Over cocktails, of course! For this week’s #weekend-engagement fun, I decided to go with option two for WE87: the dinner party. I believe most would think: “Oh come one…what…you are going to invite John Lennon? Maybe Herodotus? Carl Jung? The Veggie Kings from old???” Nope! I’ve been reading a lot of UFO books of late, so I want my dinner party to go down the strange, mystical rabbit hole that is the UFO phenomenon.
Warning: this one is a bit longer than usual
I couldn't help myself. That being said...
First up on the list of people I’d have to my dinner party:
This is an individual who has always fascinated me from the days of flying saucers old. I bought a first edition of his first book, The Secret of the Saucers, during COVID and was enthralled by the read. First and foremost, the story of Angelucci is predicated around “mushrooms.” I kid you not; I don’t see much mention of this in UFO lore, but the magic mushroom plays an integral role in Angelucci’s tale. As he describes it in his book, he first encountered UFOs in the sky while performing amateur science tests with mushrooms and experimental high-altitude balloons. This experiment caught the attention of our Space Brothers and flying discs, as the discs watched the balloons ascend into the sky.
Two years later, Orfeo poured himself a glass of ginger ale late at night and engaged with the true reality of nature. As an old San Mateo The Times article relates, Orfeo enjoyed the ginger ale, and as he:
“Sat down to the table, munched my sandwich, I looked deep into the glass. The little bubbles became galaxies, earths, stars…I put the glass down. Suddenly, I felt different – a queer feeling. Once more I put the glass up. I saw bubble in the ether…I put the glass down, but I still saw the bubbles. They became little bursts of light, each with a little face.”
Over the course of years, the UFO phenomenon continued to indirectly stalk him until 1952. As his claim goes, in 1952, he first spoke to the flying saucer men on the Los Angeles Hyperion Bridge. The space men then offered Orfeo a ride into outer space. While Fools Rush in Where Angels Fear to Tread played in the background of the space craft, Orfeo was given a tour of our solar system. He was also given a message by the Space Brothers…”A Great Accident” was to destroy humanity in the future. Of course, there was still time for humanity to change its ways…
Angelucci is a classic contactee. Jung went so far as to call Angelucci’s ordeal a genuine "mystic experience with a UFO vision.” I researched Orfeo a bit and found that his life was filled with number symbology, synchronicities, and high strangeness. So, Orfeo…welcome to the dinner party! I plan to have a few ginger ale fueled Moscow Mules ready to serve you...
Better known as Jack Parsons, the much written about American rocket engineer has filled conspiracy theorist’s canons for the better part of the 21st century. Typically written off as a “satanist with evil/nefarious overtones,” it’s easy to say “oh, look, Jack Parsons is showing up here in this Super Bowl halftime show courtesy of the Babalon Working, L. Ron Hubbard, the Scarlet Woman, and Marjorie Cameron (with some Aleister Crowley, too, of course).” Hey, it’s easy and it is clickbait in certain circles…I get it.
What I have always found interesting about Parsons is that he appears to be a completely misunderstood figure. I’ll get some slack for writing this (believe it or not, this isn’t my first go around on this rodeo), but I have found a few curious footnotes over the years regarding his life. For starters, I think Parsons was “identified” at an early age as possible military industrial asset and heavily exploited thereafter.
For example, after being kicked out of public schools in 1931, Parsons ended up at Pasadena’s University School. There, the school's headmaster took interest in Parsons and the student's interest in chemistry and rocket fuel. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, if you take the time to investigate the headmaster, you find that his name is one Russell Richardson. As fate would have it, Richardson happened to write a book that was published in 1914 called “Europe from a Motor Car.” Richardson, as lucky as he was, somehow was able to take a drive around Europe prior to the Great War and note military conditions at that time. He then returned to the States and published a book about his travels. Sure sure…is it just me, or does he reek of being a military asset?
The more you get into the Parsons story, you read that he:
Yet, after all of this, he somehow was thrown out of an experimental science career, missed out on a massive pay day that other Aerojet founders somehow managed to make in the 1950’s, and then died due to an inadvertent explosion in his garage as he was preparing to leave for Mexico. The "alleged" story is that Parsons died while attempting to manifest a homunculus. Sure thing; a homunculus. I smell a pattern here.
More interesting though to me is Parsons’s interest in UFOs, Gnosticism, and the piercing of the veil. If you get the chance to read about his Mojave Desert encounter with some type of “intelligence,” it gets weird. Very weird yet fascinating all of the same.
So welcome to the dinner party, Jack. I have read you are wild man, so gin and tonics (maybe vodka and sodas), it is!
Finally, I’d invite Jacques Vallee. He is by far my favorite UFO researcher and author. Never one to pin the phenomenon to shiny extraterrestrial objects in the sky, Vallee found his niche by correlating modern UFO occupant lore to the fairy stories of the past. Don’t believe me? Google a Joe Simonton from Wisconsin and his encounter with a UFO craft that gave him pancakes. Surreal? Of course…but when you read Vallee’s observation regarding the encounter, he mentions a US military analysis of the pancakes and their lack of salt. Curious, as the Gentry carry great disdain for salt, too.
Vallee has written many books over the course of his career. Most of his work concentrates on the potential deception the phenomenon brings to the people who experience it. Like John Keel, Vallee hints that the UFO experience is more human, and Earth based than most other researchers. Again, the phenomenon isn’t as simply as “ET visiting from the Pleiades.” He too thinks it is much more complicated than that.
I believe he is a venture capitalist in the San Francisco area and has researched many mystics, UFO encounters, UFO cults, and high strangeness events over his career. I believe he was one to have originally investigated the Skinwalker Ranch, too. A true renaissance man, I always look forward to reading his published works. Recently on a podcast, I also had heard that he is currently writing a book on his take on all of whatever this is…all of this reality…as being a sliver of a simulation. Sound exciting!
Vallee to me represents an open mind regarding the phenomenon. Sure, I have some questions for Orfeo and Jack, but something tells me Vallee would be the glue to bring this dinner party together. I would guess Jacques is (maybe?) a bourbon kind of guy. So, welcome to the dinner party, Dr. Vallee. I’m no venture capitalist, but the Bulleitt works pretty good too.
And there it is! Yikes. Long! Thanks for taking a read if you made it this far and let me know what you think about the so-called UFO phenomenon. Like the group above, I might be more open minded than you think!
