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the MIB
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The Men in Black and Their Magical Origins
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...we are dealing with a full-size world-mystery and a real fight between the Black and White Brotherhoods.
-- Frater Achad, 1948
Throughout medieval times, a major current of thought distinct from official religion existed, culminating in the works of the alchemists and hermetics. Among such groups were to be found some of the early modern scientists and men remarkable for the strength of their independent thinking and their adventurous life, such as Paracelsus. The nature of the beings who mysteriously appeared, dressed in shiny garments or covered with dark hair, and with whom communication was so hard to establish intrigued these men intensely.
-- Jacques Vallee, Passport to Magonia
In 1947 the CIA was organized and the first UFO cases burst upon the American media landscape as "flying saucers." In that year, also, the first modern visitation by the infamous Men in Black took place in which a witness, one Harold Dahl, was silenced. From that point on, a pattern began to emerge.
The Men In Black legend is perennial; that it shows up in connection with the UFO lore should come as no surprise. UFOlogy bizarro chronicler John Keel (
The records of demonology are filled with striking parallels ... the general descriptions of the vampires themselves are identical to the 'men in black.' The dark skin and angular, Oriental-like faces were commonly reported ...
The Autobiography of Malcolm X described Malcolm's encounter with an MIB in prison:
He had on a dark suit I remember. I could see him as plainly as I see anyone I look at. He wasn't black, and he wasn't white. He was light-brown skinned, an Asiatic cast of countenance, and he had oily black hair...
It is interesting that the celebrated film "Malcolm X" chooses to imply that this figure was Nation of Islam leader Elijah Mohammed. While Elijah Mohammed and his mysterious teacher Wallace Fard (who vanished without a trace) had come out of High Degree Prince Hall Freemasonry, and certainly knew some of the esoteric secrets, the being Malcolm X described is more in accord with Aleister Crowley's description of the praterhuman intelligence Aiwass than of Elijah Mohammed.
In the shadows, the Men in Black had long lurked, biding their time, waiting. Here and there, now and then, some people thought they had seen them, but they weren't quite certain; perhaps they more sense than actually regarded them...
Fourteen years earlier, the shadowy visitors had shown themselves openly. Then they had descended upon flying saucer buffs, threatening and terrorizing them, hushing them up...
Al K. Bender, a UFO researcher, had been the first known victim ...he performed a certain experiment and the lurking horror came. It began with glowing blue lights. Then came the stranger with the luminous eyes in the darkened theatre, and later on a dusky street. It culminated when the Men in Black, three of them, paid him a visit ....
-- Gray Barker, The
UFOlogist Gray Barker got his one and only best-selling book in detailing the Albert K. Bender story and the world-wide wave of silencings. They Knew Too Much about the Flying Saucers was an international success. It was widely assumed that the Men in Black were either government agents or extraterrestrials, but as researchers Wilgus and Keel have shown, the eye in the triangle was sometimes their only insignia, while my own research showed startling parallels to certain black magick rituals in medieval times which provoked visitations by what was often called "the Man in Black" -- widely understood to be the Devil himself. Even Barker noted that Albert K. Bender's experiments were more like a magical conjuration than an attempt at extraterrestrial communication. Any initiated magician reading Bender's accounts would recognize the elements of magical conjuration immediately.
Maybe, I mused, we were dealing more with magick than with Martians.
The Black Lodge
Mathers, of course, carried on; but he had fallen. The Secret Chiefs cast him off; he fell into deplorable abjection, even his scholarship deserted him. He published nothing new and lived in sodden intoxication till death put an end to his long misery. He was a great man in his way...
-- Aleister Crowley
What I am out to complain of is what I seriously believe to be an organized conspiracy of the Black Lodges to prevent people from thinking...
-- Aleister Crowley, Magick Without Tears
Often when a person or institution allied with the historical Great White Brotherhood approaches success (variously defined) or comes into possession of certain aspects of transcendent wisdom, Something Intervenes. That something has been defined as the Man in Black, the Men In Black, the black lodges, or The Black Lodge. The latter term most nearly accommodates my own view. That they need to do this, and that they often fail in their efforts, is itself an indication that (A) the Black Lodge is opposed by Something Else, equally as strong, and (B) they are afraid of something we might find out -- about them, about their opposition, about ourselves or all three.
The story of our interaction with the UFOnauts begins with the Qabalistic Tree of Life, and the Chakra system of the body.
According to the primal occult and frequently secret and subversive view, the manifest universe emerges from an Ultimate NOT-Thing, a Consciousness or Beingness beyond words or expressions sometimes referred to as the Unmanifest or The Limitless Light. This Unmanifest cannot be understood in the external sense, but can be Known in the Gnostic sense by the initiate or perfected sentient being, the Übermensch. It can be plugged into.
For reasons equally inexpressible, this uniqueness unfolds itself in manifestation. Thus, the limitless light becomes a series of emanations or expressions or Intelligences that devolve increasingly toward our material form of existence and thus towards accessibility in the conventional sense. But the manifestations also increasingly become subject to subdivision into arbitrary concepts such as "good" and "evil" as these are commonly understood. And they also become closer and closer in form and content to our own mundane reality, though in the relativity of things, these Higher Intelligences may seem unspeakably powerful, mythic and divine.
The Gnostic view has tended to be that what the external world of the conventional person understands as god, devil demon, and angel or, more recently, extraterrestrial beings are, in fact, such emanations of the unspeakable ultimate. Indeed, the ancient Gnostics saw the 'god' and 'devil' of conventional theology as an ego-maddened entity under the delusion that it, indeed, IS the Ultimate Being! The late Phil Dick, in his last Gnostic allegorical fiction, eventually settled on the name "V.A.L.I.S." or "Vast Active Living intelligence System" for this being or Demiurge. He wrestled through his literary career and secret life as a Christian Gnostic philosopher with whether VALIS was a benevolent, if machine-like deity of a sort, or an insane extraterrestrial supercomputer.
Throughout recorded history, and, from the evidence of primitive objects and works of art, for aeons before, certain humans have had the capacity to tune into or channel various of these Higher Intelligences with varying degrees of accuracy. These humans have been our Seers, Oracles and Prophets. It appears, in fact, that much of the source-material of all religions comes from such channelings, including, arguably, The Book of Revelation, The Book of Mormon, and The Book of the Law.
Concurrently, and not coincidentally, the two great initiatory bodies, or orders have been generated and regenerated throughout history. The so-called Great White Brotherhood, when undistorted, appears (according to legend) guided by Intelligences associated with the dual star system Sirius or Sothis in some manner [see The Sirius Mystery by Robert Temple for a discussion of the Sirius connection -- also Kenneth Grant's Outside the Circles of Time discusses the matter from a magical perspective]. This brotherhood also seems to have the purpose of uplifting human character and initiating biological and social evolution designed to move towards identification with Ultimate Being. What is sometimes called "the Black Lodge," which we may associate with the Gnostic Demiurge or Phil Dick's VALIS, is generated to keep humanity in a state of materialist trance and evolutionary stagnation.
Mystics generally consider that understanding the motivations of either of these Sources may be beyond our knowledge or even our capabilities. Existentially, however, it may be stated with confidence that one is dedicated to keep us in subjugation, misery and stagnation; the other to our betterment and enrichment though both at times have made claims to being our saviors.
There are keys for decoding which is which -- for example, rituals that have been generated or handed down to the magical lodges of modern times which refer to a star or the stars directly or indirectly tend to be transformative and thus of the Great White Brotherhood. Ciphers for decoding messages between the black lodges and their alien sponsors have always existed. But confusions of a deliberate nature exist; the ancient Gnostics uncovered a cipher which clearly indicates that the story of the Garden of Eden in its conventional form is turned on its head. The Serpent is clearly the symbol of Knowledge, Wisdom, the Kundalini Yogic force, the Will-current -- that is, it is the symbol of Liberation and Self-Mastery. The jealous "gods," as read in the original manuscripts, are clearly the forces of blockage, self-denial and repression -- which is to say, the Intelligences governing the Black Lodge. This Knowledge of Good and Evil and Life and Death has been the Terrible Secret of Initiates throughout history, recorded in ciphers and myths, and passed on through ritual.
The Black Lodge may be defined as the organized institution guided by VALIS for the purpose of holding back human evolution and keeping a slave mentality in place. Its human leaders are the "black brothers" who are not to be mistaken for mere black magicians. Indeed, Aleister Crowley observed that "the 'Black Magician' or Sorcerer is hardly even a distant cousin of the ' Black Brother.' The difference between a sneak-thief and a Hitler is not too bad an analogy..." The Black Brothers are highly advanced adepts of the Art who have simply, as the popular phrase goes, "been seduced by the dark side of the Force." At certain times and places in history -- for example, medieval Tibet or, in more modern times, Nazi Germany -- the Black Lodge has operated more or less openly with characteristic occult symbols of human skulls, lightning bolts, etc. out in the open. But like the Great White Brotherhood that it actively seeks to subvert and overthrow (as it did in the time of the Knights Templar), the Black Lodge has generally communicated by cipher and myth, in silence and secrecy, often within religious, fraternal and political institutions dedicated to the status quo.
In the West since at least the early 18th century, the Black Lodge has tended to operate along crypto-Masonic lines, and its development has tended to coincide with and mirror that of the Great White Brotherhood. This development may, in fact, be attributed to a cosmic principle of "equal generation of forces." Thus, the birth of the modern form, as the fraternity of the knights militant of the New Aeon in the cultural and political turbulence of Germany in the 1890s, may fairly (along with the coincident peak in the development of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the Universal Gnostic Church) be characterized as the resurgence of the Great White Brotherhood and its rejuvenation out of the degeneration of classical speculative freemasonry. This coincides closely with the "Great Airship Scare" of 1897.
At almost the same moment, and in the same unhappy land, the Black Lodge reasserted itself in the form of such fraternities as the Vril Society and the Thule Group. The full story of the Vril Society, the Thule Group, the Ahnenerbe, the Schwarze Orden (The Black Order) and other manifestations of the Black Lodge in the pre-Nazi and Nazi era has yet to be told, though Pauwels and Bergier take an informal stab at it in The Morning of the Magicians. Rudolf Hess, the last known member of the Thule Group, told Jack Fishman (The Seven Men of Spandau) that Thule leader and occult initiate General Karl Haushofer (1869-194 6) "was the magician, the secret Master..." of Nazi Germany. Hess believed in the cause to the end of his life. The last prisoner at Spandau, Hess died at the significant age of 93, proclaiming his loyalty to the Thule ideal to the very end. The period, in the middle 1930s, in which these groups attained their greatest, ruinous power over the German state coincides closely with the reports of "ghost rockets" over Northern Europe.
The British Raj in India, and the European Christian colonization of the East in general, had all but destroyed the classical Tantrism and Illuminism of the Great White Brotherhood in the East, finding such institutions as Temple Prostitution, chakra-puji, Shiva devotion, etc. to be sexual obscenity. On the other hand, fearing the power of the Black Lodge as a political entity and eroding its hold on esoteric Eastern Religion as a practical necessity had provoked the British to effectively dismantle the classical Eastern manifestation of the Black Lodge, and Western occultists visiting the East in the 19 th and early 20th century already could only find watered-down remnants and secret adepts carrying on the hidden wisdom in either form. The Great White Brotherhood survived in Tibet along with the Dark Lodges, and, since the Chinese occupation, many of its chiefs have found their way to India and around the world.
As far as is known, the last classical chakra-puj to be observed by a Westerner was in the 1930s, while the last ancient intact body of adepts of the Eastern Black Lodge, ironically dedicated to foisting upon sleeping humanity a rank and demoralizing materialism, was discovered and destroyed in accordance with the insipid Marxism which guided the Chinese "People's" Liberation Army into Tibet in the late 1950s. Among various Tantric Buddhist and Bon religious institutions, the P.L.A. liquidated the cavern retreats of Schamballah and Agarthi, the former being possibly the oldest surviving branch of the Black Lodge on the planet. (See Ossendovski's Men, Beasts and Gods, circa 1925, for an account of Schamballah and Agarthi.) As survivors of the Marxist massacre from the Tibetan Great White Brotherhood are known to have come to the West in subsequent years, it may be assumed that survivors of the Black Lodge have set up operations in our own society as well. We can see the marks of their presence in so-called right-handed Eastern circles that have gained a certain currency among Westerners, and which peddle a useless baggage of New Age platitudes.
The traditions do survive here and there in the East; a friend of mine -- for 10 years a high official of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness in India -- was seduced by a Black Tantric Magician, and wound up leaving a life of celibacy as a Hari Krishna for the lurid existence of a Madame in an upscale American house of prostitution. I leave it to my readers to decide whether she was seduced from the Great Brotherhood to the Black Lodge, or vice versa.
Certainly, prior to the destruction of the Tibetan black lodges, the German SS -- under Thule and Vril influence and directed by the infamous Ahnenerbe Group -- imported a number of Black Brothers and Adepts from Tibet during and prior to the Second World War. The Tibetan colony in Berlin in fact predates the Nazi rise to power, having been established in 1926. One Tibetan Monk, termed "the man with the green gloves" and a reputed psychic, was frequently visited by Hitler and was rumored to hold the keys to the Kingdom of Agarthi. Such keys are best understood in terms of ciphers.
Western mystics including Karl Kellner, P.B. Randolph and G.I. Gurdjieff received instruction from surviving institutions of the Great White Brotherhood and carried their influence back with them to Europe, just as the Templars had done centuries before, and incorporated their teachings into the Western Esoteric System.
It is known that the Black Lodge -- which, as it opposes evolution, inherently fights a rear-guard action -- has made unceasing war on the Great White Brotherhood in the West from the beginnings of the magical revival. Indeed, fallen and failed adepts of the Great White Brotherhood have become the tools and pawns of the Black Lodge, from Mathers to Hubbard and beyond. It would seem that the immediate goal of the Black Brothers is to delay the Manifestation of the New Aeon, the birth of the magical child and the realization of the Übermensch through diversion of the Will-current into less than useless power plays, demoralizing materialist and superstitious delusions, New Age jargon, etc. The classic example in the Twentieth Century was the Nazi appropriation, under Black Lodge influence, of the very concept of the Übermensch, and sidetracking it into a pathetic racialist caricature of Nietzsche's super being.
"We should found society upon a caste of 'men of earth,' sons of the soil ..." said Crowley, "The worst thing they can do is what is done in America, to disenchant the man of earth with his destiny; to fill him with the facts and fancies that enthrall etiolated and degenerated idealists and unfit him for his evident purpose, that of supplying society with supermen." The Black Lodge in the Nazi era totally discredited the concept of the evolved human supermen by grafting it onto German nationalist and racialist conceits, while suppressing the Gnostic Church, the OTO, the Anthroposophical Society and even lost-word freemasonry -- in short, anyone who might have an actual understanding of the coming Being. The leading figure of the OTO in Germany, the future Grand Master Karl Germer, was placed in a concentration camp. His official crime was that he knew and maintained relations with Aleister Crowley. The Chief Bishop of the Universal Gnostic Church in France was executed by the Nazis. Crowley, for his part, "on the outbreak of the War .. .was invited to see the Director of British Naval Intelligence." According to Gerald Suster, "Crowley claimed that he advocated the use of two magical signs which were to boost British morale and frequently used by Winston Churchill: the 'V' sign, which, in magical terms, is the counter of the Swastika; and the ' Thumbs Up,' the Sign of the Phallus and Victory, which was published in a pamphlet of Crowley poetry during the most desperate days of 1940 and whose use spread throughout the nation." War of the magicians, indeed!
I believe the New Age distortion of the New Aeon concept is a direct attempt by the Black Lodge and its Inner Planes Rulers (which we call, for convenience VALIS) to delay manifestation of the Aeon by creating confusion among the receptive. Much of the "White Light Channeling" clearly bears the stamp of the Black Lodge and VALIS, an empty metaphysical blind of insipid psychic trivia. Many self-improvement groups have their origins in the ideas of failed magicians like L. Ron Hubbard. We have new age centers that teach nothing useful, UFO message-oriented cults waving flashlights on mountains, and, as I have shown end-of-the-world doomsayers touting this or that grand cosmic alignment, harmonic convergence or polar shift.
The UFO cults have clearly influenced even Kenneth Grant's so-called "Typhonian OTO," which appears to use valid magical currents to pursue the hideous old ones of H.P. Lovecraft's fictional Cthulhu Mythos. Phil Dick's last efforts were marred by insipid trivial UFO cult channelings -- the kind of stuff that was old hat to hardened UFOlogists by the late 1950s. Compare Phil Dick's musings in The Last Testament with, for example, the Mark Prophet or Dick Miller or Gloria Lee Bird materials of UFO contactee lore.
The magick of the Black Lodge can be defined and thus identified in only one way and by one set standard: the subversion of the True Will. This is the essence of Black Magick, and is its only true definition. Aleister Crowley explained it this way:
The Magical Will is in its essence twofold, for it presupposes a beginning and an end, to will to be a thing is to admit you are not that thing.
Hence to will anything but the supreme thing is to wander still further from it -- any will but that to give up the self to the beloved is black magick -- yet the surrender is so simple an act that to our complex minds it is the most difficult of all acts; and hence training is necessary ...
"The majority of the people in this world are ataxic; they cannot coordinate their mental muscles to make a purposed movement. They have no real will, only a set of wishes, many of which contradict others ...and at the end of life the movements cancel out each other...
Crowley's references to his wars with the Black Lodge are scattered throughout his writings and bear further study. From these writings, one can come to understand that the form of the attack upon the magician can range from political repression to seduction.
The great magicians, Theosophists and other Western sources have devoted even more testimony to the other side of the coin -- the "Great White Brotherhood" or "The Secret Chiefs" or "The Masters." In the early days of the magical revival, the existence of an inner order was taken for granted. This was followed by a long epoch of expose, disillusionment and world weariness. But now, revisionist historians are finding evidence that these groups, usually described in mythic terms, are as material as they are archetypal. They are, in very Truth, the "Inner Order" -- in communication with and overlapping with Ultraterrestrial Sources.
The Reality of the Secret Chiefs
The mythology of the secret masters or chiefs and the myth of the black lodge form an archetypal substratum of modern magical lore which is almost a necessity if magick is not to drift into a kind of bland parapsychological secular humanism or offbeat psychology on the one hand, or a religious fundamentalism grounded in a new faith substituted for Christianity. But one should at least allow that the legend of secret chiefs may have some rather literal basis in fact; that there are high masters of the art scattered around the world, that they are in communication with one another, and that how they use their illumination depends upon their character and predisposition. This is all that one must grant to consider the great brotherhood, or secret chiefs, as well as their opposition plausible.
In medieval Tibet, this was known as the "whispered succession." It is an open part of the literature of Tantric Yoga, and the often-invoked Tibetan connection of adepts and publicists comes quickly to mind. It was the Hidden Church of Karl von Eckartshausen that brought Aleister Crowley to the path, and small wonder; von Eckartshausen wrote in the 18th century of
...the society of the Elect, which has continued from the first day of creation to the present time; its members, it is true, are scattered all over the world, but they have always been united in the spirit and in one truth ...
It is from her that all truths penetrate into the world, she is the School of the Prophets, and of all who search for wisdom, and it is in this community alone that truth and the explanation of all mystery is to be found. It is the most hidden of communities yet possesses members from many circles; of such is this School ...From all time, therefore, there has been a hidden assembly, a society of the Elect, of those who sought for and had capacity for light, and this interior society was called the interior Sanctuary or Church.
In medieval European graal mythology, we find a strain of accomplished Graal Templars going out in secret to govern and protect far-flung populations, but (as in von Eschenbach's Parzival), "...writing was seen on the Gral to the effect that any Templar whom God should bestow on a distant people for their lord must forbid them to ask his name or lineage, but must help them gain their rights ...members of the Gral Company are now forever averse to questioning, they do not wish to be asked about themselves..."
As magical mythologist Aleister Crowley has a wonderful time with both friend and foe in the fictional _Moonchild_, but his nonfictional recounting of the same period comes uncomfortably close to the metaphor of the war between the Great White Brotherhood and the Black Lodge. Then we find the matter of fact (if remarkable) essay on sexual magick, "Energized Enthusiasm," interrupted, as it were, in midcourse by an anecdotal accounting worthy of Moonchild.
Thus far had I written when the distinguished poet, whose conversation with me upon the Mysteries had incited me to jot down these few rough notes, knocked at my door ...'If you come with me now, we will finish your essay.' Glad enough of any excuse to stop working, the more plausible the better, I hastened to take down my coat and hat. 'By the way,' he remarked in the automobile, 'I take it that you do not mind giving me the Word of Rose Croix.' I exchanged the secrets of I.N.R.I. with him...
What followed was an account of a close encounter of a Most Peculiar Kind, best read in the original.
Crowley, ever both rationalist and mystic, was aware of the superficial difficulties in the idea of secret chiefs. Yet he tended to be rather unambiguous on this matter.
Yes; this involves a theory of the powers of the Secret Chiefs so romantic and unreasonable that it seems hardly worth a smile of contempt...I propose to quote it here in order to show that the most ordinary events, apparently disconnected, are in fact only intelligible by postulating some such people as the Secret Chiefs...
He remarks in this manner in his autobiography, but is still quite convinced 20 or so years later when he notes, in Magick Without Tears:
They can induce a girl to embroider a tapestry, or initiate a political movement to culminate in a world-war; all in pursuit of some plan wholly beyond the purview or the comprehension of the deepest and subtlest thinkers...But are They men, in the usual sense of the word? They may be incarnate or discarnate: it is a matter of Their convenience...
We should take note of Paul Johnson's recent trailblazing study of the theosophical masters. The essence may be boiled down to this: secret chiefs or hidden masters may have good reason to mythologize themselves, and encourage those in direct contact with them to follow suit on the border where magical philosophy meets with its political implications, the need for secrecy assumes a more practical rationale. The Secret Chiefs may be secret not because they are myths or immortals, but because they are neither.
When the Condon Committee was sampling public attitudes toward UFOs they gave this statement to a cross section of the American Public: "A government agency maintains a Top Secret file of UFO reports that are deliberately withheld from the public." The respondents were supposed to answer TRUE or FALSE. A substantial majority, sixty-one percent, thought that the statement was true while only thirty-one percent said it was false. Among teenagers, the credibility gap was even wider -- 73 percent believed the statement to be true. General opinion studies conducted by the Condon Committee, and other surveys about UFO's came up with the rather paradoxal fact that there were more people who believed in a conspiracy of silence about UFOs than believed in UFOs in the first place. It has often been said that we Americans today are a bit paranoid; that we always tend to believe that something is out to get us, or something is being kept from us. It certainly seems that we were a bit paranoid about UFOs. Most people thought vaguely in terms of an Air Force conspiracy or a CIA conspiracy or even of a world-wide scientific conspiracy. It was generally acknowledged that the reason behind such a conspiracy was a desire on the part of those in power to hide the "truth" fro the public because people would panic if they knew that we really were being visit by superior creatures from another world. Conspiracy theorists constantly harkened back to the old "War of the Worlds" broadcast, and the panic it started. Such a belief, however, is rather too simple for the true connoisseur of conspiracies. He has long ago rejected the simple, straightforward Air Force - CIA - science establishment - cover-up as too obvious, and really rather ridiculous. The conspiracy connoisseur pointed out quite correctly that no government or group, no matter how powerful, could possibly suppress so much sensational information for so long -- no earthly group that is. If the extraterrestrials WANTED to make themselves known then they would land in a central place, and all the feeble earthly cover-up would simply be blown away. It is out of this sort of background that the legend of the Men in Black arose. It concerns strange little men in dark suits who drive around in big shiny cars and harass people who claimed to have seen a UFO. The origin of the Men in Black legend can be pin-pointed fairly exactly. Back in 1953 a man by the name of Albert K. Bender was running an organization called the International Flying Saucer Bureau (IFSB) and editing a little publication called "Space Review" that was dedicated to news of flying saucers. The IFSB had a small membership despite its rather grandiose title, and "Space Review" reached at best, no more than a few hundred readers. But they were all deeply devoted to the idea that flying saucers were craft from outer space. In common with other true believers, these saucer buffs were convinced that they were in possession of a great truth, while most of the rest of the world remained in darkness and ignorance. They felt very important , and thus it was with a sense of surprise, even shock, that they opened up the October 1953 issue of "Space Review" and found two unexpected announcements: "LATE BULLETIN. A source which the IFSB considers very reliable has informed us that the investigation of the flying saucer mystery and the solution is approaching its final stages." "This same source to whom we had referred data, which had come into our possession, suggested that it was not the proper method and time to publish the data in 'Space Review'." The second and more shocking item read: "STATEMENT OF IMPORTANCE: The mystery of the flying saucers is no longer a mystery. The source is already known, but any information about this is being withheld by order from a higher source. We would like to print the full story in "Space Review", but because of the nature of the information we are very sorry that we have been advised in the negative." The statement ended with the ominous sentence, "We advice those engaged in saucer work to please be very cautious." Bender then suspended the publication of "Space Review", and dissolved the IFSB. The tone of the announcements would have been familiar to anyone who had much experience with occult organizations. Occultists often claim they are in the possession of some great secret which, for equally secret reasons, they cannot reveal. Even the appeal, "please be very cautious" was not unique. It made those engaged in "saucer work" feel more important . After all, who is going to bother to persecute you if you are just wasting your time? Shortly after Bender closed down his magazine and organization he gave an interview to a local paper which he asserted the he had been visited by "three men wearing dark suits" who had order him "emphatically" to stop publishing material about flying saucers. Bender said that he had been "scared to death" and that he "actually couldn't eat for a couple of days." Some of Bender's former associates tried to press for a more satisfactory explanation, but to all questions he replied either cryptically or not at all. This state of affairs created considerable confusions among the flying saucer buffs. What were they to think about such a strange story> Some were openly skeptical of Bender's tale. They said that his publication and organization were losing money and the tale of the three visitors who "ordered" him to stop publishing was just a face-saving gesture. Yet, as the years went by the "three Men in Black" began to sound more respectable and they took on a life of their own. Some of Bender's friends first thought that the Men in Black were from Air Force or the CIA, and indeed Bender's original statements do seem to sound like government agents. But after a while the Men in Black begun to assume a more extraterrestrial, even supernatural air. Finally in 1963, a full decade after he first told of his mysterious visitors, Alber Bender elaborated further in a book called "Flying Saucers and the Three Men in Black." It was a strange, confused and virtually unreadable book that revealed very little in the way of hard facts, but did significantly enhance the reputation of the Men in Black as extraterrestrials. The book also introduced into the lore "three beautiful women, dressed in tight white uniforms." Like their male counterparts in black, the women in white had "glowing eyes." But even before the publication of Bender's book in 1963, the Men in Black (or MIBSs as they are know to insiders) had already been reported to be visiting others besides Albert Bender. By now they have been reported so often that they have become an established part of the UFO history. The Men in Black, naturally enough, wear black suits. They also usually wear sunglasses, presumably to disguise their "glowing eyes". Most of them are reported to be short and delicately built with olive complexions and dark, straight hair. They are often described as "Gypsies" or "Orientals". Most MIBS are reported to travel in groups of three and usually ride around in shiny new black cars -- often Cadillacs. These cars are even supposed to "smell new." Sometimes the MIBs pose as investigators from the CIA or some other government agency. They may flash official-looking credentials, but these can never be checked out. Occasionally the MIBs display badges with strange emblems on them, or have unrecognizable symbols painted on their cars. The purpose of the visits seems to be to get people who have seen UFOs to stop talking about them, or somehow to confuse and frighten the witnesses. People who worry about MIBs tend to lump all sorts of mysterious visitors into the category, even if they don't wear black, have glowing eyes or show any of the familiar MIB characteristics. The primary qualification for the Men in Black is that they be of unknown origin, and that they appear to act oddly and vaguely menacing. Some of those who write about UFO's and other strange phenomena rather casually mention "countless" cases where people have been visited by Men in Black. In reality these "countless" cases are difficult to pin down. In fact, there really seems to be a rather small number of MIB cases where there are any details available at all. The impression given by the writers is that the publicized cases represent only "the tip of the iceberg." Beyond these, say the writers, are many "more sensational" cases, the details of which cannot be revealed for a variety of reasons. In any event solid evidence for a vast number of MIB cases is lacking. But we are, after all, dealing with beliefs as much as with reality, and impression is an important one. Often the MIB cases that we know of are not quite as sensational as Albert Bender's three visitors, but they are unsettling nevertheless. Heflin said that he had turned over three of the four originals to a man (or two men, the stories differ) who claimed that he represented the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD). NORAD denied that they had ever sent out an investigator or indeed that they had the slightest interest in the photos. The mysterious person who is alleged to have taken the photos has never been identified. On October 11, 1967, over two years after Heflin's original sighting, but while the Condon investigation was going on, Heflin reported another encounter with mysterious visitors. A man who said that he was Captain C. H. Edmonds of the Space Systems Division, Systems Command, a unit of the Air Force that had been involved in the first investigation of his UFO photos, came to his home. During the interview the man who called himself Captain Edmonds asked Heflin if he wanted his original photos back. When Heflin said no, the man was "visibly relieved." Inexplicably, the man then began discussing the Bermuda Triangle. This is an area near the A much more bizarre story was supposedly told by an unnamed family who had sighted a UFO. Sometime after the sighting they said that they were visited by a very strange individual. Ivan Sanderson, who reported the incident in his book "Uninvited Visitors", described the individual thus: "almost seven feet tall, with a small head, dead white skin, enormous frame, but pipe stem limbs." This oddity said he was an insurance investigator and that he was looking for someone who had the same name as the husband of this family. He indicated that the man he was looking for had inherited a great deal of money. Continued Sanderson, "This weird individual just appeared out of the night wearing a strange fur hat with a vizor and only a light jacket. He flashed an official-looking card on entry but put it away immediately. Late on when he removed his jacket he disclosed an official looking gold shield on his shirt which he instantly covered with his hand and removed." The strange visitor asked some personal questions about the family, but nothing at all about the UFOs. The creepiest part of the whole affair came when the eldest daughter of the family notices that the "investigator's" tight pants had ridden up his skinny leg, and she saw a green wire running out of his sock, up his leg and into his flesh at two points. After the interview the "investigator" got into a large black car which contained at least two other persons, and seemed to appear on an old dirt road that led from the woods. The car drove off into the night with its headlights off. This is not to imply that the MIBS are agents of the devil, or vice versa, anymore than the little green men from Mars were really the fairy folk of past generations. It is just that our visions and fears often remain the same over the ages, and only our explanations for them change. Of course, encounters with the devil during the Middle Ages were generally more frightening and overpowering experiences than current experiences with MIBs. Everybody believed in the devil, while today everybody does not believe in the creatures from outer space. Medieval society took devil stories in dead earnest, and anyone who made such a report might find himself facing a painful death at the stake. The worst one can expect from reporting an MIB encounter is a certain amount of disbelief and ridicule. In general, MIB tales are considered too bizarre even to be reported in local newspapers. They are published only in magazines and books put out for and by UFO enthusiasts. Usually such publications are privately printed and are read by only a few hundred. A few book, however, have been issued by major publishers and have reached a far wider audience. These cases are also occasionally discussed on radio and TV talk shows, so the information gets around more widely than one might think. A lot of people of heard of "something" about MIBS without really knowing any of the details. There is one incident which bears certain similarities to the traditional MIB case that did receive very wide publicity. This is the story of the "kidnaping" of Betty and Barney Hill. While most of the MIB cases do not appear directly to involve a UFO, this one does. The couple was driving to their home in Under hypnosis Hill drew a picture of "the leader" of his abductors. It is a strange insect-like face with a wide, thin mouth and huge slanting eyes that seem to go halfway around the creature's head. The eyes were the most frightening part of the saucer inhabitant's strange physiognomy. Once during a hypnotic session with the psychiatrist Barney Hill cried out in terror, "Oh, those eyes! They're in my brain!" Glowing eyes, you will recall, are considered one of the key characteristics of the typical Man in Black. Unlike many of the books written by or about people who say that they had encountered the inhabitants of UFOs, "The Interrupted Journey" carries real conviction. One gets the feeling that the Hills and Fuller are intelligent, sincere and sane people who really believe that what they described is what actually did happen. So this idea was planted in the minds of thousands of readers of "the Interrupted Journey": UFO's can land, the extraterrestrials can kidnap ordinary people, subject them to a degrading and almost brutal examination and then wipe all memory of the incident from their minds, leaving behind only an unexplained sense of anxiety bordering on panic. Well, what does all of this mean? Are we being invaded by some weird bunch of extraterrestrials who have, in the words of the old "Shadow" radio show, "the power to cloud men's minds"? Frankly the evidence does not support such an alarming conclusion. Are all the stories hoaxes and hallucinations? Psychiatrists could certainly have a field day with many of these accounts. Symptoms such as loss of memory, severe anxiety and other unpleasant reactions strongly suggest that many of those who report such experiences are in a disturbed psychological state, though they would claim the disturbance was caused by the encounter with the strange visitor. In any event they do not make the most reliable of witnesses. Some of the other stories are almost certainly sheer fiction, made up either by some practical joker or by a writer of sensational books. Whether all the stories are real or unreal is not a question that we can answer conclusively here. The point is that we Americans are building a mythology for ourselves, just as the Europeans did with their tales of dragons, ogres and elves, and just as all people have done in all parts of the world in all ages. We have often prided ourselves on being a practical hardheaded, no-nonsense sort of people who were immune to the irrational fears an superstitious notions of less clear-sighted and realistic folk. This proposition is demonstrably untrue. And perhaps we are better off for it. Our monsters, our space people, even if they don't exist, if indeed they are rather silly, also make life more interesting and exciting. Peter Rogerson During the last few years or so there has, within ufology, been a growing complexity of phenomena, accompanied by a rise, which is also a transformation of mythological statements. One of the basic myths behind the UFO interpretations until recently was that of the deus ex machina , which would bring an end to history. (1) In [John] Michel's latest article (2) we can see this theme repeated; the UFO is the precursor of a new mutation of the human species, which will produce an irrevocable discontinuity in evolution, the final, oceanic, unbridgeable generation gap. These early myths were nurtured, not primarily by the absurd UFO cults, but by the professional myth makers, the comics, films, science fiction writers, even advertisers. The first great contactee came, not from the Californian "saucerites" of happy memory, but from As with the later contactee stories, this film was conceived as a warning against nuclear war. (3) Its symbolism is powerful. If men of humanity are ignored, then humanity will be at the mercy of the elemental forces of blind technology. If peace by love is rejected, then there will inevitably be peace by terror. In the dark days when it was made The Day the Earth Stood Still made a deep impact. In its wake the contactee cults grew and flourished. Few if any possessed the vision of the original. Many degenerated into whimsy and were lost completely. Established science fiction writers also used the UFO legend as a basis on which to build mythological statements. Among the most important of such tales was Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End, another allegorical work. The Overlords, symbolic of scientific rationalism, arrive from space to end men's squabbles and create a rationalistic utopia on Earth. In the closing chapters it is seen that this utopia is sterile, its rationalist materialism a defence against aspects and powers of the human personality which must be hidden until man has gained wisdom. The release of these powers comes in a generation of divine children, whose arrival means the end of the world, the final collapse into futility of man. The vision of Alpha and Omega at the close is one of the most remarkable passages in science fiction. It is a vision of science as creator and destroyer. The myth of the super-human child is also seen in John Wyndham's The Midwich Cuckoos. In both we are confronted with a generation of "changelings" who possess the wild talents and threaten the end of history. The growing power of the myth of the changeling can be detected in a variety of literature. An idea which undoubtedly began as a primitive interpretation of the birth of a subnormal or deformed child has achieved a new significance. The growing rumour of a coming generation of children possessed of strange and supernatural powers occurs in a variety of guises. The so-called "cross-correspondence" scripts of the early years of this century, allegedly dictated by the post mortem Myers, Gurney and Sidgwick (the founders of the SPR), make much of a coming mutation of the human race engineered from "the other side". (4) Such myths also occur in UFO situations (e.g., the Similarly the myth of the adult taken to Magonia is growing. Those taken are either destroyed or, like Monsieur Vincent, (5) possessed of new powers. There is a reorientation and men change, draw apart, or are set apart by strange incommunicable knowledge. We can sense this in the case of Dr X, (6,7) with the appearance of the strange stigmata, not only reminding one of the markings used to identify birds, but also forming, as John Rimmer has pointed out, (8) a symbolic figure of a third eye in a triangle. The third eye as a symbol suggests both an increased inner awareness, and incipient splitting of the personality.
It is the work of John Keel and his supporters from which the elusive turn in the myth developed. The basic theme of Keel (and British counterparts such as Gordon Creighton) is that a dark force threatens man, prevents him from developing his faculties to the full, and can destroy him. In an effort to comprehend this force, both Keel and Creighton have turned to the primitive belief in "elementals" the impact of which seems to strike some deep chord in the unconscious. How did this myth arise? "Primitive" man (as with modern children) had no conception either of the distinction between animate and inanimate nature, or of causality. All nature had spirits, who directed the natural order of things, and who possessed the qualities of the aspect of nature they represented. These qualities were anthropomorphisms, projections of aspects of the human personality on to the environment. With the arrival of the new intellectual religions, the old myths were driven underground, becoming symbols of the dark instinctive side of man which the new faiths had rejected. The very name "elemental" suggests an identification with the dark instinctive aspects of man's personality. The childishness and general hostility to man, which are said to be attributes of the elemental, confirm this identification. In the case of the poltergeist there is evidence that this is so. (10) The poltergeist is the projection of emotional conflict from the interior reality of the mind to the external reality. The poltergeist allows anti-social actions to be committed without guilt. In a similar manner the violent and sexual "messages" received during "automatic writing", etc. can be accepted by projecting them on to "evil spirits", thus allowing repressed desires to be expressed. The term "elemental" also gives a vision of terrifying mindless power, an apt symbol of which can be found in numerous reports of "monsters", "robots", etc. reminiscent of "Gort" in The Day the Earth Stood Still. The reports of one-eyed giants from One of the most important, powerful symbolic figures in the new ufology is the Man in Black. The wealth of possible interpretations is great. The popular descriptions of the MIB are, self-evidently, a projection of all the images of the comic-book villain; spy, foreigner, gangster, anarchist, devil. He is the universal scapegoat on to which men project their undesirable qualities. Such projections in the past, on to various minority groups, have led to the great tragedies of human history, the attempts to exorcise the Man in Black merely confirming his existence. In the European witch tradition the devil is portrayed as the man in black. Black is the colour of the night, death and the hidden side of things. That the MIB is an aspect of ourselves, not an external "thing" is evident from much of the earlier tradition. Mrs Jones mistook the MIB for her brother, emphasising the close relationship. On her prayers the vision changed to that of a dog (11) - the phantom dog, which is both a folk tradition of the wolf, and a projection of the symbol of the dog within. (The dog possesses several symbolic significances.) (12) To have too close a relationship with Magonia is dangerous. The MIB has thus an element of taboo; by observing UFO events man has encroached upon the territory of the gods and retribution follows. The MIB is also the "censor", preventing men from obtaining knowledge which will destroy them, the knowledge and power of the gods. Similarly, those "taken", such as AVB and the Hills are prevented from taking artefacts. Paradoxically, the same symbol portrays the MIB as the elemental force within, preventing the discovery of precious secrets. The MIB features in many ghost stories. It is a "stock apparition" often interpreted as an undertaker, a monk, in female form as a nun or a widow. The persistence of such traditions suggests the power of the symbol. In a recent folk song, the MIB is explicitly presented as the dark hidden side of man, which men desperately attempt to avoid seeing. Closely associated with the MIB in some aspects of UFO mythology is the Dero. The Dero has several important symbolic aspects. Clearly the Dero, a terror from the interior responsible for human tragedy, is a symbol of the dark atavistic forces in the unconscious; it is also a symbol of dehumanisation by the wrong use of knowledge, a theme often expressed in science fiction. Yet these dark aspects of Magonia are not the whole picture. We have already seen the symbol of the sun maiden (13) and there are other symbols of a similar nature. Keel created a great deal of amusement in some quarters with talk of "hermaphrodite angels", yet the hermaphrodite angel is a symbol in many cultures - a symbol of primal unity, a reconciliation of opposites. It is a not infrequent dream image, and has great prominence in alchemical lore. Thus the UFO myth is of a dual nature, capable of creating or destroying, thus mirroring the power of science, and knowledge in general. It echoes powerful symbolic themes which are also to be discovered in literature, especially science fiction. It also serves as a "translation" of older universal myths in modern terms. The Myth of Magonia is total and universal to human experience. It is difficult to present a total meaning of it. Magonia seems to be the symbol of the impersonal, totally alien forces of the natural world, and its duality represents the varying moods of nature. It is these aspects of man which identify him with the natural world, the unconscious, archaic part of ourselves, that is suppressed in civilisation. It has given us our greatest visions and most terrible nightmares, the extremes of beauty and hideousness. The conservatism and timelessness of Magonia symbolises the timelessness of nature, the slow passage of geological time, compared with which the lifetime of men is insignificant. Its capriciousness is that of nature and the instinctive part of ourselves; its power dwarfs our achievements, rendering them powerless. At its best Magonia confirms an identification with man in the universe, giving meaning to an otherwise sterile existence, providing great leaps to our culture. At its worst Magonia gives an escape from the real world, a retreat to the womb, preventing men from achieving true self knowledge and maturity, or allows the darkest and most irrational impulses. The two aspects appear inseperable. The myth of Magonia presents great dangers if it is not channelled, and an examination of UFO literature can be something of an unnerving experience, for one can see through the cracks in the surface rationality to the dark elemental forces in all of us, what Lionel Chassin called "the credulity of the savage". It is a mistake to deny the existence of Magonia, as does Alan Sharp. It is also dangerous to regard Magonia and its legends as having a literal reality; that really is a misunderstanding of the nature of myth. Our comments should not be interpreted as necessarily indicating that the UFO phenomena0 are wholly internalised: Such a view, despite great scientific difficulties, should not be dismissed out of hand, but the mythological nature of the UFO reports holds true whatever the physical nature of "real" UFO phenomena. The relationship between the "real" and "mythological" UFO phenomena is a field fertile for speculation, speculation best left to science fiction writers however. References: 1. Rogerson, Peter, "The UFO as an integral part of the apocalyptophilia and irrationality of the mid twentieth century", MUFOB , Vol. 4, No. 1, 5 2. Michel, Aimé, "An enigmatic figure of the XVII century", Flying Saucer Review , Vol. 18, No. 2, 3 3. Baxter, John, Science Fiction in the Cinema , Barnes, 1970 4. Salter, W.H., Zoar, 5. Michel, Aimé, "The UFOs and history", Flying Saucer Review, Vol. 18, No. 3, 3 6. Michel, Aimé, "The strange case of Dr X", UFO Percipients, Flying Saucer Review Special Issue No. 30 , 3 7. Michel, Aimé, "The strange case of Dr X" (part 2), Flying Saucer Review , Vol. 17, No. 6, 3 8. Rimmer, John, private conversation with the author 9. Clark, Jerome and Loren Coleman, "Serpents and UFOs", Flying Saucer Review , Vol. 18, No. 3, 18 10. Owen, A.R. George, Can We Explain the Poltergeist? , Helix Press, 1964 11. Sandell, Roger, "More on Welsh UFOs in 1905", Flying Saucer Review , Vol. 18, No. 2, 31 12. Dale-Green, Patricia, Dog , Hart-Davies, 1966 13. Rogerson, Peter, "The sun maiden", MUFOB , Vol. 4, No. 2
The Men in Black and Other Terrors
Take the case of
In addition to scaring and intimidating people, visits of MIBs are also supposed to produce a variety of unpleasant physical symptoms. Bender said he suffered from headaches, lapses of memory and was plagued by strange odors following the first visit of the Men in Black. Others who say they have had similar visitations have made similar complaints. Another eerie thing attributed to MIB types, it the ability to look like anyone they want to. Some UFO researchers claim that MIBs have bee posing as THEM in order to silence potential witnesses. John Keel, who has written a number of UFO books, said that he had encountered people who refused to believe that he was who he said he was.
Later contactees (those who say they are somehow or another in contact with the space people) began to whisper to local UFO investigators that the real John Keel had been kidnapped by a flying saucer and that a cunning android who looked just like me had been substituted in my place. Incredible though it may sound, this was taken very seriously, and later even some of my more rational correspondents admitted that they carefully compared the signatures on my current letters with pre-rumor letters they had received.
Each era tries to explain strange encounters in terms of its own system of beliefs; there is a similarity of some of these MIB cases with medieval tales of encounters with the devil or some of his demons. The devil, for example, was very often described as a man dressed in black. The ability to change shape and appear in any form was commonly attributed to demons, who were able to take the shape of a victim's friends and neighbors and even assume the likeness of angels and saints. Many of those who said that they had met the devil complained of the same range of physical symptoms reported by those who encountered the MIBs. The shiny new cars associated with MIBs is reminiscent of the Haitian belief in an evil society of sorcerers called "zobops". Haitians say that if you see a big new car going along the road without a driver is under control of the "zobops", and you had better not try to interfere with it.
The Mythology of Ufo Events and Interpretations: A New Examination
During the last few years, as noted before, there has been a movement away from these simple images towards more complex patterns. The first hints came with the study of the 1897 Airship Reports, similar legends to which may have provided the basis for the airship tales of Jules Verne. (9) In these, as with some of his other works, Verne is concerned with the corrupting effect of scientific power on the idealist. The power originally intended to liberate mankind corrupts and then destroys its creator. An apt symbol of the science behind the railroads, threatening the survival of the Mid-western farmers.
