Alien Space Gods Of Ancient Greece and Rome (22 page)

An intriguing reference by Plutarch in
'Agis and Cleomenes'
reveals the vital influence of the stars and the Gods on the affairs of Ancient Greece.

'After instructing others to spread these charges against Leonldas, he himself (Lysander) with his colleagues proceed to observe the traditional sign from heaven. This is observed as follows. Every ninth year the Ephors select a clear and moonless night, and in silent session watch the face of the heavens. If then a star shoots across the sky, they decide that their Kings have transgressed in the dealings with the Gods and suspend them from their office until an oracle from
Delphi
or
Olympus
comes to the succor of the King thus found guilty. This sign Lysander now declared had been given him and indicted Leonidas.'

The Etruscans, Babylonians, Mayas, Chinese, all ancient peoples, anxiously scanned the skies and interpreted heavenly phenomena as betokening the Will of the Gods, surely a race-memory of Celestial interference with life on Earth.

The earliest Greeks like primitive peoples all over the ' world in far Antiquity worshipped the Spacemen as Sky Gods descending as Divine Kings to teach the arts and crafts of civilisation to aspiring humanity. The Celestials mastered a wondrous science, some Gods were believed to control thunder, lightning, winds, storms, seas and the potent, ever-present forces of Nature.
Temples
were erected on hills as dwelling-places of the Gods, race-memories perhaps of the secluded abodes of the Space-Kings in ancient days.

Plutarch in
'De Facie in Orbe Lunae apparet'
, Moralia XII, discussing the rotation of the Moon, writes 'There is reason to wonder then not that the velocity caused a lion to fall on the Peloponnesus but how is it then that we are not forever seeing countless men falling headlong and lives spurned away tumbling off the Moon as it were and turning head over heels. Diogenes Laertius (viii 72) quotes Timaeus to the effect that Hcraclides Ponticus spoke of the fall of a man from the Moon.' Was this some memory of Spacemen?

Visitants from space or Etherean Realms may have occasionally appeared in sacred retreats to their Initiates just as in
Israel
the 'Lord' materialised to His priests within the tabernacle. Veneration of the Celestials in
Greece
as in
China
and
Japan
developed into the deification of heroes, then to ancestor-worship; life after death in the shades was a drab existence, a miserable immortality which the departed Achilles bewailed to Ulysses as worse than slavery.

The annual cycle of the growth of corn without which life would perish, inspired fertility-cults of the Great Earth-Mother associated with Demeter and later with Aphrodite and Dionysius, the 'Son of God'. Worship of the Sky Gods declined before the mystical religions of Delphic Apollo and Orpheus which purified the souls of men.

As actual manifestations of the Spacemen grew more rare, the domination of the Heavenly Powers became subtly transformed and extended from the physical to the moral universe; Zeus like Jehovah in
Israel
was spiritualized from tribal God to awesome supernatural Authority ruling Man's cosmic existence. The Will of Zeus was venerated as Moira governing the lives of men. The Greeks vaguely imagined that somewhere in the sky dwelled the three Moiras or Fates; Clotho, represented with a spindle, spun the fates of men, Lachesis assigned to Man his fate and Atropos decreed the fate that could not be avoided. Sometimes the Fates were depicted as aged women or grave maidens spinning the thread of life and cutting it when life is to end.

Aeschylus and the poets in their yearnings for divine justice and meaning to mortal life endowed Zeus and Apollo with the loftiest ethics of universal grandeur directing human affairs; Plato associated God with perfection and sublimity later to inspire St. Paul; for most Greeks religion became a personal matter veiled in Eleusinian Mysteries teaching life after death, which was to have a profound influence on Christianity. The powerful logic of the philosophers, the contention between Epicureans and Stoics the appeal of those novel cults from Egypt and Asia inevitably eclipsed the archaic religion of the Sky Gods, despite much scepticism Greeks still believed that the Gods were real Supermen dwelling in the sky, now elderly pensioners perhaps but on due supplication ready to aid mankind.

Plato, the wisest of Greeks in his 'Laws' solemnly reminded the cynical younger generation 'No one who has adopted in youth that the Gods do not exist, ever continued to hold it until he was old.' More than two thousand years later, the Very Reverend William Inge, Dean of St. Paul's, sagely remarked 'The Gods do exist but they are not what men think they are.'

Peasants in
Greece
like superstitious country folk everywhere depended on the soil, believed in elementals, satyrs, fairies and nymphs animating Nature, whom they invoked or propitiated with spells, charms and bucolic rituals. This belief in benign and evil spirits, ghosts and demons from those vast uncanny realms of the occult conjuring white and black magic finds the closest affinity with popular superstitions in India, China, Babylon, Egypt, Mexico, Britain, echoes of a most ancient worldwide Nature-worship associated with a witchcraft of strange powers which our own once-materialist science now explores. Such demonology from primitive religion confounded the Christian Church baffling the theologians of the Middle Ages into damning witchcraft; even enlightened intellects like Paracelsus accepted denizens from inner spheres, who sometimes materialised to instruct or torment men and women enchanted by their magic.

Since the relevant classical texts are lost, we may perhaps be pardoned for seeking illumination on Spacemen in Ancient Greece by analogy from one of the most remarkable works of the seventeenth century. In 1670 Montfaucon, thirty-two year-old Abbot of Villars near
Toulouse
, published in Paris his masterpiece,
'Le Comte de Gabalis'
, based on rare Latin and Greek manuscripts and magical books summarising the secret lore from far Antiquity. With impressive erudition Montfaucon de Villars claimed that the air was filled with a countless multitude of Sylphs in human form, great lovers of Science, whose wives and children bloomed in wondrous beauty; the seas and rivers were inhabited by Undines and Nymphs of surpassing loveliness, the Earth almost to its centre was peopled by Gnomes, the Little People, guardians of treasures; the Salamanders dwelled in regions of fire and inspired Philosophers.

In the eighth century during the reign of Pepin the famous Cabalist, Zedechias, advised the Spirits to reveal themselves to men, they appeared in human form in aerial vessels of admirable structure ranged in battle order, their superb pavilions gliding on the breeze; people impressed by this marvellous spectacle thought they must be sorcerers. This aerial pageant of Sylphs evokes the brilliant and gaily-flagged sky-cars of the Celestials attending Rama and Atjuna and the peoples of Ancient India, perhaps even the Gods of Greece.

This most profound mystery of 'Demons' alien to our modern thought puzzled the greatest minds of Antiquity and tormented the theologians of the Middle Ages; now as we review the old tales in the light of our new Space knowledge we suddenly discern the familiar pattern of UFOs and Spacemen extending from our world today back to dim prehistory. New discoveries in physics appear to confirm worlds of subtle matter interpenetrating our own, the Borderland Scientists and some Sensitives believe the Extraterrestrials materialise from Etherean Realms, the Sylphs of the Middle Ages, perhaps the 'Daimones' of the Greeks.

That most excellent publication the
'Flying Saucer Review'
in its special issue The Humanoids' analyses about three hundred reports describing the landings of Extraterrestrials all over the world. Some Beings were almost human in appearance, others seemed freaks, even monsters. On
22nd August 1955
the Sutton family near
Hopkinsville
,
Kentucky
, saw '...a small, specter-like figure approaching the house. It appeared to be lit by an internal source, had a roundish head, huge elephantine ears and a slit-like mouth which extended from car to ear. The eyes were huge and wide-set. Only about 3 or feet in height, the creature had no visible neck, and its arms were long and ended in clawed hands. Although it stood upright, it dropped to all fours when it ran.’

UFO literature abounds in well-documented evidence of the landings of non-humans in isolated places particularly in
South America
; notable experts appear gravely concerned at the invasion. Descriptions of these humanoids often exuding unpleasant odour at once recall those fantastic tales of devils reeking of sulphur, alleged to have consorted with witches in the Middle Ages, confessions under torture seem more than mere hallucinations as our psychiatrists insist, some correspond uncomfortably with apparitions reported by credible witnesses today. Legends of trolls in Norse faery-tales and circumstantial details of dwarfs and gnomes in Grimm's
'Deutsche Mythologic'
and his wonderful '
Marchen
' reveal a startling similarity between 'non-humans' recorded throughout history and some Extraterrestrials manifesting today. Such strange creatures are mentioned in the ancient literature of the East.

A commentary in the 'Nihongi' states:

‘The Celestial Dog or Tengu of modem Japanese superstition is a winged creature in human form with an exceedingly long nose which haunts mountain-tops and other secluded places.'

Similar humanoids appeared in Ancient Greece and were worshipped as Gods. Greek country folk delighted in the noisy, merry God, Pan, usually represented as a sensual Being with horns, puck-nose and goat's feet, often depicted as dancing and playing his reed flute. He loved the wild mountains and forests of
Arcady
, where he frolicked with the woodland-nymphs; sometimes travellers were scared by strange sounds in the wilderness. (Dare we compare the eerie UFO phenomena plaguing Warminster today?) which they attributed to Pan, their fear coined our word 'panic'.

Pan was a wonderful musician and son of Hermes (Mercury), a Space God. A tortuous though valid argument can be advanced to suggest that Pan was a generic term for humanoids similar to those bizarre Spacemen now plaguing the peasants of
Brazil
, his association with music in wild country may have been some poetical connotation for strident noises from Spaceships. An admittedly extravagant deduction yet not wholly untenable as the famous sighting of Philippides suggests.

In 490 BC Darius, Great King of Persia, who had conquered much of the
Middle East
, invaded
Greece
; the Persians subdued
Attica
and marched southwards to crush
Athens
. Herodotus relates:

'And firstly before they had yet left the city the captains sent to Sparta as messenger, Philippides, an Athenian, who was a runner and had practised this trade and as Philippides himself reported to the Athenians, Pan met him on Mount Parthenium above Tages. And Pan called Philippides by name and commanded him to ask the Athenians wherefore they paid him no attention though he was well-disposed to them and had often helped them already and should do so again. And Athenians believed it to be true and when their affairs had prospered, they founded a temple to Pan beneath the citadel and ever since his message they have propitiated him with sacrifices and with a torch-race every year.'