Alien Abductions and Aleister Crowley





"Be that as it may, at least one such 'intelligence' was brought into physical manifestation via the Magickal Portal they created. (A portal in this context is a 'magickally' created rent in the fabric of time and space.) Crowley maintained the picture is actually a portrait and drawn from real life. This entity either called itself 'Lam,' or was named 'Lam' by Crowley. Either way, he considered it to be of inter-dimensional origin, which was the term then for extraterrestrial."

If, as I suspect, our paranormal visitors have conceived a technology of consciousness, then arguing whether manifestations such as "Lam" are due to technology or "magick" becomes meaningless. Arthur C. Clarke's maxim -- "Any sufficiently advanced technology will appear indistinguishable from magic" -- never seemed more apt.

Lam might represent the trickster archetype at work. Crowley thought he was dealing with something magickal; today's CEIII witnesses think they've seen beings from some other star system. But perhaps the phenomenon is neither (or both).

Weirdly, there's evidence the popular "Gray" alien face is hardwired into our brains for purposes not yet understood. Neurologist Michael Persinger has tested the effects of magnetic fields on the brains of volunteers, and some of them have described seeing elongated humanoid figures, accompanied by the "sense of presence" experienced by abductees. So it's possible the brain itself is responsible for some "extraterrestrial" imagery -- maybe because the stimulus is too bizarre to deal with directly. Or maybe Persinger has inadvertently triggered the same "magick" employed by Crowley using the tools of modern science.

Liminal UFOs and the alien raison d'etre

Why don't aliens make open contact? Why do they seem content with taunting our aircraft and haunting lonely night roads? Why the elusiveness that's characterized the UFO phenomenon since the modern era of sightings began in the late 1940s?

There are a multitude of reasons a visiting civilization would refrain from "landing on the White House lawn," foremost among them the potentially debilitating effect open contact might wreak on terrestrials. History shows that relatively advanced sea-faring cultures topple less developed cultures, in part by collapsing defining assumptions and rendering cultural self-hood obsolete. If we're of any research value to a visiting civilization then interfering at the macro-sociological level might threaten to destroy thousands of years of patient work. The paradox is that UFOs do exhibit an interest in our activities. But it's a cryptic, behind-the-scenes sort of interest: clandestine-seeming at first take but, on closer inspection, almost alarmingly conspicuous, like a silent plea for attention.

One idea to account for this behavior is that the UFO intelligence somehow hinges on our belief in it (a notion that assumes an esoteric origin instead of the more common "nuts and bolts" extraterrestrial hypothesis). In this scenario, the UFOs are engaged in an elaborate act of psychic propaganda, preparing our collective unconscious for the idea of "others," ET or otherwise. It's well worth remembering that humanity's interaction with apparent visitors is hardly limited to alleged space travelers in the 20th century; Jacques Vallee's classic "Passport to Magonia" offers strong support to the (admittedly slippery) prospect that the UFO intelligence was functioning under the guise of faerie lore in Europe centuries before the idea of spaceflight became fashionable.

It's possible that UFOs would like to initiate something like formal contact but are restrained from doing so by the physics of perception, as Whitley Strieber has suggested. So the pageant in our skies might be an ongoing indoctrination, an attempt to become more substantial (in our universe, at least) so that a more meaningful dialogue can be reached at some indeterminate point in the future. One way of achieving this might be to cultivate a milieu of incipience, in which nonhuman contact (or disclosure) seems inevitable. In fact, this illusory notion of an impending ufological "smoking gun" has left a pronounced signature on the history of UFO research, often forcing investigators to take sides in a fruitless (if colorful) ideological battle that reduces the UFO enigma to trite discussion of galactic federations and Orwellian government oversight.

If UFOs are attempting to breach our universe, our ingrained sense of disbelief might be preventing them in some arcane quantum mechanical sense. Strieber has argued that official denial of the phenomenon is designed to thwart a potential invasion of nonhuman intelligence, in which case it seems an enduring stalemate has been reached (with occasional power-plays made by both the UFOs and earthly officialdom). This idea is similar to the citizens of the Planck Brane in Rudy Rucker's science fiction epic "Frek and the Elixir." In Rucker's novel, the inhabitants of a parallel universe must accumulate a critical level of prestige and notoriety or else cease to exist. The ruling class consists of six individuals who are so well-known and casually accepted by the other Planck Braners that they persist with their individuality intact while their fellows vanish during periodic "renormalization storms"; only when the main characters deride and purposefully ignore them to they fade into the quantum background. Strieber takes a related idea and runs with it in his horror novel "The Forbidden Zone," which depicts a reality-bending alien presence set loose upon a small town in the wake of a quantum experiment gone awry.




"Lam"


The overriding theme, prevalent in occult literature, is that our universe is permeable and can, under specific circumstances, provide a channel to unseen realms (an idea that's remarkably similar to contemporary thought on wormhole travel). Of immediate interest is Aleister Crowley's "Lam," a "magickal" entity who bears an uncanny resemblance to today's "Grays." Unlike Lam, who functioned as a mentor and paraphysical guru, the Grays are typically assumed to be dispassionate ET scientists; if Crowley were practicing his consciousness experiments today, would he be greeted by dome-headed beings in skin-tight jumpsuits? (Perhaps it pays for aliens to stay in touch with predominant memes if it entails making a lasting impression. The presence of awkward, quasi-human "Men In Black," chronicled in detail by Jenny Randles and John Keel, suggest that aliens may have already infiltrated -- perhaps in order to refine the art of passing as typical Earthlings. If so, what's the ultimate agenda?)

We're left with a surreal residue of encounters and sightings that describe an intelligence operating at the periphery of human consciousness. Whether this is due to deliberate intent or can be attributed to obstruction (willful or innocuous) remains one of ufology's most significant unanswered questions.

Do aliens smoke cigarettes?

In a follow-up to her post about an unusual cigarette-purchasing "woman" (briefly discussed here), "Kartott" has offered further description that underscores the unconventional nature of her brief encounter:

Though I could not see her eyes due to the large Jackie-O style sunglasses she wore, other aspects were evident: an unusually long pointy chin. Exaggerated cheekbones out of proportion to the rest of the face. Practically no lips, only enough to discern that there was any mouth. A nose that was almost not there: there was very little structure to it, a small bridge area, and some structure around the nostrils, but not much.

Consciously or not, Kartott is describing a being strikingly similar to the woman supposedly encountered by abductee Antonio Villas Boas, whose experience is described here. Indeed, the pointed chin, exaggerated cheekbones and vestigial nose and mouth are commonly reported characteristics of ostensibly "alien" entities, and crop up with compelling frequency in the UFO literature. The visage has become synonymous with that of the "Gray," a commonly portrayed UFO occupant type with massive black eyes and fetal characteristics. (The Grays are often described as sexless or even robotic, stirring discussion that they're in fact biological robots or even genetically atrophied human time-travelers from our own ecologically impoverished future.)





Although the being described by Villas Boas is perhaps the most obvious example of an apparently alien woman, one has to look no further than the cover of Whitley Strieber's iconic 1987 best-seller "Communion" for another. (Often assumed to depict a male extraterrestial, the text of "Communion" and subsequent books by Strieber emphasizes that the being on the book's cover is female.)





In a disquieting twist, researchers have noted a conspicuous resemblance between the "Communion" alien and "Lam," the "magickal" entity allegedly summoned by controversial occultist Aleister Crowley. Like Strieber's female contact and Villas Boas' seductress, Lam's portrait emphasizes a memorably tapered face with dramatically pointed chin and minimal nose and mouth, suggesting a common origin. (At least some of the infamous "Men In Black" would also seem to fit the mold.)

Kartott's "cigarette lady" seems to fit the pattern. Even the purchase of cigarettes -- however seemingly preposterous -- is in keeping with reports by self-proclaimed abductees, who have described the smell of cigarette smoke in the context of their encounters. (The distinctively repellent odor of sulfur is a more common variant, with both mythological and folkloric antecedents.)

I propose -- tentatively -- that the beings featured above are "alien" only in the sense that they seem exceedingly strange to us. Their predominantly humanoid manner and ability to function in "normal" human reality -- if fleetingly -- argue that they're denizens of our own planet. Perhaps they're materializations of the sort postulated by John Keel in such books as "The Mothman Prophecies" and "The Eighth Tower."

Of course, the unmistakably elfin qualities described by UFO witnesses suggest Jacques Vallee's heretical notion of a "multiverse" inhabited by all manner of humanoid intelligences: a hypothesis that begs a scientific analysis of unlikely "contact" reports attributed to indigenous beings such as fairies.

Alternatively, liminal beings like Kartott's cigarette woman might represent a race of human-alien "hybrids," as argued by Budd Hopkins and David Jacobs. Apparently unable to pass among us for great lengths of time, the hybrids' overseers might be content to allow their creations to practice certain basic social skills in a relatively unbounded setting.

Of course, the answer could be a fusion of any of the above possibilities . . . or we could be dealing with a phenomenon generated at least partly by the psyche. The supposed aliens that witnesses see within and outside of UFOs might be examples of what Dr. John Mack termed "reified metaphor": a physical intrusion of repressed archetypal forces. If so, it's all-too-tempting to speculate that the daimonic reality traditionally accessed by shamanic cultures has begun to spill over into waking consciousness, manifesting as a veritable onslaught of beings quietly seeking to reassert their influence.

In a mechanistic society, the "Other" might find itself faced with extinction; violations of restricted airspace and face-to-face encounters with unsuspecting observers could amount to a kind of existential assertion, begging the possibility that our capacity for belief is somehow integral to our visitors' reality . . . if, indeed, "visitors" is the proper term.

Note: This is the latest in a series of speculative essays that I'm using as "source-code" for a book titled "The Cryptoterrestrials." If interested, you can find related musings here, here, here, and here.

The following is from an anonymous Amazon review of John Carter's "Sex and Rockets: The Occult World of Jack Parsons":

"According to Thelemic legend, in 1918 Aleister Crowley came into contact with a interdimensional entity named Lam, who by the way is a dead ringer for the popular conception of the 'alien grey ' depicted on the cover of Whitley Strieber's Communion. From this purported encounter, some have inferred that the industrious Mr. Crowley intentionally opened a portal of entry--through the practice of a magick ritual, The Amalantrah Working--which allowed the likes of Lam and other 'alien greys' a passageway onto the Earth plane."







The review goes on to mention the possibility that atomic blasts may have allowed the "Grays" access to our universe by creating a rift between dimensions. Far-out? You bet. But I've always been intrigued that the first flying saucer wave coincided with the onset of the Cold War and bomb-testing in the Southwest.

One possibility is that the UFO intelligence in some sense originates here on Earth and felt threatened by us, thus the decision to "go public" . . . if fleetingly. They might be here to save us from ourselves -- a message drilled into innumerable contactees and abductees -- but it's perhaps just as likely that the "aliens" want to preserve the planet for themselves.* This suggests a hierarchy of unseen intelligences very much like John Keel's "superspectrum."

*Although just maybe atomic weapons were (and are) a direct threat to our invisible neighbors. If some "aliens" indeed originate from the nether-regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, hard radiation from nuclear blasts (such as gamma rays) could pose a grave physical threat. This might help explain accounts of UFOs interfering with ICBM silos and other military installations. Could it be that they're actually afraid of us, despite their evident superiority?