Strange People

From 'sociology of belief' territory, via Danijel Sinani in 10(1) Antropologija (2010) - One of the most controversial and therefore, one of the most interesting figures in the UFO movement that appeared in public during the late forties and the fifties of the twentieth century, is certainly George Adamski, an American of Polish descent. Adamski is the prototype of the new type of contactees, and he was among the first who gained enormous popularity with his testimonies about contacts with UFOs, claiming that he was chosen to deliver important alien messages and wisdom to humanity. We don't know much about his life before he became famous as a contactee and as an author of several books and articles on this subject. After he served shortly in the U.S. Cavalry on the Mexican border, Adamski got married and situated on a ranch in California, where, with the help of like-minded people, he later bought a piece of land and opened a cafe and an observatory.

Clearly interested in mysticism and metaphysics from the earliest age, Adamski founded the Royal Order of Tibet in 1936 and began to teach the "knowledge" of the occult nature. However, Adamski quickly shifted his interest to the ideas related to UFOs and he revealed his first contact with UFOs on October 9th 1946. Three years later he published his first book which made his way clear to a significant position in the circles of people interested in the UFO phenomena (Adamski 1949). However, Adamski gained a worldwide fame by publishing his second book in 1953. In the book he presented Orthon to the public - a tall, blond inhabitant of Venus, with whom Adamski allegedly established a telepathic connection a year earlier. It's unclear whether that telepathy involved the notion, espoused by Ervin Laszlo of World Futures, that the brain is - or will shortly become - a 'quantum wave transceiver'.

Sinani reports that - Through Orthon, Adamski was then given hieroglyphic, encrypted messages from the "Space Brothers" who were interested in the future of the Earth and its inhabitants. Now of course he'd be invoking nonsense about the Mayan Calendar. Adamski claimed that he learned, through the contact with the Venusians, whose aircraft he managed to see up close, that they have been secretly present on Earth for some time. He also stated that their mission was a peaceful one and that they were concerned about the human inclination towards war, especially the nuclear arms race, which threatened to disturb the harmony of the Universe (Leslie and Adamski 1953). Can't have too much harmony, with or without quantum mysticism Adamski allegedly possessed a number of photographs that were supposed to support his stories about seeing UFOs, as well as the encounters with extraterrestrial beings. In the vastness of testimonies about the contacts with aliens, Adamski became famous for claiming that the government scientists had evidence of the existence of intelligent life on other planets, that he travelled to Saturn on a space ship he boarded in a U.S. military base, that he held secret meetings with the Pope in the Vatican and the United States president John Kennedy and the people from his administration in connection with the "Space brothers" and, finally, that the Venusians, by using the flying saucers rushed to provide him with transportation even on shorter distances on Earth (O'Leary, 2000). Due to these, often extravagant and even bizarre testimonies, Adamski was suspected of fraudulence and discredited by a number of UFO researchers. He was accused of plagiarizing ideas from the old science-fiction books and movies, doctoring photographs and a few of his close associates eventually admitted that some of Adamski's claims had been invented and redesigned (Melton and Eberhart 1995). You don't say! However, despite the controversies that followed him and the odium of the UFO researchers circles he brought upon himself, Adamski was able to gather a significant number of followers, forming in 1957 a club "International Get Acquainted" which brought together both those interested in UFOs and those who wanted to receive the "knowledge" and "wisdom" that Adamski, allegedly received from the "Space Brothers". That sounds quite contemporary. In the late fifties and early sixties, Adamski made a world tour with his lectures, he initiated a periodical, while his books became some of the most widely read books about UFOs.

Today the "Adamski Foundation" which was established in 1965 still exists and continues the tradition of his teaching and a number of individuals and smaller groups all over the world operate under the influence of the "secret knowledge" which Adamski believed he had been conveying.