Above: Doves being released from a flying-saucer-shaped thing at the 22nd Interplanetary Conclave of Light, held by the Unarius Academy of Science in El Cajon, California. Watch the video.
Unarians spent much of March and April 1997 explaining why they were so different from Heaven's Gate adherents. Reporters routinely asked, "Could Unarius be the next Heaven's Gate?" [...] The Space Brothers had assured Antares that Heaven's Gate members had been taken to the healing wards on Venus to await their next reincarnation. Unarians described Heaven's Gate followers as tragically misguided cult members, who could have actually met the Brothers if they had only waited until 2001. To their way of thinking, Heaven's Gate qualified as a cult, unlike Unarius, which was scientific. [...]
Reporters called me to get coroboration of stories from unnamed ex-members who accused Unarius of mind-control. While I interpreted Unarian practices as commonplace conformity and suggestibility or folk healing, that proved too tame an analysis for some reporters, who wanted an expert's name to use in condemning the organization.
Diana G. Tumminia, When Prophecy Never Fails: Myth and Reality in a Flying Saucer Group (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). In Tumminia's account of life and myth production and relivings of intergalactic past lives among the Unarians, the author navigates through the awkwardness of participating in a new religion ("science"!) she didn't believe in, participating just enough—and just tactfully enough—to finish a book on it.
I was, at the same time, reading Susan Clancy's very entertaining Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens. In stark contrast to Tumminia and her careful, anthropological approach, Clancy takes a psychological, supercilious-bitch approach. To be fair, the anecdotes would be priceless, regardless of how the book frames them. There's what's probably the first-ever recorded Sox-related abduction account—
"Once, when I was younger, I was with a group of buddies at Fenway Park watching a game. We were drinking, horsing around, and things got a little bit fuzzy later on that night. Next thing I remember, I was on Mission Hill and it was five the morning. I didn't know where I was; don't know how I got there. You hear how advanced they are—they could have just wiped it from my mind, whatever happened that night. Then there's the mystery of the Pyramids. Who do you think built them? The aliens helped to build them."
And there's an exquisitely Cantabrigian older-woman-with-a-shawl account—the lady in question sees a luminous alien craft flying over a beach in India, and another woman ("a high spirit") channels it for her ("because she's a high spirit, she could address it in a humble way").
"She taught me so much. She's a Taoist priestess; she has had temple training. She taught me to be macrobiotic, to celebrate my body with dance and yoga." [...]
At a later point in the interview, she discussed the aliens themselves. "You know, they do walk among us on the earth. They have to transform first into a physical body, which is very painful for them, and they do it out of love." [...] I asked how she knew this. "It's what I know. it just is. That's all. You can't ask them quetsions like. 'What are you? Why are you here? How have you intervened on our behalf?' You just need to know." [...]
My experience with macrobiotic food is that it's brown and it tastes bad, so I asked her why she likes it.
Oh good. Now, on top of explaining to people that I was raised in the *Unitarian* church, not the *Unity* church, I'm gonna have to explain that I'm not a wacko cult member. Though I'm sure people assume that even without the Unitarian connection.
Posted by: unsinn | 14 November 2005 at 01:39 PM
the SPACE BOTHERS??!?! roflroflroflteeheehee
fun typo
Posted by: gus | 16 November 2005 at 12:18 AM