This little curiosity also appeared on YouTube for me yesterday. It’s an interview from the BBC Archives channel with George King, the founder of the Aetherius UFO space religion, broadcast from 1959. The Aetherius Society are the people who believe that their leader, George King, channelled messages from Aetherius, an entity on Venus. They used to hold rituals after a disaster somewhere in the world in which they’d queue up to charge up their prayer meters. These were devices that supposedly acted as reservoirs of benevolent psychic energy, which would then be released to help solve or ameliorate the problem.
I’ve something of a soft spot for them, as although I don’t believe one word of it, there have never been any accusations of brainwashing, exploitation or abuse and brutality made against King and his followers, as there have against so many other leaders of New Religious Movements. Whenever one of their representatives has appeared on TV in the past decade or so, they’ve been keen to stress their absolute personal normality. Perhaps that’s been something of their undoing. John Spencer in one of his books describes being lined up to appear on a popular TV programme with someone from the Aetherius Society, only for both of them to be dropped. Spencer says that the programme’s producers were clearly looking for Ufologists who would say something daft or outrageous they could take the mick out of. Neither he nor the Aetherian played ball, and were far too sensible, so they were dropped.
In this clip King describes how he was doing the washing up in his kitchen one Saturday morning when he heard a voice say ‘Prepare to become the voice of interplanetary parliament.’ He stepped outside, and met Aetherius, an Indian-looking gentleman who lives in the Himalayas when he is on Earth, and who had come to inform King of his mission. King explains that Aetherius also lives on Venus, and when he goes there he alters his molecular structure to suit the environment on that planet. Aetherius and his fellow Venusians, as well as people from other planets, such as Saturn and Mars, fly across space in UFOs. These are completely real and material, and if you fired a 16mm shell at them it would not hurt them because of their defensive shields. Saturnians are like us, but have no pupils to their eyes.
The interviewer politely asks if he could talk to Aetherius. George King agrees, but says he will have to get into a trance. He duly puts a pair of blindfold goggles over his eyes. These look somewhat like the shades worn by Agent Smith in the Matrix films, so I was half expecting King to saying something sneering and condescending about ‘Mr Anderson’ before launching into Kung Fu moves as robots attack. Fortunately, he doesn’t. After a few moments snorting, Aetherius’ voice emerges. In answer to the interviewer’s question, he confirms he is Aetherius. The interviewer then asks if he can tell them where he is, if it’s a UFO or Venus. Sadly, he can’t, to the interviewer’s obvious disappointment.
The interviewer then states bluntly that there are many people, who would say that King is sincere, but deluded. What could he say to convince them otherwise? King replies that the UFOs are solid and real, and that not only he but his mother has flown on them. She had to walk through a field to get to the saucer, which had made her shoes very muddy.
When the interviewer asked King why Aetherius and his fellow space brothers wanted to make contact with us, King replied that they were worried about our situation. Not just the political situation, but our moral development. If we were Christians, we should diligently follow Christ’s teachings. If we were Buddhists, we should properly follow those of the Buddha. If we were Hindus, we should be the best Hindus.
Throughout the clip, there are shots of others in the studio carefully listening to what was being said. At the end of the interview, the questioner states that although many will consider Mr King sincere but deluded, nevertheless his cry of concern for our age is genuine and relevant.
The clip’s interesting as an example of old school broadcasting, where forthright comments could be made about the person being interviewed and their message or pretensions, while not holding them up to ridicule and stressing that they were quite right in their concern for the current moral and scientific situation of humanity.
The description of Aetherius as an Indian fellow is significant. Before he received his telepathic message, King had been interested in eastern mysticism. Aetherius clearly follows in the mode of the Theosophical Society’s Ascended Masters and Koothoomi, who were also supposed to come from India. In their case, they resided somewhere in the Himalayas. This was also a time when the Lux Orientis movement was influential, and many westerners believed that western spirituality had been discredited and people should seek enlightenment in eastern traditions.
King died a few years ago, and I think in his later years subjects of his revelations changed so that they were more about the ecological crisis and planetary consciousness centred around the Earth. Or at least, that was the impression I had.
Tags: Aetherius Society, BBC, BBC Archives, Buddhism, Christianity, George King, Hinduism, Jesus, John Spencer, Lux Orientis, Mars, New Religious Movements, Planetary Consciousness, Saturn, The Matrix, Theosophical Society, UFOs, Venus, Youtube
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