I have noticed that the media has been buzzing with quite a lot of extremely interesting UFO reports recently. It’s a nice synchronicity that this is happening to coincide with the republication by the Daily Grail of Jacques Vallee's classic "Messengers of Deception" a book which turned up on my doorstep yesterday and is on the “get to soon” pile. At first these reports suggest that either media interest is trying to increase interest or that something subtle and more interesting may be happening.

Lets briefly look at a few recent examples:

One of the most fascinating concerns Dr Ed Mitchell. He was one of the original Apollo astronauts flying and landing on the Moon on Apollo 14. Among other things he holds the record for the longest Moonwalk (9h17m). He is also noted to have an interest in psychic phenomena being the astronaut who conducted ESP experiments with his associates on Earth whilst in flight. His background was as a pilot in the Navy before joining NASA and he holds several degrees including a number of doctorates, some being honorary but at least one being research based. As such I think we can say he is a highly intelligent man, a trained observer and a reliable witness.

In recent interviews he has gone on to express a belief in UFOs (as spacemen) and shocked the scientific world with some views. For example

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=...

If it was just one astronaut we might be forgiven in thinking that there could be other factors involved. However other astronauts and NASA staff have seen UFO's and ET's. For example:

http://www.australia.to/index.php?option...

Even Buzz Aldrin has encountered UFOs on the moon

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlkV1ybBn...

There are many more testimonies from astronauts and you can see a summary of them here. http://www.syti.net/UFOSightings.html

I could equally well have dug into the thousands of testimonies of people who have reported UFO's and other encounters throughout history. However I have stayed with astronauts here because these are a class of people who are very intelligent, highly trained both in terms of observation skills and also scientifically (although perhaps not blinkered by a "political" scientific perspective as we might find in academia). Also and (I think this is important) is astronauts encountering "aliens" and "UFO" seems to suggest a "nuts and bolts" "Star Trek" view of the phenomena - a view which I do not share so am interested in looking to see if all is not what it seems.

Let’s now take a look at another perspective. A number of researchers such as Vallee have been suggesting that UFO's and entity experiences are something other than spacemen visiting from another world. There argument suggests that Aliens/UFOs have always been here and originate from perhaps another dimension.

I am always a bit coy about bandying words like dimension around so lets define that one. Rather than say dimension perhaps we can say from a parallel reality existing and mingling with reality as we know it. If you image our reality as slides from a film-strip and the other reality as another film-strip held next to ours I hope illustrates what I am saying.

In the past there are certainly records that we have encountered these beings and given them various names through history such as witches (African tribes referred to flying lights as witches), Faerie, Jinns etc. There are a number of parallels between traditional encounters and UFO encounters which include:

1) Appearance. Often we have accounts of UFO occupants appearing similar to the descriptions given by people encountering fairies. We could perhaps ask does the term “little green men” refer to aliens or leprechauns. Similarly it has often been remarked how similar our friend Lam looks is to the iconic grey alien.
2) Time distortion – Often people encountering either will experience some sort of time distortion
3) An interest in babies and fertility. In fairy lore we have the concept of a changeling. In UFO lore we have accounts of breeding-programs etc
4) Accounts of flying lights. These are one of the most common parts of the phenomena and seem to be universal.
5) The experience of going into the hill or going into the saucer.

I don’t really want to go into too much detail here as it has been covered in many places already. A lot of research has come from academics looking at the field and many UFO researchers such as Keel and Vallee however I would be interested to hear as to whether and magical research has looked at this, for example do traditional anti-fairie charms such as iron work against UFO entities?

Some UFO accounts emphasis strongly the trickster aspect commonly encountered with fairy experiences and some accounts are blatantly absurd. One of my favourites is the pancake giving alien. The only witness here was one Joe Simonton who was in his house making breakfast one April morning. He heard a sound like tires on a wet pavement and went outside to investigate. On doing so he saw a round disk about 12 ft high and 30 ft in diameter. From this a hatch opened when three men came out and telepathically asked Joe to fill a jug with water. He did so and was then given three pancakes before the UFO closed up and flew off. The pancakes were genuine and I believe tested and shown to be totally unremarkable.

With cases like this one the mind begins to boggle. It certainly breaks the "nuts and bolts" mould simply by being so absurd. Yet there was clearly a technologically gloss to this instance. We have a spaceship and the "aliens" were described as wearing tight fitting uniforms so beloved of 1950s/60s era B-movie science fiction. But the event itself is more suggestive of a trickster entity such as faeries are reputed to me. I can imagine them in their mushroom/spaceship after this literally killing themselves with laughter over this and seen in this light it is hilarious.

Other accounts are more sinister and fairies have been known to turn nasty. There is a similar aspect to this with UFOs with phenomena such as Cattle Mutilations and Men in Black. Many examples of Men in Black seem to suggest an inhuman quality to the visitors as if there are something not quite human and doing an imperfect job as masking themselves as such.

I suppose we could ask the question as to which is the truer picture. Are alien spacemen being seen though an olde-worlde earth perspective and encountered as fairies or are we seeing fairies through a scientific gloss perceiving them as spacemen.

Actually I rather think that to categorise them as one or the other would be naive. Throughout history they have shown many forms. However the Pancake incident suggests one thing which is that there is a cultural filter to what is perceived. Our minds work by symbols and once a symbol is used to associate with a manifesting energy then it seems that the mind likes to keep it that way. In other words if one tends to perceive an energy as a spaceman one probably always will.

One of the most common aspects of these phenomena is that of the flying lights. There are described variously as spacecraft, fairies, flying witches etc. It is even possible that the Will-o-the-wisp phenomena is more complex that simply marsh gas as suggested in some cases, although just as some UFO's can be Venus, presumably some will-o'-the-wisps can be marsh gas. Some researchers such as Michael Deveraux have suggested that flying lighs are linked to places of high electro-magnetism on the earths crust and this does seem to be a variable in the phenomena. Michael Persinger’s work in Canada has also suggested the electromagnetic fields can distort human perception, activate transcendent states and give one the sense of being abducted and/or out of ones body.

I think that this research is incredibly important and in no way invalidates the paranormal aspect of these phenomena. Rather it is saying that the brain is capable of these states (which is interesting and wondrous in itself) and that these states can be triggered by electromagnetism. It points to electromagnetism as being a component in the phenomena but does not make this a necessity.

For example, I can create an illusion of heat and burning in my mouth by eating "hot" chillies. The capsaicin in the chillies stimulates the same nerves in my mouth that get stimulated when I eat hot (as in cooked) food. This shows that senses and experiences can be fooled and stimulated by other means and just as chillies are not really hot (in the heated sense) phenomena may not be really electromagnetic, rather the electromagnetism is stimulating the same parts of the being that gets stimulated by phenomena. We don’t know of course and it would be hasty to assume anything here other than that much more research is needed.

Given that astronauts also perceive UFO's not only on the moon but also in the depths between the Earth and the Moon, I would suggest that the electromagnetism in the earth crust is not the only factor in this. Perhaps this phenomena needs a carrier to transmit it to us. One such carrier may be electromagnetic radiation, another may be marsh gas etc, and another may be orgone. Again we are really on the edge of speculation here jumping into unknown territory.

Perhaps a form of perichoresis takes place through the transmitting medium. EM radiation, marsh gas and orgone are each relatively simple "building blocks" so any influence from another dimension may find it very easy to impress and emerge in our reality through this media. This is sort of like those pictures we see of flying birds in the work of MC Escher – If one gets caught in the detail one sees the birds but if one steps back and looks at the picture as a whole we see a larger picture emerge.

There is a wonderful example of perichoresis in Dali's "Destino" animated film. I believe this short piece is available on YouTube although I can’t get the link to it from work. If you do watch it take a look at how the Greek God "emerges" from the archway.

Perichoresis might also be an element in an explanation of Crop Circles. Andrew Collins excellent book "the Circlemakers" suggests that orgone is responsible for the circles, and this may well be correct. (I am in fact looking forward to the new edition of this book due soon to see how Andrew's theories have been updated over the past few years.) However orgone may suggest the mechanism by which circles are formed but doesn’t necessary address the issue as to the nature of the information coming through and this I believe is where we can also look at perichoresis. Something elsewhere is impressing these patterns on our reality.

It has been suggested that astronauts are changed by the simple fact of going into space and we do see a lot of returning astronauts being caught up in paranormal projects, getting religion or simply being awed with wonder, something many of us lose as we get older, more cynical and jaded. Certainly for me I find images such as the opening sequence of Carl Sagan’s "Cosmos" very moving and would love to experience something like spaceflight and really see and experience some of the images NASA release. I can imagine that being out there, would really open the mind to wonder and perhaps create an "enflamed with prayer" type of state where magic happens.

Could this act of wonder have the effect of switching astronauts on, perhaps making them more spiritual and psychic? Is it possible that "reality" is loaded so that the act of a species travelling into space switches them on in a way similar to magic does opening up a larger universe?

In a sense something similar happened a billion or so years ago when life on earth evolved vision. At that point the visual universe opened up and because visible to all. Granted this was actually for our distant very-pre-human relatives but the event is rather staggering, nature went from being blind to being able to see. Our very language of spiritual attainment uses this as a metaphor. Words like “Enlightened”, “Illuminated” perhaps in some deep atavistic way still remember this event and carry it on in our being.

There are some very interesting peculiarities surrounding the evolution of vision. First of all it seems to have developed on several places independently, so all life with vision does not share a common ancestor who was the first creature with sight. Rather there are several possible ancestors. This sort of suggests that the pattern of sight was programmed into evolution (in a very non-Darwinian way) to emerge perhaps in a similar process to how Sheldrake’s Morphic resonance is presented.

More interesting still is the fact that sight is supposed to have evolved before the brain. This is confirmed by looking at the human pineal gland in the centre of the brain. It actually possess some photosensitive properties suggesting that whilst atrophied will have certainly acted as an eye in our ancestors. It seems that the brain grew around the eye, adding abilities to process the new visual data being received. The brain of course does a lot more than think, and it does act as a filter and translator to what we see. For example at its simplest it filters out the blood vessels in our eyes which we do not see. It also tends to take out unexpected anomalies in our vision

Some experiments were done years ago involving a man dressed as a gorilla running onto a baseball game and waving at the audience. The majority of the audience didn’t even notice him because it was so far outside our expected vision that it simply processed the data out. This can work conversely as well and expected objects can appear in our visual matrix.

I think that we are on the verge of a perceptual leap perhaps similar to what was experienced when life evolved the ability to see portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Changes are taking place both through our personal evolution as magicians and as individuals as a part of the human species going into space which are shifting our perspective and as a result enhancing and mutating our perceptions to see the universe in a more connected magical state where we will be able to see the fairies, UFO's etc in all their myriad forms and maybe not understand but certainly communicate and interact with.

Please post your thoughts.

Paolo