Alien Space Gods Of Ancient Greece and Rome (29 page)

For hundreds of years the Etruscan priests scanned the heavens, they must have had some overwhelming reason for such scrutiny, unlike ourselves they did not fear air-attack from any other country, aerial invasion as in ages past could come only from the stars. The Ancients were not fools, they did not build high towers and watch the skies for centuries and appease the 'Gods' with sacrifices just for stupid superstition! There was no propaganda from newspapers or television to condition people's minds, therefore some obvious, highly-potent ever present menace must have existed for many hundred years to instill in priests and public all over the world such dread of those 'Gods' from the skies.

Cicero
states that the Etruscans were taught by a Divine Being called Tages. One day in the reign of Tarchon, son of Tyrrhenus, as a peasant ploughed a deep furrow in a field near the city of
Tarquinia
, there sprang out of the earth a young child with grey hair and wisdom of an old man. The apparition, Tages, revealed that he had been sent by Tinia, the Supreme God, to impart to the Lucumones, Etruscan Kings, the laws, religion and art of divination by examining the entrails of animals. He dictated to the augurs the Libri Tagetici, which formed the Etruscan Bible governing the lives of the Etruscans from the cradle to the grave just as the Books of Moses regulated the daily life of the Jews.

The artists of
Etruria
featured Tages in bronze statuettes or on the backs of mirrors showing him as a small boy with a bald head or like a bearded dwarf. The Egyptians claimed they were taught civilisation by Osiris, a Celestial from the sky; the Babylonians were instructed by Oanncs, an Apparition from the Sea; the Etruscans were inspired by Tages, a Being from the soil. Osiris and Oannes may have been Spacemen. Was Tages teleported or transported in a Spaceship from another planet? The Etruscans worshipped Tages with all the reverence the Jews devoted to Jehovah; they did not doubt his divinity; odd though his advent may seem to our cynical minds could it possibly be true? The brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in
'Die Grimmische Sagen’
Volume I, page 15, record a curious story 'Das schwere Kind’ which merits resurrection to modern Space literature. In our own translation it reads:

The Heavy Child

In the year 1686 on 8th June two noblemen on the road to Chur in
Switzerland
saw a little child lying on a bank, it was wrapped in linen. One of them took compassion and ordered his servant to dismount and lift the child up, so that they might take it to the next village and that it might be cared for. The servant dismounted, took hold of the child, and wished to pick him up, but he found it beyond his powers. The two noblemen were extremely surprised and ordered the other servant to alight and help him. But both with joined hands were not strong enough to raise him from the spot After they had tried for a long time pushing it to and fro, the child began to speak and said, 'Let me lie here, for you cannot lift me from the ground. But I will tell you that this will be an excellent and fruitful year but few men will live through it.’ As soon as he had expressed these words he vanished. Both noblemen with their servants made a deposition to the Council at Chur.

This curious tale, sworn as true, suggests the teleportation of a dwarf whose weight was apparently tremendously increased by the Earth's gravity. Could he have come from the Moon? His prophecy was hardly inspiring; the fact that he promptly vanished whence he came suggests that his journey was somewhat unnecessary. Extraterrestrials have surveilled Earth for many millennia; advanced Beings on other planets, who have conquered disease, may be almost immortal with a conception of Time vastly different from our own; to these Celestials an interval of three thousand Earth-years may seem quite short. Should this be so, we might expect Beings like Tages to visit
Italy
again.

Jacques Valine, whose brilliant researches throw such enlightenment on this enigma of UFOs, analysed 80 sightings in 12 countries including Italy between 1909 and 1960; of the 153 'Pilots' seen, 44 were dwarfs about 3' 6" tall. Some of the dwarfs wore 'diver's suits' or light respiratory apparatus described as transparent clothing, others did not, the latter were characterised by large heads, hairy faces, flat noses, thick and red lips. Evaluation of the manifestation of Tages to the Etruscans three thousand years ago may be enhanced by examination of those astounding 'little men' who appeared in
Northern Italy
in 1947, surely one of the best sightings ever recorded.

On the morning of 14th August 1947 about 9 a.m. Signor R. J. Johannis, a well-known artist and writer interested in sociology and anthropology, with knapsack and Alpine pick, was climbing the wooded hi Us in the valley of Chiassi rivulet near Villa Santina by the little villa of Raveo in Carnia (Friuli). In graphic and colourful language, Signor Johannis described his remarkable encounter in the Italian UFO periodical '
CLYPEUS'
, May 1964. Signor Johannis was ascending the steep slope by a long path winding through groves of fir-trees. We translate his revelation as follows.

'Coming out from one of those clumps of fir-trees I noticed on the rocky river bank about fifty metres away a large lenticular object coloured vivid red When I arrived at a few paces from the "Thing" I could confirm that it was a disc - apparently of varnished metal like the metal of an ordinary toy - in the shape of a lens with a low central cupola without any aperture. At the top protruded some sort of shining metallic antennae … The object about ten metres wide was embedded about a quarter of its length in a great transversal cleft of the crumbly rock of the mountain-side at a height of about six metres above the bed of the stream.'

He decided to approach and examine the object, however turning around he saw leaving the same wood through which he himself had passed two 'boys', so they appeared to be at first. He shouted to them 'When I had halved the distance between us, I stopped petrified. The two "boys" were two dwarfs such as I had never seen before nor even imagined.' Both stopped a few paces from him.

'I seemed to be paralysed or rather dreaming. However I could observe them at my ease in every particular. And those details have remained impressed on me so indelibly that even now today I could make a picture or statue of those extraordinary Beings. I must confess however, at the time my predominant feeling was an enormous astonishment combined quite understandably with a sense of fear. They were not more than 90 centimetres tall and were wearing a type of dark-blue overall made from a material I would not know how to describe, "translucent" is the only term suitable to describe it. They wore a collar and rather high belt, vivid red in colour. Even the sleeves and the ankles ended in "collars" of the same type Their heads were - according to my impression - bigger than the head of a normal man and gave the two Beings the appearance of caricature, but I believe the sight of their "faces" would have removed from anyone the desire to laugh....

'They had no trace of hair, instead of it they wore a kind of closefitting, dark-brown cap. The "skin" of their faces was an earthen green Their "nose" was straight, geometrically cut and very long. It hung over a mere slit, shaped like a circumflex accent, which I had noticed opening and closing at intervals very much like the mouth of a fish. Their "eyes" were enormous, protruding and round. Their appearance and colour were like the colour of two well-ripened, yellow-green plums. In their centre I noticed a kind of vertical "pupil". I saw no trace of eyelashes or eyebrows, and what I would have called the eyelids was constituted by a ring between green and yellow surrounding the base of those hemispherical eyes just like the frame of a pair of spectacles.'

Signer Johannis, extremely astonished, waved his arm with the pick and asked them in a voice quite different from normal, who they were, whence they came and if he could help them. The dwarfs apparently interpreted his rash gestures as threatening.

‘…one of them raised his right hand to his belt from the centre of which spurted something which seemed as though it could have been a thin puff of smoke. Today I think it must have been a ray or something of that nature. However, I had no time to get out of the way or make any gesture, I found myself stretched out full-length on the ground. My pick jerked out of my hand as though snatched by some invisible force.’

This forcibly reminded Signor Johannis of a violent electric-shock from a Leyden-jar which he had in 1924 when a student He felt himself deprived of strength, each attempt to stand up caused him unbearable fatigue. One of the two dwarfs bent down to collect the pick which was longer than he was.

'It was then that I could observe distinctly his green "hand". It had eight fingers of which four were opposable to the others. It was not a hand, it was a paw with fingers without claws. I also noticed the chest of the two Beings quivered like that of a dog panting after a long run The two dwarfs arrived beneath the disc, I saw them climb up slowly but surely to the rocky cleft and then disappear behind the disc itself, which was embedded in an almost vertical position.

'A few more minutes elapsed, then the strange object arose in the air shooting up from the rock. A cascade of stones and earth fell down on the stony riverbed. And that was the only sound that broke the silence of that solitary place. The water of the stream trickled without a sound among the pebbles. The disc remained motionless in the air until, finally, it tipped slowly and receded from the vertical then it grew smaller all at once and vanished.'

Signor Johannis still on his back in pain was suddenly assailed by a tremendous blast of air (was it air-shock?) which rolled him over and over on the ground against the stones in the stream.

'At last I managed to sit up again. I then looked at my wristwatch. It was
9:14
. But it was only about
midday
that I was able to return home. Meanwhile I had even slept for an hour. I felt as though my bones were broken and my legs weak and trembling like after a spree of heavy drinking. I looked in my rucksack for my thermos flask of coffee. I was not surprised to find it smashed to pieces but what did surprise me was not finding any trace of its metal casing. In just the same way had vanished my aluminum fork and a small tin of the same metal which contained my cold lunch. Now I think my old pick may be found in the museum of another planet. I hope that someone yonder tries to decipher the marks cut in the handle that are nothing more than my name and an Alpine motto with a couple of stylised Alpine "stars" and an eagle. And I hope they arc wearing out their brains trying to understand them.

'I end by stating that at the time I tried to interpret my adventure in various ways but all quite foreign to Flying Saucers or to other machines of extraterrestrial origin. At first I thought the "disc" occupied the Campoformido airport in
Friuli
. Next I thought of a machine of Russian origin. Finally, I speculated on a machine belonging to some unknown civilisation still hidden in the Matto Grosso or in some still unexplored region on Earth. But nothing was satisfactory since nothing could justify the presence of those two little men. . . . Two months later I sailed for
New York
. During the crossing, I heard for the first time about the Flying Saucers seen by Kenneth Arnold. Only then did I understand that I had seen a Flying Saucer.'

In confirmation an old man and a boy separately stated that on
14th August 1947
they bad seen a red 'balloon' in the air. This experience of Signor R. L. Johannis is quoted in detail not only to chronicle one of the most remarkable Extraterrestrial visitations in modern times but also because it probably describes sightings which appeared in
Italy
centuries ago to the Etruscans and the Romans.