Alien Space Gods Of Ancient Greece and Rome (4 page)

By Sean Casteel

* Why do the ancient myths of
Greece
and
Rome
still "speak" to us today? Are the old gods really the immortals they claimed to be, still capable of communing with modern man?

*
Greece
and
Italy
both have a rich history of UFO, alien and other paranormal encounters. Read the stories here of Greek and Italian UFO witnesses and alien abductees as they participate in the universal cosmic dance that dates from the times of antiquity when the gods ruled more openly.

* Are the ancient gods like Zeus and Apollo biding their time before making a triumphal return in full view of the entire world? Or is it that they have never left their Mediterranean homelands at all?

*    *    *

The school of thought categorized as "Ancient Astronauts" has been a longtime staple of UFO research and lore, most often attributed to Erich von Daniken, whose "
Chariots of the Gods?
" sold millions of copies worldwide and made it to the top of the bestseller list when it was first published in 1968. It presents a case for, in general, the firm belief that ancient man and his various civilizations were created and guided by creatures from outer space or from some as yet unknown dimension. The theory most often focuses on the stories from the Bible or the records of the earlier Sumerian and
Babylonia
societies, giving short shrift to the equally compelling stories from Greek and Roman mythology.

In this study you are now reading, the late Britisher W.R. Drake impressively offers up almost inarguable evidence that the so-called Gods of Antiquity were not just illusionary but were instead real flesh and blood beings who emerged from the sky and made themselves right at home as if this was their world to begin with. Perhaps it is, and we are but pawns in some unknown chess game being played out as part of the grand design.

As an extension of Drake's understanding of primordial cosmology, we must state our unwavering belief that the Space Gods continue to keep a watchful eye on the Mediterranean region and haven't forgotten their past interaction with the people of the area, some of whom still hold a high degree of reverence for the deities their ancestors encountered and held forth with and conceivably even copulated with. The old stories from
Greece
and
Rome
continue to resonate today, and are given new life by the UFO mythos that began to take hold on the public mindset in the 1940s.

For example, there are the stories surrounding the Greek god Hermes, born the son of Zeus, who was considered by the Greeks to be the father of gods and men, the ruler and preserver of the world. Hermes plays many roles and appears in many different ways in the Greek pantheon. Writes author Keith Thompson in his book "Angels and Aliens," "Hermes is the swift-footed messenger of the gods between heaven and earth, from which he derives his character as a god of oracles. As a messenger or herald, Hermes has access as well to the underworld, guiding the souls of the departed to rest across the threshold of life and death."

Hermes also serves as the mediator between conscious and unconscious, surface and depths. He is the god of "persuasive speech," or oratory, as well as a patron saint of liars and thieves.

A story is told about Hermes that took place when he was barely a day old. He stole a herd of cattle belonging to his half brother Apollo, covering his tracks as best he could. When the theft was reported to Apollo by a local mortal named Battos, Apollo dragged Hermes off the couch where he pretended to sleep and delivered him to Zeus, who would surely punish Hermes for his cattle rustling. Without a hint of shame, Hermes denied the accusation and then took up a lyre and began to make music for Zeus and Apollo, much to their delight. They did not believe Hermes' protestations of innocence, but they were irresistibly charmed in any case.

When Hermes further ingratiated himself to Apollo by giving him the lyre he had been playing, Apollo made a present to Hermes of a divining rod and along with it the power of prophecy, which Hermes must communicate not by words, which was Apollo's domain, but by signs and occurrences.

All of which added to the complex nature of Hermes' communications and revelations.

"Whereas Apollo insists on single meanings, clear and straight like an arrow," Thompson writes, "communications under the sign of Hermes borrow from twisted pathways, shortcuts and parallel routes. It makes many round trips and ends up sometimes in meaningful dead ends. The paths of Hermes are multiple."

Yet if Hermes were merely a liar, Thompson observes, then no one would listen to his stories.

"This is a crucial point for the UFO phenomenon as well," he writes, drawing a comparison to our fascination with the wonders from the heavens we have come to call the flying saucer mystery and the gods of the sky. "If each and every sighting invited a definitive explanation, there would be no controversy about 'meanings.' UFOlogists (pro and con), like Apollo, are interested in 'proving' things. Hermes (like UFOs themselves?) wants to win over the audience and get applause, even if it means twisting the truth."

The Perfect Humans

Admittedly, we know very little about the true nature of the Greek religion beyond the myths and legends that have survived into our present time. What we do know is that about 1200 B.C.E., the residents of what we would call
Greece
and
Asia Minor
shared a common, undisputed belief in a group of deities from the heavens that came to be known as the Olympians.

The world famous Erich von Daniken has devoted an entire book to the subject of Greek mythology called "Odyssey of the Gods," in which he suggests that the Greek gods were in fact extraterrestrial beings who arrived on Earth thousands of years ago.

On a website devoted to the Greek/Roman UFO connection as part of the NetScienta posting, an unnamed author writes, "Archeological evidence and the writings of the ancients, including Aristotle, prove these gods interbred with humans, performed genetic experiments, and bred 'mythical' creatures, such as centaurs and Cyclops." The same author explains, "Greek gods were a way of explaining the unexplainable in a person's life. According to Greek mythology, there once was a time when great events had occurred and the gods had involved themselves in human affairs. These gods were described as 'the perfect humans.'"

Zechariah Sitchin once remarked that people often say the gods of old, with their love affairs and various intrigues and jealousies, are "just like people." But Sitchin said it's the other way around, really, that we as people are just like the gods who made us, imperfect and weak in many ways.

The Greeks' creation story goes like this: Prometheus and Epimetheus were spared imprisonment in Tartarus because they had not fought alongside their fellow Titans in the war with the Olympians. Having found favor, they were given the task of creating man. Prometheus shaped man out of mud, and Athena breathed life into his clay figure. This is a method similar to genetic splicing, the author declares, which makes the story all the more feasible given that we can splice genes ourselves now and there is much evidence that the UFO aliens/gods can do the same. Witness the human/alien hybrid children that are so much a part of the present day alien abduction phenomenon.

Humanoids In
Greece

Shifting gears into the modern era, we come to the sightings in
Greece
of humanoid forms, which include a high number of encounters of the third kind. On the website of our good friend Brian Haughton, Mysterious People.Com, he devotes several pages to the research of Greek UFOlogist Thanassis Vembos, a fulltime journalist, author, translator and researcher whose versatile lifelong interests include the paranormal in all its aspects as well as Astronomy, Astronautics and science fiction.

Vembos makes the important point that UFO sightings and alien encounters have never received the attention they deserve in his nation's press.

"After World War II," he writes, "the only relatively credible medium of information was the newspapers. So the only source of ufological information was the local press, even though it usually distorted the narratives and presented information with no substantive details due to a complete lack of knowledge about UFOs. In fact, the UFO subject was unknown to the greatest part of Greek society until the 1960s."

The heaviest wave of sightings in
Greece
was in 1954, when all of the European theater was overcome with flying saucer fever. On Vembos' own personal site, which you are invited to visit (at
www.Vembos.gr
), there are many apparently well-documented reports listed from that fateful year. We found the following incident to be without a doubt the most puzzling and intriguing:

"November 20. A strange report comes from Vovoda village, near Aegion,
Peloponnese
. At
7:00 A.M.
, 84-year-old Helias Coromilas was at his field, at Voulomeni, outside Vovoda, when he noticed a small object, resembling a small car, rolling on the road and then entering the field at a distance of about 100 meters (300 feet) from the witness. Coromilas ran to warn the driver of the 'car' that there was a steep cliff in front of him, but when he approached it, suddenly the 'car' took off, making no sound at all and, engulfed in dust, flew away into the sky. Coromilas said later that the 'car' was dark in color, had two wheels and was 1.5 to 2 meters in size and one meter in height. He considered the whole event 'supernatural.'"

In addition to the wave of 1954, other UFO incidents related by Mr. Vembos keep us fascinated, especially the experience related to him firsthand by a Greek university professor identified simply as Mr. G. P., with the name of his home city also withheld in order to protect his privacy. It was the year 2001, and the professor was at home, in the wee hours of Sunday, June 24, watching a late- night talk show on television. It was approximately
2 A.M.
His wife and son were asleep and his daughter was out. The talk show began to bore him intensely, so the professor went to bed. He was walking to the bedroom when he noticed that the kitchen light was on.

"Reaching out to switch it off," Vembos writes, "he felt a sense of coldness, like a cold wind on his back. He turned to see what it was. The thing he saw was like a bolt out of the blue. A strange humanoid was standing right there, before his eyes. It was a slim, tall creature - almost six feet - and seemed to be wearing a tight- fitting light blue 'coverall.'"

The witness would explain later that, "It was like the stockings that burglars put on their head, but it was covering the whole body, from head to toes."