Jacques Vallée

In early 2021, while UFOs were enjoying a fresh vogue in the mass media and Washington D.C., I read the 2014 reissue of Jacques Vallee's third ufological book, Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers (1969). In this volume Vallee provides something like an inverted form of the "ancient astronaut theory" pioneered by Erich von Däniken in Chariots of the Gods (also 1969). Von Däniken's hypotheses tend to flatten the reality of gods and angels into visiting extraterrestrial show more humanoids with a sort of "science" that "we" now comprehend. Vallee sees similar trans-historical connections, but instead observes that modern UFOs are a reiteration of just the sort of stories that have been told perennially of gods, angels, and fairies. These are expressly stories of otherworldly people and phenomena that we don't understand, and we are just as ignorant of today's alleged ufonauts as the eighth-century French bishop Agobard was ignorant of the visitors in flying ships from the region they called "Magonia."

The continuities between the fairy faith and the tropes of ufology are conclusive, and drawn out through Vallee's chapter titles. "Visions of a Parallel World" involve encounters with extraordinary realities and non-human intelligences. These latter are "The Good People" who have their own polity, "The Secret Commonwealth." The abduction phenomenon is treated in "To Magonia ... and Back!" whether the destination is outer space or fairyland. The changeling mytheme and its modern mutations make us "Nurselings of Immortality."

Passport to Magonia resonates throughout with "The faint suspicion of a giant mystery, much larger than our current preoccupation with life on other planets" (58). At the same time, Vallee never abandons an acute skepticism, and a frustration with accounts that seem like pranks on an enormous scale. The mere falsity of any of the episodes cannot diminish the importance of the larger phenomenon; if nothing else, "these accounts show that it is possible to affect the lives of many people by showing them displays that are beyond their comprehension, or by convincing them that they have observed such phenomena, or by keeping alive the belief that their destiny is somehow controlled by occult forces" (20).

An appendix that is longer than the five body chapters of the book combined recounts "A Century of UFO Landings 1868-1968." These hundreds of data each consist of a short paragraph of some three or four sentences, indexed by date and location. One of the nineteenth-century items is Aleister Crowley's sighting of "two little men" in the Swiss Alps (191). (Crowley himself described them as "exactly the traditional gnome of German folk-tale; the Heinzelmanner that one sees sometimes on German beer mugs.") The acme of these landings in my view were the numerous visitations of the "air locomotive" in its 1897 travels across the United States. These are also treated more extensively in the body of the book under the heading "Look, But Do Not Touch."

Unlike von Däniken's superstitious reductionism, Vallee's careful "systematic documentation and literary illustration" (12) of the legendary dimensions of UFO lore and its precursors did not win him many readers in its initial publication. Fifty years later, though, it is still worth attention from anyone who would understand rather than fear or hope, when it comes to these perplexing stories. "We cannot be sure that we study something real, because we do not know what reality is; we can only be sure that our study will help us understand more, far more, about ourselves" (164). show less

After the meticulous comparative mythology of Passport to Magonia, and the awkward non-committal nature of The Invisible College, Dimensions is a refreshingly candid affair.

In this book, Vallée lays out his core thesis statement on the UFO phenomenon: UFOs are real, they are probably not aliens, and they seem to seek to manipulate observers. From there, he extrapolates.

Covering everything from potential government psyops to externalised (and semi-sentient) Jungian archetypes, it's worrying show more how little the discourse has progressed in since 1988. Dimensions still feels fresh, radical, and exciting 40 years on, but it shouldn't—the topics covered here should be baseline concepts points by now. It's disturbing that we're still getting bogged down in the same tired discussions of UFO propulsion and starsystem habitats we were having in the 1950s and 60s—long after the extraterrestrial hypothesis should have organically died out. Given what we know about CIA and military intelligence involvement in Hollywood, the media, and UFO talking heads and 'whistleblowers', one has to wonder if the constant return to the 'little grey scientists crashing spaceships into the desert' baseline is in fact part of a concerned effort to stop other hypotheses going mainstream.

One of these other hypotheses is Vallée's idea of the 'Control System' much discussed but little understood—mainly because he always seems reticent to actually discuss in interviews and other books—here we get a full exigesis of the concept. I'm not sure if I buy it, but it's hard to deny the patterns that led to his conclusion: cross-cultural archetypal similarities in (often shared) 'visionary' experiences caused by lights in the sky, with powerful 'others' giving messianic prophecies to children, outcasts, and people prone to radically upending their lives as a result of their revelation; these revelations often fit with popular but underdog social positions within the culture—New Age religion in conservative america, christianity in ancient Rome, political leftism and ecology at the height of conservative social control, the importance of bloodlines and galactic imperialism at the height of left-wing social control. Now, in the age of AI and tech utopianism, we're seeing a wave of anti-technological interactions focusing on peace, love, and psychic powers; transcendence through meditation, technological uplift is a false-god.

With that in mind, my one criticism of the book is Vallée's ultimately optimistic interpretation of the Control System. Without any evidence (and with significant evidence to the contrary), Vallée seems to believe that the control system, if it exists, is benevolent and pushing humanity toward a better understanding of itself, its place in the universe, and its ultimate potential. He believes that the positions it is pushing are positions held by the Control System and which are ultimately written into the system to protecting humanity. Ultimately, Vallée believes that the leading underdog position in any culture must become culturally dominant over time; he believes that social progress is both bottom-up and always positive—and the UFOs are here to help. This position is to be expected—Vallée is both French and scientist—but I don't think it fits the facts.

I wonder instead if a case could be made that the UFOs aren't agentic and (pseudo)moral, as Vallée believes, but instead simply act as cognitive amplifiers—taking powerful convictions and reflecting them back at the observer in an almost narcotic feedback loop. The extreme confirmation (a god or alien agreeing with you) of a radical belief changing the observer, feeding back into culture, and, as a result, changing how the UFOs themselves 'manifest'—we could be seeing something similar to how AI reinforces its users' beliefs and changes their behaviours simply by agreeing with them over and over again; the way AI is changing how the average person thinks and writes could be a microcosm of how the UFO changes form through similar mechanisms. The underdog philosophies could come to the fore simply because they have more emotive power behind them than, say, 'keep everything the same, you're doing good.' The cross-cultural and cross-temporal archetypes could simply be because the archetypes themselves are part of our cognitive architecture, rather than something manifested by the the UFO. I'm not sure if this is what I think is going on—I'm not sure what I think is going on—but if there is a Control System, as Vallée posits, then I don't see why this reflective AI approach isn't just as likely as (if not more likely than) a benevolent system designed to push human social evolution in a specific 'positive' direction.

While Vallée covers a lot of ground in Dimensions—we get everything from discussions of the Christian Fathers' classification of succubi, to the mathematical unlikeliness of UFOs being aliens, and all that on top of a full explanation of his Control System idea—he does still leave a number of ideas hinted at but unexplored. In particular two topics stuck out to me as things I wish Vallée had gone into more depth on—especially as these topics don't seem to be covered anywhere else by anyone else...

1. UFOs and Sex
While there have been a number of books about sexual encounters with 'aliens', there appears to be no real analysis of this topic from a comparitive mythology angle. Nobody has taken Alien probes and womb-needles and compared them with demonic medieval torture methods. Nobody has compared Antonio Vilas Boas' encounter to encounters with succubi. Nobody has compared the scene in the Iliad where Paris is abducted from the battlefield by Aphrodite, and subsequently instructed to have sex with 'the most beautiful woman in all of Greece', to similar sexual abductions with men are instructed by aliens to have sex with ethereally beautiful abducted women. There is a rich untapped vein here which would likely get very weird and very dark. It's strange that nobody has really explored this.

2. UFOs and Obscurity
Vallée makes the interesting observation that paranormal phenomena loves obscurity—darkness, rural areas, unreliable narrators—UFOs, ghosts, and crytids seem to live on the edge of reality, never quite proving themselves, always hiding in a realm of plausible deniability. Unfortunately, he doesn't really delve into this any further.
If this is the case, what are the implications of more cameras, more streetlights, and denser populations? Does this mean that these things manifest less and less as we shift further into modernity—could the world becoming more secular not be the result of a clearer image of the world, but bright lights that make all the strange cockroaches scatter and hide? Could we be systematically disenchanting the world with modern technology and living conditions? If so, could this be deliberate? Is the world being intentionally rendered purely material by powerful people afraid of the things that might lurk in a world where darkness, ambiguity and imagination were allowed to flourish?

Dimensions is easily my favourite Vallée book so far. It's dense, fun, and gleefully weird. It's both an incredible primer for anyone new to the topic, and a fascinating deep-dive for anyone tired of reading the same old stories again and again. It's a midpoint between vibes-based free-associative sociology and well-researched scholarship, in a way that feels fun and and fresh without ever tipping over into silliness. More than anything, it's the book that proves Jacques Vallée is much more than just the one-note 'let's compare UFOs to European fairy folklore' guy—but he absolutely still is the 'let's compare UFOs to European fairy folklore' guy. show less

The Edge of Reality was originally released in 1976. In preparation for this review, I sought out a copy of the original release for comparison purposes. Sadly, only a couple of used copies were available on Amazon for prices well in excess of $100.

Fortunately, the publisher has seen fit to reissue the book making it available to a new generation of people interested in the UFO phenomenon. Having not previously read the book myself, I take the time to review it here.

The immediate question show more is whether a nearly 50 year old book is worth your time. It’s certainly possible. Vallee’s Passport to Magonia and The Invisible College were both written in the 1970s and remain important reading on the path to understanding the UAP phenomenon. The Edge of Reality is an enlightening entrant from the same era.

The book takes the form of conversations between Hynek and Vallée, occasionally facilitated by Dr. Author Hastings, a psychologist and mutual friend. The conversations are sometimes prefaced by a description of a particular UFO case that serves as the basis for the conversation.

One of the best values that the book brings for me is insight into Hynek and his activities. Hynek is less well published than Vallée, so commentary directly from him was educational, including:

The first-person account of his Project Blue Book years and his evolution in thinking on the UAP topic.
His understanding of how Project Blue Book was managed inside the Air Force: A low priority, amateurly run project, of interest to few within the Air Force. “Sloppy, just kid stuff.”
His recount of the famous “swamp gas” incident of 1966, how it was handled and how the whole notion of swamp gas became involved in the case. This is the moment, according to Hynek, when he finally decided he had had enough of Project Blue Book.
Another point that jumps out after reading the book during the current era, is that progress on this topic is wholly dependent then and now on engaging the scientific community. Again and again, Hynek and Vallée speak on the need for one or several scientists to speak up in order to progress. They talk about the continual discrediting of the topic keeping the scientific community away. They conclude that engagement by the scientific community is the way forward.

Hynek and Vallée express skepticism of a cover up by the government. It’s difficult to understand this stance given Hynek’s exposure to projects, Sign, Grudge and Blue Book. They put it more on incompetence, lack of interest, or passing the buck between various government entities such as the Air Force, the CIA, and others.

The book highlights how well evolved our knowledge of the phenomenon was 50 years ago. By 1975, Fort, Keel and Vallée have given us an understanding of the high strangeness aspect of the phenomenon, Vallée has given us the control system hypothesis, Keel and others had moved on from the extraterrestrial hypothesis. It leads to a cascade of questions: Has it taken until recent years to disseminate this thinking more fully? Did our progress researching the phenomenon stagnate over decades? How was the research community held at bay?

50 years ago, The Edge of Reality showed us what we know again today: Future scientific research holds the answers to the UAP phenomenon. The push in this era is towards just that. Avi Loeb’s Galileo Project and Gary Nolan’s Sol Foundation are the way forward. Has our inability to engage the scientific community cost us 50 years in our quest to understand the UAP phenomenon? Can this era accomplish what Hynek and Vallée called for decades ago and engage the scientific community? Time will tell. show less

Probably my last book of 2023, it's been a good year of reading. I'll touch on some of this year's reads here.

Continuing my UFO obsession -- Vallee's Dimensions is loaded with extraordinary evidence for an extraordinary conclusion. There's some out-there speculation at the very end, but Vallee's main thesis - that the UFO occupants are interdimensional, not extraterrestrial - is actually well supported, enough so that I can’t just write off this crazy claim or try to ignore it. Even if show more I’m not fully on board yet, this book succeeded in changing the way I approach understanding the phenomenon. I felt like I had some solid ground to stand on with Leslie Kean’s UFOs: Generals, Pilots, etc., but Vallee tears down the red curtain and shows just how big and weird all of this is. Kean and Vallee are both strong proponents of the fact that UFOs are real, physical objects. But Vallee goes further and explores their psychic nature. This gets into weird territory, equal parts ridiculous and unsettling, but Vallee has convinced me that the psychic side can't be ignored.

Reading Childhood's End right before this was great because it felt like a dramatization of Vallee's ideas (only Vallee's ideas are somehow weirder). "There is something about the human race with which they interact, and we do not yet know what it is. They are part of the environment, part of the control system for human evolution." Out of context there's no telling whether that's Vallee hypothesizing or Clarke talking about his fictional Overmind. It also sounds like something out of The Lathe of Heaven by Le Guin, another scifi read from earlier this year, in which beings interact with humanity via the realm of the unconscious.

Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku came in handy too, as some of these contact cases call into question what is possible under physics -- telepathy, psychokinesis, and teleportation, all common features of contact events, are Class 1 impossibilities according to Kaku, meaning they don't violate the laws of physics and are likely possible for humans within the next couple centuries. Cool....

I won't try to tie together everything I read this year but it's fun to see a common thread running through some of it. Let's keep it going in 2024 yall! show less