DANIEL S. writes:

Ufology has long been a favorite topic of mine. In my teenager years I had a near obsession with the subject, devouring every book and TV documentary I could find on UFOs, abductions, and conspiracy theories. I read everything from Whitley Strieber’s famous book Communion to William Cooper’s Behold a Pale Horse (in which he offers the theory of an alien takeover of Earth in league with the Illuminati, which he later rejected declaring the notion of an alien takeover a false flag for the New World Order). In my own time I have witnessed UFOs, though I always shied away from specifically defining what I had seen, not knowing whether I had seen something natural or supernatural in the night sky.

In recent years I had left the topic on the back burner of my spiritual and intellectual pursuits, but a year or so back had my interest renewed after reading Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future by Father Seraphim Rose and The System of the Antichrist by Charles Upton, a disciple of the Swiss metaphysician Frithjof Schuon. Both men speak of the UFO phenomenon not through the lens of materialism or modern science, but through the lens of traditional metaphysics. They point out that is only in modern times that man has such trouble coming to terms or understanding of what is ultimately a paranormal reality, both men associating UFO activity with what the Christian tradition has termed demons and the occult. Upton draws our attention to the observations of the French metaphysician Rene Guenon who speak of a “crack in the wall” between the material world and the other, psychic world as we near the ending of the age. Fr. Rose to links the increase in UFO incidents and the New Age cults that embrace them to an increase in demonic activity before the End Times.  All of them make the basic point that without traditional metaphysics we cannot truly understand the nature and agenda of UFOs.

I would encourage your readers interested in this subject to consider both of these books (though, I would warn that Fr. Seraphim Rose is a sectarian Eastern Orthodox and isn’t very sympathetic toward the Roman Catholic Church in his writings) and I am certainly willing to further flesh out the ideas of Rose, Guenon, and Upton if anyone is interested and doesn’t have the ability to read their writings in the near future.

Laura writes:

Fascinating. I am very interested. Thank you for the terrific reading suggestions.

I was reading a bit of the excerpt of Fr. Rose’s work you sent earlier today:

What then, is the meaning of the UFO phenomena of our time? Why have they appeared at just this time in history? To what future do they point?

First, UFO phenomena are but one part of an astonishing outpouring of “paranormal” events—what just a few years ago most people would have considered as “miracles.” Dr. Vallee, in The Invisible College, expresses the secular appreciation of this fact: “Observations of unusual events suddenly loom into our environment by the thousands” (p. 87), causing “a general shifting of man’s belief patterns, his entire relationship of the invisible” (p. 114), “Something is happening to human consciousness” (p. 34); the same “powerful force [that] has influenced the human race in the past is again influencing it now” (p. 14). In Christian language this means: a new demonic outpouring is being loosed upon mankind. In the Christian apocalyptic view (see the end of this book), we can see that the power which until now has restrained the final and most terrible manifestation of demonic activity on earth has been taken away (II Thess. 2:7), Orthodox Christian government and public order (Whose chief representative on earth was the Orthodox emperor) and the Orthodox Christian world view no longer exists as a whole, and satan has been “loosed out of his prison,” where he was kept by grace of the Church of Christ, in order to “deceive the nations” (Apoc. 20:7-8) and prepare them to worship antichrist at the end of the age. Perhaps never since the beginning of the Christian era have demons appeared so openly and extensively as today. The “visitors from outer space” theory is but one of the many pretexts they are using to gain acceptance for the idea that “higher beings” are now to take charge of the destiny of mankind. [cont.]

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Kevin M. writes:

As I read Daniel S.’s post re UFOlogy and its implications within the lens of Christianity, I recalled something that happened to me when I was living in Saudi Arabia, teaching English to young Saudi men. As a way of getting a conversation going in class (and I had to be very careful not to upset their hysterically sensitive Muslim beliefs), I asked them if they had heard of Bigfoot. Not one. The Yeti? Crop circles? Nope. ESP? I ran the gamut of things that were huge in paperback sales and drive-in fare during the 1970s.

Then I asked about the Bermuda Triangle.

Every single student knew of that. They were fascinated with it. The head demon in the Islamic world is Iblees, and his throne is upon the surface of the sea. That’s where all those ships and planes went.

UFOs? Old news. “Those are just the jinn being chased out of Heaven by angels who throw meteors at them. Jinn like to eavesdrop on conversations between Allah and His angels.”

Case closed.

Joseph L. Ebbecke writes:

Allow me to second Daniel S.’s recommendation of Charles Upton’s The System of Antichrist. He covers UFO’s in Chapter 7 of this wide ranging work, which is basically a dissection of New Age and other counterfeit spiritualities in the modern world.

Cracks in the Great Wall, also by Upton, is a much shorter treatment of the same material in The System of Antichrist. It may be attractive to those whose primary interest is UFO’s.

I was led to read The System of Antichrist by a review written by the late John Reilly. It was a fruitful introduction; Upton has written a number in interesting books.

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