An examination of some mythological traditions, with relevance to contemporary ufology

From MUFOB volume 4, number 2, June 1971

Since the publication of Vallée’s Passport to Magonia there has been a growing awareness that the UFO phenomenon belongs to a wider context of events, that possess a deep mythological significance for the human species.

This myth may be summarised as a belief in a fabulous land inhabited by supernatural beings, who can and do intervene in the affairs of men. They may ‘take’ men and women to their land, as either mates or servants or to perform a special tasks. They may live among men for a time, but are eventually called back to their homeland, They can take an interest in the affairs of individuals, families or nations, either to aid or to harm. Above all they are powerful:

We could out off half the human race, but would not… for we are expecting salvation

a member of the gentry tells an Irish seer (1). For this reason they must be held in respect; one should not conduct oneself in an unseemly manner in their presence or in the places sacred to them. A belief which persists to this day:

I favour the idea that the watchers have to be somehow in tune with whatever controls UFOs before they will appear… preferably a small harmonious group should sit quietly and think about UFOs

writes Janet Gregory in Pegasus magazines in a recent discussion on skywatches (2) feeling that the general chit-chat and blaring transistor radios are an affront to the inhabitants of Magonia.

There are many intriguing strands of belief connected with the general myth of Fairyland, as John Rimmer has pointed out. (3) In many respects one of the most important of these myths is that of the divine maid, who can seduce men and take them to the unknown country, or as in the tales we shall explore in this article can impart to them messages of great import. This maiden is simultaneously a mermaid-nereid figure and a sun goddess. The sun is the origin of the archetype of the Mandala, (The radiance of the sun is seen as a symbol of spiritual wholeness) with which the UFO is so identified as is the Grail legend. (4) In this way we can trace a mythological line of profound importance.

In South Uist in the haunted Western Isles, tradition has it that on Easter Day from the peak of Ben More the sun can be seen to dance, to celebrate the Resurrection, according to the Christianised version of the legend, which in fact is far older, and must date from the days of sun worship. One Easter day a widow climbed the mountain to see for herself:

She said the sun came above the horizon a dazzling blaze of gold, and when it reached the crest of the great hills… it began to change colour green it became, then purple and red, a deep blood red and white, clear intense white, and at last white-gold, like the Glory of God Himself. And it was dancing, dancing up and down, stepping it from peak to peak, from hilltop to hilltop.

The price of this mystic vision, as with that extracted from those who see the enchanted secrets of Fairyland, is blindness

From this we are impelled towards the Fatima story (4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11). Here three peasant children [above] encountered in the Cova da Iria, a large creek, a celestial woman. It was the 13th of May, 1917 when, tending sheep, they saw a bright flash of light. then, near an oak tree a woman materialised in a globe of fire. According to the children:

“The wonderful lady looked young, Her dress white as snow and, tied to her neck with a gold band, wholly covered her body. A white cloak with a golden edge covered her head. Near her hands was a rosary of pearly grains. The face was circled by a golden halo.” (8)

The lady delivered a message, then departed in the luminous globe. Again on the 13th of June, 13th July and 13th September the lady reappeared to the children. By the 13th September a good crowd had gathered but only the children saw the lady, Some (but by no means all) saw an ‘aeroplane of light’ coming from and returning to the sun in the east, with strange flakes which dissolved when touched, dropped from the sky. The following month, the cumulation of this fantastic vision came the famous Dance of the Sun. At midday the sun came through the clouds, glowing with a clear brilliance. Suddenly it seemed to spin wildly, and as it did so it changed colour, yellow, green, blue, then deep blood-red, falling towards the earth, the temperature rising. Then suddenly the spell was broken, the sun was back in a cloudless sky. While this spectacle was taking place the lady again appeared to the children, giving them messages they had to deliver to the great ones of the world.

Only the children saw the lady; not all the crowd even saw the dance of the sun. (10) Something Which those who attribute the phenomena to electromagnetic spaceships have failed to account for. About this event Michell writes:

There is a sort of fairy-tale atmosphere about the whole story. The lady appears to have been one of those supernatural figures like the attendant of the Holy Grail who can appear to one person and be invisible to another. She revealed herself above or by a tree like the angels who visited Joan of Arc or like the legendary local goddesses of pre-Christian Portugal. (4)

It is well to bear these views in mind, for such visions occur outside the traditional religious setting. Two centuries before Fatima a strange rumour circulated in the France of Louis XIV. It concerned a wonderful apparition perceived by a Marechal Ferraut (12, 13). Riding home one evening through a dark forest in Provence, he passed a blasted oak. There he saw a strange light.

Between this tree and a sapling, the intervening space consisting of about a dozen yards, stood a tall figure absolutely still and apparently inanimate. It seemed at first to be shaped out of transparent cloud… However, rapidly becoming more and more substantial, It soon developed into a very beautiful woman. She was dressed in white, the most splendid jewels glittered on her arms and breasts and something like a tiara upon her lovely golden hair… (12)

A strange paralysis, such as that which affects UFO percipients, gripped him. The strange figure announced that it was the spirit of the King’s late wife. It commanded him to take a message to the King, This consisted in part of a message about an apparition the King himself had seen in the same forest thirty years before. He promised to deliver the message, under the most terrible threats. Yet Ferrault had greater fear of the King, and he was to encounter the apparition twice again before he carried out the mission. The King, it was said, paid him highly to keep his silence as to the full nature of the message.

The reader will already have seen the parallels with Fatima and other visions of Mary — the tree, the woman of awesome beauty the secret to the leaders. The differences too — the vision of the children is one of quiet beauty, that of the old warrior, awesome and possessing of a terrible power.

Midway in time between these two stories, there occurred in a Maine coastal village near Machiasport a strange vision which seems to create a link between the legends such as Fatima and those of modern psychic research, (14,15). Towards the end of August 1799 a strange voice was heard in the house of a sea captain, Paul Blaisdell, followed a few months later (in January 1800) by an apparition of a beautiful woman clad in brilliant white raiment, who floated’ just above the ground, claiming to be a Mrs George Butler (deceased) and summoned her ‘husband’ and ‘father’ to prove the point. The purpose of the visitations was to force George Butler to marry the captain’s daughter Lydia, a purpose which was eventually accomplished.

The descriptions of what happened during the period are incredible. The apparition herded large numbers of people into the Blaisdell’s cellar (On one occasion there were more than two hundred present,) and delivered sermons, interspersed with prophecies, all of which eventually came to pass. There is a description of one of these lectures. The writer, a young woman guest was awoken by knocks on the door and went to the cellar, where twenty people were already assembled:

“Then I heard a voice speaking… it was shrill, but mild and pleasant.” Then there appeared a shapeless mass of light, growing into the figure of a woman, which then passed between the ranks of the spectators, talking all the time. At last it became shapeless, “expanded everywhere” and then vanished in a moment. The Rev. Abraham Cummings, who published the case, (14) had an even more curious experience. Told of the apparition he was sceptical and went to see for himself:

About twelve rods ahead of him there was a slight knoll or rise in the ground, and he could see a group of white rocks on the slope, showing dimly against the dark turf… Two or three minutes later he looked up… One of those white rocks had risen off the ground, and had now taken the shape of a globe of light with a rosy tinge. As he went towards it ho kept his eye on it for fear it might disappears but he had not gone more than five paces when the glowing mass flashed right to where he was (and) resolved itself into the shape and dress of a woman, but small, the size of a child of seven. He thought, “You are not tall enough for the woman who has been appearing among us.” Immediately the figure expanded to normal size… and now she appeared glorious, with rays of light shining from her head all about, and reaching to the ground. (15)

Struck dumb by joy mingled with terror Cummings stood silent, the figure then faded. The world seemed dull, commonplace, compared to its glory, he later recorded.

The inhabitants of Magonia can change their shape at will: “They are shape changers, they can grow small or grow large; they can take what shape they may choose.” (16) There are parallels to these stories. The Waterdales, Northfleet, Kent, for example, where, in a bedroom, the ghostly figure of a small girl growing to the size of a woman was seen. (17) Again there is Warminster, a maelstrom of embryo mythologies where a member of Shuttlewood’s investigating team was ‘taken’ by tiny beings who grew to normal size, then reduced him, with themselves. (18) (The Sidhe take people body and soul thus transforming them into one of their own.) They returned him but he was never the same again, and began to waste away. In other days it would have been said he was a ‘changeling’, for the Sidhe never give up those they have taken.

Those who are taken go to Magonia itself, the enchanted world, located according to various cultures under the earth, or sea, in the sky, or on strange other worlds, Always it is the Shangri-La, just over the horizon, so near and yet so far Few will go willingly into this paradise, for once entered there is no return. So ‘they’ will take men by force, especially those who have offended against their code, or who have disturbed their secret places. One such tale of attempted kidnapping is told by

Elliot O’Donnell the well-known ghost hunter. (19) A relative of O’Donnell (Mr B.) was driving in his side-car once night along a road from Hospital to Ballynanty in Limerick, a route notorious as a haunt of the Sidhe. He had fallen drowsy when he was suddenly awakened by his driver-servant clutching hold of him:

The horse had come to a dead stop, and was standing still, shivering, whilst the roadside was crowded with a number of tiny shadowy figures that were surging round the car trying to drag the unfortunate drivers who was quite frantic with terror, from his seat. Mr B, however, concluding that what he saw could only be the fairies, of whose existence he had hitherto been very sceptlcal, seized the reins and urged the horse forward. Meanwhile his servant seemed to be still paralysed with fright, and it was not until they were well out of sight that the man found himself once again in possession of his tongue and normal faculties… Then he described what had befallen him… He was driving along quite all right, till the horse suddenly stopped, and when he looked down to see what was the cause of it, he perceived a crowd of fairies, who rushed at him, and tried to drag him off the car. He said their touch was so cold it benumbed him, but by praying hard he held on. The cause of the attack was apparent…

“It was all because we came on them, sir, when they were dancing. They won’t be disturbed when they are at their revels and enjoying themselves. Had they got me down into the road maybe I should have lost my sight or my hearing or the use of my limbs, and in any case my soul.” (19)

Had such a story been told today there would be no doubt that it would be interpreted as a ufonaut kidnapping attempt. It is equally true of course that in earlier times the adventure of Gustafsson and Rydberg for example (20) would have been seen as an attempt by the trolls or watermen to take humans to their underground home.

It is clear that the supposedly simple UFO phenomenon is in fact incalculably complex. Whatever pretty little theory we care to dream up never covers the whole spectrum of events. Pieces of the jigsaw do fall into place; it is evident for example, that the modern UFO legend is an integral part of an immensely old mythological tradition. some facets of which we have presented here. We may in fact regard the UFO as an archetypical symbol derived from the sun at one level of ‘reality’.

However this certainly is not the whole meaning behind the myth or the reality. Can we interpret the phenomenon as subjective? If so, can the human sub-conscious create such a complex hallucination, or would it have to be implanted by some extra-mundane intelligence, and what kind of mind could accomplish that, and for what purpose? If the phenomenon is objective even more questions seem to be raised, among the simplest being: how could any objective phenomenon be visible to only a limited number of people contiguous to one another. Certainly if the phenomenon is a result of the activities of an extra-mundane intelligence it is operating at a far more complex and subtle level than most exponents of the ETH are prepared to concede.

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References: 

1.  Evans-Wentz, W.Y. The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, quoted in Jacques Vallée, Passport to Magonia, 1969.
2.  Gregory, Janet. Letter to the Editor, Pegasus, vol.2, no.8.
3.  Rimmer, John. ‘On the conceptual connection between fairies and UFO entities’, MUFOB, vol. 2, no.1.
4.  Michell, John. Flying Saucer Vision, 1967, especially chapters 4, 5 and 6. The quotations are from chapter 5.
5.  Swire, Otto F. The Outer Hebrides and Their Legends, 1966. Quotation from chapter 7.
6.  Vallée, Jacques. Anatomy of a Phenomenon, 1966.
7.  Thomas, Paul (i.e. Paul Misraki) Flying Saucers Through the Ages, 1965.
8.  Ribera, Antonio. ‘What happened at Fatima?’, Flying Saucer Review, vol.10, no.2.
9.  Inglefield, Gilbert. ‘Fatima: the three alternatives’, Flying Saucer Review, vol.10, no.3.
10.  Paris, S. A. ‘Fatima again’, Flying Saucer Review, vol.12, no.1, letter to the editor,
11.  Stearn, Jesse. The Door to the Future, 1964
12.  O’Donnell, Elliot. Family Ghosts, 1965
13.  O’Donnell, Elliot, Ghosts With a Purpose, 1963.
14.  Cummins, Abraham, Immortality proved by Testimony of Sense, 1859. Quoted in:
15.  Stevens, William, Oliver, Unbidden Guests, 1949
16.  Gregory, Lady Augusta, Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland, 1920; quoted in ‘The UFO is alive and well and living in fairyland’, MUFOB, vol.3, no.6.
17.  Sims, Victor, and George Owen. ‘the case of the haunted council house’, Sunday Mirror, November 20, 1961.
18.  Shuttlewood, Arthur. Warnings from Flying Friends, 1968
19.  O’Donnell, Elliot. Ghostland, 1925
20.  Steiger, Brad. Strangers from the Skies, 1966

For a review of a more recent discussion of the Fatima phenomenon see: http://magonia.haaan.com/2008/god-and-the-sun-at-fatima-stanley-l-joki/ 

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