UFOs: Harbingers of the Anti-Christ?

Charles Upton is a Traditionalist writer with a rather colourful (and interesting!) background. He even claims to be "part of the diminutive Left-wing of the quite conservative Traditionalist world". A convert to Islam through a Sufi order, Upton is a friend of the perennial Huston Smith (pun intended), who is also something of a maverick in Traditionalist circles, equally at home with psychedelic left-liberals and the Moonie Jonathan Wells.

"Cracks in the great wall" is a critical look at the UFO scene, especially as it has developed post-Whitley Strieber. Apparently, most of the book is excerpted from a larger work by the same author, "The System of the Anti-Christ".

Upton doesn't deny the reality of UFOs or "aliens". However, he believes that UFOs cannot be explained from a purely materialist perspective. UFOs aren't nuts-and-bolts alien craft from other star systems, nor are they the result of a government conspiracy. Rather, UFOs are precisely what they seem to be: paranormal. Upton is particularly fond of Jacques Vallée, a French ufologist who saw similarities between UFO reports and older claims about fairies and other mythological creatures, and therefore drew the conclusion that they are, at bottom, the same paranormal phenomenon.

Upton believes that UFOs and their occupants come from the so-called subtle realm, a kind of astral double of our own material world. At one point, he refers to the "aliens" as Jinns. In Muslim tradition, Jinns are spirit-beings who are usually regarded as malevolent. A few Jinns are "Muslim", since they were converted by the prophet Muhammad, and Upton even mentions a sighting of a green elf-ship made by one of his friends on a hike. Most Jinns, however, are demonic. The author regards both the seemingly benevolent "space brothers" of neo-Theosophical lore, and the more obviously malevolent "Greys" who abduct humans, as equally satanic. The "space brothers" preach a false religion, and the author spends some time distancing Traditionalism from various Theosophical and New Age notions (including reincarnation). The book places strong emphasis on Guénon's concept of counter-initiation, a kind of inverted and perverted form of the true religion. Guénon believed that Theosophy was a form of counter-initiation, and Upton claims that the UFO phenomenon is a modern version of pretty much the same thing.

The author takes strong exception to John E. Mack's book "Abductions", a book I rather dislike myself. Mack's sees the abduction experiences as somehow positive, despite the bizarre abuse reported by the abductees. (A similar attitude is taken by Colin Wilson in "Alien Dawn".) Upton has a point here: *if* the abduction experiences are real - something Mack did indeed believe - then they are obviously demonic in character. It's disturbing that New Age denial of evil and perhaps a certain kind of "positive thinking" made Mack deny this. After all, alien abductions are "evil" even if regarded as purely hallucinatory! Upton also has a point that many people in today's culture are impressed by almost anything that seems spiritual or paranormal, regardless of how trivial or even "demonic" the manifestations might be. Much of the New Age scene is surely based on this craving after paranormal experience of whatever kind. Anything to disprove materialism!

But what is the UFO phenomenon ultimately about, according to the author? Upton quotes Guénon, who apparently believed that the material world has been "solidified" by the collective consciousness of our materialist civilization. However, at the end of our cosmic cycle, the great wall separating our world from the supernatural realms will crack. However, since modernity is preoccupied with "quantity" and the lower, the walls will crack beneath us rather than above us, making it possible for all kinds of demonic creatures and influences to flood our level of reality. Indeed, the walls are cracking in large parts because a growing number of people actively seek to conjure up the "Jinns". Another feature of modern civilization which makes us vulnerable to demonic deceptions is human cloning, which the author regards as an attempt to destroy the imago Dei in Man.

What it will ultimately lead to is less clear, but the author implies in his work that the apocalypse might be near. He quotes Seraphim Rose's book "Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future" at several points. (Rose was an American convert to Eastern Orthodox Christianity, but also a very controversial one even among his co-religionists.)

In plain English: UFOs are real, and the harbingers of the Anti-Christ.

"Cracks in the great wall" remind me in some ways of "Alien Identities" by Richard Thompson, a member of the ISKCON who also identifies many of the aliens with demonic beings, this time the Asuras from Hindu mythology, and also accuses them of preaching a phoney religion. The aliens, after all, don't seem to know about Krishna! However, it seems Thompson is less apocalyptic than Upton.

I recommend this book both to avid ufologists, and perhaps to students of comparative religion.