Jacques F. Vallée > Quotes

“Whenever a set of unusual circumstances is presented , it is in the nature of the human mind to analyze it until a rational pattern is encountered at some level . But it is quite conceivable that nature should present us with circumstances so deeply organized that our observational and logical errors would entirely mask the pattern to be identified . To the [ genuine ] scientist there is nothing new here .”
― Jacques Vallée

“Let us come to the point now. It would be nice to hold on to the common belief that the UFOs 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 lutins, 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.”
― Jacques F. Vallée, Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers

“Today there are still students of the phenomenon who reject the notion that the UFO phenomenon was reported before 1947.”
― Jacques F. Vallée, Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers

“Human actions are based on imagination, belief, and faith, not on objective observation – as military and political experts know well. Even science, which claims its methods and theories are rationally developed, is shaped by emotion and fancy, or by fear. And to control human imagination is to shape mankind's collective destiny.

Beyond the question of the physical nature of the UFOs, it is imperative that we study the deeper problem of their impact on our imagination and culture. How the UFO phenomena will affect, in the long run, our views about science, about religion, about the exploration of space, is impossible to measure. But the phenomenon does appear to have a real effect. And a peculiar feature of this mechanism is that it affects equally those who "believe" and those who oppose its reality in a physical sense.

For the time being, the observation can be made that it is possible to make large sections of any population believe in the existence of supernatural races, in the possibility of flying machines, in the plurality of inhabited worlds, by exposing them to a few carefully engineered scenes the details of which are adapted to the culture and symbols of a particular time and place.

Could the meetings with UFO entities be designed to control our beliefs? Consider their changing character. In the United States, they appear as science fiction monsters. In South America, they are sanguinary and quick to get into a fight. In France, they behave like rational, Cartesian, peace-loving tourists. The Irish Gentry, if we believe its spokesmen, was an aristocratic race organized somewhat like a religious-military order. The airship pilots were strongly individualistic characters with all the features of the American farmer.”
― Jacques F. Vallée, Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact

“Reverend Kirk stated the case [of sexual contact] more clearly when he said: "In our Scotland there are numerous and beautiful creatures of that aerial order, who frequently assign meetings to lascivious young men as succubi, or as joyous mistresses and prostitutes, who are called Leannain Sith or familiar spirits. "I hardly need to remind the reader of the importance of such "familiar spirits" in medieval occultism, particularly in Rosicrucian theories. Nor do I need to mention the number of accused witches who were condemned to death on the evidence that they had such familiar spirits. Like the modern abductees examined by Budd Hopkins, the women accused of witchcraft usually had a strange mark or scar somewhere on their body.”
― Jacques F. Vallée, Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact

“I have come to think of the UFO problem in terms of three distinct levels.

The first level is physical. We now know that the UFO behaves like a region of space, of small dimensions (about ten meters), within which a very large amount of energy is stored. This energy is manifested by pulsed light phenomena of intense colors and by other forms of electromagnetic radiation.

The second level is biological. Reports of UFOs show all kinds of psychophysiological effects on the witnesses. Exposure to the phenomenon causes visions, hallucinations, space and time disorientation, physiological reactions (including temporary blindness, paralysis, sleep cycle changes), and long-term personality changes.

The third level is social. Belief in the reality of UFOs is spreading rapidly at all levels of society throughout the world. Books on the subject continue to accumulate. Documentaries and major films are being made by men and women who grew up with flying-saucer stories. Expectations about life in the universe have been revolutionized. Many modern themes in our culture can be traced back to the "messages from space" coming from UFO contactees of the forties and fifties.

The experience of a close encounter with a UFO is a shattering physical and mental ordeal. The trauma has effects that go far beyond what the witnesses recall consciously. New types of behavior are conditioned, and new types of beliefs are promoted. Aside from any scientific consideration, the social, political, and religious consequences of the experience are enormous if they are considered over the timespan of a generation.

Faced with the new wave of experiences of UFO contact that are described in books like Communion and Intruders and in movies like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, our religions seem obsolete. Our idea of the church as a social entity working within rational structures is obviously challenged by the claim of a direct communication in modern times with visible beings who seem endowed with supernatural powers.

This idea can shake our society to the very roots of its culture. Witnesses are no longer afraid to come forward with personal stories of abductions, of spiritual exchanges with aliens, even of sexual interaction with them. Such reports are folklore in the making. I have discovered that they form a striking parallel to the tales of meetings with elves and jinn of medieval times, with the denizens of "Magonia," the land beyond the clouds of ancient chronicles. But they are something else, too: a portent of important things to come.”
― Jacques F. Vallée, Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact

“One noon in September, 1702, the sun took on a bloody color several days in succession and cottonlike threads fell down, apparently falling from the sun itself—phenomena reminiscent of the 1917 observations in Fatima, Portugal.”
― Jacques F. Vallée, Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers

“U fenómeno existe o no existe: ¿creen ustedes en el electrón o en las ecuaciones diferenciales?”
― Jacques F. Vallée, Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers by Vallee, Jacques (November 23, 2014) Paperback

“The central question in the analysis of the UFO phenomenon has always been that of the controlling intelligence behind the objects' apparently purposeful behavior. For the time being, let me simply state again that the modern, global belief in flying saucers and their occupants is identical to an earlier belief in the Good People. The entities described as the pilots of the craft are indistinguishable from the elves, sylphs, and lutins of the Middle Ages. Through the observations of unidentified flying objects, we are concerned with an agency our ancestors knew well and regarded with awe: we are prying into the affairs of the Secret Commonwealth.”
― Jacques F. Vallée, Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact

“If human reactions to the vision of a UFO are varied, the opposite holds true for animals: their reaction is unmistakably one of terror.”
― Jacques f. Vallée, Passport to Magonia: On UFOs, Folklore, and Parallel Worlds

“Un fenómeno existe o no existe: ¿creen ustedes en el electrón o en las ecuaciones diferenciales?”
― Jacques F. Vallée, Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers by Vallee, Jacques (November 23, 2014) Paperback

“A Universal Fact

The problem before us now is this: if the reality behind the UFO phenomenon is both physical and psychic in nature, and if it manipulates space and time in ways our scientific concepts are inadequate to describe, is there any reason for its effects to be limited to our culture or to our generation? We have already established that no country has had the special privilege of these manifestations. Yet we must carry the argument further: if the UFO phenomenon is not tied to social conditions specific to our time, or to specific technological achievements, then it may represent a universal fact. It may have been with us, in one form or another, as long as the human race has existed on this planet.

Something happened in classical times that is inadequately explained by historical theories. The suggestion that the same thing might be happening again should make us extremely interested in bringing every possible light to bear on this problem. Beginning in the second century B.C. and continuing until the fall of the Roman Empire, the intellectual elites of the Mediterranean world, raised in a spirit of scientific rationalism, were confronted and eventually defeated by irrational element similar to that contained in modern apparitions of unexplained phenomena, an element that is amplified by their summary rejection by our own science. It accompanied the collapse of ancient civilizations.

Commenting on this parallel, French science writer Aime Michel proposes the following scene.

Consider one of the Alexandrian thinkers, a man like Ptolemaeus, the second-century astronomer thoroughly schooled in the rational methods of Archimedes, Euclid, and Aristotle. And imagine him reading the Apocalypse, various writings about Armageddon. How would he react to such an experience? He would merely shrug, says Aime Michel: "It would never occur to him to place the slightest credence in such a compendium of what must regard as insanities. Such a scene must have taken place thousands of times at the end of classical antiquity. And we know that every time there was the same rejection, the same shrugging, because we have no record of any critical examination of the doctrines, ideas, and claims of the counterculture that expressed itself through the Apocalypse. This counterculture was too absurd to retain the attention of a reader of Plato. A short time – a very short time – elapsed, the counterculture triumphed, and Plato was forgotten for a thousand years. Could it happen again?"

Only a thorough examination of the ancient records can save us from the effects of such cultural myopia.”
― Jacques F. Vallée, Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact

“The perpetrator of such a misdemeanor must have a motive. Is UMMO the private joke of a group of Spanish engineers? Is it a psychological warfare exercise, as some French analysts suspect? Or is the truth more complex, rooted in a social reality where the ideas and symbols of UMMO have acquired a life of their own, their special mythology, and a set of beliefs that feed on themselves?

We can at least be certain of one thing: the UMMO documents do not come from advanced beings trying to demonstrate their existence to us. But try to explain it to their disciples! Very few UFO believers, and even fewer of their New Age counterparts, have any formal training in science. They are easily awed by any document that contains a few equations and a numerical system of base 12. Yet if they had some awareness of modern technology, they would realize how easy it should be for an advanced race to prove its genuine skill to a society like the human race.

After reading the masses of documents purportedly coming from the planet UMMO, I asked myself: if I had the opportunity to communicate with intelligent beings of an earlier time, such as the high priests of Egypt, how would I establish a meaningful dialogue? I certainly would not insult them by sending a letter beginning with ”We are aware of the transcendence of what we are about to tell you”—especially if I had an imperfect command of hieroglyphics! Instead, I would concentrate on a few points of valuable, verifiable information. Since the Egyptians already knew how to make electrical batteries and were aware of the magnetic properties of certain minerals, I would send them a simple set of instructions to make a coil and a compass. I could explain resistance and Ohm’s Law, a simple equation that was easily within the grasp of their mathematicians. Or I would tell them about making glass and lenses from sand. If they wanted proof, I would not bother to reveal to them set theory or the fact that E is equal to mc2. Instead, I would send them a table predicting future eclipses, or a diagram to build an alternator, or Leonardo da Vinci’s design for variable-speed cogwheels. That should get the attention of the top scientists in their culture and open up a dialogue. Unfortunately, the extraterrestrials of UMMO and other planets never seem to communicate at this level. Are they afraid of collapsing our society by appearing too advanced with respect to us? This hypothesis does not hold, since they have chosen a very obvious way of showing themselves in our skies.”
― Jacques F. Vallée, Revelations

“Chaos spread all over Japan on January 2, 1749, when three round objects “like the moon” appeared and were seen for four days. Such a state of social unrest developed, and seemed so clearly linked with the mysterious “celestial objects,” that the government decided to act. Riot participants were executed. But confusion became total when people observed three “moons” aligned in the sky and, several days later, two “suns.”
― Jacques F. Vallée, Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers

“Project Serpo is an alleged top-secret exchange program between the US and an alien planet by that name. Details have appeared in UFO conspiracy stories, including one incident in 1983 in which a man identifying himself as Air Force Sergeant Richard C. Doty contacted Linda Moulton Howe, offering Air Force records of the exchange for an HBO documentary,”
― Jacques F. Vallée, TRINITY: The Best-Kept Secret

“Officer Zamora, thirty-one-year-old at the time, gave his testimony multiple times (33) and his statements were always consistent with what he told his colleagues and the FBI when he was debriefed immediately after the sighting, late into the first night, and again Hynek in the following days.”
― Jacques F. Vallée, Trinity: The Best-Kept Secret

“Everyone is now so eager to see the government "reveal" this long-awaited information that no one questions the reality of the basic facts and the political motivations that could inspire a manipulation of those facts. Trying to outsmart the CIA and the Pentagon has become such a national pastime that lawsuits against federal agencies under the Freedom of Information Act have begun to accumulate.

All that has been shown so far is that these agencies were involved – often covertly – in many aspects of the UFO problem. I suspect that they are still involved. Discovering the secret of the UFO propulsion mechanism could be such a military breakthrough that any research project connected with it would enjoy the highest level of classification. But these UFO enthusiasts who are so anxious to expose the government have not reflected that they may be playing into the hands of a more sophisticated coverup of the real situation.

Because of their eagerness to believe any indication that the authorities already possess the proof of UFO reality, many enthusiasts provide an ideal conduit for anyone wishing to spread the extraterrestrial gospel. The purpose of such an exercise need not be complex or strategically important. It could be something as mundane as a political diversion, or a test of the reliability of information channels under simulated crisis conditions, or a decoy for paramilitary operations.

None of these rumors is likely to lead us any closer to a solution that can only be obtained by careful, intelligent, and perhaps tedious scientific research. The truth is that the UFOs may not be spacecraft at all. And the government may simply be hiding the fact that, in spite of the billions of dollars spent on air defense, it has no more clues to the nature of the phenomenon today than it did in the forties when it began its investigations.”
― Jacques F. Vallée, Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact

“People would rather believe in a doctor’s hood than in their own eyes. There has been in your native France a memorable proof of this popular mania.”
― Jacques F. Vallée, Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers

“contact between mankind and an intelligent race endowed with apparently supernatural powers.”
― Jacques F. Vallée, Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers

“The "experiment" performed on Betty Hill by the entities is also remarkable. It will be recalled that while she was in the craft, Betty was submitted to a simulated medical test. Under hypnosis, she reported that a long needle was inserted into her navel, that she felt pain, and that the pain stopped when the leader made a certain gesture with his hand in front of her eyes. A fifteenth-century French calendar, the Kalendrier des Bergiers, shows the tortures inflicted by demons on the people they have taken: the demons are depicted piercing their victims' abdomens with long needles.”
― Jacques F. Vallée, Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact

“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. Are his theories fantastic? Before we decide, let us review a few other facts. We need to examine more closely the political connections.

Paris Flammonde, in his well-documented Age of Flying Saucers, remarked that “a great many of the contactees purvey philosophies which are tinged, if not tainted, with totalitarian overtones.”1

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 dependent on outside forces and discourages 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 the premise that some races were somehow “purer” or better than others. (Let us note 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 powers 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.”
― Jacques F. Vallée, Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults

“The belief in UFO contact, and the expectation of visitation by beings from space, is promoted by certain groups of people who are responsible for advertising UFO contacts, for circulating faked photographs (often in connection with genuine sightings), for interfering with witnesses and researchers, and for generating systematic “disinformation” about the phenomenon. We may find that they belong, or have access, to military, media, and government circles. In these games it is not clear exactly which side is infiltrating the other.”
― Jacques F. Vallée, Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults

“Dr. David Saunders of the University of Colorado and Dr. James McDonald, an atmospheric physicist at the University of Arizona.”
― Jacques F. Vallée, Trinity: The Best-Kept Secret

“He gave me a summary: four days earlier, he said, on the evening of Friday, April 24th, a gray-white, egg-shaped craft with a strange red insignia had landed on four legs (not three), making deep imprints in the sandy, rocky soil of an empty lot with brush vegetation just south of Socorro, and setting the bushes on fire. A local cop named Lonnie Zamora had watched the whole thing and rushed to the site, thinking there might be an explosion at a nearby dynamite shack. Allen had interviewed the cop and believed him. The Air Force didn’t. Zamora had seen the object on the ground with two humanoid occupants of short stature standing next to it, but he didn’t have much time to note details because the craft had taken off on a sort of thunderous vertical bluish beam that set the vegetation on fire, before flying away horizontally.”
― Jacques F. Vallée, Trinity: The Best-Kept Secret

“April 21, 1897, by one of the most prominent citizens in Kansas, Alexander Hamilton. In an affidavit quoted in several recent UFO books and journals, Hamilton states that he was awakened by a noise among the cattle and went out with two other men. He then saw an airship descend gently toward the ground and hover within fifty yards of it. It consisted of a great cigar-shaped portion, possibly three hundred feet long, with a carriage underneath. The carriage was made of glass or some other transparent substance alternating with a narrow strip of some material. It was brilliantly lighted within and everything was plainly visible—it was occupied by six of the strangest beings I ever saw. They were jabbering together, but we could not understand a word they said. Upon seeing the witnesses, the pilots of the strange ship turned on some unknown power, and the ship rose about three hundred feet above them: It seemed to pause and hover directly over a two-year-old heifer, which was bawling and jumping, apparently fast in the fence. Going to her, we found a cable about a half-inch in thickness made of some red material, fastened in a slip knot around her neck, one end passing up to the vessel, and the heifer tangled in the wire fence. We tried to get it off but could not, so we cut the wire loose and stood in amazement to see the ship, heifer and all, rise slowly, disappearing in the northwest. Hamilton was so frightened he could not sleep that night: Rising early Tuesday, I started out by horse, hoping to find some trace of my cow. This I failed to do, but coming back in the evening found that Link Thomas, about three or four miles west of Leroy, had found the hide, legs and head in his field that day. He, thinking someone had butchered a stolen beast, had brought the hide to town for identification, but was greatly mystified in not being able to find any tracks in the soft ground. After identifying the hide by my brand, I went home. But every time I would drop to sleep I would see the cursed thing, with its big lights and hideous people. I don’t know whether they are devils or angels, or what; but we all saw them, and my whole family saw the ship, and I don’t want any more to do with them.”
― Jacques F. Vallée, Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers

“I have pointed out that the concept current among most flying-saucer enthusiasts that the unidentified flying objects are simply craft used by visitors from another planet is naive. The explanation is too simple-minded to account for the diversity of the reported behavior of the occupants and their percieved interaction with human beings. Could this concept serve precisely a diversionary role in masking the real, infinitely more complex nature of the technology that gives rise to the sightings?
[...] Here then, is a brief statement of five new propositions based upon the material we have reviewed so far:

1. The things we call unidentified flying objects are neither objects nor flying. They can dematerialize, as some reliable photographs seem to show, and they violate the laws of motion as we know them.

2. UFOs have been seen throughout history and have consistently recieved (or provided) their own explanation within the framework of each culture. In antiquity their occupants were regarded as gods; in medieval times, as magicians; in the nineteenth century, as scientific geniuses; in our own time, as interplanetary travelers. (Statements made by occupants of the 1897 airship included such declarations as "We are from Kansas" and even "We are from anywhere... but we'll be in Greece tomorrow.")

3. UFO reports are not necessarily caused by visits from space travelers. The phenomenon could be a manifestation of a much more complex technology. If time and space are not as simple in structure as physicists have assumed until now, then the question "where do they come from?" may be meaningless; they could come from a place in time. If consciousness can be manifested outside the body, then the range of hypotheses can be even wider.

4. The key to an understanding of the phenomenon lies in the psychic effects it produces (or the psychic awareness it makes possible) in its observers. Their lives are often deeply changed, and they develop unusual talents with which they may find it difficult to cope. The proportion of witnesses who do come forward and publish accounts of these experiences is quite low; most of them choose to remain silent.

5. Contact between human percipients and the UFO phenomenon always occurs under conditions controlled by the latter. Its characteristic feature is a factor of absurdity that leads to a rejection of the story by the upper layers of the target society and an absorption at a deep unconscious level of the symbols conveyed by the encounter. The mechanism of this resonance between the UFO symbol and the archetypes of the human unconscious has been abundantly demonstrated by Carl Jung, whose book Flying Saucers makes many references to the age-old significance of the signs in the sky.

I am not regarding the phenomenon of the UFOs as the unknowable, uncontrollable game of a higher order of beings. Neither is it likely, in my view, that an encounter with UFOs would add to the human being anything it did not already possess. Everything works as if the phenomenon were the product of a technology that followed well-defined rules and patterns, though fantastic by ordinary human standards. It has so far posed no apparent threat to national defense and seems to be indifferent to the welfare of individual witnesses, leading many to assume that we may be dealing with a still-undiscovered natural occurrence ("It cannot be intelligent," say some people, "because it does not attack us!"). But its impact in shaping man's long-term creativity and unconscious impulses is probably enormous. The fact that we have no methodology to deal with such an impact is only an indication of how little we know about our own psychic world.”
― Jacques F. Vallée, Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact

“For a scientist, the only valid question is to decide whether the phenomenon can be studied by itself, or whether it is an instance of a deeper problem. This book attempts to illustrate, and only to illustrate, the latter approach. And my conclusion is that, through the UFO phenomenon, we have the unique opportunities to observe folklore in the making and to gather scientific material at the deepest source of human imagination. We will be the object of much contempt by future students of our civilization if we allow this material to be lost, for "tradition is a meteor which, once it falls, cannot be rekindled."

If we decide to avoid extreme speculation, but make certain basic observations from the existing data, five principal facts stand out rather clearly from our analysis so far:

Fact 1. There has been among the public, in all countries, since the middle of 1946, an extremely active generation of colorful rumors. They center on a considerable number of observations of unknown machines close to the ground in rural areas, the physical traces left by these machines, and their various effects on humans and animals.

Fact 2. When the underlying archetypes are extracted from these rumors, the extraterrestrial myth is seen to coincide to a remarkable degree with the fairy-faith of Celtic countries, the observations of the scholars of past ages, and the widespread belief among all peoples concerning entities whose physical and psychological description place them in the same category as the present-day ufonauts.

Fact 3. The entities human witnesses report to have seen, heard, and touched fall into various biological types. Among them are beings of giant stature, men indistinguishable from us, winged creatures, and various types of monsters. Most of the so-called pilots, however, are dwarfs and form two main groups: (1) dark, hairy beings – identical to the gnomes of medieval theory – with small, bright eyes and deep, rugged, "old" voices; and (2) beings – who answer the description of the sylphs of the Middle Ages or the elves of the fairy-faith – with human complexions, oversized heads, and silvery voices. All the beings have been described with and without breathing apparatus.
Beings of various categories have been reported together. The overwhelming majority are humanoid.

Fact 4. The entities' reported behavior is as consistently absurd as the appearance of their craft is ludicrous. In numerous instances of verbal communications with them, their assertions have been systematically misleading. This is true for all cases on record, from encounters with the Gentry in the British Isles to conversations with airship engineers during the 1897 Midwest flap and discussions with the alleged Martians in Europe, North and South America, and elsewhere. This absurd behavior has had the effect of keeping professional scientists away from the area where that activity was taking place. It has also served to give the saucer myth its religious and mystical overtones.

Fact 5. The mechanism of the apparitions, in legendary, historical, and modern times, is standard and follows the model of religious miracles. Several cases, which bear the official stamp of the Catholic Church (such as those in Fatima and Guadalupe), are in fact – if one applies the deffinitions strictly – nothing more than UFO phenomena where the entity has delivered a message having to do with religious beliefs rather than with space or engineering.”
― Jacques F. Vallée, Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact

“One prominent writer would allow old cases dating back some 200 years “but not before,” because a long-term Alien presence would negate the newest belief in an imminent extraterrestrial invasion, manifested through abductions aboard flying craft.”
― Jacques F. Vallée, Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers

“It is becoming technically feasible for sounds and images to be projected into people’s minds at a distance. Is this part of the technology that creates the UFO phenomenon? Could the required equipment be carried on board an ordinary bus? Here again we must ask the question first posed at the occasion of the UMMO investigation: Are we dealing with a terrestrial technology that systematically confuses the witnesses? If so, it must be possible to demonstrate it. If certain areas of the human brain can be remotely stimulated, then it is not impossible to think of broadcasts literally saturating large territories with a flood of symbols. Such a device could be a major tool of social change. If disguised under a preposterous or “absurd” appearance, its effects would be undetected for a long time. I believe this could be a key to the confrontation with UFOs.”
― Jacques Vallée, The Invisible College

“Considerable problems arose when one had to identify the physical process of intercourse with demons. This is clearly a most difficult point (as difficult as that of identifying the physical nature of flying saucers!), and Sinistrari gives a remarkable discussion of it. Pointing out that the main object of the discussion is to determine the degree of punishment these sins deserve, he tries to list all the different ways in which the sin of demoniality can be committed. First he remarks:
There are quite a few people, over-inflated with their little knowledge, who dare deny what the wisest authors have written, and what everyday experience demonstrates: namely, that the demon, either incubus or succubus, has carnal union not only with men and women but also with animals.

Sinistrari does not deny that some young women often have visions and imagine that they have attended a sabbat. Similarly, ordinary erotic dreams have been classified by the church quite separately from the question we are studying. Sinistrari does not mean such psychological phenomena when he speaks of demoniality; he refers to actual physical intercourse, such as the basic texts on witchcraft discuss. Thus in the Compendium Maleficarum, Gnaccius gives eighteen case histories of witches who have had carnal contact with demons. All cases are vouched for by scholars whose testimony is above question. Besides, St. Augustine himself says in no uncertain terms:

It is a widespread opinion, confirmed by direct or indirect testimony of trustworthy persons, that the Sylvans and Fauns, commonly called Incubi, have often tormented women, solicited and obtained intercourse with them. There are even Demons, which are called Duses [i.e., lutins] by the Gauls, who are quite frequently using such impure practices: this is vouched for by so numerous and so high authorities that it would be impudent to deny it.

Now the devil makes use of two ways in these carnal contacts. One he uses with sorcerers and witches, the other with men and women perfectly foreign to witchcraft.

What Sinistrari is saying here is that two kinds of people may come in contact with the beings he calls demons: those who have made a formal pact with them – and he gives the details of the process for making this pact – and those who simply happen to be contacted by them. The implications of this fundamental statement of occultism for the interpretation of the fairy-faith and of modern UFO stories should be obvious.

The devil does not have a body. Then how does he manage to have intercourse with men and women? How can women have children from such unions? The theologians answer that the devil borrows the corpse of a human being, either male or female, or else he forms with other materials a new body for this purpose.”
― Jacques F. Vallée, Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact