The mutation of facts into mythology

Copyright 2022, InterAmerica, Inc.

We’re all familiar with how, by morphology, real events and actualities are altered in the telling, sometimes immediately, as with the Trump followers, and after a period of time by (even) scholars, academics, and historians.
 
The father of History, Herodotus, was a grand exampler of the process.
 
And the didactics of those hoping to alter thought often modify reality by subtle changes in the dialogues they’re engaged in.
 
This happens all the time with the colloquies about UFOs.
 
I’m often distressed by the insertion of that mythological entity, the Trickster, as a focal point of some UFO misadventures.
 
There have been, in real terms, persons (and animals) that alter their appearance and activity to convince their “audience” that they are operating within a framework that is special, mystical even. (Animal alterations, such as color or shape derive from mechanisms of evolution, so their procedures may be attributed to nature.)
 
But calculating beings, endowed with obtuse thought and a devious personality, try to bring about changes of behavior or fact to further their own ends.

The “trickster” within the fabric of ufology seems to be using chicanery just for the fun of it, or so the accounts of persons, seeing UFOs or allegedly being abducted by creatures from them, would seem to indicate.
 
Starting in primitive eras, a category of odd behavior has become a mainstay of mythology and actuality, the idea of Shamanism: the accumulation of activity and procedures, often veiled in secret processes or ritual, meant to show that the being providing the ritual is endowed with special powers.
 
As much as I dislike the idea of shamanism, it does appear to be an ongoing and long-running human practice that has come down from early man to this day.
 
(I mentioned Mircea Eliade the other day here, a notable academic who has provided much about shamanism, as have others.)

Early on [1400 BC] the god of the Israelites was a “Shaman” – a being who set out to gull the early peoples of the Levant – and who by force of his appearance and seemingly wondrous acts became a god, historically, mythologically and devastatingly.
 
This complete significant episode of human foolishness has provided the template for the many foolish thoughts and renderings that make up UFO lore, or “ufology.” It is the essence of UFO belief and investigation, sadly.
 
The UFO phenomenon – a real, actual phenomenon – is constructed of fact mutilated by the process of mythologizing, that horrendous misguided and mistaken human trait of gilding normal actualities.
 
The seemingly inherent need to elaborately enlarge events, as the Israelites did with their “god” and early mankind did – see Julian Jaynes particularly – one might understand how in the great maul of human destiny something as strange as UFOs would be fodder for the creation of a mythology, one flush with maddening endorsements and foolish filigree.

UFOs are a perceptible “fact” – but one without real consequence. That lack of consequence has fathered all the nonsense of extraterrestrial visitations, so-called abductions and alleged medical examinations, or encounters and observations that reek of fantasy and psychologically induced errancy.
 
UFOs are almost mundane. That they currently have a status of emerging importance derives from the input and activity of present-day “shamans” and “tricksters.”
 
So, as not to glorify the deviancy of current UFO hucksters, let me just end by writing that real shamans and authentic tricksters were little more than hucksters themselves. And to endow them with more than a smear of grandiloquent labeling is to befoul actuality, something we should also disallow in all UFO circles.
 
RR