"You have people on Mars! Think how great you are. Ask the white man if he has any out there. We have life on other planets, but he don't." I don't know when Elijah Muhammad, until his death in 1975 the leader and most visible face of the black-nationalist "Nation of Islam" (a.k.a. "Black … [Read more...]
My Friend Jerry – Jerome Clark – and “The UFO Encyclopedia”
Jerome Clark, The UFO Encyclopedia, 3rd edition. Detroit: Omnigraphics, 2018. I've never met Jerry Clark, the editor and for the most part the author of the monumental UFO Encyclopedia that's about to come out in its third, updated edition. Yet he's one of my oldest friends and, for a few … [Read more...]
Desmond Leslie – Sifra di-Tzeniuta, the “Book of Dzyan,” and “Flying Saucers Have Landed”
At the beginning of this month I blogged about the terse, baffling Kabbalistic text called Sifra di-Tzeniuta, "The Book of Concealment." It's found in the second volume of the Zohar, written in Aramaic like the rest of the Zohar, yet orders of magnitude more cryptic and therefore, perhaps, more … [Read more...]
Credulity and the Astronomer – The Strange Case of Cedric Allingham
"It certainly has taken me by surprise," said Mr. Gascoigne. ... "Probably you think me blamable." "Not blamable exactly. I respect a man for trusting another." --George Eliot, Daniel Deronda, chapter 64 Do you know the strange story of Cedric Allingham? And--do you care? If you think … [Read more...]
An African-American UFOlogy?
My aim in this post is to ask a question I can't answer. Does there exist an African-American UFO tradition, parallel to but distinct from the UFOlogy of white America? If so, what are its contours? Its meaning? I found myself thinking about this after posting two links on my Fan Page … [Read more...]
