Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact - Above Top Secret

various forms of error worship under the names of Fauns, Satyrs and Incubi. I am sent torepresent my tribe. We pray you in our behalf to entreat the favour of your Lord and ours,who, we have learnt, came once to save the world, and 'whose sound has gone forth into allthe earth.'"As he uttered such words as these, the aged traveller's cheeks streamed with tears, the marksof his deep feeling, which he shed in the fulness of his joy. He rejoiced over the Glory ofChrist and the destruction of Satan, and marvelling all the while that he could understand theSatyr's language, and striking the ground with his staff, he said,"Woe to thee, Alexandria!" he exclaimed, "Beasts speak of Christ, and you instead of Godworship monsters."He had not finished speaking when, as if on wings, the wild creature fled away.Let no one scruple to believe this incident; its truth is supported by what took place whenConstantine was on the throne, a matter of which the whole world was witness. For a man ofthat kind was brought alive to Alexandria and shown as a wonderful sight to the people.Afterwards his lifeless body, to prevent its decay through the summer heat, was preserved insalt and brought to Antioch that the Emperor might see it.Again, with this story, we are faced with an account the truthfulness of which it would be futile toquestion: the lives of the early saints are full of miracles that should be taken literary figures ratherthan as scientific observations. The important point is that basic religious texts contain suchmaterial, giving, so to speak, letters of nobility to a category of beings widely believed to be ofsupernatural origin. Such observations as St. Anthony's prove fundamental when religiousauthorities are faced with the problem of evaluating medieval observations of beings from the sky,claims of evocation of demons by occult means, and modern miracles.The details and the terminology of observation are not important to us. It is enough to note that thestrange being is indifferently termed a satyr and a manikin, while the saint himself states that theGentiles also use the names faun and incubus. St. Jerome speaks of a "man of that kind."Throughout our study of these legends, we shall find the same confusion. In the above account,however, it is at least clear to St. Anthony that the creature is neither an angel nor a demon. If it hadbeen, he would have recognized it immediately!In the twenty-century-old Indian book of primitive astronomy Surya Siddhanta, it is said that:"Below the moon and above the clouds revolve the Siddhas (perfected men) and the Vidyaharas(possessors of knowledge)." According to Australian writer Andrew Tomas, Indian tradition holdsthat the Siddhas could become "very heavy at will or as light as a feather, travel through space anddisappear from sight."Observations of beings who flew across the sky and landed are also found in the writings ofAgobard, Archbishop of Lyons, France. Agobard, who was born in Spain in 779 and came to Francewhen three years old, became archbishop at thirty-seven. When he died in 840, "one of the mostcelebrated and learned prelates of the ninth century," he left an interesting account of a peculiarlysignificant incident:We have seen and heard men plunged in such great stupidity, sunk in such depths of folly, asto believe that there is a certain region, which they call Magonia [Italics within quotationsindicate my emphasis.], whence ships sail in the clouds, in order to carry back to that regionthose fruits of the earth which are destroyed by hail and tempests; the sailors paying rewardsto the storm wizards and themselves receiving corn and other produce. Out of the number ofthose whose blind folly was deep enough to allow them to believe these things possible, Isaw several exhibitions in a certain concourse of people, four persons in bonds – three menand a woman who they said had fallen from these same ships; after keeping them for somedays in captivity they had brought them before the assembled multitude, as we have said, inour presence to be stoned. But truth prevailed.We will see that the occultists give a quite different interpretation to the same incident.