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An uncritical tribute to the recently deceased Erich von Däniken. Is this the "official" story c/o Däniken´s most devoted supporters?
I also believed in Erich´s speculations when I was 11 years old, but stopped doing it at the age of 13 or so. I prefer Carl Sagan, thank you. Besides, I simply couldn´t be as sycophantic as this content-creator. But...note the religious angle! As I suspected.
Fun fact: I became more positive towards Sagan when I realized that he might have been more pantheistic than many people realize. Amen!
Is the new "Game of Thrones" spin-off actually a comedy? Judging by the trailer. OK, maybe it´s worth watching. Perhaps the comic-parodic angle on the George R R Martin in-story universe will make it more bearable, somehow! LOL. What took you so long, R R?
Erich von Däniken (who passed away two days ago) actually had a YouTube channel. It´s still up, also containing a lot of non-Däniken material from the new agey streaming service Gaia. The above video was posted recently in December, but surely Däniken looks younger than 90 years old here?
Däniken´s books feels "so 1970´s" and I´m still surprised that he managed to survive into the 2020´s. Not the man himself, but his ideas. Personally, I´ve always seen him as a fossil from a much simpler time when everything seemed possible and every alternative idea looked somehow legit. I suppose Däniken managed to rebrand himself for the American market - which is considerable - and off it went. Yes, that would be "Ancient Aliens". And, I suppose, the Gaia streaming service.
I admit that I intensely dislike the idea of ancient astronauts visiting Earth. It´s almost ugly. You have to be a complete ignoramus to take this seriously. "If a Stone Age petroglyph looks like an astronaut in my subjective rendering, it must *be* an astronaut. QED". That´s the take. Even for 1970-ish counter-culture, this is breathtakingly naive.
At the same time, it´s fascinating how Däniken and other Schwärmers of this type simultaneously both dis-enchant and re-enchant the world. On one level, speculations about ancient aliens are atheist, since they suggest that the "gods" were really physical space aliens in nuts-and-bolts craft. Nothing supernatural to see here! But on another level, Däniken also creates a new mythological narrative. After all, nobody can see the aliens and only a select few believe in their existence. Science denies knowledge. Is it a conspiracy? In the clip above, Däniken even calls the aliens "teachers", a term many New Age believers will probably associate with "Ascended Masters".
It´s this new crypto-mythology which many people find so endearing. The seemingly atheist message subtly becomes a new religion. Erich von Däniken was it´s prophet and chief evangelizer.
As long as humans will send shit into orbit, that long Däniken´s crypto-religion will survive. In other words: probably not for another 90 years.
Only in America? The so-called Universal Life Church (ULC) is notorious for ordaining literally anyone to its "ministry", including Playboy employees and explicit atheists. OK, they don´t ordain dogs and cats. Or do they?
But...it turns out that even this super-inclusive Church has split and that most people "ordained" by it have really received their certificate from a breakaway faction informally known as The Monastery. It´s apparently a former gay-oriented night club housed in a vacated church building in Seattle?! They were offically recognized by the original ULC at one point, but then decided to strike out on their own, appropriating the ULC designation in the process. It seems the neo-ULC is currently larger than the paleo-version!
The ULC was founded over a century ago by one Kirby J Hensley. His actual religious beliefs seem somewhat unclear. Perhaps a soft-core version of New Thought coupled with a heavy dose of California-style liberalism? Or was it libertarianism? At one point, he explicitly referred to himself as a "con man". It´s rather obvious that his Church was really a business operation, since most people "ordained" also bought products through the ULC´s mail order service or websites. After Hensley´s death, the ULC apparently paid over a million dollars to the IRS in back taxes.
Apparently, there is also a third group based on Hensley´s ideas, but they don´t call themselves ULC and actually have three doctrinal statements (well, kind of), whereas the paleos and the neos have exactly none. I kind of wonder what would happen if people on the Alt Right would ironically get ordained by the ULCs as a provocation? Would that force these Churches to finally issue a formal creed openly espousing West Coast values? But perhaps the Alt Right isn´t *that* ironic, after all...
Some moderately entertaining tall tales about gigantic and truly monstrous snakes in South America. One of them a kilometer long?! And yes, space satellites see them. Are they rugous and squamous, as well?
