WARNING: Wall-o-Text to follow.
Here are some notes I took on Messengers of Deception. These are all direct quotes from the book unless otherwise indicated by brackets.
Notes on the book:
Vallee, Jacques. Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults. Berkeley, CA: And/Or, 1979. Print.
Prologue, pg.11
[French Air Force Intelligence Officer] …if we let people believe that those things are out there, and we have no explanation for them, the whole structure is in trouble. People will transfer their fear and their trust to a different place.
Prologue, pg. 19
I think that UFOs represent an objective reality that we can study only by revolutionizing existing disciplines. Confronting the irrational means promoting pioneer research in physics and biology. We also need to begin a kind of research that will take UFO data as empirical observations and try to use them to initiate an interaction with the phenomenon itself. And we should do this now before the new myth is created, before the myth of extraterrestrial revelation replaces belief in the rational acquisition of knowledge.
Prologue, p.21
Let me summarize my conclusions thus far. UFOs are real. They are an application of psychotronic
technology; that is, they are physical devices used to affect human consciousness. They may not be from
outer space ;they may, in fact, be terrestrial-based manipulating devices. Their purpose may be to achieve
social changes on this planet. Their methods are those of deception: systematic manipulation of witnesses
and contactees; covert use of various sects and cults; control of the channels through which the alleged
“space messages” can make an impact on the public.
Chap. 1: The case against spacecraft, pg. 46
... demonstrates that the “abduction” experience is a constant that hypnosis can trigger in almost everybody. This demonstration that contactee experiences can be induced comes from a professor of English at California State University in Long Beach, Al Lawson. … eight subjects finally selected were hypnotized by a clinical hypnotist, Dr. William C. McCall. ...The results of the experiments were shattering. …”All of the imaginary subjects described many details which are identical to ones found in the literature. These patterns range from the obvious (saucer shaped) to rare and even obscure though well-established details of high strangeness. (See Lawson, “What can we learn from hypnosis of imaginary abductees’?”)
Chap. 1: The case against spacecraft, pg. 46
The link between the images of the UFO world and those of human folklore resides in the psyche. The “technology” of the UFOs is not designed to carry little men from on physical planet to another. It is designed, much more simply, to trigger the already existing imagery we are all carrying in our brains. It is the imagery of the Magonia, of intelligent beams of light, of dialogues with strange creatures.
Chap. 2: The Bandwagon, pg. 52
The controversy is more lively than ever as increasing numbers for young scientists of the “UFO generation” wonder about the reality of UFOs and eagerly look for an answer.
I have long pondered that same question. The answer I have formed is a disturbing one. It can be expressed very simply: it doesn’t matter any more whether flying saucers are real or not. It still matters to me, of course, as an individual scientist. … I am speaking of their social impact.
Chap. 3: The Deception, [first mention of Major Murphy] pg. 66 - 69
[This section was quoted in length in Hunting the Skinwalker. Who is Major Murphy?]
I replied with something to the effect that problem was only scientific in the way it was approached, but he would have none of that, and he began lecturing me. First, he said, science had certain rules. For example, it has to assume that the phenomenon it is observing is natural in origin rather than artificial and possibly biased. Now, the UFO phenomenon could be controlled by alien beings, “If it is, “ add the Major, “then the study of it doesn’t belong in science. It belongs in Intelligence. “Meaning counterespionage. That, he pointed out, was his domain.
p. 102
..the way to a man’s belief is through confusion and absurdity.
The absurdity of many UFO stories and of many religious visions is not a superficial logical mistake. It may be the key to their function. According to Major Murphy, the confusion in the UFO mystery may have been put there deliberately to achieve certain results. One of these results has been to keep scientists away. The other is to create the conditions for a new form of social control, a change in Man’s perception of his place in the universe.
p. 103
A catalogue of contactee themes, compiled from interviews I have conducted, includes the following.
Intellectual abdication. The widespread belief that human beings are incapable of solving their own problems, and that extraterrestrial intervention is imperative to save us “in spite of ourselves.” The danger in such a philosophy is that it makes its believers dependant on outside forces and decoupage's personal responsibility: why should we worry about the problems around us, if the Gods from Outer Space are about to solve them?
Racist philosophy. The pernicious suggestion that some of us on the Earth are of extraterrestrial descent and therefore constitute a “higher race.” The dangers inherent in this belief should be obvious to anybody who hasn’t forgotten the genocides of World War II, executed on he premise that some races were somehow “purer” or better than others. (Let us not in passing that Adamski’s Venusian, the Stranger of the Canigou seen by Bordas, and many other alleged extraterrestrials were all tall Aryan types with long blond hair.)
Technical Impotence. The statement that the birth of civilization on this planet resulted not from the genius and ability of mankind, but from repeated assistance by higher beings. Archaeologists and anthropologists are constantly aware of the marvelous skill with which the “Ancient Engineers” (to use L. Sprague de Camp’s phrase) developed the tools of civilization on all continents. No appeal to superior posers is necessary to explain the achievements of early culture. The belief expressed by the contactees reveals a tragic lack of trust on their part in human ability.
Social utopia. Fantastic economic theories, including the belief that a “world economy” can be created overnight, and that democracy should be abolished in favor of utopian systems, usually dictatorial in their outlook.
p.116
Here is another organization which attempts to “program”us.
The small group appears to provide the inspiration for the SCCF and for the French contactees. Are the also behind some UFO incidents? Or are they simply another element of confusion?
p. 145
We should look for an answer in the direction the phenomenon itself indicates: it has human elements; yet is alien to us. It is physical in appearance; yet it also behaves like a projection from the unconscious. I suggest that it represents a technology, like the television set, that manipulates the perceptions of the human mind. ...Whatever the technology, it is the effect that is interesting. The new man Vorilhon, like other contactees, is out to change the world.
p.146
The Manipulators... I have given this name to the agents who cause the UFO contacts and engineer their effects. Everything no centers on their role, their identity, their designs. Who could they be? Alien beings coming from the end of of the galaxy? Psychic entities from the “other side”? Automata controlled by some nonhuman consciousness? Holographic nightmares? But under out nose: could they imply be human? Could they be masters of deception so skillful that they can counterfeit an invasion from space?
p. 147
…”General James Doolittle was sent to Sweden by the United States in 1946, apparently under cover of the Shell Corporation. In fact, he was to investigate the ‘ghost rockets’ with the Swedish authorities. Whatever came of that?”...
...This was a year before Kenneth Arnold, mind you, several years before the creation of Project Bluebook. …”One area where you must realize a lot of research had already been done in great secrecy by 1946 concerned mind control and the effects of electromagnetic radiation (what we now call ELF, or Extremely Low Frequency) on the human body.”
p.157
I don’t think we should expect salvation from the sky.
I believe there is a very real UFO problem. I have also come to believe that it is being manipulated for political ends. And the data suggest that the manipulators may be human beings with a plan for social control. Such plans have been made before, and have succeeded. History shows that having a cosmic mythology as part of such a plan is not always necessary. But it certainly helps.
p. 188
What we do know at this point seems shattering enough in is awful simplicity; the unpredictable UFO phenomenon and its more disgusting extensions at ground level are sending some definit messages, and a lot of people have been listening.
The truth about the manipulation of the UFO phenomenon may turn out to be that it has been a grotesque hoax, perpetrated on thousands of unsuspecting witnesses, in order to use the minds and emotions of the contactees as a means for influencing social beliefs and behavior. If so, who has decided in what direction this behavior should be bent?
p. 195 What else could they be?
If they are not spacecraft, what else could UFOs be? What explanation can account for the physical effects, for the impact on society, and for the surprisingly “human” element of much of their behavior? How can we explain that the phenomenon makes itself obvious to rural populations but avoids overt contact, choosing instead to deliver is message in a series of high strangeness incidents, such as the Cuban and Iranian aerial chases quoted at the beginning of Chapter 10?
The theory that suggests itself ...Rather than a form of transportation invented by the denizens of some far-away world, the UFOs could be stratagem devised by a human group to promote its own goals.
