History Of The Ufo Phenomenon

Though the Ufos were first publicized only towards the end of the second World War, the phenomenon itself was known long before. It was observed in the first half of this century, and was described in earlier centuries and perhaps even in antiquity. In the Ufo literature there are collections of reports from various sources which need critical evaluation. I shall spare myself this task and give the reader only two examples:

BASEL 1556

This (fig. 404.05) is from a broadsheet written by Samuel Coccius, “student of the Holy Scripture and of the free arts, at Basel, in the Fatherland,” in August 1566. He reports that on August 7 of that year, at the time of the sunrise, “many large black globes were seen in the air, moving before the sun with great speed, and turning against each other as if fighting. Some of them became red and fiery and afterwards faded and went out” CW10 ¶ 758

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As the illustration shows, this sighting was made in Basel. The dark colour of the Ufos may be due to their having been seen against the light of the rising sun. Some of them were bright and fiery. Their speed and irregular motion are typical Ufo features CW10 ¶ 759

NUREMBURG 1561

This broadsheet (fig. 404.06) relates the story of a “very frightful spectacle” seen by “numerous men and women” at sunrise on April 14, 1561. They saw “globes” of a blood-red, bluish, or black colour, or “plates” in large numbers near the sun, “some three in a row, now and then four in a square, also some standing alone. And amongst these globes some blood-coloured crosses were seen.” Moreover there were “two great tubes”three in the picture“in which three, four, and more globes were to be seen. They all began to fight one another.” This went on for about an hour. Then “they all fellas one sees in the picturefrom the sun and sky down to the earth, as if everything were on fire, then it slowly faded away on the earth, producing a lot of steam.” Underneath the globes was a long object, “shaped like a great black spear.” Naturally this “spectacle” was interpreted as a divine warning CW10 ¶ 760

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This report, as the reader will have noted, contains certain details already known to us. Above all the “tubes,” which are analogous to the cylindrical objects in the Ufo reports. These, in Ufo language, are the “mother-ships” which are said to carry the smaller, lens-shaped Ufos for long distances. The picture shows them in operation, releasing Ufos or taking them on board. Especially important, though lacking in the modern Ufo reports, are the indubitable quaternities, seen sometimes as simple crosses, sometimes as disks in the form of a cross, that is, as regular mandalas. There also seems to be a hint of the 3 + 1 motif in the dilemma of three and four. The militaristic interpretation is as characteristic of the sixteenth century as the technological one is of ours. The tubes are cannons and the globes cannonballs, and the shooting to and from of the globes is an artillery engagement. The great black spearhead, as well as the spearshafts (?), seem to represent the masculine element, especially in its “penetrating” capacity. Similar things are reported in the Ufo literature CW10 ¶ 761

The emphasis on the cross motif is striking. The Christian meaning of the cross can hardly be considered here, since we are dealing with a natural phenomenon, a swarm of round objects in violent motion, shooting in opposite directions and reminding the reporter of a battle. If the Ufos were living organisms, one would think of a swarm of insects rising with the sun, not to fight one another but to mate and celebrate the marriage flight. Here the cross signifies a union of opposites (vertical and horizontal), a “crossing”; as a plus sign, it is also a joining together, an addition. Where the globes are coupled together to form quaternities, they have given rise to the crossed marriage quaternio, which I have discussed in my “Psychology of the Transference.” It forms the model for the primitive “cross cousin marriage,” but is also an individuation symbol, the union of the “four” CW10 ¶ 762

Columns of smoke rise up from the place where the cannonballs have fallen, reminding us of Tanguy's picture. The moment of sunrise, the Aurora consurgens (Aquinas, Boehme), suggests the revelation of the light. Both reports have clear analogies not only with one another but also with the modern saucer stories and with the individual products of the unconscious today CW10 ¶ 763

THE PILGRIM

This seventeenth-century woodcut (fig. 404.07) , possibly representing a Rosicrucian illumination, comes from a source unknown to me. On the right it shows the familiar world. The pilgrim, who is evidently on a pélerinage de l'âme [pilgrimage of the soul], has broken through the star-strewn rim of his world and behold another, supernatural universe filled with what look like layers of cloud or mountain ranges. In it appear the wheels of Ezekiel and disks or rainbowlike figures, obviously representing the “heavenly spheres.” In these symbols we have a prototype of the Ufo vision, which is vouchsafed to the illuminati. They cannot be heavenly bodies belonging to our empirical world, but are projected “rotunda” from the inner, four-dimensional world CW10 ¶ 764

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THE CHILD IN THE WOMB

This picture (fig. 404.08) comes from the Rupertsberg Codex Scivias, written by Hildegard of Bingen (12th cent.). It shows the quickening or “animation” of the child in the body of the mother. From a higher world an influx enters the foetus. This upper world has a remarkable quadratic form divided into three to correspond with the Trinity, but, unlike the latter, which is supposed to consist of three equal parts, the middle section is different from the other two. It contains round objects, whereas the other two are characterized by the eye motif. Like the wheels of Ezekiel, the little rotunda are associated with eyes CW10 ¶ 765

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As Hildegard's text states, the radiance of the “countless eyes” (there are in reality twenty-four in each section) means “God's knowledge,” that is, his seeing and knowing, with reference to the seven eyes of God that “run to and from through the whole earth” (Zech. 4 : 10) CW10 ¶ 766

The rotunda, on the other hand, are God's deeds, such as the sending of his son as a saviour.Hildegard adds: “All, the bad as well as the good, appear in God's knowledge, for it is not ever clouded round by any darkness.” The souls of men are “fireballs”,so presumably the soul of Christ was also such a ball, for Hildegard interprets her vision not with reference to the growth of a human child only, but with particular reference to Christ and the Mother of God CW10 ¶ 766

The square divided into three stands for the Holy Ghost entering into the child. The procreative aspect of the Holy Ghost unites the Godhead with matter, as is clear from the sacred legend. The intermediate forms between spirit and matter are obviously the rotunda, early stages of animated bodies, filling the middle section of the square. There are thirty of them, and, however accidental this may be, the number 30 (days of the month) suggests the moon, ruler of the hylical world, whereas twenty-four (hours of the day) suggests the sun, the king. This indicates the motif of the coniunctio (* and *)an instance of that unconscious readiness which later came to expression in Cusanus' definition of God as a complexio oppositorum CW10 ¶ 766

In the miniature the rotunda are fire-coloured, the fiery seeds from which human beings will sprout, a sort of pneumatic roe. This comparison is justified in so far as alchemy compares the rotunda to fish's eyes. The eyes of a fish are always open, like the eyes of God. They are synonymous with the scintillae, “soul-sparks.” It is just possible that these alchemical allusions crept into Hildegard's text via the atoms of Democritus (spiritus insertus atomis). Another such source may be responsible for the squareness of the Holy Ghost CW10 ¶ 766

The square, being a quaternity, is a totality symbol in alchemy. Having four corners it signifies the earth, whereas a circular form is attributed to the spirit. Earth is feminine, spirit masculine. The square as a symbol of the spiritual world is certainly most unusual, but becomes more intelligible when we take Hildegard's sex into account. This remarkable symbolism is reflected in the squaring of the circleanother coniunctio oppositorum. “Squareness” in alchemy is an important feature of the unitary substance, the Mercurius Philosophorum sive quadratus, and characterizes its chthonic nature, which it possesses along with spirituality (spiritus mercurialis) CW10 ¶ 767