Foreword by Ivan Fraser

Over the last 30 years or so there has been increasing interest in the 'ancient astronaut' thesis. Although this fascination with 'real' alien visitors essentially hit mainstream consciousness with the works of Erik Von Daniken and Zecharia Sitchin, the population has been mentally prepared for the aliens since the beginning of the 20th century by science-fiction in books, comics, movies and tv shows. It is so innate to our collective psyche today that there are very few who do not relate the idea of UFOs to extra-terrestrial beings, and have an immediate mental image of the 'greys' and the similar spindly beings of Spielberg's Close Encounters, or Whitley Streiber's Communion, as their archetypal representation of these same off-world entities.

Today there are numerous TV documentaries asking the questions about whether or not we are being visited by extra-terrestrial beings, and countless books and websites promoting 'the truth' about our alien co-inhabitees of the universe. Furthermore, any amount of New Age psychics and channellers are also preaching 'the word' as 'given to them' by ET cousins.

Given that the universe is such a massive place, and given that there is so much material and evidence for ETs and their activities, isn't it verging on insanity to suggest that there may actually be another reason entirely for such things? How can all of these experiences, books, scholars, and even currently a growing number of scientists and government 'insiders' be mistaken?

Well, one could summarize that briefly, and one would make no impact on a mind that has already taken the view expressed above. But I would sincerely hope that as it takes an open mind to accept such conventionally outlandish ideas as alien visitation, the reader would try and remain equally open-minded, in assessing the contents of what follows.

'But we've read a thousand books on the subject. There is no doubt. Even if they aren't all entirely accurate, one thing's for sure - the common element - and that is ETs exist and they are visiting this planet, have been for centuries, and probably have an agenda for our future.'

To suggest otherwise is heresy. Right?

At least it is increasingly so these days. Ever wondered about that; how something so suppressed and 'true' should be so increasingly accepted by the mainstream, when all along we have been told that 'they' don't want us to know this?

What if such a mindset has been engineered? What if it is being designed in such a way that the entire alien visitor scenario is what the powers-that-be WANT us to replace our religions and belief systems with?

But why? Surely there's a history of government and Intel suppression of this information? They wouldn't hide and suppress what they want us to believe would they?

Well, yes. Firstly, they aren't hiding it! They are steadily creating an air of mystery and allowing us to come to the very conclusions that we are. It's reverse psychology really. And the Illuminati know all about how to control mass mentality.

If all this was so secret, do you really think that all these 'insiders' would still be free and on talk shows, in magazines, and books spreading this top-secret material, having signed national security agreements? Would there be so much availability of this supposedly 'secret' subject in mainstream media? The same media that clearly manages to heavily suppress and distort most of the other material that concerns those in the 'conspiracy' area.

Why, if history shows us that the first UFO organisations that were accusing the CIA and governments of covering up the truth of alien visitors, were actually CIA and government agents, should we believe that suddenly, today, everything they told us was true?

The earliest pro-ET lobbyists were organisations such as NICAP (the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena), which were riddled with former military and Intelligence personnel, such as Donald Keyhoe, a former Pentagon Major involved in investigating the German UFO technology during WW2, Roscoe Hillenkoetter a former CIA director, and several CIA Psychological Warfare Division personnel, such as Joseph Bryan etc. These are the people who, from the outset of the ET myth, were actively creating it!

And why should the CIA and governments have been so interested in ploughing energy into creating UFO groups and cults, if what they say is true? Clearly there's something big belying this agenda, and it certainly is not what those agents told us was going on. The one thing we can be damned sure of is that it isn't alien visitation.

For decades following WW2, the major aeronautics companies such as Boeing and Lockheed, were engaged in the development of saucer-shaped craft (this really took off, excuse the pun, after 1957) . These craft, and more conventional, though secret, craft were being tested; U2 spyplanes, and others were being mobilized, and the CIA had found a way to confuse the Soviets, and the general populace, by hiding these craft in plain sight. Eye-witnesses' stories were spun into tales of extraterrestrial encounters, the news media and magazines like Time and Life had stories planted by the CIA, wherein 'anonymous' government and intelligence sources were 'spilling the beans' on extraterrestrial visitation in saucer-shaped craft. CIA groups like NICAP (subliminally, this rearranges into PANIC!) were lobbying furiously in public and gathering a pro-ET following, actively accusing the government of covering up ET visitation. On the other side of the equation, the government and military were continually officially denying the entire UFO-ET connection, thereby giving the populace the impression that it was 'hiding the truth' about the extraterrestrial visitors.

Later, solitary eye-witnesses would be sometimes abducted and false memories and crude chip devices implanted, so that they would become star witnesses and prophets in an ever-growing new religion of extraterrestrial close encounter-based cultism. The development of ET-based cults was largely a blowback from the disinformation exercise, wherein those of a religious disposition would find other avenues to receive their saviours and satisfy their need for a 'higher power'. Other cult groups would be actively created and encouraged, such as those following the Council of Nine - a council of 9 gods channelled through 'chosen ones' - chosen ones chosen and tutored under the wing of Andrija Puharich, a psychologist formerly (?) part of the CIA's MK-ULTRA mind-control project, specialising in developing drug, radio and hypnotic methods to implant signals directly into the brain!

Despite the technicalities of Mind Control, advanced engineering etc. this really is a simple swindle - although the simplest swindles are often the most effective. The governments and the Intelligence agencies are operating at a high level in concert - the one side denying the position of the other, but both acting by admission or omission to promote in the minds of the public the 'overwhelming evidence' that ETs are visiting Earth in UFOs. It is a swindle that has been sustained for the last half a century. Why mess with a winning formula?

Why do so many people, even those well-versed in UFO lore, not know that the alien stories ORIGINATED in the Intelligence community, when they are also being told BY THE SAME community that the Intel and Govt. arena is deliberately HIDING these truths?

What kind of mental gymnastics does it take to accept that the government is hiding the truth, whilst relying on their agents FOR the information about ETs and UFOs?

The answer is simple: our minds and opinions are being manipulated AWAY from the truth by simple sleight-of-hand magicians' tricks. Whilst we are all looking at the interesting and enthralling spectacle, we are missing the real action, and failing to notice the simple way the deception is achieved. In doing so, we are continually speculating about all manner of conspiracies and hidden technologies, as well as occult realities that vested interests certainly do not want us delving into.

Why are so many authors performing these same mental gymnastics and writing books that expose the Illuminati conspiracy whilst giving one of their conspiracies as reason behind the agenda? If we take the work of David Icke, for example, he has written thousands of pages exposing the Illuminati, but underpins it entirely with Zecharia Sitchin's erroneous and fantastical interpretations of ancient history - the evidence for which is given below. At the same time, Icke claims Sitchin to be a disinformant, as well as claiming that he has attended sacrificial Illuminati rituals in which he transformed into a reptilian. If Sitchin is one of the bad guys then why is he telling the truth about the ETs? I don't believe - as has been rumoured - that Icke is himself a deliberate disinformant, but I do believe that Icke has much to do to re-evaluate his books and understand how much of what he writes comes from disinformation sources (as I pointed out, even from sources he himself identifies as unreliable). It's no use relying on one or two authors to give you the basis of an entire all-encompassing thesis, and relying on cross-referencing authors that all sing from the same hymn sheet, unless you have done enough research into that subject yourself and can understand it sufficiently to be able to decide that those authors are actually properly representing the topic. One can read a hundred books all telling the same story and believe one is well-read in that field, and adopt that version as one's belief system. Icke is merely one example, and perhaps the most popular, of those authors and lecturers who appear to provide a massive amount of evidence and references for their theses, when in fact they are merely replicating work of a handful of other authors who share the commonalities that fit where the author wishes to 'come from'.

The above is merely one example of how the Intelligence community set information sources against each other, providing various 'angles' on a subject to fit the reader's particular mindset, but always keeping the common factor the same. Icke, like most people, works on the basis of documenting 'commonalities', and often points out that although there are many versions of the same story, it is the 'common interconnecting themes' inherent in his documentation that are the evidence for the verity of his explanations. However, creating many 'versions' of disinformation is an integral part of the manipulation. Creating 200 variants on who, why and what, the aliens are, gives people apparent choice as to which version to believe, or whether to synthesise their own version. BUT, it isn't the one version of the scenario that the Intel community are trying to implant (at least not yet), it is merely that the people will accept the CENTRAL THEME - that is the Aliens. They provide a data-hungry audience with a jigsaw puzzle and 'challenge' them to put it together, but they remove key pieces. So the intrepid researcher nearly always ends up piecing together the picture that 'they' want him to, but usually with subtle variations on the central theme. Then, later, other authors rely on such ideas as the basis of their own, but tend to wish to take it a step further, to be a bit cleverer, more insightful, than the last. And so the myths develop many tentacles, whereas the main body remains the central and unifying factor. Of course, that central unifying factor was false to begin with, but given time, nobody bothers to check out the deductions that led to the original idea in the first place; and what we are left with is a hundred and one variations on an erroneous theme, such as found in religions and New Age beliefs. Even science and history all come down to us built upon the dogmas of our forebears. It builds up like an inverted triangle. Of those who do decide to look at things from the first principle and get to the root of the thing, most are overwhelmed by the task at hand because they spend so much time sifting through the very works of those spin-off authors and find the original documentation to be rare, out of print, or whatever, and that it's still tempting to just go along with one of the pre-prepared theories already in existence.

I am no exception to this. As a researcher, I understand how easy it is to get caught up in the red herrings, and how difficult, time-consuming and expensive it is to verify data and explore theories from the bottom up, rather than simply accept the words of others who appear to have done all the work for you. But with each passing week, I am becoming ever more aware of just how much information that is available on these subjects has simply been collated and BELIEVED without being checked out, and have become enormously popular ideas amongst those that consume them as readers. If only the readers knew how much material out there is simply unreliable, and how much these authors only appear to have researched it for themselves, and how many people set themselves up as authorities whilst having merely a smattering of knowledge on their subject, I think the sales of books, seminars and lectures by these personalities would plummet.

People are being groomed en masse into cults of personalities of authors and lecturers pontificating about aliens and conspiracies and ascended masters and all sorts of shallow material, whilst being entirely unaware that they are being so manipulated. They have been told, therefore believe, that the personality will reveal so much, and they trust that the author or presenter has thoroughly examined the subject. But nine times out of ten, the author is merely dressing up their own belief system in apparently new clothes, from the very material that created their belief system and cult mentality in the first place. The authors often do not realise they are wrong, and that their truth is a belief-system, and so usually begin proceedings by telling their audience that they are against religion and cults and orthodoxy etc. And the audience is impressed by that, finds a kindred sceptic in their preferred source, and ends up becoming a part of an alternative belief system that believes it is now free and onto 'the truth', rather than being one of 'them', a 'straight' or an 'unawakened' or 'unenlightened' one. It all serves to make the New Age and alternative conspiracy community feel rather special.

Again, I do not divorce myself from this phenomenon. I too am at the mercy of my sources, and I too feel I have an important message for people to consider. I believe in the verity of what I believe and provide reason and evidence. Which is why I am always at pains to ask people to think for themselves and try and verify any information provided by me or anyone else. All I try and do is make sense of things as best I can and put it up for consideration. Authors, researchers, lecturers, presenters, journalists, scholars etc. are all readers too; not necessarily as wise or knowledgeable as they may appear, no matter how many pages they churn out. I've met many people who have never written an article or a book who are far more knowledgeable about such things than many recognised authors on certain topics. And yet, it is these recognised characters who are fast becoming the new authorities and priests of the new breed of New Age and related cultic movements. And most of them are singing from the same sheet. So there's little difference really, and the reader's choice is largely an illusion. Just as for centuries the West was divided fundamentally into Catholics and Protestants, and few thought to consider that there may be an alternative to Christianity in the first place, so too today there are increasingly many people who are failing to consider that there may be an alternative to the ET central core theme.

For many the issue is settled, and no amount of scepticism or 'debunking' will convince them otherwise.

If a host of cults and belief systems can be created now, it is only a matter of wheeling out the advanced technology and a bunch of 'experts' later to unite those diverse believers into a unified belief system. If all of those pre-prepared believers believe in the common theme of aliens, the process should be fairly easy. The rest of the herd will go along with it too, because who isn't going to believe a fly-by of UFO craft, combined with news footage of alien artefacts and accredited experts stating that 'we now know scientifically that ETs are visiting Earth', whilst on the other channel are a bunch of experts on ancient writings showing how the ancient texts tell us that these beings have been here for millennia, busily telling us that pictures of old art and symbolism are really spacecraft and alien life-forms? The newspapers will be full of this most amazing revelation of the age - the headlines will be unavoidable. Suddenly, everything will make sense to the man in the street, who is prone to believing anything an 'expert' tells him, and will promptly rush out and buy as many Icke, Sitchin and related books as he can find. Everything he reads in those books will reinforce the evidence he has been given and he will never think to question or look for himself. He will wonder why he never 'got it' in the first place and will bow to the superiority of all those at whom he scoffed in the past, and they will gladly provide him with everything he needs to know.

Oh the joy that will be felt around the world, when finally everyone joins the new reality and is 'awakened'. But those pesky religious types will need sorting out for the greater good of all, of course! The heretics and infidels of the old ways, those pagans and heathens who cannot understand or accept the clear Truth!

Hang on, where have I heard that before? Why am I put in mind of the Inquisition, the witchtrials and the various religious purges of the last few thousand years?

Don't assume it won't happen, because it always did before, and there's no reason to suspect that in time to come this new religion will not be exactly the same foundation for intolerance and mass mind control as those that preceded it.

Another author to influence the conspiracy and New Age community with his own version of the ET mythos, William Cooper, realised a few years before his death that he had been used in a clever scam - to convince people that aliens were visiting Earth, manipulating people through a network of conspiratorial organisations that the Earth's governments were colluding with. But still, today, his book Behold A Pale Horse remains a widely-quoted script for the 'exposure' of the ET agenda. How many people realise that only several years after releasing that book, Cooper retracted the whole alien connection? Not only that, but many books have since been based upon this book, such as David Icke's Robot's Rebellion and its follow-up works, that maintain the exact same basis as the cornerstone of the world view represented therein. Like myself, he made the transition and broke away from the mould of the community he was essentially part of. He wasn't afraid to let go of his beliefs and dogmas and tell things as he saw them. I recommend that the reader also reads MAJESTYTWELVE by Bill Cooper.

ETs sell books - but as experience has shown me, giving the alternative, no matter how reasonable or well-referenced, does not attract much attention. It is exciting and stimulating to consider that the sci-fi we grew up with as children may actually be true. The more sensational and outlandish, the more promises that 'this book reveals more' than the others, the more people will buy them. The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it. And the Illuminati know this all too well.

We have come so far now down the ET road that the mass belief has become a NEW RELIGION; one rejected as such by its adherents. It is a belief that is now 'the truth' to so many people. Such adherents - like members of all cults - do not consider their own beliefs to be cultic or religious. How can the 'truth' be 'religion'?

We are not infallible. We can not be expected to know everything. We are ALL at the mercy of our sources, and we take on faith the accuracy of their data. If you want to find the truth in anything, never be afraid of re-evaluating your beliefs.

This conspiracy to replace the old gods and revise history with swathes of extra-terrestrial beings and introduce a new religion for a new scientific age, is so stealthy, so ingrained and so vast that I do not blame anyone for accepting such scenarios as 'the truth'. Indeed, several years ago, I too would have offered the ancient astronaut hypothesis as the most likely candidate to explain any number of mysteries and conventionally-inexplicable phenomena. Yes, I too have read these books and been fascinated since early childhood with the idea of alien visitation; many a time I have gazed at the night skies for hours in the hope that I would witness a UFO. And yes, on a few occasions I have seen them!

Towards the late 1990s I began to find many answers to those same questions that create alien beliefs, that had nothing to do with ETs. I either had to keep my own mind open and accept that I may have been wrong - which the new data showed me was the case - or I could have remained cocooned in a belief system, and used 'the aliens are responsible' as a convenient answer to those very anomalies and mysteries.

I spoke to many people who were primarily interested in UFO and alien research, and none were aware of the data I was starting to collate, and none were able to provide answers or give as reasonable an explanation for the phenomena we were discussing. That situation has not changed.

'But aren't you just a sceptic? There are loads of debunkers who just either haven't seen all the data or are misinformationists.'

Good question, and a very common one. There are simple sceptics that take the conventional views and ridicule alternative free-thinking. I am certainly not one of them. Anyone familiar with my work will know that I have spent many years experiencing and investigating occultism, the paranormal, psychism, and of late science and history of 'unexplained' phenomena. I have always advocated such research and always accepted as normal the reality of multiple dimensions, psychic phenomena, inter-dimensional communication, and have always leaned towards the New Age modes of thought. But I have always remained sceptical of claims that I have not explored in sufficient detail for myself.

And yes, there are many debunkers and sceptics who offer the shallowest of debunking material and deserve to be discredited. However, just as Intel have agents in the field putting these alien stories into circulation, they also have a lot of those opposing that same material. This is deliberate, in order that the debunkers can be themselves debunked by the UFO community, and thereby give greater credence to the alien agenda. It is not because official sources and debunkers are bad at obscuring the truth about alien visitation that they never provide credible explanations for the UFO reports, it is because they are supposed to make such a hash of it that the average researcher or reader will feel that they have the opposition 'sussed', which reinforces their belief in the alien agenda and that the government/Intel/Illuminati are trying to keep it 'hushed up'.

People naturally feel rather chuffed when they believe they have outsmarted the opposition. This reinforces a belief system splendidly. The Illuminati know that, and they are a lot cleverer than the vast majority of us!

It is not for me to tell anyone what or how to believe, nor to impose my own beliefs on anyone else, but on this matter I do implore those readers who now wish to reject outright the following material, to read on. You may have read a thousand books on the following subjects and NEVER been presented with the data below; even if you believe you have read just about everything going and are convinced that this is a closed subject.

If you believe that ETs are visiting planet Earth, that they founded civilisation, have an agenda for mankind or that they are merely benevolent 'watchers' of mankind (or all the above), THINK AGAIN! That's what you are SUPPOSED to believe, as far as I am concerned. I believe you have been fooled. Accept that or not, but from what I have gathered over the years, that is my firm belief. Do not reject it outright as 'but that's just your belief', but examine the data and the reasoning behind it, and decide for yourself what makes sense.

The mechanics of the inter-dimensional mind is such that it is very difficult to escape belief systems. The collective unconscious is a swarming mass of archetypes and ideas that affect us perpetually. Unless we can learn to separate the external influence of the sea of energy around us from the mind that lies within us, and truly think for ourselves, we are easily victims of those who know how to manipulate the information coming into our heads and minds through the five senses, as well as the occult fields.

What is actually being hidden from plain sight by the programming of people to see 'aliens' where they are not, is profound! Real technology, NOT back-engineered alien technology, but real technology based on physics that is over 100 years old which has been obscured and written out of the text books - if it ever managed to sneak into them at all, that is. The same physics that lies behind the engineering of flying discs is also that which would provide free and clean power. And that same physics works on principles that also explain many other so-called mysteries or 'paranormal phenomena'. No wonder it is hidden!

The science we see on show today is over 50 years behind that which exists in secret.

Concurrently, the cover-stories are being used to create a new religion that replaces and brings together the other out-dated religions, much as Christianity did 2000 years ago. Steadily, it was manufactured out of diverse religious sources across the Roman empire, and used to control those people of other religions with a 'one size fits all' Catholic one. The consequences of which have been a disaster for mankind - eons of mental and spiritual slavery, as well as the cause of genocides. Religion is the ideal tool of control, and currently 'the ETs' are the racing cert for being the basis of the next biggie.

People are already being condescended to and even ridiculed in websites and magazines for not believing in the aliens. They are already becoming a new generation of HERETICS. It won't be too long before we start to see a more sinister mentality growing in the 'believers', as extremist factions begin to form and the course of the new religion inevitably takes the same one as that of the other main religions of history.

Are you honest enough and courageous enough to reconsider deeply held beliefs and realities? Or are you convinced that the ETs are out there and they are coming and no amount of 'debunking' will convince you otherwise?

It's your choice. I wish you well in whatever view you take.

The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it. If you know the truth, then you cannot be taken in by the lie. However, if you believe lies, then all you will find is evidence to reinforce the illusion. The only solution is a truly open mind, a willingness to shed one's dogmas no matter how dearly cherished, and absolute honesty.

The following, albeit lengthy, compilation of articles merely scratch the surface of the matter at hand. The subject is worthy of at least several volumes of books, as there are so many interrelated topics to consider.

In my own comments, I have drawn on the work of Prof. L A Waddell to explain some of the historical data of ancient Sumer. Most readers may be familiar with Waddell through the recent works of David Icke. In my view, Icke has done a great service in explaining the intricacies of the Illuminati agenda, but has made the fundamental error of combining Waddell's work with that of Sitchin to create a hybridised false version of history, and used that false history as the entire basis of his current world view. In Waddell's history there are no extraterrestrials - and to the ancients the only extra-terrestrials were the heavenly bodies, and these became the 'gods and the watchers and teachers of mankind. They were often humanized (albeit supernaturally so) or expressed in totemic animal form or hybrids of both. But the ancients did not recognise the concept of alien beings riding in ships from outer space and interacting with mankind! Waddell does indeed need to be tempered with data from other fields - especially in the region of ancient mythology, which he sometimes confused for real history despite his invaluable insights into this field. He failed to realise the full extent to which ancient historical characters became fused with cultural mythologies, and where the origins of these mythologies lay. Almost inevitably, such characters became fused in cultural histories with archetypes of ancient mythology based around the cycles of nature, ancient astronomy etc. I do not go into these elements below, but urge the reader to look at the work of Acharya S, Gerald Massey etc. to see where these mythologies derived from and how.

One MUST study comparative mythology to understand the meaning behind the stories that are today being passed off as tales of ancient extraterrestrials. One CANNOT rely on the accuracy of the likes of Sitchin and Icke to portray these myths as they were understood by their creators. If one studies for oneself the same mythologies presented throughout the globe, one finds that there are many different versions of the same myths that clearly do not even hint at extraterrestrials, but instead reveal an early form of scientific explanation of natural phenomena using that which was visible and observed by the ancients as similes.

Ivan Fraser

Refuting Zecharia Sitchin's Ancient Astronauts and Planet X Theses

updated article taken from The Truth Campaign magazine issue 25

I really don’t want to belabour the point re Sitchin and Planet X etc. but for the fact that these kinds of theories have taken such a dramatic hold of so many people’s views on the ancients and impact upon their views of the present and future (doomsday prophecies etc). Currently, the most popular doomsday prophecy doing the rounds is the Planet X theory, which basically states that a rogue planet with a massive orbit will be returning in 2003 to cause catastrophe on Earth. This theory has developed over the years and is first to be found in the works of Zecharia Sitchin.

While there are so many people quoting the ‘Sumerian texts’ straight from Sitchin, or indirectly from the other sources who have also directly or indirectly replicated his bizarre interpretations, I feel we cannot simply ignore the impact this one man has had on the entire New Age movement. More importantly, we must consider the very real implications for our future if this revisionist movement continues at the pace it is going.

Amongst the popular authors who have used erroneous material from Sitchin are Graham Hancock and Robert Beauval, who relied on Sitchin’s assertion that the Great Pyramid at Giza had no evidence within it to show it was built in the 3^rd millennium BC. They took him at his word that essential data – an inscription inside the pyramid relating to Khufu – was actually a later piece of fraudulent graffiti. Fortunately, Hancock has now assessed this himself and agrees that the inscription is of Khufu and it does prove that the pyramid was constructed no earlier than Khufu’s reign.

Another author – whose current theories regarding an extraterrestrial race seeding manipulating bloodlines in the ancient world are built upon Sitchin’s ideas – is David Icke. Icke has recently written two very popular books based on this theory and has in the process contaminated the superb work of Prof. L A Waddell with the disinformation of Sitchin. Again, the average reader is unlikely to have the knowledge-base with which to deconstruct the kind of mess which Icke has created of history by combining good source material with disinformation.

I too am guilty of accepting Sitchin’s translations at face value and used some of them in my earlier work. Like many others, I had read the superlative commendations about Sitchin’s scholarship and had not yet looked outside of Sitchin and Alford’s Gods of the New Millennium at the wide range of sources concerning the Sumerians that are available. So I do sympathise with other readers and researchers who have also fallen naively into the same trap. I am also grateful for Sitchin’s work, which initially stimulated my interest in the Sumerians, and gave me so many insights into how history and texts can be manipulated and mislead millions of people.

Today, there are many other such authors. Some are innocently taken in by the hoax, others are knowing hoaxers employed by the Illuminati’s Intelligence community to deliberately spread masses of fraudulent information to hide the truth about the secret aircraft development programme. This knowledge of advanced physics could revolutionise human life if it were widely acknowledged, by not only providing advanced craft, but free energy for the world. Another reason for the maintenance of this hoax is to distort our understanding of history, religion and mythology. If we were to truly understand the meanings behind the writings of our elder cultures, which are basis for most of the world’s religious beliefs, we would see and understand that our diversity of beliefs and faiths stem from common truths that have been perverted, distorted and used for dividing mankind, both from each other and from our own inner connection with our innate spiritual core. If the Truth were known, rather than beliefs bought and sold in packages of religion, then we could remove religion altogether - the greatest mind manipulation and social control tool in the Illuminati’s arsenal - and live in harmony and freedom, together.

One has to be aware of the wolves in sheep’s clothing. Many such authors are active in informing you that they are ‘freeing’ you from the mind control of religion, through deconstructing them and providing you with evidence to support their claims. However, what so many of them are actually doing is tearing down the foundations of religions (not necessarily a bad thing, in my opinion), to replace them with the ‘alien gods’ or ‘ascended master gods’ scenarios, which the reader may never even consider to be a new religion. And far from being ‘freed’ or ‘enlightened’, such people are actually being re-herded into new pens full of manageable sheep who believe they are free.

I have already said a good deal in previous magazines about what I see as a plan to create a new religion, which will bring us up to date in technological terms, whilst at the same time coalescing the previous religions, gods and mythologies into a united ‘they were all aliens’ scenario, and minor variations upon it. Christianity amalgamated the world religions into one manageable religion for the Romans 2000 years ago, and it would appear that we are heading for the next Universal (Catholic) Church, through which they can mind control future generations.

Sitchin is certainly not the only author to distort and mislead us, but is certainly the most influential, and most of what is being said in these articles about Sitchin can be applied to countless other New Age, historical revisionist and UFO-related authors.

Most people do not have the time to investigate the complex background to information presented in books on ancient texts. In the main, people develop an interest in a particular angle on a subject – for instance the ancient astronaut hypothesis. They will then read many books of the same type, usually coming from the same angle, often by a bunch of authors who cross-reference each other incestuously. They may then consider themselves quite well-read on the subject. However, unless they have taken the time to study the same texts and histories from many other perspectives, they will not have a good perspective from which to judge whether the material they favour is reasonable.

It has struck me how much information is available, and has been for many years, which your conventional ancient astronaut author will never reference, criticise or ever try to incorporate into their work. This applies equally to any number of revisionist Egyptology, Sumerian, ancient civilisation, Atlantis etc. etc. authors too. It would appear that these authors are either extremely ignorant of the available data – which I have difficulty believing, as they usually appear very well-read in their field – or they have so narrowed their field of vision to exclude the available answers in order to create an illusion that there are far more ‘holes’ in our knowledge than there actually are.

They usually start from the proffered premise that ‘we believe’ today a certain scenario which ‘experts’ have developed, such authors usually take pains to disassemble the ‘conventional view’ of academia and reveal the glaring inconsistencies; showing us how the academic viewpoint as taught in universities simply can’t be true or is at least highly dubious. And I agree in the main that conventional history needs to be revised, but we simply cannot ignore the mass of data which has been gathered by academia over the years, even if we do not necessarily agree with the overall picture such academics paint with this data. In the books of many of today’s popular alternative authors, once the subject is rendered ambiguous and open to interpretation, the authors then go on to ‘fill the gaps’ with highly speculative or tentative information as evidence of their own particular theory. Again, this is not necessarily improper; all authors and theorists do this. What is improper is when the conventional view is artificially distorted to make it appear to the reader to be inadequate or ridiculous; something which the average reader is unlikely to recognise.

Moreover, surely, when there is a huge body of information available which does provide adequate explanation, we need to question both the ability and the motivation of the author who never references known evidence and proof that would negate their own theories.

Sitchin is a good example of one who ignores known data, misquotes and mistranslates, and who leaves out elements of well-known data – even parts of well-known texts – which remove the proper context, so that he can reconstruct carefully selected fragments of hand-picked data into an internally consistent book. Although the individual books may seem to be internally consistent – which is all the average reader will know and therefore accept – when viewed next to the available data, such theories are blatantly ridiculous and clearly manufactured to con a reader who unfortunately knows no better; a reader who trusts the author to have done his homework and to be reasonable with the data – especially when, as in the case of Sitchin – the author is widely acclaimed to be an ‘expert’ and one of a handful of people in the world who can read the ancient Sumerian texts. It is clear that Sitchin is not an expert at all. In fact, most of his 12^th Planet is merely a collation of standard works such as Kramer's, which is then used as the basis of a deconstruction and ‘retranslation’ into the ET-gods scenario.

I fail to see where Sitchin has done any proper translation work of his own, or has revealed anything which was not already available in the standard works. The only ‘new’ material in the 12^th Planet comes in the form of mistranslation, and distortion of known data.

Unfortunately, it is this mistranslated data that any number of books, New Age gurus and websites are quoting to support their belief in the ancient astronaut theory. Amazingly, these clearly erroneous translations and histories are also being ‘channelled’ by numerous New Age gurus who claim to be receiving the information directly from spirits, ascended masters or aliens! There is a mass market for such things today; naïve ‘truthseekers’ all over the world have been captured in the glamour and excitement of the ETs and many have invested their entire view of reality on such paradigms as ‘the aliens will save us’, or ‘the aliens are coming’, which has replaced conventional religion as a means of explaining creation and providing answers from ‘above’ or ‘out there’.

So let’s look at the evidence and decide for ourselves if Sitchin’s particular version of history has any merit, and whether there is any reason to fear Planet X. Then we will take a brief look at one key area in mythology – astronomy and astrology – which is usually misunderstood, thereby creating a host of motifs that people such as Sitchin have speculated about and refashioned into new theories and myths over the years. I’ll run past you a few theories of my own into the bargain and you can see if they make any more sense in the light of the following information.