Empire unusual suggested

56 PASSPORT TO MAGONIA
these albino people were responsible for the Tennessee mounds." 3
Let us come to the point now. It would be nice to hold on
to the common belief that the UFO's 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 complete answer. However
strong the current belief in saucers from space, it cannot be
stronger than the Celtic faith in the elves and the fairies, or the
medieval belief in tutins, 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 writers of the Bible—a faith rooted in daily experiences with
angelic visitation.
In short, by suggesting that modern UFO sightings might be
the result of experiments—of a "scientific" or even "super-scientific"
nature—conducted by a race of space-travelers, we may be
the victims of our ignorance, an ignorance that finds its cause in
the fact that idiots and pedants alike, through a common reaction
that psychologists could perhaps explain if they were not its
first victims, have covered the fairy-faith with the same ridicule
as other idiots and pedants cover the UFO phenomenon. The
realization that rumors of the real meaning of the UFO phenomenon
set in motion the deepest and most powerful mental mechanisms
makes acceptance of such facts very difficult, especially
since the facts ignore frontiers, creeds, and races, defy rational
statement, and turn around the most logical predictions as if they
were mere toys.
It is difficult to come to grips with the UFO phenomenon; for,
although it clearly evolves through phases, its effects are diffuse
and it cannot be dated very precisely. We have to rely on legends,
hearsay, and extrapolations. Much can be accomplished, however,
once it is realized that the observational material on hand since
World War II—the twenty thousand or so clear-cut, dated reports
of UFO's in official and private files—is nothing but a
resurgence of a deep stream in human culture known in older
times under various other names.
THE SECRET COMMONWEALTH 57
Wentz, as we have seen, found several people in Celtic countries
who had seen the Gentry or had known people who were
taken by fairies. In Brittany, he had much greater difficulty:
The general belief in the interior of Brittany is that the fees once
existed, but that they disappeared as their country was changed by
modern conditions. In the region of the Mcne and of Erce (Ille-et-
Vilaine) it is said that for more than a century there have been no
fees and on the sea coast where it is firmly believed that the fees
used to inhabit certain grottoes in the cliffs, the opinion is that they
disappeared at the beginning of the last century. The oldest Bretons
say that their parents or grand-parents often spoke about having seen
fees, but very rarely do they say that they themselves have seen fees.
M. Paul Sebillot found only two who had. One was an old needlewoman
of Saint-Cast, who had such fear of fees that if she was on
her way to do some sewing in the country and it was night she
always took a long circuitous route to avoid passing near a field
known as the Couvent des Fees, The other was Marie Chehu, a
woman 88 years old.*
The central question in the analysis of the UFO phenomenon
has always been that of the controlling intelligence behind the
objects' apparently purposeful behavior. In stating the problem in
such terms, I am not assuming that the objects are real—contrary
to the implications someone might draw if he read this book too
fast. Yet in no way am I excluding the possibility that this controlling
intelligence is human, and I shall elaborate on this idea
in later chapters. For the time being, let me simply state again my
basic contention: the modern, global belief in flying saucers and
their occupants is identical to an earlier belief in the fairy-faith.
The entities described as the pilots of the craft arc indistinguishable
from the elves, sylphs, and lutins of the Middle Ages.
Through the observations of unidentified flying objects, we arc
concerned with an agency our ancestors knew well and regarded
with terror: we are prying into the affairs of the Secret Commonwealth.
* In undertaking research into beliefs in fairies, Gentry—call them what
you will—confusion arises from the great variety of names and classifications
given the different races of beings. In Lower Brittany alone, Paul
Sebillot has found and classified fifty different names given to lutins and
korrigans, while latins themselves are the same as the elvish people: pixies
in Cornwall, robin good-fellows in England, gohlim in Wales, goublins
in Norimmrfv, "nd brownies in Scotland.