This post is wonderfully thought-provoking! Your analysis of Simonton's encounter "feels" correct (demonic in nature), at least compared to the explanations possible under alternate metaphysical framings.
Very nice post...Your point about metaphysical parameters made me think of Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, where he argued that every society has an existing paradigm to process knowledge, but because the paradigm is incomplete (as we are all finite beings), over time anomalies that are inexplainable to that paradigm accumulate; eventually, the anomalies grow too large to sustain within the existing paradigm, so a new paradigm is proposed and accepted which incorporates an explanation for those anomalies which then turns the “facts” understood by the previous paradigm on their head, to be understood in totally different ways.
I agree with that formulation, but (and I have not read him) a flaw in that thinking could be that there is some implicit idea of progress in the succession of paradigms. In other words, an assumption that we each paradigm is an improvement on the last. I don’t know that that would necessarily be true, especially as pertains to spiritual things.
OK, I will take you on on this one point. Kuhn's early work was on Copernicus. Would the Librarian of Celaeno (you) say that thinking of the earth as basically round or spherical or better, that the planets are heliocentric, is an improvement on the previous idea? Or that our understanding of electricity is not an improvement on what we knew previously? The key here is understanding that the scientists of the last few hundred years, up until, Say mid-century, were "picking the low-hanging fruit." This stuff was just out there waiting to be found. Once all the easy stuff like the circulation of the blood is discovered or ,earlier, how to go from pig iron to cast iron, it gets more dubious. Now we are the level where a lot of the technology is a waste of time or a distraction. We cannot eliminate wars or repair damage to the earth or the biosphere, but we can make stupid "vaccines" that seem to not to work. But the scientific discoveries of the 19th century were an improvement. These are gratefully accepted, for example by Indians. The Eskimos did not have to wait literally all day with a spear for a seal to surface. They were also - those Indians I mean - very happy to have horses. I would suggest stopping all the "progress" at around 1978. We had all the trucks we needed by then, I think so. But I am Autistic and I do not progress so this may be personal, as I personally could not really integrate much after about the mid-seventies.
Perhaps, but not necessarily. As NF notes, Kuhn believes that the principal instigator of "paradigm change" is the buildup of anomalies. However, there is no theory free of anomalies, as Kuhn himself acknowledges: "to be accepted as a paradigm, a theory must seem better than its competitors, but it need not, and in fact never does, explain all the facts with which it can be confronted." (Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 17-18). The presence of anomaly alone is not what damns a paradigm; rather, the perceived severity of its anomalies kills it. Each paradigm will have anomalies, and they will provide answers for different things. The deciding question, as Kuhn puts it, is "which problems is it more significant to have solved?" (110). This does not imply progress so much as a change in priorities.
Kuhn does provide some criteria by which theories can be adjudicated to be better than those they replace: they allow the prediction of otherwise unpredicted or unexpected phenomena, they exceed or retain the total explanatory power of their predecessor, they are reasonably simple and coherent, and they allow for the formulation of future puzzles and solutions. Still, is that progress, or just a lateral shift? The new paradigms are "better" in the sense that they are more persuasive, but whether or not that is defined as "progress" is really up to the beholder.
the idea of 'which problems to solve' seems interesting. Although we "should" be solving economics problems, both of theory and policy, we instead stick to an old understanding, and understanding which, although full of anomalies seems not to inspire anyone to seek change. There is no money in it I suppose. One more thin.g, as for progress an idea I have, for awhile now I think like this, is that, as we the people of earth experience what some call "progress," (think of a magazine with the word p-r-o-g-r-e-s-s on the cover in capital letters), we are not solving the important problems. we are losing ourselves in a fascination with a few techno-novelties or with whatever is new and different or colorful. Meanwhile, any important things like respecting earth or even respecting life are not improved. And now even democracy and human freedom are very much in peril as well. Taibi says Amy Kobuchar is trying to get Substack censored (by Amazon or something). But I cannot read the Taibi because he has 200,000 subscribers and I do not want to pay him more dough, so it seems to go...
The high strangeness of this kind of encounter is certainly an argument against the entities being aliens. However, it isn't airtight. These encounters frequently involve psychic effects, as indeed the Simonton case does. Entities that have mastered telepathy could, I suspect, quite easily project false images as a form of camouflage. They could be invisible, but they could also make themselves visible in deceptive ways, allowing just enough of a true image through to enable interaction (on their terms), while being false enough to maintain operational secrecy. Not only is the contactee kept in a state of confusion, but the resulting absurdity of the encounter is an obstacle to the belief of others.
Recently I was chatting with a skeptic, a man with a background in astronomy who has put no little thought into this matter. He said that about the only thing that would convince him would be a direct, face to face encounter. I found this interesting, because such encounters are the most convincing on an individual basis but the least convincing on a societal scale.
If the “aliens” had wanted to remain unseen, they could have just gotten water from a river. It would have obviated the need for any physic deception in the first place. Also, the account notes they looked like Italians. Had they parked the UFO down the road and walked up to his house, there never would have been anything to report. The weirdness is what makes the story compelling. It’s the only reason anyone talks about it. I think the strangeness is the reason for the encounter in the first place, to get attention focused on compelling but otherwise meaningless things, such that if you really try to plumb the depths of it, you go insane. Cruel and absurd.
What I meant was that, most of the time, they remain invisible. Sometimes, they choose to be seen, as in this case; but, the very technology that enables them to wholly cloak their appearance, also enables them to project a false appearance. Thus, they can appear as greys, mantids, Italians, or unicorn-riding faerie of the high sidhe, as their fancy takes them. Similar considerations would apply to their vehicles.
But why appear at all? Did these incredibly advanced beings, with appearance-altering holographic technology, really need a pitcher of water from a chicken farmer? The disguise they picked would only serve to draw more attention to themselves than if they had just looked like regular people. Which is what I mean by the absurdity is the point. They want the attention.
Yes, I agree: absurdity is absolutely central to their method. Vallee thinks that it's essentially a psychospiritual project, nudging human consciousness in a certain direction. My only contention here is that this need not involve demons or ultraterrestrials; it could be purely a technological effect.
Ruling out demons or ultra terrestrials leaves humans. These would have to be humans from the future, since present humans lack the technology you describe. This would mean that while they are more advanced than us they share our basic characteristics, and should thus on some level be comprehensible to us. This is where I see the problem. Trying to tie the various encounters together as some nudge in some particular direction is completely fruitless. If the Italians had a message for Joe Simonton, if they were trying to get him or the rest of us to do something or believe something, it was not received. Even if the message was some awareness that the world is a weird place, that too didn’t work, since the whole pancake thing makes most people laugh rather than look deeper. If there is any tendency at all it is that such experiences make an impression on people who are particularly spiritually sensitive and open to such experiences, and that’s about it. And it is precisely those people who are the sorts who are likely to be targeted by malign spiritual forces, at least according to Christian theology. Which is why, to me at least, it makes more sense as a spiritual than technological phenomenon.
Seraphim Rose is very much worth reading on the subject. Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future (pdf l linked in my article) I regard as his central work. No one else on the right so fully synthesizes rightist philosophy and Orthodox Christian theology; he studied Nietzsche and read Guenon heavily before his conversion, in addition to his studies in Chinese philosophy in the original language. He explores Vallée more thoroughly in his chapter on UFOs.
The possibility space is larger than that. Off the top of my head:
1. - demons, angels, and gods
2. - ultraterrestrials aka hyperdimensional entities (the distinction between these and demons/angels/gods may be without difference, admittedly)
3. - extraterrestrial intelligence
4. - present day humans (e.g. it's all MKULTRA)
5. - time-travelling future humans or human descendants
6. - past humans (e.g. Lemurian descendants living in subterranean and/or offworld environments)
7. - past non-humans (e.g. intelligent dinosaurs)
Of those seven, only 3 (1., 2., and to a certain degree 5.) involve "magic"; the remainder involve material beings utilizing technology that we don't have yet.
I just finished reading Vallee's The Invisible College, and his thesis is worth considering. Essentially he suggests that UFOs are the manifestation of a control system that operates upon human consciousness, by nudging individuals and societies in certain directions. He compares manifestations of the Virgin Mary, e.g. at Guadalupe and Fatima, as well as other biblical accounts, to contemporary UFO sightings and finds considerable phenomenological overlap. He then shows how, throughout history, various religions and cults have spun off from these experiences. Not in every case, but in enough to have a dramatic impact. So, one could conclude from this that the UFO phenomenon is purely spiritual, but one could also conclude that modern religions are in general the result of technological intervention in human history via the UFO phenomenon, i.e. who- or whatever is behind it is fucking with our heads in order to direct our consciousness.
The absurdity, he argues, serves two purposes. First is psychological: it places contactees into a state of uncertainty, which makes them more pliable. Second is social: it contributes to making the phenomenon, as he puts it, 'self-negating' i.e. it covers its tracks, since people who hear the story will think 'that makes no sense, it must have been a hallucination'. Why would they want to do this? Well, for cult-formation purposes, it results in contactees and those who follow them self-isolating from society, which contributes to ethnogenesis. Think of Joseph Smith leading his followers to Utah. But also, it ensures that at any given time the wider society dismisses the phenomenon at the level of conscious awareness, meaning that it can continue operating at the more powerful level of the unconscious. "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled," etc.
If Vallee is correct, then the phenomenon is both spiritual and technological. It's almost certainly not in our best interests, either - all that sneaking around strikes me as untrustworthy. Given that, bringing the phenomenon to conscious awareness is probably our best defense against its manipulations ... as long as we avoid the 'space brothers initiating us into the Galactic Federation' interpretation that is quite popular in certain circles.
In the Mouth of Madness (1994) the book editor Linda Styles introduces what I can only describe as demonic logic to the main character, “reality is just what we tell each other it is. Sane and insane could easily switch places, if the insane were to become the majority.” This is the opposite of reality that is God’s created order. Without God demonic logic gains it’s foothold, readers of Sutter Crane bleed from their eyes and axe people to death on the street. The Intergalactic House of Pancakes descends on your driveway.
Many years ago I read something from John Michael Greer, who suggested UFO experiences are very similar to historical shamanic descriptions of the unseen. That makes sense to me.
And for my part, I am always mystified when people speak of this world/universe as "fallen," or demonic. I consider it sublime.
“Sublime” is that subtle feeling of fear in the presence of the immensity of some power. Burke and Goethe and Freud wrote about it in those terms. By fallen I mean that it falls short of what it might have been in a perfectly realized divine order, with man at the center in a state of theosis. Instead, or alienation from God means we can never quite know things as the might have been. The sublime is but a faint hint of that.
Well, we are careening dangerously close to the Gnostic universe in this piece, the ultimate no go zone for all abrahamics. Gnostics have addressed such issues for many centuries now, but hey, WTF do Gnostics know, is the usual societal response.
Certainly, one can reject such an event and indeed most do just that, but crass rejection doesn't answer any of the questions that such events inevitably create.
The truth revealed in this piece is that the world of the senses is but an island in a great sea of unknowable proportions. Like all genuine mystical experience, such encounters reflect the spiritual development of that soul-or lack thereof.
Mystical experience is not some la tee da walk in the garden of love and light, it is a deeply transformative and often devastating experience. The meeting with the numinous is not a conscious choice. It is a fact of human existence beyond the control apparatus of self, religion, and society.
Some never recover from such experiences.
Some never integrate them.
Especially today, in this spiritually illiterate society, integration is quite the task.
My beliefs are in no way gnostic. There is God and his divine order, and rebellious spiritual entities within that order who deceive men through perversions of the natural and supernatural world.
Sure thing, dude. But then my observation still stands.
I often wonder over the pat abrahamic responses, which explain exactly nothing, but for those who love going around in circles there is always the ride.
Not everything is explainable; although it’s expected in our materialistic, scientific worshipping world to make things believable. IMHO some things are a mystery and should be (or could be?) accepted as such.
Sure, there are mysteries, but is it excusable or even correct to claim that something which is understandable, is instead a mystery?
However, here we have something more.
Assigning an unknowable quality to an experience is one thing, but when that mystery is being used to promote a specific ideology, which itself is based only upon opinion, we are now well beyond a mystery existing in its own juices.
The true quality of any genuine mystery is that it brings us to that delicious point, where we have no clue. Most people don't realize just what a gift this really is. Can you grasp the possibility in this moment?
Jamming in a microwave ready TV dinner of ideology might be useful as a cheap sales pitch, but it completely corrupts and hijacks the potential of this moment, and the significance of meeting the great mystery with only what one is.
But how does one claim that this story IS understandable? Or any, for that matter. I mean you can "understand" an experience you have, sort of, as far as a description of who, what, etc. but does that mean you really understand it? Not being facetious, just curious.
Because understanding is not simply an act of repeating in words, but rather a participation, the immersion into this story is what allows the participation.
Consider any powerful event in your life, and you will realize that you make a narrative of that event. The narrative, if successful, captures your experience on multiple levels. What you notice then is that your description of events in the story becomes a tool of evocation for that experience. We gauge a story to be good when it provides for a deep participation.
For some odd reason, our society doesn't consider this participation to be an act of understanding when it most definitely is.
You can understand a sudden flash of memory, not because someone has an opinion about it, but because you have had flashes where memories arrive. You participate in the experience to understand the experience.
The numinous is not described by objective structures.
In all my research and reading on the phenomenon of UFO's - UAP's? - and aliens, I've never come across this story, which is strange because I thought I'd heard it all by this point. And this is quite a strange one. But, there's a fine line to these sorts of things, and after reading enough of them, I feel like you learn to discern the obviously fake from the might-be-true, and, in my opinion, absurd and outlandish stories like this ring more of "might be true" than the obviously fakes. This is to say that I agree with you on your demonic hypothesis. I know it's not exactly uncommon to equate aliens and UFOs with demonic activity, but I also think that our current zeitgeist has a very narrow-minded idea of what demonic activity actually looks like. I'm also not entirely convinced that, if there really are incorporeal entities out there causing outright Exorcist-style spectacles with spinning heads and speaking backwards and what not, that those are actual, real demons and not some other stripe of metaphysical entity (if they happen at all, which, again - not sure if they do and IF they do, I'd be happy to never witness one, so, knock on wood), when it seems like their ultimate goal - at least, as we speculate it to be - would be better served in less.... explicit ways. In my own personal experience, a sudden, violent experience can be deeply unpleasant, even traumatizing, but there's a certain way that something absurd and nonsensical and ever-so-slightly off will haunt you in a much more pervasive and unshakeable way. It's a little difficult to articulate entirely. I guess what I mean is I've been in car accidents, and even though I was shaken up badly after them, I never really had a problem getting in the car again. But I've had far less violent and physically harmful experiences with certain types of places and things that make me hard pressed to ever step foot in them or interact with them ever again, and I think about them a lot more than I do the car accidents I was in, even though I think you could argue I was in no immediate danger or physically hurt during these experiences. Maybe the brain just processes different trauma in different ways - I can't say. But this was a very intriguing piece. Thank you for sharing and bringing this story to my attention.
I hope to never witness such a thing myself, either. And yes, I think that the more believable the story, the less believable the story; the ones that are the most coherent and comprehensible also most generally turn out to be hoaxes. The “nordic” aliens with their sub-generic Cold War liberal warnings about atomic bombs and messages of universal brotherhood have not stood the test of time very well. The ones featuring goblin attacks and giant ace-of-spades cloaks seem far more enduring.
I have yet to really put forth a more plausible analysis on this entire landscape of encounters and supposedly extra-terrestrial vehicles. The old engineer in me categorically refuses to limit encounters to more explainable rationales, at the same time my experience is that people have always tended to explain things they don't understand as 'magic.' The pastor in me recognizes that there are many scriptural encounters with the supernatural - or what we, in our limited capacities think of as super-natural.
Demons? Perhaps, but unlikely, considering they're not given the prerogative of physical manifestation anywhere I've read in scripture - otherwise what you suggest toward the end there, would certainly be realized. A visual perception into the spiritual world? Again, unlikely as his conveyance of water and receipt of a burnt-looking pancake tends to indicate this was physical and not ethereal.
Then again, one could possibly make the case that cardboard pancakes are indeed served only in hell.
And yet news outlets all over the world are STILL calling anyone who publishes or talks about this FACT a ‘conspiracy theorist’ a ‘paranoid mentally ill psychopath’ or ‘scare mongering’. It’s time people were given the truth of exactly WHAT has been done to everyone on the planet for over 40 years.... Everyone, even the rich and power razed have this nano tech inside their bodies...it has been infiltrating every single aspect of human existence for decades and is unavoidable. Once it proliferates in the body it takes over every single mechanism, every single cell, every single bodily function, every brain reaction, every muscle reaction, every blood cell, every millimetre of our bodies is lit up like a beacon and we are connected to the ‘grid system’ via vast cyber intelligence computer systems. We can then be targeted , controlled, experimented upon, watched, tortured, terrorised, tormented, shaped, bullied, you name it they can do it. This nano tech has been developed for many different uses. The military have been involved with this science for 70 years. The US and UK were the ones who took this technology forwards after the Second World War... they took the 116 scientists that Hitler had working on all of this and put them to work. The UK signed a deal with the NSA 70 years ago... all our military bases here in the UK have been used to further this experimentation program, as have the US bases. All world governments are fully aware and fully involved in this program and always have been. Every war that occurs has a completely different reason for being, other that that which we have been told. Climate change is due to frequency abuse...’The Grid’. We are all connected to it via the nano tech inside our bodies. Every single living thing is infected with this nano tech. It ONLY causes problems when it overruns our systems, or if we are purposely targeted through the grid system... This grid system runs from HAARP and then through every single tower that has been erected world wide. Every town and city has these towers... A huge pole like structure going far up into the sky is always at the centre of a vast network of smaller towers that are filled to the brim with aerials... MILITARY, not mobile phone and television reception as we have been told..... some are indeed for their reception, but not many and they are separated on these towers from the military tech that is affecting every living thing in its path. The towers are all triangulated and never less that a hundred metres or so apart. Primary schools and colleges here in the UK are a favourite positioning place for them, as are housing estates. Everyone living within those triangulated areas is being terrorised, tortured, manipulated, mangled, spied on, controlled, physically and mentally affected and abused, often even sexually abused, controlled, manipulated. And worst of all is that most people have absolutely no idea any of this is happening to them! That’s the beauty of this technology.... Every single building with an electrical supply is connected to this grid system and your homes are spying on you through your own bodies! I have spent 4 years researching all of this after discovering police involvement. I have had these facts confirmed by police, ex military, professors, ex GCHQ IT specialist etc. I have hard evidence, recorded evidence, witnesses, voice recordings, photographs. Everything ended to bring a court case. BUT as a single entity it is impossible to get through the obstructive walls of power. All internet communications are now controlled by military sub-servers everywhere. Anyone publishing ‘truth’ is censored and their information sharing capability is monitored, modified, and manipulated to prevent mass awareness. We all think we are publishing freely... we are NOT. Our posts are controlled. We only see what they want us to see and the amount of viewers for any posts that inform people of the truth and of those involved, and especially anything to do with how to stop this stuff working, are limited. Unless we all share these posts, ‘follow’ each other and ‘subscribe’ to everyone that is posting about these facts, we will always only see a small fraction of what is available. People are being controlled at every level. Not just the infrastructure of our bodies... but the entire infrastructure of human existence is now being controlled by sociopathic specially trained operatives who spend their lives, in 3 shifts per day, watching and controlling every aspect of our lives on massive computer screens, in rooms full of like minded idiots who are so brainwashed and damaged by their training that they can’t see what they have become. They and their children, friends and families are spared from this nightmare only as long as they comply. Other civilians are employed in every single town and neighbourhood to help the cause. An entire internet business has grown up through this nano tech..... porn sites and peadophilia sites and torture sites have been created for victims to be broadcast live from their homes 24/7. I can prove everything I have stated here and will be publishing short Substack pieces to explain all the different elements involved over the coming weeks. As an intelligent, strong minded and independent free thinker I feel it is my duty to share what I know to be FACT. There are others who have been publishing on other outlets for as long as 15 years and STILL only reach a very small number of readers/viewers, and their information could have stopped so much misery had it not been monitored and controlled from mass sharing. THIS IS THE ONLY WAY TO FREE OURSELVES AND EDUCATE PEOPLE. WE MUST SHARE OUR INFORMATION AND CONNECT TO OTHERS... EVERYONE...IT DOESNT MATTER IF THEY ARE PUBLISHING, OR IF IT IS THE SAME AS OUR INFO AND POSTS.... IF WE DONT CONNECT OUR ACCOUNTS WE DONT ALL SEE THE RELEVENT INFORMATION. IT IS BEING BLOCKED AND CENSORED AT SOUTCE BY MILITARY SERVERS. I have proof of this... lots of it! ‘Follow’ ‘Subscribe’ like, share........ if we ‘connect’ our accounts we get everything that is being posted. Surely having to dump loads of unconnected crap from our inboxes is worth our eventual freedom from this tyranny and torture? For every ten posts that aren’t relevent to this particular subject, there is one piece that changes the game completely..... I am 57 years old. A grandmother. I am now doing a BA hons degree in film and television at university here in the UK to ensure my findings can be broadcast.... I want my grandchildren and my daughter to be free, happy, healthy and not virtually sexually molested in their homes 24/7 by sick, degenerate sociopaths who get their kicks from using all this technology...... Don’t you want the same for Your families?
lol, not yet but I’m waiting! It seems they are descending upon Substack as I type and share my post….. I may have to retreat into my cubby hole for a day and be a good girl ! 🤣🤗🌺👁🥰🤩☠️🤪😊
Wow. Very interesting and there are several ideas in here I have not been seeing in the things I read. All this started with a note I left on an article on Subst. by Theodore Atkinson, who sent me an interesting (although at first I was merely puzzled) response and you came in at some point. I had seen you newsletter before but I was confused and put off by the "weird" name you use). However I am into this stuff now. It is a welcome relief from, and different from, the usual mRNA horror stories I have been reading. I like the fact that there are several ideas there that are new to me. Persons who go to my humble little pathetic Substack thing get all kinds of stuff: literature, memoir, culture and my own economics, in the category or subdivision called ECONO posts.
A long time reader of JMG (like moi) https://www.ecosophia.net/a-primer-of-magical-combat/ would be familiar with the concept of the enchanted and the disenchanted world views, and also their cyclical nature. In our case, we live at the end of a disenchanted, rational materialistic phase that first picked up steam in the Enlightenment. That way of looking at things has certainly run out of coal and so we are now making the great swing back to the enchanted world. This is already well underway and (I believe) science fiction played the role of a bridge between them, permitting “science” to imagine the unimaginable. Aliens in flying saucers are the “gateway drug” to fairies, ogres, dragons and all the rest of the flora and fauna that inhabit this realm.
What did Joe Simonton really experience? Perhaps he saw what the shape-shifters (who have no form of their own) thought he should see, and they put on the appropriate skin suit. The alien lack of verbal communication is interesting, I have some personal experience with that.
Oct 22, 2023·edited Oct 22, 2023Liked by Librarian of Celaeno
The incident was much written about at the time. The pancakes appeared to be exactly that . They werenot radioactive. They contained fats, carbohydrates, proteins. The extractables (fats) were analyzed by UV and IR spectroscopy and are consistent with vegatable fat, melting near room temp, as opposed to inorganic oils. The ash was analyzed by emission spectophotometry for elements--all ordinary. C-14 analysis indicated levels conistent with organic material grown in the ealry 1960's, i.e. flour ground from recently harvested grains, as opposed to grains form some other time (on Earth) or place.
The investigators said Simonton was a very ordinary, jovial fellow, who gained nothing from the whole affair and probably had a vivid dream, that he mistook for reality as sometimes happens. A number of of elements in the dream, such as the "exhaust tubes" are inconsistent with the behavior of the object.
All true and I linked to that file as well. A lucid dream makes the most sense in a universe where a lucid dream is more likely than an encounter with an alien or a demon. But what sort of universe we live in is precisely the question.
Fantastic article! I’ve often wondered about the “high strangeness” aspects of these types of close encounters. It reminds me of the “Lonnie Zamora Incident” in Socorro, New Mexico, or even the famous Travis Walton Abduction, where the beings encountered seem to be not merely humanoid, but actual humans. The early accounts of “airships” in the western United States during the nineteenth century—for whatever they’re worth—are full of these sorts of stories too; actually the Simonton Encounter sounds like it could be lifted straight out of a newspaper account from the late 1890s.
And Fr. Seraphim Rose’s book really is excellent, with an interesting take on the UFO phenomenon. Great stuff!
It’s often overlooked that the technology of supposed Aliens is always one step ahead of that of the observer. The “airships” of the 19th century were impossible flying constructions with balloons and propellers; in the 60s they all had the chrome and lighted-button Star Trek look, etc. They functioned a bit like the “influencing machines” envisioned by schizophrenics. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_the_%22Influencing_Machine%22_in_Schizophrenia
That’s an interesting observation. The recent “UAP” sightings, of course, seem to conform to that same pattern.
Christopher O’Brien, who investigates UFOs and cattle mutilations in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, has articulated another intriguing theory. Apparently it was formulated by an investigator named David Perkins, and is called the “Evolutionary Imperative.” The idea is that UFOs and certain other paranormal phenomena are actually collective psychological projections of the entire human species, and are intended to stimulate our curiosity and “pull” us into the future, so to speak, and off the planet earth for survival reasons. I guess the point is that UFOs and UAPs and everything to do with them are an incipient mythology or religion with evolutionary implications. Don’t know whether it has any merit, but it’s an intriguing idea.
This post is wonderfully thought-provoking! Your analysis of Simonton's encounter "feels" correct (demonic in nature), at least compared to the explanations possible under alternate metaphysical framings.
I came here for the Pancakes, and received a UFO El Camino as a Bonus Reward. 🥺
THIS IS THE BEST RESTAURANT EVER💖😭💖
Very nice post...Your point about metaphysical parameters made me think of Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, where he argued that every society has an existing paradigm to process knowledge, but because the paradigm is incomplete (as we are all finite beings), over time anomalies that are inexplainable to that paradigm accumulate; eventually, the anomalies grow too large to sustain within the existing paradigm, so a new paradigm is proposed and accepted which incorporates an explanation for those anomalies which then turns the “facts” understood by the previous paradigm on their head, to be understood in totally different ways.
I agree with that formulation, but (and I have not read him) a flaw in that thinking could be that there is some implicit idea of progress in the succession of paradigms. In other words, an assumption that we each paradigm is an improvement on the last. I don’t know that that would necessarily be true, especially as pertains to spiritual things.
OK, I will take you on on this one point. Kuhn's early work was on Copernicus. Would the Librarian of Celaeno (you) say that thinking of the earth as basically round or spherical or better, that the planets are heliocentric, is an improvement on the previous idea? Or that our understanding of electricity is not an improvement on what we knew previously? The key here is understanding that the scientists of the last few hundred years, up until, Say mid-century, were "picking the low-hanging fruit." This stuff was just out there waiting to be found. Once all the easy stuff like the circulation of the blood is discovered or ,earlier, how to go from pig iron to cast iron, it gets more dubious. Now we are the level where a lot of the technology is a waste of time or a distraction. We cannot eliminate wars or repair damage to the earth or the biosphere, but we can make stupid "vaccines" that seem to not to work. But the scientific discoveries of the 19th century were an improvement. These are gratefully accepted, for example by Indians. The Eskimos did not have to wait literally all day with a spear for a seal to surface. They were also - those Indians I mean - very happy to have horses. I would suggest stopping all the "progress" at around 1978. We had all the trucks we needed by then, I think so. But I am Autistic and I do not progress so this may be personal, as I personally could not really integrate much after about the mid-seventies.
not "trucks" really! tricks
Perhaps, but not necessarily. As NF notes, Kuhn believes that the principal instigator of "paradigm change" is the buildup of anomalies. However, there is no theory free of anomalies, as Kuhn himself acknowledges: "to be accepted as a paradigm, a theory must seem better than its competitors, but it need not, and in fact never does, explain all the facts with which it can be confronted." (Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 17-18). The presence of anomaly alone is not what damns a paradigm; rather, the perceived severity of its anomalies kills it. Each paradigm will have anomalies, and they will provide answers for different things. The deciding question, as Kuhn puts it, is "which problems is it more significant to have solved?" (110). This does not imply progress so much as a change in priorities.
Kuhn does provide some criteria by which theories can be adjudicated to be better than those they replace: they allow the prediction of otherwise unpredicted or unexpected phenomena, they exceed or retain the total explanatory power of their predecessor, they are reasonably simple and coherent, and they allow for the formulation of future puzzles and solutions. Still, is that progress, or just a lateral shift? The new paradigms are "better" in the sense that they are more persuasive, but whether or not that is defined as "progress" is really up to the beholder.
the idea of 'which problems to solve' seems interesting. Although we "should" be solving economics problems, both of theory and policy, we instead stick to an old understanding, and understanding which, although full of anomalies seems not to inspire anyone to seek change. There is no money in it I suppose. One more thin.g, as for progress an idea I have, for awhile now I think like this, is that, as we the people of earth experience what some call "progress," (think of a magazine with the word p-r-o-g-r-e-s-s on the cover in capital letters), we are not solving the important problems. we are losing ourselves in a fascination with a few techno-novelties or with whatever is new and different or colorful. Meanwhile, any important things like respecting earth or even respecting life are not improved. And now even democracy and human freedom are very much in peril as well. Taibi says Amy Kobuchar is trying to get Substack censored (by Amazon or something). But I cannot read the Taibi because he has 200,000 subscribers and I do not want to pay him more dough, so it seems to go...
Maybe they just really wanted pancakes ;)
The high strangeness of this kind of encounter is certainly an argument against the entities being aliens. However, it isn't airtight. These encounters frequently involve psychic effects, as indeed the Simonton case does. Entities that have mastered telepathy could, I suspect, quite easily project false images as a form of camouflage. They could be invisible, but they could also make themselves visible in deceptive ways, allowing just enough of a true image through to enable interaction (on their terms), while being false enough to maintain operational secrecy. Not only is the contactee kept in a state of confusion, but the resulting absurdity of the encounter is an obstacle to the belief of others.
Recently I was chatting with a skeptic, a man with a background in astronomy who has put no little thought into this matter. He said that about the only thing that would convince him would be a direct, face to face encounter. I found this interesting, because such encounters are the most convincing on an individual basis but the least convincing on a societal scale.
If the “aliens” had wanted to remain unseen, they could have just gotten water from a river. It would have obviated the need for any physic deception in the first place. Also, the account notes they looked like Italians. Had they parked the UFO down the road and walked up to his house, there never would have been anything to report. The weirdness is what makes the story compelling. It’s the only reason anyone talks about it. I think the strangeness is the reason for the encounter in the first place, to get attention focused on compelling but otherwise meaningless things, such that if you really try to plumb the depths of it, you go insane. Cruel and absurd.
What I meant was that, most of the time, they remain invisible. Sometimes, they choose to be seen, as in this case; but, the very technology that enables them to wholly cloak their appearance, also enables them to project a false appearance. Thus, they can appear as greys, mantids, Italians, or unicorn-riding faerie of the high sidhe, as their fancy takes them. Similar considerations would apply to their vehicles.
But why appear at all? Did these incredibly advanced beings, with appearance-altering holographic technology, really need a pitcher of water from a chicken farmer? The disguise they picked would only serve to draw more attention to themselves than if they had just looked like regular people. Which is what I mean by the absurdity is the point. They want the attention.
Teenage demons pranking humans? 🤪
Yes, I agree: absurdity is absolutely central to their method. Vallee thinks that it's essentially a psychospiritual project, nudging human consciousness in a certain direction. My only contention here is that this need not involve demons or ultraterrestrials; it could be purely a technological effect.
Ruling out demons or ultra terrestrials leaves humans. These would have to be humans from the future, since present humans lack the technology you describe. This would mean that while they are more advanced than us they share our basic characteristics, and should thus on some level be comprehensible to us. This is where I see the problem. Trying to tie the various encounters together as some nudge in some particular direction is completely fruitless. If the Italians had a message for Joe Simonton, if they were trying to get him or the rest of us to do something or believe something, it was not received. Even if the message was some awareness that the world is a weird place, that too didn’t work, since the whole pancake thing makes most people laugh rather than look deeper. If there is any tendency at all it is that such experiences make an impression on people who are particularly spiritually sensitive and open to such experiences, and that’s about it. And it is precisely those people who are the sorts who are likely to be targeted by malign spiritual forces, at least according to Christian theology. Which is why, to me at least, it makes more sense as a spiritual than technological phenomenon.
Seraphim Rose is very much worth reading on the subject. Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future (pdf l linked in my article) I regard as his central work. No one else on the right so fully synthesizes rightist philosophy and Orthodox Christian theology; he studied Nietzsche and read Guenon heavily before his conversion, in addition to his studies in Chinese philosophy in the original language. He explores Vallée more thoroughly in his chapter on UFOs.
The possibility space is larger than that. Off the top of my head:
1. - demons, angels, and gods
2. - ultraterrestrials aka hyperdimensional entities (the distinction between these and demons/angels/gods may be without difference, admittedly)
3. - extraterrestrial intelligence
4. - present day humans (e.g. it's all MKULTRA)
5. - time-travelling future humans or human descendants
6. - past humans (e.g. Lemurian descendants living in subterranean and/or offworld environments)
7. - past non-humans (e.g. intelligent dinosaurs)
Of those seven, only 3 (1., 2., and to a certain degree 5.) involve "magic"; the remainder involve material beings utilizing technology that we don't have yet.
I just finished reading Vallee's The Invisible College, and his thesis is worth considering. Essentially he suggests that UFOs are the manifestation of a control system that operates upon human consciousness, by nudging individuals and societies in certain directions. He compares manifestations of the Virgin Mary, e.g. at Guadalupe and Fatima, as well as other biblical accounts, to contemporary UFO sightings and finds considerable phenomenological overlap. He then shows how, throughout history, various religions and cults have spun off from these experiences. Not in every case, but in enough to have a dramatic impact. So, one could conclude from this that the UFO phenomenon is purely spiritual, but one could also conclude that modern religions are in general the result of technological intervention in human history via the UFO phenomenon, i.e. who- or whatever is behind it is fucking with our heads in order to direct our consciousness.
The absurdity, he argues, serves two purposes. First is psychological: it places contactees into a state of uncertainty, which makes them more pliable. Second is social: it contributes to making the phenomenon, as he puts it, 'self-negating' i.e. it covers its tracks, since people who hear the story will think 'that makes no sense, it must have been a hallucination'. Why would they want to do this? Well, for cult-formation purposes, it results in contactees and those who follow them self-isolating from society, which contributes to ethnogenesis. Think of Joseph Smith leading his followers to Utah. But also, it ensures that at any given time the wider society dismisses the phenomenon at the level of conscious awareness, meaning that it can continue operating at the more powerful level of the unconscious. "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled," etc.
If Vallee is correct, then the phenomenon is both spiritual and technological. It's almost certainly not in our best interests, either - all that sneaking around strikes me as untrustworthy. Given that, bringing the phenomenon to conscious awareness is probably our best defense against its manipulations ... as long as we avoid the 'space brothers initiating us into the Galactic Federation' interpretation that is quite popular in certain circles.
I know how I would challenge a picture of Lincoln on a unicorn:
He's not a maiden, so the unicorn would never let him near it.
You’ve clearly never read Weekly World News.
https://weeklyworldnews.com/headlines/5586/abe-was-a-babe/
I consider myself corrected. :)
In the Mouth of Madness (1994) the book editor Linda Styles introduces what I can only describe as demonic logic to the main character, “reality is just what we tell each other it is. Sane and insane could easily switch places, if the insane were to become the majority.” This is the opposite of reality that is God’s created order. Without God demonic logic gains it’s foothold, readers of Sutter Crane bleed from their eyes and axe people to death on the street. The Intergalactic House of Pancakes descends on your driveway.
I’m really going to elaborate on this theme in my next essay.
Post modernism.
Many years ago I read something from John Michael Greer, who suggested UFO experiences are very similar to historical shamanic descriptions of the unseen. That makes sense to me.
And for my part, I am always mystified when people speak of this world/universe as "fallen," or demonic. I consider it sublime.
“Sublime” is that subtle feeling of fear in the presence of the immensity of some power. Burke and Goethe and Freud wrote about it in those terms. By fallen I mean that it falls short of what it might have been in a perfectly realized divine order, with man at the center in a state of theosis. Instead, or alienation from God means we can never quite know things as the might have been. The sublime is but a faint hint of that.
Well, we are careening dangerously close to the Gnostic universe in this piece, the ultimate no go zone for all abrahamics. Gnostics have addressed such issues for many centuries now, but hey, WTF do Gnostics know, is the usual societal response.
Certainly, one can reject such an event and indeed most do just that, but crass rejection doesn't answer any of the questions that such events inevitably create.
The truth revealed in this piece is that the world of the senses is but an island in a great sea of unknowable proportions. Like all genuine mystical experience, such encounters reflect the spiritual development of that soul-or lack thereof.
Mystical experience is not some la tee da walk in the garden of love and light, it is a deeply transformative and often devastating experience. The meeting with the numinous is not a conscious choice. It is a fact of human existence beyond the control apparatus of self, religion, and society.
Some never recover from such experiences.
Some never integrate them.
Especially today, in this spiritually illiterate society, integration is quite the task.
My beliefs are in no way gnostic. There is God and his divine order, and rebellious spiritual entities within that order who deceive men through perversions of the natural and supernatural world.
Sure thing, dude. But then my observation still stands.
I often wonder over the pat abrahamic responses, which explain exactly nothing, but for those who love going around in circles there is always the ride.
Not everything is explainable; although it’s expected in our materialistic, scientific worshipping world to make things believable. IMHO some things are a mystery and should be (or could be?) accepted as such.
Sure, there are mysteries, but is it excusable or even correct to claim that something which is understandable, is instead a mystery?
However, here we have something more.
Assigning an unknowable quality to an experience is one thing, but when that mystery is being used to promote a specific ideology, which itself is based only upon opinion, we are now well beyond a mystery existing in its own juices.
The true quality of any genuine mystery is that it brings us to that delicious point, where we have no clue. Most people don't realize just what a gift this really is. Can you grasp the possibility in this moment?
Jamming in a microwave ready TV dinner of ideology might be useful as a cheap sales pitch, but it completely corrupts and hijacks the potential of this moment, and the significance of meeting the great mystery with only what one is.
But how does one claim that this story IS understandable? Or any, for that matter. I mean you can "understand" an experience you have, sort of, as far as a description of who, what, etc. but does that mean you really understand it? Not being facetious, just curious.
Because understanding is not simply an act of repeating in words, but rather a participation, the immersion into this story is what allows the participation.
Consider any powerful event in your life, and you will realize that you make a narrative of that event. The narrative, if successful, captures your experience on multiple levels. What you notice then is that your description of events in the story becomes a tool of evocation for that experience. We gauge a story to be good when it provides for a deep participation.
For some odd reason, our society doesn't consider this participation to be an act of understanding when it most definitely is.
You can understand a sudden flash of memory, not because someone has an opinion about it, but because you have had flashes where memories arrive. You participate in the experience to understand the experience.
The numinous is not described by objective structures.
In all my research and reading on the phenomenon of UFO's - UAP's? - and aliens, I've never come across this story, which is strange because I thought I'd heard it all by this point. And this is quite a strange one. But, there's a fine line to these sorts of things, and after reading enough of them, I feel like you learn to discern the obviously fake from the might-be-true, and, in my opinion, absurd and outlandish stories like this ring more of "might be true" than the obviously fakes. This is to say that I agree with you on your demonic hypothesis. I know it's not exactly uncommon to equate aliens and UFOs with demonic activity, but I also think that our current zeitgeist has a very narrow-minded idea of what demonic activity actually looks like. I'm also not entirely convinced that, if there really are incorporeal entities out there causing outright Exorcist-style spectacles with spinning heads and speaking backwards and what not, that those are actual, real demons and not some other stripe of metaphysical entity (if they happen at all, which, again - not sure if they do and IF they do, I'd be happy to never witness one, so, knock on wood), when it seems like their ultimate goal - at least, as we speculate it to be - would be better served in less.... explicit ways. In my own personal experience, a sudden, violent experience can be deeply unpleasant, even traumatizing, but there's a certain way that something absurd and nonsensical and ever-so-slightly off will haunt you in a much more pervasive and unshakeable way. It's a little difficult to articulate entirely. I guess what I mean is I've been in car accidents, and even though I was shaken up badly after them, I never really had a problem getting in the car again. But I've had far less violent and physically harmful experiences with certain types of places and things that make me hard pressed to ever step foot in them or interact with them ever again, and I think about them a lot more than I do the car accidents I was in, even though I think you could argue I was in no immediate danger or physically hurt during these experiences. Maybe the brain just processes different trauma in different ways - I can't say. But this was a very intriguing piece. Thank you for sharing and bringing this story to my attention.
I hope to never witness such a thing myself, either. And yes, I think that the more believable the story, the less believable the story; the ones that are the most coherent and comprehensible also most generally turn out to be hoaxes. The “nordic” aliens with their sub-generic Cold War liberal warnings about atomic bombs and messages of universal brotherhood have not stood the test of time very well. The ones featuring goblin attacks and giant ace-of-spades cloaks seem far more enduring.
I have yet to really put forth a more plausible analysis on this entire landscape of encounters and supposedly extra-terrestrial vehicles. The old engineer in me categorically refuses to limit encounters to more explainable rationales, at the same time my experience is that people have always tended to explain things they don't understand as 'magic.' The pastor in me recognizes that there are many scriptural encounters with the supernatural - or what we, in our limited capacities think of as super-natural.
Demons? Perhaps, but unlikely, considering they're not given the prerogative of physical manifestation anywhere I've read in scripture - otherwise what you suggest toward the end there, would certainly be realized. A visual perception into the spiritual world? Again, unlikely as his conveyance of water and receipt of a burnt-looking pancake tends to indicate this was physical and not ethereal.
Then again, one could possibly make the case that cardboard pancakes are indeed served only in hell.
Never eat the food!
And yet news outlets all over the world are STILL calling anyone who publishes or talks about this FACT a ‘conspiracy theorist’ a ‘paranoid mentally ill psychopath’ or ‘scare mongering’. It’s time people were given the truth of exactly WHAT has been done to everyone on the planet for over 40 years.... Everyone, even the rich and power razed have this nano tech inside their bodies...it has been infiltrating every single aspect of human existence for decades and is unavoidable. Once it proliferates in the body it takes over every single mechanism, every single cell, every single bodily function, every brain reaction, every muscle reaction, every blood cell, every millimetre of our bodies is lit up like a beacon and we are connected to the ‘grid system’ via vast cyber intelligence computer systems. We can then be targeted , controlled, experimented upon, watched, tortured, terrorised, tormented, shaped, bullied, you name it they can do it. This nano tech has been developed for many different uses. The military have been involved with this science for 70 years. The US and UK were the ones who took this technology forwards after the Second World War... they took the 116 scientists that Hitler had working on all of this and put them to work. The UK signed a deal with the NSA 70 years ago... all our military bases here in the UK have been used to further this experimentation program, as have the US bases. All world governments are fully aware and fully involved in this program and always have been. Every war that occurs has a completely different reason for being, other that that which we have been told. Climate change is due to frequency abuse...’The Grid’. We are all connected to it via the nano tech inside our bodies. Every single living thing is infected with this nano tech. It ONLY causes problems when it overruns our systems, or if we are purposely targeted through the grid system... This grid system runs from HAARP and then through every single tower that has been erected world wide. Every town and city has these towers... A huge pole like structure going far up into the sky is always at the centre of a vast network of smaller towers that are filled to the brim with aerials... MILITARY, not mobile phone and television reception as we have been told..... some are indeed for their reception, but not many and they are separated on these towers from the military tech that is affecting every living thing in its path. The towers are all triangulated and never less that a hundred metres or so apart. Primary schools and colleges here in the UK are a favourite positioning place for them, as are housing estates. Everyone living within those triangulated areas is being terrorised, tortured, manipulated, mangled, spied on, controlled, physically and mentally affected and abused, often even sexually abused, controlled, manipulated. And worst of all is that most people have absolutely no idea any of this is happening to them! That’s the beauty of this technology.... Every single building with an electrical supply is connected to this grid system and your homes are spying on you through your own bodies! I have spent 4 years researching all of this after discovering police involvement. I have had these facts confirmed by police, ex military, professors, ex GCHQ IT specialist etc. I have hard evidence, recorded evidence, witnesses, voice recordings, photographs. Everything ended to bring a court case. BUT as a single entity it is impossible to get through the obstructive walls of power. All internet communications are now controlled by military sub-servers everywhere. Anyone publishing ‘truth’ is censored and their information sharing capability is monitored, modified, and manipulated to prevent mass awareness. We all think we are publishing freely... we are NOT. Our posts are controlled. We only see what they want us to see and the amount of viewers for any posts that inform people of the truth and of those involved, and especially anything to do with how to stop this stuff working, are limited. Unless we all share these posts, ‘follow’ each other and ‘subscribe’ to everyone that is posting about these facts, we will always only see a small fraction of what is available. People are being controlled at every level. Not just the infrastructure of our bodies... but the entire infrastructure of human existence is now being controlled by sociopathic specially trained operatives who spend their lives, in 3 shifts per day, watching and controlling every aspect of our lives on massive computer screens, in rooms full of like minded idiots who are so brainwashed and damaged by their training that they can’t see what they have become. They and their children, friends and families are spared from this nightmare only as long as they comply. Other civilians are employed in every single town and neighbourhood to help the cause. An entire internet business has grown up through this nano tech..... porn sites and peadophilia sites and torture sites have been created for victims to be broadcast live from their homes 24/7. I can prove everything I have stated here and will be publishing short Substack pieces to explain all the different elements involved over the coming weeks. As an intelligent, strong minded and independent free thinker I feel it is my duty to share what I know to be FACT. There are others who have been publishing on other outlets for as long as 15 years and STILL only reach a very small number of readers/viewers, and their information could have stopped so much misery had it not been monitored and controlled from mass sharing. THIS IS THE ONLY WAY TO FREE OURSELVES AND EDUCATE PEOPLE. WE MUST SHARE OUR INFORMATION AND CONNECT TO OTHERS... EVERYONE...IT DOESNT MATTER IF THEY ARE PUBLISHING, OR IF IT IS THE SAME AS OUR INFO AND POSTS.... IF WE DONT CONNECT OUR ACCOUNTS WE DONT ALL SEE THE RELEVENT INFORMATION. IT IS BEING BLOCKED AND CENSORED AT SOUTCE BY MILITARY SERVERS. I have proof of this... lots of it! ‘Follow’ ‘Subscribe’ like, share........ if we ‘connect’ our accounts we get everything that is being posted. Surely having to dump loads of unconnected crap from our inboxes is worth our eventual freedom from this tyranny and torture? For every ten posts that aren’t relevent to this particular subject, there is one piece that changes the game completely..... I am 57 years old. A grandmother. I am now doing a BA hons degree in film and television at university here in the UK to ensure my findings can be broadcast.... I want my grandchildren and my daughter to be free, happy, healthy and not virtually sexually molested in their homes 24/7 by sick, degenerate sociopaths who get their kicks from using all this technology...... Don’t you want the same for Your families?
I suppose then that it's a good sign you have not been censored here.
lol, not yet but I’m waiting! It seems they are descending upon Substack as I type and share my post….. I may have to retreat into my cubby hole for a day and be a good girl ! 🤣🤗🌺👁🥰🤩☠️🤪😊
Wow. Very interesting and there are several ideas in here I have not been seeing in the things I read. All this started with a note I left on an article on Subst. by Theodore Atkinson, who sent me an interesting (although at first I was merely puzzled) response and you came in at some point. I had seen you newsletter before but I was confused and put off by the "weird" name you use). However I am into this stuff now. It is a welcome relief from, and different from, the usual mRNA horror stories I have been reading. I like the fact that there are several ideas there that are new to me. Persons who go to my humble little pathetic Substack thing get all kinds of stuff: literature, memoir, culture and my own economics, in the category or subdivision called ECONO posts.
A long time reader of JMG (like moi) https://www.ecosophia.net/a-primer-of-magical-combat/ would be familiar with the concept of the enchanted and the disenchanted world views, and also their cyclical nature. In our case, we live at the end of a disenchanted, rational materialistic phase that first picked up steam in the Enlightenment. That way of looking at things has certainly run out of coal and so we are now making the great swing back to the enchanted world. This is already well underway and (I believe) science fiction played the role of a bridge between them, permitting “science” to imagine the unimaginable. Aliens in flying saucers are the “gateway drug” to fairies, ogres, dragons and all the rest of the flora and fauna that inhabit this realm.
What did Joe Simonton really experience? Perhaps he saw what the shape-shifters (who have no form of their own) thought he should see, and they put on the appropriate skin suit. The alien lack of verbal communication is interesting, I have some personal experience with that.
Thanks again for writing, much appreciated!
The incident was much written about at the time. The pancakes appeared to be exactly that . They werenot radioactive. They contained fats, carbohydrates, proteins. The extractables (fats) were analyzed by UV and IR spectroscopy and are consistent with vegatable fat, melting near room temp, as opposed to inorganic oils. The ash was analyzed by emission spectophotometry for elements--all ordinary. C-14 analysis indicated levels conistent with organic material grown in the ealry 1960's, i.e. flour ground from recently harvested grains, as opposed to grains form some other time (on Earth) or place.
The investigators said Simonton was a very ordinary, jovial fellow, who gained nothing from the whole affair and probably had a vivid dream, that he mistook for reality as sometimes happens. A number of of elements in the dream, such as the "exhaust tubes" are inconsistent with the behavior of the object.
http://www.cufos.org/cases/1961_04_18_US_WI_Eagle-River_NICAP_Simonton-CE-III.pdf
All true and I linked to that file as well. A lucid dream makes the most sense in a universe where a lucid dream is more likely than an encounter with an alien or a demon. But what sort of universe we live in is precisely the question.
It's a fascinating story. I was born in Wisconsin in 1959 and lived there until I was 29. Never heard this story.
Fantastic article! I’ve often wondered about the “high strangeness” aspects of these types of close encounters. It reminds me of the “Lonnie Zamora Incident” in Socorro, New Mexico, or even the famous Travis Walton Abduction, where the beings encountered seem to be not merely humanoid, but actual humans. The early accounts of “airships” in the western United States during the nineteenth century—for whatever they’re worth—are full of these sorts of stories too; actually the Simonton Encounter sounds like it could be lifted straight out of a newspaper account from the late 1890s.
And Fr. Seraphim Rose’s book really is excellent, with an interesting take on the UFO phenomenon. Great stuff!
It’s often overlooked that the technology of supposed Aliens is always one step ahead of that of the observer. The “airships” of the 19th century were impossible flying constructions with balloons and propellers; in the 60s they all had the chrome and lighted-button Star Trek look, etc. They functioned a bit like the “influencing machines” envisioned by schizophrenics. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_the_%22Influencing_Machine%22_in_Schizophrenia
That’s an interesting observation. The recent “UAP” sightings, of course, seem to conform to that same pattern.
Christopher O’Brien, who investigates UFOs and cattle mutilations in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, has articulated another intriguing theory. Apparently it was formulated by an investigator named David Perkins, and is called the “Evolutionary Imperative.” The idea is that UFOs and certain other paranormal phenomena are actually collective psychological projections of the entire human species, and are intended to stimulate our curiosity and “pull” us into the future, so to speak, and off the planet earth for survival reasons. I guess the point is that UFOs and UAPs and everything to do with them are an incipient mythology or religion with evolutionary implications. Don’t know whether it has any merit, but it’s an intriguing idea.