The names of Lovecraft’s alien gods, like Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, and Shub-Niggurath, began to crop up in other stories during Lovecraft’s lifetime. Lovecraft himself started this practice by inserting these names, or variants on them, into stories he ghostwrote or revised for other authors. In his revision of Zelia Bishop’s “The Mound,” for example, Lovecraft slipped his alien god Cthulhu into the story under the variant name Tulu, giving magazine readers what they thought were independent stories featuring references to the same ancient gods. By the 1960s, several dozen authors were using elements of what came to be called “The Cthulhu Mythos” in stories they wrote for science fiction and horror magazines.
Lovecraftian fiction became increasingly popular in Europe, where the French embraced him as a bent genius, much as they embraced Edgar Allan Poe. In France, the Russian expatriate Jacques Bergier and the writer Louis Pauwels read Lovecraft and were inspired by his cosmic vision. Bergier claimed to have corresponded with Lovecraft in 1935, though no letters survive. He spent much of the 1950s promoting Lovecraft in the French media, including the magazine he and Pauwels edited, Planète, and working to bring Lovecraft’s work out in French editions. Planète’s editors held Lovecraft as their prophet, and their reprints of his stories helped to popularize him and the Cthulhu Mythos in the French imagination.
Digging into Lovecraft’s Theosophical and Fortean source material, Bergier and Pauwels wrote Le Matin des magiciens (1960) (published in English as The Morning of the Magicians) and presented the first fully-fledged modern ancient astronaut theory. In it, they presented the themes found in Lovecraft as nonfiction, speculating about such alternative history touchstones as the “true” origin of the Egyptian pyramids, ancient maps that appear to have been drawn from outer space, advanced technology incongruously placed in the ancient past, and the other staples of later ancient astronaut theories. They note that ancient mythologies are replete with gods who visit earth in fiery chariots and return to the sky. These, they state, may have been alien visitors in spaceships.
Pauwels and Bergier drew on unrelated writings from a number of French and other authors who wondered to a greater or lesser extent whether modern UFO sightings might have antecedents in prehistory, but they combined this 1950s space-age speculation with a Lovecraftian cosmic vision and a New Age sensibility that translated Cthulhu into an ancient astronaut in a way that shiny atom-age extraterrestrials in spacesuits never could.
Morning of the Magicians became one of the most important sources for Erich von Däniken, the Swiss writer whose Chariots of the Gods? (1968) brought what had hitherto been a theory known only to Theosophists, Lovecraft aficionados, and fringe theorists into the cultural mainstream. Von Däniken did not mention Pauwels and Bergier in his works, however, until a lawsuit forced him to disclose the sources he closely paraphrased in Chariots. The bibliography of Chariots thereafter listed the French writers’ book in its 1962 German translation, Aufbruch ins dritte Jahrtausend. Tens of millions of copies of Chariots and its sequels sold, and the ancient astronaut theory became a cultural phenomenon, appearing in movies, on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, in Playboy, and practically anywhere people were talking about the past.
Other authors were inspired by von Däniken’s theories, including Robert Temple (whose Sirius Mystery argued that amphibious aliens from Sirius taught Sumerians civilization) and Zecharia Sitchin (whose Twelfth Planet argued that aliens from a “wandering” planet called Nibiru conquered ancient earth to steal its gold and other precious metals). By the end of the 1970s, there was an entire network of authors and promoters then known as the Ancient Astronaut Society (later the Archaeology, Astronautics and SETI Research Association, or AAS RA; now the Ancient Alien Society). As of this writing, the H2 channel broadcasts Ancient Astronauts: The Series, a weekly program that explores the work of von Däniken and other ancient astronaut theorists. The program was seen by more than two million viewers each week when it aired on the History Channel before it moved to sister station H2 in 2012. The ancient astronaut theory also appeared in movies and television series, ranging from the various incarnations of Stargate to Ridley Scott’s Prometheus (2012), a film that the famed Alien director explicitly modeled on von Däniken’s 1970s bestsellers: “NASA and the Vatican agree that is almost mathematically impossible that we can be where we are today without there being a little help along the way... That’s what we’re looking at (in the film), at some of Eric von Daniken’s ideas of how did we humans come about.”[39]
So what made so many believe aliens visited our ancestors?
IV. The Evidence for Aliens
The ancient astronaut theory, as it developed in the hands of Pauwels and Bergier, von Däniken, and others, uses a combination of suggestive archaeological, mythological, and artistic evidence. Though believers interpret nearly every piece of ancient history as supporting the ancient astronaut theory, in outline, the most important evidence is as follows:
Archaeological
Believers maintain that ancient cities and monuments the world over display three important properties that speak to their non-human origins. First, many are composed of stones that weigh so much that it seems impossible for ordinary humans to have moved them. For example, the blocks making up the Great Pyramid of Egypt weigh as much as fifty tons each, and the stones of the Incan fortress of Sacsayhuaman weigh as much as two hundred tons. Further, believers hold that these ancient sites are laid out and constructed with a precision that is unmatched by all but the most modern of contemporary constructions. The Great Pyramid, for instance, is said to be placed on a base within 0.049 inches of flat; its sides are oriented to the cardinal directions within three minutes of arc, something unmatched in nearly all modern constructions. Such engineering is said to be possible only with alien help, either as the builders themselves or as teachers who imparted the knowledge of such building techniques.
Second, believers argue that ancient sites and artifacts encode scientific data that should be unknown to Stone Age peoples. The Great Pyramid, to take a familiar example, is said to be an accurate scale model of the northern hemisphere of the earth thousands of years before Eratosthenes first estimated the planet’s circumference. It is also said to be placed in the exact center of the earth’s land masses. The monumental pyramids of the ancient Mexican city of Teotihuacan are often said to be a scale model of the solar system.
Third, anomalous artifacts represent advanced technology of possibly inhuman origin. The famous “Baghdad battery” is a small jar that may have held electrodes that when exposed to vinegar could have produced a small electrical charge. Small golden bees from Mexico may be depictions of ancient airplanes. A sparkplug may have been found inside a billion-year-old rock known as the Coso artifact.
Mythological
Ancient myths and legends record the arrival of the aliens and their deeds upon the earth. Believers in the ancient astronaut theory are united in their belief that myths and holy books are factual accounts of events that happened in the real world. The apocryphal Book of Enoch is a favorite, along with the legend of the Jewish prophet ascending to heaven in a fiery chariot. The Biblical vision of Ezekiel, who saw a fiery apparition of interlocking wheels, is said to represent an encounter with a flying saucer. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in fire and brimstone is suggested to be an account of aliens dropping an atomic bomb. Elsewhere, mythological appearances of savior gods such as Oannes in Sumer, Osiris in Egypt, Quetzalcoatl in Mexico, and Viracocha in Peru are thought to be factual accounts of anthropomorphic aliens bringing civilization to benighted ancient tribes. Hindu mythology is an especially rich source of proof because of its descriptions of flying machines, ray guns, and explosions that resemble atomic detonations.
And of course, like the Old Ones in At the Mountains of Madness, the gods who created humans and other earth life in myth and religion are here interpreted as aliens that genetically engineered earth life for their inscrutable purposes. They also manage earth life, lik
e the Old Ones who wipe out unfavorable races, by sending floods or annihilating trouble spots with nuclear weapons.
Artistic
Ancient art shows images of the aliens and their advanced technology, according to believers. Aboriginal cave art in Australia depicts beings with circles around their heads, obviously the helmets of space-faring aliens. Similarly, ancient Japanese statuary of rotund monsters actually shows aliens in bulky spacesuits. Medieval paintings are said to contain images of flying discs or aerodynamic chariots that resemble flying saucers and rocket ships. The lid of the tomb of the Mayan king Palenque does not show the king in the underworld but rather depicts him at the controls of technological device, perhaps a rocket ship. An image of a lotus blossom in the Egyptian temple of Dendera is really a depiction of a light bulb, complete with power cord and filament. Ancient maps are believed to show a) earth as depicted from space, b) the world as it existed in the Ice Age before human civilization, c) Antarctica centuries before its discovery in 1818.
V. The Science
Archaeologists, paleontologists, anthropologists, and other scientific professionals were less than impressed by the web of suggestion and interpretation that masqueraded as a scientific hypothesis. Since the mid-1970s, skeptics have produced articles, books, and documentaries aimed at debunking the ancient astronaut theory and explaining its “evidence” as a series of misinterpretations, misrepresentations, and ignorance of scientific research. It would be impossible to thoroughly explore the scientific arguments against the ancient astronaut theory in anything short of a book (for which, see my 2005 book, the The Cult of Alien Gods[40]), but the general lines of argument run like this:
Archaeological
No evidence of extraterrestrial technology has ever been found on earth, and no artifact can conclusively be tied to a planet other than earth. Such claims are exaggerations, misinterpretations, or frauds. For example, the alleged Coso artifact is not a billion-year-old bit of advanced technology but a 1920s spark plug encrusted in solidified crud mistaken for ancient rock. Ancient monuments show every sign of being constructed by the ancient people who lived around them, as demonstrated by the artifacts found in, around, on top of, and under ancient sites. Construction of buildings—even highly precise and heavy ones—can be accomplished with large numbers of people working together.
Mythological
Ancient myths do not have a direct correlation with events in the distant past. Instead, they are complex web of symbolism, religious belief, historical events, and imagination. There may be some distorted truth behind myths (as the discovery of Troy proved for Homer’s Iliad), but they cannot be interpreted as literal accounts of historic happenings. Nor are the myths themselves consistent across time. The myth of Jason and the Golden Fleece, for example, shows significant changes to major events between its earliest recorded forms and the best-known version, written by Apollonius of Rhodes many centuries later. In the earliest forms of the myth, it is unclear whether the Golden Fleece was even present—a far cry from those like Robert Temple or Erich von Däniken who assumed that one version of the myth stood for all, could be considered definitive, and could be interpreted literally as evidence of alien intervention. Mythology must be seen in its cultural context, and any interpretation must account for changes, distortions, and mutations that accrue over time as oral stories are retold, come into contact with stories from other cultures and lands, and eventually take on a written form. This is not unlike the contradictory variants of Mythos legends found in Lovecraft’s own stories.
Artistic
Again, ancient art should not be taken as a literal recording of events happening before the artists’ eyes. Many works of prehistoric art, such as cave paintings, depict shamans engaged in rituals designed to imbue them with the powers of the netherworld and their spirit animals. These cannot be taken literally but must be seen in cultural context and in terms of the visions of strange shapes and forms humans see when in shamanic trance states. Other pieces of ancient art, like the Dendera light bulb or Palenque’s coffin lid, must be viewed in light of other artistic depictions from the period, not by itself, in order to understand the symbolism and artistic conventions used in the work. Neither seems so much like ancient depictions of technology when compared to other Egyptian depictions of the lotus, or Mayan funerary art. No one piece exists in isolation, and an interpretation based only on what something “looks like” instead of its place in the broader cultural picture will lead to mistaken correlations.
VI. Conclusions
The novelist and Lovecraft scholar Richard L. Tierney noted the potential correlations between Lovecraft’s story “The Mound” (with Zealia Bishop) and actual Mesoamerican and Native American legends and traditions, and he identifies Yig, father of serpents, with the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent. At Teotihuacan, the Mexican city so old and mysterious that even the Aztecs themselves knew it only as a ruin belonging to the gods who descended from the sky, Tierney humorously identifies the sculptures of tentacled Tlaloc the rain god and serpentine Quetzalcoatl on Quetzalcoatl’s temple as representations of Cthulhu and Yig.[41] Thus is the ancient astronaut theorists’ evidence for aliens transformed again into proof of the Mythos. This, of course, was meant in jest, but the same reasoning transformed ancient achievements into alien interventions.
In 1982, Charles Garofalo and Robert M. Price wrote an article for Crypt of Cthulhu noting the similarities between the Mythos and Erich von Däniken’s ancient astronaut theories. They concluded that despite the high degree of correlation between von Däniken’s evidence and claims and Lovecraft’s fictional conceits, direct influence was impossible because von Däniken denied ever having read or heard of Lovecraft.[42] As we have seen, though, the influence need not be direct. The connections between those who propose ancient astronauts as fact and those who write of them as (science) fiction are myriad, and the web of influence runs in many directions. Perhaps someday the Great Race will swap minds with some of us and tell the world how aliens once ruled the past, but until that happens, Cthulhu will have to rest in his tomb and the ancient astronauts will have to stay in their fictional chariots.
3. Pauwels, Bergier, and Lovecraft
In my first book, The Cult of Alien Gods, as well as in the preceding chapter of this book, I outline a series of mostly uncontested facts that demonstrate the direct connection between the horror author H. P. Lovecraft and the ancient astronaut theory as developed by Erich von Däniken and those inspired by him. These facts are as follows:
- Many modern ancient astronaut theorists were directly inspired by Erich von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods (1968), though this was not the first or only ancient astronaut theory, merely the most popular. Most others took inspiration from Morning of the Magicians (1960) by the French writers Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier. Most acknowledge this debt.
- In writing his book, Erich von Däniken drew on Morning of the Magicians to such a degree that he was forced by threat of lawsuit to acknowledge his borrowings in later editions of Chariots of the Gods.
- Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier were both fans of Lovecraft and found inspiration for their ancient astronaut theory in Lovecraft’s writing.
Really, that’s it. Everything else is window-dressing around these three key facts.
However, critics who disagree with my theory have frequently contested that I have failed to sufficiently demonstrate that Pauwels and Bergier were inspired by Lovecraft to create their ancient astronaut theory despite the well-established connections between the French authors and the American horror writer. For these critics, Lovecraft is merely a side-light in a story that travels exclusively through non-fiction works, from Charles Fort and Theosophy to Pauwels and Bergier and thus to modern theorists. But this ignores the evidence.
Bergier, for example, asserted throughout his life that he had been a correspondent of Lovecraft (no letters survive), and both he and Pauwels translated and published the first French editions o
f Lovecraft’s work. Nor am I the only writer to have noted such a connection; in Lovecraft: A Study in the Fantastic (1984), Maurice Lévy took issue with the French writers’ implication that Lovecraft considered reality to be plastic when he was in fact a scientific materialist. In 2003, Gary Valentine Lachman discussed in Turn off Your Mind how Bergier championed Lovecraft in the 1940s and 1950s. Both of these works predate my own.
I believe that a direct quotation from the earlier Morning of the Magicians should settle any lingering doubt about the connection and firmly establish once again that the two French writers not only knew Lovecraft prior to writing Morning but drew on his work in developing their own.
As an example of militant action in favour of the greatest possible degree of open-mindedness, and as an initiation into the cosmic consciousness, the works of Charles Fort have been a direct source of inspiration for the greatest poet and champion of the theory of parallel universes, H. P. Lovecraft, the father of what has come to be known as Science-Fiction to which he has contributed some ten or fifteen masterpieces of their kind, a sort of Iliad and Odyssey of a forward-marching civilization. To a certain extent, we too have been inspired in our task by the spirit of Charles Fort.[43]
From this passage, we can clearly establish a few key facts about Pauwels and Bergier in 1960:
Faking History Page 3