Mod+ The Fairy Faith, UFOs and experiences of the "Other"

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This is a favorite documentary of mine. I've always been intrigued by the similarities between UFO stories and Fairy lore. This thread is dedicated to such things.


I think the Joshua Cutchin interview on Where Did the Road Go? is a wonderful exploration of encounters with the "other", whatever you call it... fairies, aliens, bigfoot...


Of course, Jacques Vallee has covered this topic as well. He is just getting into the good stuff when the interview ends, and certainly he has gotten into this topic in more recent interviews, but I enjoy this older one where he is just getting started in consciousness work.

 
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I've always been intrigued by the similarities between UFO stories and Fairy lore. This thread is dedicated to such things.
You're far more knowledgeable on the literature in this area than I so maybe you can set me straight. In the very little I've read about people finding apparent similarities few people have explored it from the perspective of people in the "past" not having a concept of ET so therefore styling them as fairies.

Another take is that there have been reports of ET craft at least as far back as ancient Rome and Egypt, each of which had their own tales of "fairies" so there would seem to be some differentiation.

My own take is that they are very different things and that conflating them is simply an effect of those who strive to conjure explanations without having enough info.
 
I think that people who have unusual experiences describe the experiences in the language of their culture. What someone today might call a UFO, someone in a past culture might have referred to as fairies, witches or angels.

You see the same thing in NDEs, where people use the language of their own culture to describe what they have experienced. The "being of light" could be called god, the universal consciousness, Jesus, Buddha, etc...
 
I'm open to the possibility the alien abduction phenomena is spiritual, but I keep coming back to Mary Rodwell and David Jacobs' work, which shows a more mundane, programmatic development that doesn't really fit a spiritual experience.
 
The "being of light" could be called god, the universal consciousness, Jesus, Buddha, etc...
Then again Michael Newton tells us that he has not had a single case of someone being greeted in the spiritual world by any major religious figure...
 
Then again Michael Newton tells us that he has not had a single case of someone being greeted in the spiritual world by any major religious figure...
In Michael Newton's personal mythology, doesn't he call them "guiding beings"? That's just a different name for the phenomenon being reported based on a different POV.

EDIT: By "personal mythology", I mean the belief system he brings to his work.

On the Newton Institute website they tell clients that LBL Hypnotherapy is "A deep hypnotic process, developed over many years, designed to reconnect you with your soul self, and your guiding beings and thereby awakening an understanding of your immortal identity." So clients are given a set of beliefs from the start to frame the experience.
 
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In Michael Newton's personal mythology, doesn't he call them "guiding beings"? That's just a different name for the phenomenon being reported based on a different POV.
Not sure what you mean by his personal mythology, but non of his clients, some of whom are religious, report being met or guided by major religious figures....
 
I'd just like to point out that there are legitimate concerns over the use of hypnotic regression.

https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/concerns-about-hypnotic-regression/

Many persons who attach no importance whatever to their dreams–realizing that most of them are merely images of the dreamer’s subconscious mind without correspondence to any other reality–nevertheless believe that whatever emerges during hypnosis can invariably be taken at face value. In fact, the state of a person during hypnosis resembles in many ways–although not in all–that of a person dreaming. The subconscious parts of the mind are released from ordinary inhibitions and they may then present in dramatic form a new “personality.” If the subject has been instructed by the hypnotist–explicitly or implicitly–to “go back to another place and time” or given some similar guidance, the new “personality” may appear to be one of another period of history. Such evoked “previous personalities” may be extremely plausible both to the person having the experience and to other persons watching him or her. Experiments by Baker1and by Nicholas Spanos and his colleagues2 have shown how easily different suggestions given by a hypnotist can influence the features of the “previous personality” in conformity with suggestions.
 
I've always been intrigued by the similarities between UFO stories and Fairy lore. This thread is dedicated to such things.
...
Of course, Jacques Vallee has covered this topic as well. He is just getting into the good stuff when the interview ends, and certainly he has gotten into this topic in more recent interviews, but I enjoy this older one where he is just getting started in consciousness work.

I am not fluent in this area, but came across this quote from Vallee's Dimensions at RuneSoup:
It would be nice to hold on to the common belief that the UFOs are craft from a superior space civilization, because this is a hypothesis science fiction has made widely acceptable and because we are not altogether unprepared, scientifically and even, perhaps, militarily, to deal with such visitors.

Unfortunately, however, the theory that flying saucers are material objects from outer space manned by a race originating on some other planet is not a good answer. However strong the current belief in UFOs from space, it cannot be stronger than the Celtic faith in the elves and the fairies, or the medieval belief in lutins, or the fear throughout the Christian lands, in the first centuries of our era, of demons and satyrs and fauns. Certainly, it cannot be stronger than the faith that inspired the early contributions to the Bible – a faith that seems rooted in personal experiences regarded as angelic visitation.
http://runesoup.com/2012/10/somebodys-spinning-somewhere/
Attempting to understand the meaning, the purpose, of the so-called flying saucers, as many people are doing today, is just as futile as was the pursuit of the fairies, if one makes the mistake of confusing appearance and reality. The phenomenon has stable, invariant features, some of which we have tried to identify and label clearly. But we have also had to note carefully the chameleon-like character of the secondary attributes of the sightings: the shapes of the objects, the appearances of their occupants, and their reported statements vary as a function of the cultural environment into which they are projected.
 
I am not fluent in this area, but came across this quote from Vallee's Dimensions at RuneSoup:

http://runesoup.com/2012/10/somebodys-spinning-somewhere/
I find the approach taken in the Strieber/Kripal book The Super Natural, really useful here. Rather than starting with an interpretation of an experience, such as fairies, angels or aliens, let's just look at the phenomenology and see what we can learn. A glowing light might be interpreted as a ghost, fairy, or alien spacecraft, depending on the person who sees it and the context of the experience. But maybe it's more useful to just say, "I saw a glowing light that I can't find an explanation for."
 
Thanks for introducing these Think Anomalous videos - they're a great little series!
You're welcome. It's a series done by a film maker from Toronto. I hope he keeps doing this stuff.

http://www.thinkanomalous.com/about.html
Jason Michael Charbonneau is a freelance writer and amateur film producer in Toronto, Canada. He graduated with a Masters of Arts in History in 2012, before retraining as a sound engineer and beginning a career in audio post-production. He currently works freelance as a Foley artist and sound editor in film and TV, and operates Think Anomalous independently.

As a graduate student, Jason developed an interest in the history of supernatural thought in the western world, focusing his research on intellectual reactions to miraculous claims in seventeenth-century Europe. He has since turned his focus to our own society's relationship to the unexplained, and has lent his historical training to the discipline of anomalistics.

Jason is particularly interested in the similarities between reports of encounters with UFOs and alien beings, and encounters with "spirit beings" in visions, dreams, and altered states of consciousness. He is critical of the extraterrestrial hypothesis for UFOs and abductions, and looks instead for a common origin in other "paranormal" or psychological phenomena.

Jason also maintains an active interest in the history of anomalies and anomalistics. In 2012, he began producing UFO Case Review, a YouTube series offering brief expositions of "classic" UFO sightings. The series is currently on hiatus, but all videos are available on YouTube here.
 
Sadly I was unable to watch the videos but I remember Robert Anton Wilson writing that the most common (and not well reported) experiences of meeting "aliens" is like the man who was given pankakes by one of them. Gifts of food seem to be common in both alien encounters and in fairy lore.
 
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Just to add, podcast with Cutchin over at Runesoup:

TALKING FOOD AND THE SPIRIT WORLD WITH JOSHUA CUTCHIN


This week we talk to author and musician, Joshua Cutchin, about the role of food in spirit and UFO phenomena.

We also talk Jazz, the South, alien pancakes, faery food taboos, plant spirits, offerings protocols and research advice.

Good times. Download the episode directly here or listen along on YouTube below.
 
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