Holiday, artists and Theosophy

Värmland, Sweden, is known as the province of writers, artists and mystics. During the first week of our holiday my lady Susanne and I decided to visit this part of Sweden which also includes my birthplace Karlstad. One of our destinations was the famous Rackstad Museum, not far from the city of Arvika. This part of Sweden was for many years the home of the Rackstad Colony of artists. Of special interest to me was to learn more about and view some of the paintings of Gustav Fjæstad (1868-1948), who together with his wife Maja were active in the Theosophical Society (Adyar). Theosophy had a strong influence on many Swedish authors and artists in the beginning of the twentieth century. Here we find poet Gustaf Fröding och internationally acclaimed author Selma Lagerlöf, both from the Värmland province.

Visiting the birthplace of poet Gustaf Fröding

It was with a deep sense of "mystique" Susanne and I enjoyed watching the magically beautiful paintings of Gustav Fjæstad. We bought a reproduction of "The Riddle of Life" (1919). If esoteric philosophy is defined as an aspiration towards the good, the true and the beautiful then the art of Gustav Fjæstad is an outstanding illustration of the ancient wisdom. There are many reproductions of his paintings found on the internet but nothing can compare with the experience of beholding an actual painting. Fjæstad´s creations are, in my opinion, real art - trancendent beauty and harmony.

Gustaf Fjæstad, The Riddle of Life

A lodge of the Theosophical Society (Adyar) had been founded in Arvika by pharmacist Hjalmar Juhlin and in 1909 Gustaf Fjæstad and his wife Maja became members. Several artists from the Rackstad Colony joined this lodge. Gustaf was one of the most active members and often lectured on various aspects of the ancient wisdom. The Gustaf and Maja Fjæstad Collection of manuscripts, correspondence, photographs and press clippings can now be found at the National Library of Sweden.

Swedish biography of artists Gustaf and Maja Fjæstad

As several of the artists who settled in the Rackstad Colony were theosophists this group could very well have developed along the line of the cooperative community in Halcyon, California. The Temple of the People was a splinter group of the theosophical movement, founded in Syracuse, New York by William Dover and Francia LaDue in 1898. They moved to Halcyon, California in 1903 and created the still existing community. The Temple of the People was a unique blend of more or less utopian ideas in science and religion with strong socialist or left-wing basis. The history of the group has recently been documented by scholar Paul Eli Ivey in his book Radiance From Halcyon (2013).

Paul Eli Ivey´s book is another interesting example showing that the esoteric tradition is politically basically left-wing or socialist, at least in the mainstream tradition: H P Blavatsky, Annie Besant and Alice Bailey. In popular culture and literature Theosophy and the esoteric tradition is very often portrayed as an inspiration for right-wing och neo-nazi groups but this must be regarded as misleading or in many ways a biased interpretation. During my years as an active secular humanist in the 1990s I also made the mistake of generally associating Theosophy and the esoteric tradition with right-wing politics and wrote several critical articles based on this theme. Of course there are right-wing and neo-nazi groups using ideas from esotericism as documented by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke in his classic Black Sun, but these groups obviously have misinterpreted the esoteric tradition.

In recent years there have been several scholarly studies of socialist or left-wing political ideas in esotericism. Author Gary Lachman finds that still many people associate "occult politics" with fascism. In Politics and the Occult he tries to give a more balanced view: "One of the things I hope to show in this book is that there was a progressive left-wing occult politics as well, although, to be sure, it has gone comparatively unnoticed."

Why the obviously left-wing or socialist ideas in the esoteric tradition have been "comparatively unnoticed" is hard to understand. Anyone aquainted with the tomes of Alice Bailey must have noticed the critical views on capitalism and competetive society and the defense of the labour movement and social democracy. This is perhaps most evident in The Externalisation of the Hierarchy. Here are a few quotes:
"... the Master who started what is called by you "the labour movement". This is regarded by the Hierarchy as one of the most successful attempts in all history to awaken the masses of men." (p. 664)

"It is interesting to have in mind that today labour functions internationally; it is a group which learns with rapidity and has in it the seeds of vast good; it is probably the group which will place goodwill in the forefront of human thinking..." (p. 647)

"Socialism can degenerate into another form of totalitarianism, or it can be more democratic than the present expressions of democracy... the socialist point of view... a mixture of nationalisation of the public utilities and of free enterprice - a combination which may have true value, if preserved." (The Rays and the Initiations, p. 747)

It will be interesting to see whether communities or radical political groups to the left will once again derive their inspiration from the esoteric tradition as was evident in the beginning of the twentieth century. The extreme neo-liberalism, capitalism and consumerism of todays society is a challenge to radicals in presenting new ideas and political solutions. Hardline communism and materialist Marxism have been tried and have lost its appeal for most people. A new deeper vision involving democracy, goodwill and sharing could very well emerge from students of the ancient wisdom.

 

Ray Palmer - the man from Mars

John Keel dubbed him "The man who invented flying saucers" in Fortean Times 1983, orthodox aficionados of science fiction termed him a disaster who destroyed their genre and to the scientifically inclined ufologists of the 1950s and 60s he was a talespinner who championed impossible theories like The Shaver Mystery, a hollow Earth and the complicated worldview of the channeled "Bible" Oahspe. Anyone delving into the underground world of ufology will sooner or later encounter the books, magazines and theories of Raymond (Ray) Palmer (1910-1977). For some unknown reason this well known figure in ufological history is only mentioned in a footnote in David Michael Jacobs classic The UFO Controversy in America. This odd omission is noted by author and scholar Fred Nadis is his recently published Palmer biography: The Man From Mars. Ray Palmer´s Amazing Pulp Journey.

Ray Palmer (1910-1977)

 Interest in Ray Palmer and Richard Shaver is obviously coming back. There is also a new book by Richard Toronto, War Over Lemuria. Richard Shaver, Ray Palmer and the Strangest chapter of 1940s Science Fiction. Richard Toronto is also the editor of the magazine Shavertron, dedicated to all things Shaveriana.

Ray Palmer instantly became an avid science fiction fan when he found the first issue of the pulp magazine Amazing Stories at the newsstand in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1926. A severe accident had made him a cripple and hunchback when only seven years old and this handicap made him a voracious reader of everything from archeology to astronomy and mythology. But it was science fiction that was his first love and he started writing pulp stories in his bedroom. Hardly could he imagine that in twelve years he would be the editor of Amazing Stories. According to John Keel this magazine was regarded as "garbage" by hardcore sci-fi fans. But by the end of 1945 this "garbage" was selling 250,000 copies per month. And all because Palmer had discovered a Pennsylvania welder, Richard Shaver, who claimed to be in contact with underground races, the evil Deros and the kind Teros.

The manuscripts from Shaver were re-written by Palmer and were a strange combination of science fiction and horror fantasy, ofter featuring the sado-masochistic orgies of the Deros. Somehow the stories appealed to a previously unrecognized audience who vouched for the authenticity of the Shaver claims. A few years protests from science fictions fans ended Palmer´s editorship and in 1948 he was one of the founders of the new magazine Fate. He worked as editor, using the pseudonym Robert N. Webster, until 1952 when Curtis Fuller assumed the position.

As editor of Fate Palmer hired Kenneth Arnold to investigate the controversial Maury Island observation. The affair resulted in the tragic death of two Air Force Intelligence officers and strange rumours of Men-in-black and conspiracies. Palmer associated this with his involvement with the Shaver mystery and that this was confirmed by a famous intelligence agent. In his article The Hidden World, Palmer wrote: "Why, I had to ask myself, would a military secret service agency concern itself with the hair-brained fiction story that the earth was honey-combed with caves in which lived a degenerate race of people calles dero, who possesed marvelous machines with which they caused unending trouble to surface man? When at last one of the the world´s  top secret service men, the spy to whom American owes most during Wold Was II personally paid me a visit and said flatly that there was "more truth than I knew" in Shaver´s story, the "hidden world" came into full prominence". (Flying Saucers, no. 17, November 1960, p. 35-36).

It is difficult to ascertain how much Palmer really believed in the Shaver stories. Palmer was a combination of  trickster, iconoclast and spiritual seeker. Richard Shaver was an outspoken atheist and materialist. Ghosts and spiritual experiences was just technological tricks played by the Deros on unsuspecting victims using rays that stimulated the brain. This was contrary to Palmer´s own spiritualist beliefs. During most of his life he advocated the teachings of the obscure channeled "Bible" Oahspe. Fred Nadis mentions that Ray and his wife Marjorie used to read it to each other at night and discussed it while doing dishes in their home in Evanston. Palmer eventually also published his own edition of Oahspe.

In 1953 Palmer sold his share in Fate and started the rival magazine Mystic, later to be named Search. Here he could combine his interests in Shaver, flying saucers and spiritualism. In Mystic, August 1954, one of the most fascinating (in my view) physical contactee stories ever was published by Los Angeles journalist Paul M. Vest: Venusians walk our streets! In 1957 Palmer launched the more specialized magazine Flying Saucers and in 1966 began Ray Palmer´s Forum. In his first editorial i Forum he wrote "conformity is the enemy of all thinking". And perhaps that was one of his real and deep ambitions, although he used somewhat far-out ideas to accomplish his aim. He also theorized this was one of the reasons for the coming of the saucers. In an interrview in Caveat Emptor, no. 1, Fall 1971 he stated: "Now if there is a power somewhere which is interested in the balance of this planet, the flying saucers would be an excellent way to - just to make us think. So to prove to us exactly what they were would make us stop thinking again." This is a much more optimistic UFO theory than manipulation by evil Deros.

Ray Palmer was in many ways an cultural outsider, the Man From Mars, as he used to call himself. Both physically different and with ideas that certainly didn´t cater to the mainstream, not even to the ufological community. But he was a gentle soul who supported several worthy causes, among them giving help to poor native Americans as told by biographer Fred Nadis. When Palmer died in 1977 James W. Moseley wrote in  his obituary: "It is with genuine sadness that we announce the recent death of UFO pioneer Ray Palmer of Amherst, Wisconsin. Only those of us who had the privilege of meeting him in person knew what a warm, wonderful person Ray really was. He didn´t really expect anyone to agree with all his wild theories; in fact, at his lecture at the recent Fate Convention in Chicago, he kept telling his audience, to their amusement, that they needn´t believe everything they were hearing.. What Ray Palmer did was make us think in new, weird, wild directions; and for that he deserves to be remembered as a master of his trade..."  

Alice Bailey and extraterrestrial intervention

The Edge of Reality (1975) by Allen Hynek och Jacques Vallee is one of the classics in UFO literature. Of special interest are the unusually open minded discussions, the brainstormning, between Hynek and Vallee. That both of these scientists were also ardent students of hermetical and esoteric traditions is obvious from their choice of and presentation of the various UFO theories. They have, from different perspectives, tried to find clues to the UFO enigma in old books on myth, folklore and the esoteric tradition. After many years of search Vallee concludes: "... there is no occult school that has a tradition of UFOs. They are just as baffled about it as the rationalists, and they tend to reject it with the same kind of skepticism; in other words, you find the same kind of skepticism in the high priests of the occult as you find in the high priests of science." (p. 145).

Vallee´s assertion is, in my estimation, basically correct. There is no mention of UFOs, at least in our time, in the esoteric tradition, only stories of Vimanas used in Atlantis. So when UFOs started appearing in large numbers after the end of World War II esotericists were as astonished and unprepared as the general public.   Meade Layne, founder of Borderland Sciences Research Associates in 1945, commented several times on this problem in The Coming of the Guardians, first published in 1950. His opinion was that the "near-hopeless inadequacy" of occult orders both in the east and west to cope with "facts of such immense importance" (the coming of the saucers) was appalling. This lack of knowledge of UFOs among esotericists became a challenge to the second director (1959-1985) of BSRA, Theosophist Riley Crabb. He declared his objective in The Journal of Borderland Research (Round Robin), vol. 17:1, Jan-Feb. 1961: "Meade Layne pointed out years ago how unprepared were the established Mystery Schools to explain the Flying Saucer phenomena. Your present director of BSRA knows from experience that this is true. My lecture work since 1954 has been an attempt to correlate Saucer sighting data with Mystery School teachings." (p.22)

New edition published in 2009

This was a real and difficult challenge to Riley Crabb as there is not much data to find in the classic Theosophical and esoteric literature. Crabb relied heavily on the claims of the unusual and interesting trance medium Mark Probert, whos Inner Circle members asserted that many UFOs were basically etheric. A most unusual member of the original BSRA associates was author and contactee Millen Cooke, whose article Son of the Sun, was remarkably prophetic as it was written in 1946.

Riley Crabb, 1912-1994

Riley Crabb was very well versed in the esoteric tradition and quoted frequently from various Theosophical classics and the writings of Alice Bailey. But he still seems to not have noticed several almost prophetic assertions made by the Tibetan in the books of Alice Bailey. Pronouncements made before 1946 and which could be interpreted in a UFO context. I will here present some relevant quotes for consideration. They are all from The Externalisation of the Hierarchy, clothbound edition, 1981.

April 1935: "... the regenerative forces of Those extraplanetary Beings Who offer Their Help at this time." (p. 25)

April-May 1940: "Hovering today within the aura of our planet are certain great spiritual Forces and Entities, awaiting the opportunity to participate actively in the work of world redemption, re-adjustment and reconstruction.... the waiting extra-planetary Forces." (p. 222-223)

September 1940: "There still remains one mode of intervention which is still more mysterious, illimitably more powerful, and definitely more difficult to evoke and subsequently to contact. This is the emergence, responce, or appearing of great Sons of God Who dwell in sources far removed from our planetary life altogether..." (p. 261)

April 1943: "Certain great Energies of extra-planetary significance Who stand ready to intervene..." (p. 392).

These are just a few quotes. There are several more. Although the Tibetan often use typical oriental symbolic language these statements are clear indications that in the esoteric tradition before 1946 there is mention of an awaited extra-terrestrial intervention. Nothing is said of how this is to be accomplished and there is no  mention of craft or technology. It is also obvious from several quotes that even the Tibetan is not sure whether the "extraplanetary beings" will intervene. The Externalisation of the Hierarchy is to my knowledge the only esoteric source before 1946 that could be associated with the UFO enigma.

Finally I hope that the present leaders of Borderland Sciences Research Foundation (BSRF) take god care of their unique archive. According to a presentation on the blog Borderland Sciences News they are trying to preserve and arrange the archive which is now unaviable. Unfortunately they never answer e-mail as I have several times unsuccessfully tried to buy older issues of Round Robin as some issues are missing in AFU. I do hope that the UFO and esoteric community will have access to this archive in the future.

 

Humanoids, aliens, elementals

In the May/June 2013 issue of OVNI, Journal of the Phenomenon Research Association Margaret Fry tells of an extraordinary paranormal experience she had in 1970. Margaret Fry is a veteran investigator of UFO and paranormal phenomena and author of Who are they? (2004) and Link to the Stars (2009).

In the Spring of 1970 she went to visit her pen-friend Francisco Deulander in Barcelona. During the night Margaret woke up to see moonlight streaming into the room through the patio windows. "And there in the corner by a wash basin sat three little devils with horns. They formed a close circle and each had their heads bent, one arm linked and the other hand over their their three quarters closed large eyes". Margaret yells and as Francisco wake up their beds are rolling violently all over the room. Petrified she manages to jump to Franciscos bed. As the beds are zigzagging fast about the room Francisco tries to reach the switch and put the lights on. When he finally succeed the small devils vanish and the beds stop rolling.

Some year later Margaret contacted Francisco again to find out if that night in 1970 was a fact or dream. His response was "Don´t mention that again, please, please it was the most horrible, horrible experience of my life". Margaret has a vivid memory of this event and today she wonders what type of entities these "devils" actually were? "All I can say again is that it happened".

In the annals of UFO history there are many cases documented where their is observation of entities but no UFO. I have investigated a Swedish humanoid case with some similarities to Margaret´s experience. It involves the Swedish couple Sture and Turid Johansson. In 1976 Sture began his life as a trance medium travelling all over the world together with his wife. He became quite famous and celebreties like Shirley MacLaine and Dennis Weaver visited their home in Sweden. Sture also figures in the 1987 miniseries Out on a Limb, starring Shirley MacLaine, which I mentioned in an earlier blog entry.

Sture and Turid Johansson

In the 1960s Sture and Turid were an ordinary working class couple, interested in UFOs and paranormal phenomena. On Friday, October 29, 1965 Turid received a inner (psychic) message that the couple should go to a place called Väggarö, south of Stockholm at 10 pm. Turid had once received a similar message by phone when an unknown voice broke in during a conversation with a lady friend and told her to go to Väggarö. But this time the voice also said, "be careful, there is a power struggle on Earth".

I interviewed Sture and Turid on October 27, 1973. Here are some excerpts from the tape:
"Sture: When we arrived at the place we were told to visit those entities were already there but we did not observe them until we had parked the car. It was not totally dark but twilight. We noticed them first over the field and then they came very close to the car, about 50 centimeter. We believe they were five or six, between 1,25-1,50 meter with large heads and shining eyes. The eyes were red, phosphorous. The entities didn´t walk but floated around in straight lines. I wished for all my life that another car would come but no one showed up. After some time the entities disappeared over the field and then it was like a saucer tried to land on the car. Our whole car shook and the radio screamed in the back seat. We took cover below the dashboard.

Väggarö, Sweden where the entities appeared

Drawing by witness Sture Johansson

Håkan: For how long did the observation last?

Sture: Maybe five minutes but for me it felt like eternity.

Håkan: Did you see any ears or fingers?

Sture: Imagine yourself sitting in twilight gazing through the car window. Would you notice the type of ears or fingers the entities had when you are absolutely terrified. You just don´t do that. Then you have to be enormously cold-livered and I couldn´t act like that. But I am sure they had arms."

After this frightening experience Sture and Turid just sit in the car for a while before going home. But they arrive home in the early morning. Several hours are missing. They never wanted to know what eventually had happened during that missing time.

Ufologist Lennart Johansson at the observation site

In Flying Saucer Review vol 22, no. 6 (1976) there is a case describing fifty small "frogmen" observered by witness Dominique Menuge on May 2, 1976. The site is close to the Franco-Belgian frontier. Between 9.00 and 9.30 the eyewitness is driving his car on the road from Matton to L´Etang du Banel. In the beam of the car lights he notice about fifty little men in a field. They had long arms with webbed hands and also webbed feet. Two big red eyes resembling highway traffic lights. Hight was about 1 meter 15 cm. They were simply standing in the field, doing nothing. The witness took fright and left the area as fast as he could.

The entities as witnessed by Mr. Dominique Menuge

So what type of entities do we have here? Hardly aliens, unless they are robots. These creatures seem more like some form of elementals, described in folklore and by Theosophists like Geoffrey Hodson and Charles Leadbeater. According to esoteric tradition elementals are artificial creations formed consciously or unconsciously by human beings. An interesting example can be found in the classic Magic and Mystery in Tibet, by Alexandra David-Neel. But if the entities were elementals in the above cases, who sent these "aliens" to Sture and Turid?

Talbot Mundy and the esoteric intervention theory

I guess few of todays ufologists or esotericists have read the novels of Talbot Mundy (William Lancaster Gribbon) 1879-1940. But he was quite popular in the 1920s and 30s and influenced science fiction and fantasy writers like Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber and Robert Heinlein. This week I received a copy of Brian Taves, Talbot Mundy, Philosopher of Adventure. A Critical biography (2006). Brian Taves is film archivist for the Library of Congress. The biography chronicles both the adventurous life and philosophical and artistic development of Talbot Mundy.

Born in London, England his thirst for adventure took him in his early twenties to India, Africa and the Far East. During these Wanderjahre he tried all sorts of jobs, not always living on the side of the law. His life changed when arriving in America. With a new wife and a new name - Talbot Mundy - he tried his hand at writing. Starting in 1911 he wrote for the popular pulp magazine Adventure and subsequently wrote more than 40 book, novellas and serials.

In 1922 Talbot Mundy discovered Theosophy and moved to the Theosophical commune Lomaland, located in Point Loma, San Diego and headed by Katherine Tingley. "The single most important action of his adult life", according to biographer Brian Taves. Mundy was admitted to membership in the Theosophical Society in 1923 and soon became a popular och charismatic public speaker in the society. "Blavatsky´s pen stirred in me something deeper and more challenging than I had known was there and capable of being stirred", he wrote in The Theosophical Path 1925. From the 1920s he produced novels that were a combination of adventure stories and esoteric philosophy, with titles like Om, The Secret of Abhor Valley (1924), The Nine Unknown (1924) Jimgrim (1931).

From a ufological viewpoint Jimgrim is of special interest. This must be one of the first times in modern writing where gravity defying aircraft are used by a secret society of adepts in Tibet. An early fictional version of Jacques Vallee´s esoteric intervention theory. Anyone acquainted with modern UFO reports will find several interesting quotes in Jimgrim:
"Another thing he has discovered is the use of anti-gravity — his name for it. Mathematicians, of course, have understood for centuries that each law has its opposite; but it took Newton to reveal the law of gravity as a practical fact; and Dorje seems to be the first since the Atlanteans to put in practice what his Chinaman discovered from the tablets about antigravity — which is the principle on which his airship works."

"I don't believe one word of that," said Henri de la Fontaine Coq. "Nothing can fly without gravity — not even a what-do-you-call-it — a blimp."

Grim grinned. "That is how he has preserved his secret. Nobody believed a word of it. His ships have been seen and reported by any number of people. He has two of them. Nobody believed the tales about chlorine gas until it wiped out a division at Ypres. Who believed in the telephone? It has been the same with Dorje's airship. And if you want rather worse humiliation than Bell got when he talked telephone, try talking anti-gravity to a group of scientists. Discoveries are made by unlearned men. The learned merely recognize them and perfect them after jealousy and incredulity are bankrupt."

The ships are described as soundless and moving on earth´s magnetic currents. They are also partly translucent. The theme of adepts guarding a secret "vimana" technology is also developed in Mundy´s novel The Nine Unknown. Nine adepts are guarding nine books of secret knowledge. Book number six has information on gravity and antigravity aircraft.

The books of Talbot Mundy are fiction but can be compared with the controversial claims of Richard Kieninger, founder of the new age community Stelle, Illinois. Kieninger is the author of The Ultimate Frontier (1963), written under the pen name Eklal Kueshana. In a small booklet, Observations (1971), Kieninger wrote that the secret Brotherhood that contacted him use flying saucers: "... some are interplanetary vehicles, others are of earthly origin. The ones which are from this planet are saucer-shaped of generally trapezoidal cross-section with three hemispherical engine pods on the underside. They were first developed by man on this planet about 20,000 years ago and have been used by members of the Lesser Brotherhoods continously since that time."

I corresponded with several members of the Stelle community between 1979 and 1995. In a letter 1979 I asked Richard Kieninger how the brotherhoods could keep their retreats (bases) for the flying saucers secret from the military and CIA? He answered that "there are isolated places in the world which are safe from detection, and the Brothers know where those places are." (Letter Nov. 12, 1979). Kieninger, to my knowledge, never claimed observations of or trips in flying saucers. But his contact experiences resemble in many ways those of american contactee Howard Menger.

Richard Kieninger 1927-2002

Talbot Mundy and Richard Kieninger, in their different perspectives, present versions of the esoteric intervention theory. This is a vast and largerly unexplored field for both ufologists and students of the esoteric tradition.

Bruce Cathie 1930-2013

New Zealand airline pilot and ufologist Bruce Cathie died June 2, 2013. Following a UFO observation in Manukau Harbour, Auckland 1952 he started his own investigations which resulted in several books. In titles like Harmonic 33 (1968), Harmonic 695 (1971) and Harmonic 288 (1977) Cathie claimed to have discovered a grid-like pattern on the Earth used by flying saucers for power and navigation and that this grid could also be used for predicting the detonation of atomic bombs.

Very early in his research Bruce Cathie became convinced that there was a powerful international elite behind the UFO phenomenon. He claimed that representatives of this elite approached him several times offering large sums of money if he would stop his investigations. "As I dug in closer to the truth of the UFOs and the power sources which they use, I was twice approached by a "middleman" who was interested only in finding whether or not I would stop my research for a price. When he found that I was prepared to go on with my research and to publish at all costs, I was warned that unspecified "strange things" would happen to me if I persisted... A little later I was again approached, offered a position working with a small band of scientists with the hint of a very healthy salary". (Harmonic 695, p 91).

Cathie also claimed several classic MIB experiences. He described these in the chapter People we would like to know more about. These experiences convinced him that we have aliens among us and that their presence is known to some scientists. "I have an uneasy feeling that the world is being slowly and surreptitiously taken over by an all-powerful elite. I only hope if they succeed there purpose is one of eventual benevolence. " (Harmonic 288, p.xviii).

Bruce Cathie, spring 1992

In the spring of 1992 Swedish ufologist Jan-Ove Sundberg visited and interviewed Bruce Cathie. Here are a few questions and answers from this interview:

Jan-Ove: Is it a sort of private group that are holding these things?
Bruce: It is a world group.
Jan-Ove: What kind of world group is it?
Bruce: A very powerful group backed by financiers and a comparably small group of scientists involved. Very, very powerful people. they are running the world. Oil companies are behind them.
Jan-Ove: Are they identifiable?
Bruce: I´ve had contact with people who are in the group. They tried to buy me off but I refused. You never get near the principals in the group.
Jan-Ove: Where are these people from? What country? Is there an inner circle?
Bruce: They are from all the major countries in the world... all the western world, Russia, Japan, America of course, England. There are even some here in New Zealand.
...
Jan-Ove: So you mean to say that actually scientists of the world are in cooperation with these people that are manning the flying saucers?
Bruce: Oh, yes.
Jan-Ove: How long has this been going on?
Bruce: Well, I´ve traced connections with the knowledge back to eleven hundred.
Jan-Ove: Eleven hundred!?
Bruce: And in modern times back to 1870.
...
Bruce: This whole thing is not in the control of the governments... These people are controlling the governments. If this technology does away with oil who are the people who will be most hit?
Jan-Ove: You say that these people they have the flying saucers. But originally the flying saucers couldn´t be from Earth, could they?
Bruce: If you knew the true history of Earth you would find that we are space people. We had space travel in the past... I know for a fact that this knowledge has been held by a group on Earth right through history. There has always been people who have known this stuff.

Bruce Cathie was a controversial man and there are several sites on the Internet presenting his views and discussing his theories. Cathies official website can be found here.

Donation of CEI archives

The last two days I have spent working hard unpacking 93 boxes of material from Centro de Estudios Interplanetarios (CEI) in Barcelona, Spain. Two days of blood, sweat and tears. Well, no blood and tears actually but I could have shed a few tears of joy when studying the marvelous donation from CEI, administered by the present president Mr. Marti Flo. We at AFU are tremendously delighted to receive this great contribution to the AFU international collection. Thank you very much Marti Flo and collegues at CEI. We will do our best to catalogue and preserve this invaluable material from many Spanish speaking countries.

CEI collection unpacked

After two days of hard work

Here is a list of some of the collection according to Marti Flo:

- Library -+ 800 Books
- Newspaper library 125 volumes of bound magazines
500 cards of articles published in journals that have been detailed. These cards are grouped under the following headings: cases of interest, history of the UFO subject, author articles, technical articles on propulsion, magnetic detectors, UFOs and possible submarine bases, the affair UMMO, Bermuda Triangle, solid light, celestial photography and so on, etc.

- File casuistry CATIB 1945-2004 (Iberian Catalogue)
- Iberian Peninsula and rest of the world:
a) File of observations,
b) Photographic file,
c) File of possible cases of Contact,
d) File of false cases or mystification
File referred to the Canary Islands

Monographic file cabinets:
a) File "Charles Fort" comprising high strangeness events worldwide.
b) File on UMMO affair.
c) general and file reports: includes news and press - not observations - related to the topic.
d) File researchers.
e) File Symposiums, Conferences and Meetings.
f) Research Archive manuals, questionnaires, aid research, etc.
g) meteorological file: contains the meteorological bulletins for the period 1968-1969 and to the Flap 1974.
h) research archive of Spanish authors, complemented with other foreign researchers.
i) File of the possible presence of UFOs in the past and in antiquity.
j) File of luminous phenomena.
k) File of propulsion
l) File of animals mutilated mysteriously.
others.

-Index file that contains the basic data of each event (date, time, place, province, type and source of the news), which in turn is complemented by a provincial file that meets the same data as the file-index. Another file meets the basic data of those cases with a special peculiarity: Type I (landings), stop engine, electromagnetic effects, observations of pilots, controllers, and meteorologists, solid light, car chase, etc.

I have not had time to study all the files but notice there are a many rare books in Spanish that I have never seen before, or heard of.