The Secret Sun: Ockham, the Occult and the Ultraterrestrials

Ockham's Razor is one of those famous dictums that people use in arguments and often do so incorrectly.

The whole story of it is pretty tangled and is better explained elsewhere, but for our purposes let's stick to the common distillation of it, being that the simplest answer to a problem is usually the correct one.

"Skeptics" love Ockham's Razor, even if they don't always understand it. This is because "Skeptics" love-- no, that's not quite right-- they worship received authority and hate anything that challenges said authority. If the Razor was good enough for their professors, it's good enough for them, even if they often misquote it.

I've heard Ockham's Razor thrown around in UFO debates, with "Skeptics" gleefully oblivious to the fact that non-manmade aircraft is a much simpler solution to the problem than swamp gas, weather balloons, Venus, meteors, satellites, chinese lanterns, dirty lenses, low-lying clouds reflecting streetlights, and on and on and on and on and on ad infinitum.

So let me repeat that: the simplest solution to the UFO problem is that they're some kind of non-terrestrial vehicles. Ockham, thou art revenged.

Of course, "Skeptics" have a much stronger argument in their corner, and that's the mind-twisting distances between star systems. Given the immense amount of energy that would be required to travel to another star system, thrown in the not-inconsiderable frequency with which unidentified objects are spotted (every day, now) and the numerous contact/abduction narratives and it all seems to beggar belief in "extraterrestrials," as commonly understood.

But if you delve into some of these contact narratives (which we touched on here) a different picture begins to emerge. One thing I've noticed is how vivid and downright numinous some of the reports seem. It's as if these experiences are engineered to trip a switch deep in the collective unconscious, in much the same way certain songs trigger a "dreamy" feeling (something we discussed back in the day here).

I have no idea if it speaks to the authenticity of the stories themselves, but I've read a number of stories that seem realer than real to me.

But at the same time, there's that Trickster element to so much of this phenomena. This is something that becomes harder to avoid the more you read the literature. And as many others have pointed out this aspect of the story drags us into murkier waters-- the paranormal, magic and the supernatural.

And as many others have also pointed out there are endless strands of continuity between modern UFO reports and ancient folklore of the supernatural world-- fairies, elves, djinn and of course, Leprechauns. Little people all. And like so many of the modern-day abduction narratives, sleep or some other variety of unconsciousness plays a central role in many of those olde tales.

Thornier still is the world of the Occult. If ETH adherents are wary of the paranormal, they're downright terrified of the Occult. But if you accept narratives from the Bible and other ancient mythologies as evidence of ancient contact-- like Enoch, for example-- what are we to make of Dee and Kelly and their Enochian Keys? How different is the Enochian alphabet from the various alien alphabets so many abductees have reported?

If Horus was an alien godking on Earth, what of poor Mrs. Crowley and her in-spired bit of channeled stenography? Then there's always Lovecraft and Lam, and the whole drift towards alien overlords in 20th Century occultism. Not the least of which are The Nine, who have a naggingly strange relationship to the current occupant of the Oval Office.

All of those Secret Chiefs and Great White Brotherhoods didn't have to be from Sirius, certainly. Not directly, at least. It seems trenchant that occultism became especially potent once the Companions themselves entered the mix, whether in fact or by reputation. And let's not get started on JPL and NASA and all of that for now.

Of course none of this bolsters the ETH. But even as many of us come to grips with the whole UFO issue -- and many of not-us as well, such as the Vatican, the Royal Society and now National Geographic, of all people-- many of us also begin to wonder if these aren't aliens as you might understand them. In fact, they might actually be our companions. Elusive companions, maybe, but thousands of years of sightings and contact stories seem to show us they're elusive but never walk far.

The question then becomes not are we alone in the Universe but are we alone on this planet? Have we ever been alone? Then the question becomes if we're not alone, why do these companions of ours seem to take such pleasure in being such teases, giving us little glimpses and hints before they skulk back to the shadows?

Certainly, anyone who's kept an eye on this little rock of ours knows what blood-thirsty savages we are at heart, so you can't quite blame any outsider for keeping a low profile. But at the same time it seems that the kind of phenomena we puzzle over here pops up now and then at particularly opportune moments.

The Elusive Companion Hypothesis explains the long history of sightings and contact narratives. Being aware of our technological and scientific powess explains why these companions have chosen to present themselves in a procession of guises- gods, fairies, spacemen- over the years. Even controversies like Roswell and the nuke installation flyovers make a lot more sense in the ECH-- our little jumps in technology happen in secret, catch them by surprise, and take a bit of time to adjust to.

Over-the-horizon radar might have been a bit of a shock to their navigational systems and then combined with a good electrical storm all of a sudden the savages have gotten a hold of one of your (non-spaceworthy) little hovercrafts which they promptly reverse-engineer, at least in part.

Now, the other reason why the ECH or Ultraterrestrial hypothesis works is that it satisfies Ockham in relation to AAT or Intervention Theory. It's no accident that now that the bilge-waters left by the Fundamentalist tsunami of the 70s and 80s have finally receded that AAT is suddenly all over the place lately (most recently in the late, unlamented NBC potboiler The Event).

The Designers might have been called away for whatever reason but would they go to all this trouble and not leave a sitter behind to keep an eye on the kids? Which makes even more sense that the sitters would make themselves known once the kids started playing with the atomic matches. If Ockham is to be satisfied than these ancient and modern skywalkers must in some way be connected.

It makes you wonder if there isn't some realization about all of this afoot among the ruling elites, given that we're seeing a parade of evil alien movies hit the screens (both big and small) whether we want them or not (mostly not, it seems). If some change in the status quo were in the cards, it makes sense that those with the most to lose from said change would want to salt the fields.

Of course, there is that whole 2012 thing coming at us fast and furious. I've long wondered what all those defense billions are being spent on and it wouldn't surprise me at all if they were being spent to keep things the way they are as best they can.

Well, like anyone else I can't answer any of these questions. All I know is that the more I read about this ongoing mystery the less it feels "alien" in any real sense of the word. It seems all too familiar, like it's all part of some unactivated bit of shareware that came with our birthday CPUs.

There's a quote from a famous abductee from the 60s that I can't quite get out of my mind. Former Police Chief Herbert Schirmer believed he was abducted, reported the events, took a major beating in his life for doing so even though he passed all of the polygraphs and all of the rest of it.

When asked about the motives of his skywalking friends. Schirmer responded "to a certain degree they want to puzzle people. They know they are being seen too frequently and they are trying to confuse the public's mind."

Tricksters, in other words. Quite insightfully, Schirmer added, "everyone should believe in them some, but not too much."

Just like Hermes, go-between for the gods. The ancients knew Hermes was around when Synchronicity began to pop up and so it often is with our Companions. As the blog archives will show I didn't think much about UFOs for years. That is until my first trip out to Esalen, where I gave a talk on Jack Kirby and Synchromysticism.

As I also documented here, a strange electrical storm kicked off a spate of wildfires not long after, roaring all the way down the coast. The flames licked at Esalen's gates but spared the compound its wrath. How about that?

And of course Esalen itself is no stranger to the Companions, having been controlled by a channeler for The Nine (late of Sirius) for several years back in the waning days of the Cold War. Not a few people thought they were tricksters as well.

Jack Kirby was no stranger to the Companions, either. They starred in his epic series The Eternals (another touchstone of my life and this blog).

In The Eternals, the Companions were composed of two races- the Deviants, who skulked in the underseas ruins of Lemuria (under the Bermuda Triangle, of course) and liked to pose as demons and the Eternals, who kept to themselves on the roofs of the world and were mistaken for the gods throughout history.

Think the Greys and the Nordics of UFO lore, more or less.

The Eternals were content to pursue meditation and other spiritual practices and the Deviants kept themselves busy with their infernal machines while humankind were ruling the roost.

The two races only made themselves known to the world when the gods- or Anunaki, if you prefer-- returned to take stock of the Project. Kirby didn't seem to be familiar with 2012 prophecies but would certainly have incorporated it if he had. The story all kicked off in a Kirbyesque Inca tomb, which could easily be Kirbyesque Mayan if need be.

And this all brings us back to the shamanic and psychedelic realm, yet again. Kirby not only knew things he shouldn't have known, but he didn't even know he knew them. As far back as the Mithraic Mysteries and all of the way up to the modern Ayahuasca ones, strange flying disks show up when a certain state of mind is reached. It's almost as if there's a signal out there, one that's usually filtered out.

Shamans, occultists, sick children and other thought-criminals seem to pick up on the signal when the stars are all aligned. It's a fleeting state, but it's driven forward our evolution in ways we don't quite understand. Real evolution is never pretty, never fun and always painful. But maybe on the other side of it we'll get to know our Companions more intimately. And we can teach each other.

SYNC LOG: Speaking of sick children I was mulling the idea of losing the Ockham's Razor part of this piece until I happened over to Wikipedia and happened to scroll down and spotted an old friend...

Pretty necessary in this context, don't you think?