Science Of The Soul: Theosophy, Therapy, And The Evolution Of The UFO Cults
An essay series on the history of the idea of extraterrestrial visitation
Secret societies always have esoteric beliefs at their core. In his explanation of Freemasonry, Albert Gallatin Mackey attributes the foundation of his faith to Abe Dom Pernetty, “a Hermetic philosopher,” and “a disciple, to some extent, of Jakob Böhme, that prince of mystics. To such a man, the reveries, the visions, and the spiritual speculations of [Emanuel] Swedenborg were peculiarly attractive.”1 Benedict Chastanier, “another disciple of Swedenborg,” brought the new rite of enlightenment (“Illuminati”) to London. This movement retitled itself later as The Theosophical Society.
Charles Sotheran, a member of that society, had belonged to “the Order of Illuminated Theosophists” for a numerologically-significant period of seventeen years when he co-founded the Church of Theosophy, serving thereafter as its librarian. A Rosicrucian as well as a high-level Mason of the Scottish rite, he was “grand representative of Great Britain and Ireland to the Supreme Council of the Swedenborgian rite.” His religious beliefs complemented his politics. A journalist and editor by day, by night, Southeran was a socialist district delegate for the Knights of Labor.
A busy man, Southeran still found time for the Ancient and Primitive Rite of Memphis-Misraïm, which of all these esoteric rituals was “the only rite which taught the idea of reimbodiment, alleging that the souls of virtuous men were liberated from rebirth, while those of the wicked were reborn after a period of punishment.” Better-known as Egyptian Freemasonry, this sacred mystery held that humans who are “neither wholly good nor wholly bad suffer proportion to their guilt after which they ascend into heaven to receive a temporal reward for their good actions and then reassume flesh” — in other words, the soul could be perfected in heaven and reincarnated as a heavenly being.
America, allegedly a Christian nation, had in fact been percolating with interest in faraway religious ideas since its founding. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, who co-founded the Church of Theosophy in New York City in 1875, was a female mystic in a land where women were already receiving spiritual authority. Indeed, Blavatsky immigrated to America on a mission to prove that the Spiritualists, an American religious movement, had secret knowledge that outranked the bible. She had come, she said, from the clouded heights of the mysterious Tibetan plateau bearing this revelation, which was summed up in the motto of her church: “There is no religion higher than truth,” pronounced in Sanskrit as Satyat Nasti Paro Dharma.
Blavatsky’s revealed truth was a literal, physical heaven where the Ascended Masters raised the souls of former humans to the next level of being. They lived on other planets, and sometimes they visited earth to direct our spiritual evolution. This belief evolved into the very first extraterrestrial contact reports. Today’s UFO cults are steeped in Theosophy. About half of UFO believers reject any spiritual interpretation for their belief, or else prefer to keep it to themselves, while the other half are often explicitly spiritual. David Grusch, lately a congressional witness, has emerged as an outspoken spiritualist-believer in extraterrestrial beings. According to Grusch, all we have to do if we want world peace is release the alien spacecraft from Area 51. Humanity will be so impressed that our differences will vanish, our wars will end, and a new era of global cooperation will begin as we explore the universe in our new, perfected bodies with a shared spiritual consciousness. It is the Theosophical tradition speaking through a veil of science, offering therapy for the modern soul.
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