (in addition to Tibetan lamas, denizens of lost worlds like Atlantis and Mu, the dead, and other putative sources of wisdom).
At the Nexus of Science and Religion: UFO Religions
The modern period has witnessed a rise of religious interest in extraterrestrial life and visitations, which although dating back to the 18th century, culminated during the 20th century in the emergence of the ‘UFO religions’. This article highlights the manner in which the founders and members of unidentified flying object (UFO) religions have sought to operate at the nexus of science and religion in the modern world. The article first considers definitional questions and explains the origin of the concept of UFOs, ufology, and UFO religions. The article then traces the history of the development and rise of several of these religions, providing case studies of the major UFO religions and religious movements. Finally, the article considers recent scholarship and research issues involving UFO religions.
Why UFOs are ideal for new religions, and why they fail
This paper examines why UFOs are highly suitable symbols for some creators of new religions. I suggest this is because these creators desire a spiritual system that is also scientifically credible. I then offer some reasons why UFOs fail in that reconciliatory role: first, that UFOs must be as malleable as spirit yet more physically real; and second, that mainstream scientific and religious stigma against UFOs undermines UFO religions' credibility in a wider cultural arena. Of the small but growing number of scholars who study UFO phenomena sociologically, many agree that UFOs have great religious importance and potential. Where some, such as noted religion scholar Steven O'Leary, are concerned with how the self-professed scientific study of UFOs is infiltrated by spiritual concerns, I am more concerned with how religious movements make UFOs and aliens integral parts of their belief systems. Specifically, I will draw on the textual productions of these religious groups and their sociological investigators to consider the utility of UFOs for certain kinds of religious creativity. That same body of texts also, I suggest, offers hints that UFOs can and do fail in the roles they are asked to fulfill. Based on works in the sociology of new religious movements, in the study of UFOs, and on my own research on several UFO movements, I will examine these successes and failures.
• „Waiting for the ‘Big Beam’: UFO Religions and ‘Ufological’ Themes in New Re-ligious Movements“, in: J.Lewis (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements. Oxford 2004, 419–444., 2004
For the most part, UFO religions were not taken seriously until after the Heavens Gate suicides in early 1997. Since that time, more and more scholarly attention has been given to UFO religions as well as to the religious motifs found in the more general ufological subculture. This article discusses the historical emergence of this strain of spirituality out of modern esotericism, the millenarian aspect of ufological spirituality, the quest for a both a new science and a religious technology in UFO religions, and the religious significance of the "ancient astronaut" hypothesis which informs groups such as the Raelian movement.
Drawing on social scientific research on flying saucer religions, including my own work on Heaven's Gate (US) and Chen Tao (ROC), I suggest several paths along which anthropologists ought to pursue UFOs in the religious register. The first, for which anthropology is uniquely qualified, is to trace the flows of people and information-including the diffusion of UFO beliefs-that connect flying saucer religions around the world. The second is to determine the nature of the relationship between culture, social conditions, and the adoption of UFOs into the religious repertoire. The third is to analyze the role of technology in UFO religions, both in conceptualizing the sacred and in mediating between those religions and the wider society.
Religion, 2004
Initially, the sacralisation of the extraterrestrial led to an understanding of the alien as a fundamentally benevolent, messianic figure-a 'technological angel'. This was largely because of the Cold War environment in which much UFO religion arose. Those attracted to the myth looked beyond a politically and militarily unstable planet to extraterrestrial saviours. Furthermore, because UFO religions have their roots in the Theosophical tradition, the religious understanding of the extraterrestrial tended to be fundamentally indebted to the concept of the wise and benevolent ascended master. The aim of this article is to examine the technological angel's foil. The central thesis is that, in their construction of the malevolent alien, UFO religionists and abductees turn not to Theosophy and Eastern religious traditions but to the myths and symbols of Christian demonology. Moreover, in exploring the origins and nature of the demonologies of contemporary UFO religions and abduction spiritualities, the article also draws attention to the importance of popular culture in the West, which, itself influenced by the Christian tradition, contributes to the formation of both popular demonology and also UFO mythology, which are in turn synthesised in UFO demonologies.
Extraterrestrial Encounters: UFOs, Science and the Quest for Transcendence, 1947–1972
History and Technology, 2012
Beginning in 1947, with the first waves of UFO sightings, and continuing in the subsequent decades, debates on the existence and gestalt of extraterrestrial life gained unprecedented prominence. Initially an American phenomenon, flying saucer reports quickly became global in scope. Contemporaneous with efforts to legitimize the possibility of spaceflight in the years before Sputnik, the UFO phenomenon generated as much sensation in Europe as in the USA. In the public imagination, UFOs were frequently conflated with technoscientific approaches to space exploration. As innumerable reports of sightings led to a transnational movement driven by both proponents and critics, controversial protagonists such as ‘contactee’ George Adamski became prominent media celebrities. Incipient space experts including Willy Ley, Arthur C. Clarke, and Wernher von Braun sought to debunk what they considered a great swindle, or, following C.G. Jung, a modern myth evolving in real-time. Yet they failed to develop a response to the epistemic-ontological challenge posed by one wave of UFO sightings after another. Studying a phenomenon whose very existence has been non-consensual since its genesis presents a particular challenge for historians. Posing complex questions of fact and fiction, knowing and believing, and science and religion, this article analyzes the postwar UFO phenomenon as part of a broader astroculture and identifies transcendental and occult traditions within imagined encounters with extraterrestrial beings.
Proceedings of the Sign Historical Group UFO History Workshop
Proceedings of the Sign Historical Group UFO History Workshop , 1999
Foreword: History is often concerned with heritage and origins. The question applies as much to UFOs as any other subject. For example, where in time do genuine UFOs begin? Was 1947 the beginning or a turning point in UFO history, as opposed to human perceptions of the phenomenon? We all know that anomalous aerial phenomena have always been with us, as the portents and prodigies of primeval and medieval times, the Fortean anomalies of the scientific age, the phantom airships, ghost fliers, foo fighters and ghost rockets that predate Kenneth Arnold. But is there a genuine continuity in the phenomenon? Folklorist, Thomas Bullard affirms, “UFOs as the experiential phenomenon and UFOs as the popular cultural myth entangle in a knot of confusion. I suspect that this entanglement stands as one of the greatest impediments to understanding the nature of UFOs, and scientific acceptance of UFOs as a subject worthy of serious attention. A historical perspective offers a grip on the end of the string, a chance to untangle the mess to some degree.” Behind this perplexing UFO history is a whole history, or mythology of modern science, less well known, stretching back to the sixteenth century. What Karl Guthke terms “a heritage of Copernicanism; the modern myth, or the myth, of the modern era, [without which] the image of man since the Copernican revolution would be decidedly poorer.” The fact is, the question of extraterrestrial life, rather than having arisen in the twentieth century, has been accepted by the majority of educated persons since, at least, the Scientific Revolution, and in many instances was employed to formulate philosophical and religious positions in relation to it. As William Whewell observed, in his 1853 treatise, Of A Plurality of Worlds: An Essay, popular ideas about a multiplicity of inhabited worlds “are generally diffused in our time and country, are common to all classes of readers, and as we may venture to express it, are popular views of persons of any degree of intellectual culture, who have, directly or derivatively, accepted the doctrines of modern science.” So as Professor Michael Crowe put it, “even if no UFOs hover in the heavens, belief in extraterrestrial beings has hovered in human consciousness for dozens of decades.” UFOs, and, the experiential aspects of UFO history are, seemingly, inextricably entangled in the myth of the modern era. This then, is simply an attempt to grab hold of the end of the string.