UFO Religions

Magonia Review of New Book by Vallee and Aubeck on “UFOs” Throughout History

The Magonia Blog posted a review today on an important new book by Jacques Vallee and Chris Aubeck entitled, Wonders in the Sky: Unexplained Aerial Objects from Antiquity to Modern Times, and Their Impact on Human Culture, History and Belief (Tarcher/Penguin, 2010). You can read the review here. Two paragraphs of note:

Of course these accounts are not without interest, and the portions relating to strange lights in the sky may well contain material of interest to astronomers and meteorologists. This is particularly true of the material from the nineteenth century. For example some of the observations of dark objects crossing the sun might be early accounts of near-earth asteroids.

Though the second section entitled ‘Myths, Legends and Chariots of the Gods’ is supposed to be the one in which more mythical or even fictional material is presented, once it moves out of modern hoaxes, the differences between the two sections become rather academic. Again, it seems to invoke the sort of arguments which plagued projects like INTCAT, trying to separate out the ‘genuine’ from ‘spurious’ cases, often on the basis of personal belief and boggle factor. Again if we cannot make easy judgements about events in our own time, how can we possibly make them about events and experiences centuries ago?

I’m reading the book now, and will no doubt have similar sentiments, though I’ll probably be harsher. To this point, while this book will be valuable as a reference source, it is a parade example of over-promising and under-delivering. Stay tuned to find out why.

Technorati Tags: ancient, Ancient Astronauts, signs and wonders, ufos antiquity, Vallee

Jacques Vallee on Crop Circles

Many readers will know that Vallee has commented on crop circles before.  This offering, however, is new. While Vallee cannot prove his thesis with the kind of empirical power we’d like to see, his thinking on this odd phenomena is worth reading. In my view, any ET explanation is the farthest reach. If you think crop circles lend weight to an ET presence, you’ve probably watched Signs too many times.

Technorati Tags: crop circles, military, Vallee

Orbs: Living Entities from Elsewhere?

This is a bit peripheral to the main thrust of UFO religions, but I was asked by a reader on another blog about it. Discussions of UFOs and ETs often (right or wrong) gets lumped in with other “paranormal” phenomena. One such phenomenon is orbs (those little circular things that appear on photographs). Many people have presumed orbs indicate ghosts or some other “non-terrestrial” life forms (there’s the oblique connection to ETs). Is there anything to that idea? Not really.  Here’s a peer-reviewed article from the Journal of Scientific Exploration on the topic. In case you are not familiar with the JSE, it is a publication of the Soceity for Scientific Exploration, an association of scientists open to the paranormal (i.e., they aren’t debunkers).

Technorati Tags: aliens, extraterrestrials, orbs, paranormal, UFOs