The Sagan Paradox, Chapter 3: Skepticism and Egyptian Mysticism

UFO Smackdown: “Show Me the Proof,” Says Science Superstar

Carl Sagan, “The Demon-Haunted World” (1995), Ch. 11 (The Fine Art of Baloney Detection)

Rather than treating UFO research as a rigorous scientific inquiry into possibly extraterrestrial phenomena, Sagan rejected its validity on the grounds that it lacked the ‘extraordinary’ UFO evidence required by the scientific method and rested largely on unreliable eyewitness testimony, demonstrating his UFO skepticism.

Further reading: UFO Truth: Witnesses, Speak Out!

Witnesses should be allowed to stay anonymous, but non-anonymous testimony should be prioritized.

Radio Roulette: SETI’s Slow-Motion Search for Martian Pen Pals

Instead, he argued, the most promising avenue for detecting alien life was the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) via radio astronomy—a point he dramatized in his 1985 novel Contact. Of course, SETI has its own fundamental limitation: due to the speed at which radio signals travel, any interstellar message exchange could potentially experience lengthy delays, like years, decades, or centuries.

Interstellar two-way communication easily requires centuries, ruling it out for spontaneous chats. Despite this limitation, SETI’s search continues in hopes of finding concrete UFO evidence.

The shooting of “Contact” started in September 1996. Sagan himself was supposed to appear in a cameo, but he passed away 2 months after the shooting began. Sagan had been working on this project since 1979.

THE FIRST “PARADOX”: Reason meets mysticism

Ur-Uatchti, a winged sun disk, was once mandated to adorn every temple as protection against evil.

Throughout his career, Sagan loathed sloppy thinking. He famously derided Erich von Däniken’s ancient-astronaut theories—that extraterrestrials had a hand in erecting the pyramids—as nothing more than fanciful speculation, lacking credible UFO evidence.

And yet, in 1981, he purchased the Sphinx Head Tomb, the headquarters of Cornell University’s oldest secret honors society, designed in hauntingly authentic Egyptian style.

The symbol of the Sphinx Head Tomb Secret Society, Cornell University

What could possibly have enticed Carl Sagan—the very embodiment of rational, evidence-driven science—to take up residence in a building modeled on an Egyptian tomb? Granite walls etched with hieroglyphs, a false burial chamber—this was a home more temple than townhouse, a place charged with the power of millennia.

Those close to him sensed a shift. His daughter, Sasha, later recalled that almost immediately after moving in, her father’s health began to falter. The scientist who probed the furthest reaches of space found himself besieged by a far more intimate mystery: a sudden decline that culminated in his death on the winter solstice of 1996.

Reference: Lessons of Immortality and Mortality From My Father, Carl Sagan

What compelled a scientist such as Carl Sagan to relocate into a structure reminiscent of an Egyptian tomb? Did the ancient mystique of the tomb hold a deeper sway over even the sharpest mind of his generation? The first paradox has been set in stone—yet its enigma endures.

April 15, 2025April 18, 2025

On the existence of “Aldebaranians”

Aldebaranian Extraterrestrials and Telepathic Contact?

Upon reviewing the “Vril Project” material, it becomes clear that the details provided regarding the drawings and symbols—which supposedly form the basis for telepathic contact—are incorrect. On these grounds, I conclude that the proposed contact with an Aldebaranian species is entirely fictitious.

Aldebaranian interstellar space battlecruisers, AI extrapolation of images based on telepathic contact claims

Aldebaran is known as the bull’s eye ◎ in the constellation Taurus (The Bull), and is 65 light-years distant from us. It’s right next to the Pleiades (Seven Sisters) star cluster. Aldebaran has been described as a follower of the Pleiades.

Fun Fact:
The Pioneer 10 probe, launched in 1972, is on its way to Aldebaran. Although it no longer communicates with the Earth, it will reach Aldebaran in about 2 million years.

Professor Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (author of “The Occult Roots of Nazism”) states that “In the early 1990s, the Austrians Norbert Jürgen Ratthofer and Ralf Ettl developed new Nazi UFO myths involving ancient Babylon, Vril energy, and extraterrestrial civilization in the solar system of Aldebaran.”

According to myth, the Aldebaranians made contact with the Third Reich and helped in the development of German UFOs.

According to Ella LeBain, author of “Who’s who in the Cosmic Zoo?“,

an emerging fringe narrative claims Nazi Germany accessed a “stargate” to the star Aldebaran, using trance mediums and telepathic “light‐code” secrets in ancient Hebrew to justify genocide and develop advanced UFO and atomic‑implosion technology—dubbed the “Black Sun.” Drawing on works by Zechariah Sitchin and Phyllis Schlemmer, the theory links Sumerian and Babylonian empires to Nazi occultism and portrays extraterrestrial “Elohim” as the architects of Phoenician and Israelite origins.

According to the same account, post‑1945 American agencies seized Nazi UFO blueprints and recruited German scientists for both NASA and a covert “underground” space program. Proponents warn that Aldebarans—alongside reptilian “Draconians” and Grey aliens—now lurk within global elites, aiming to forge a Fourth Reich and a New World Order. Mainstream historians and scientists reject these claims as baseless, citing a complete lack of verifiable evidence for any terrestrial stargate or telepathic warfare

Origin of the Aldebaran Contact Claim

The initial reference to telepathic contact with Aldebaranian beings, through mediums such as Maria Orsic and “Sigrun,” originates from a single source: Ralf Ettl (d. 2006). According to David Childress, oftentimes a guest on “Ancient Aliens,” Ettl was residing in London in 1989. At that time, he received a parcel containing documents describing this alleged contact. Childress was the first to recount this origin story.

The “Vril Society” in Historical Context

The parcel purportedly contained information about telepathic mediums associated with the “Vril Society,” who contacted Aldebaran beings around 1919. However, an examination of historical references to the “Vril Society” reveals significant inconsistencies in the narrative:

• 1947: The first mention of a “Vril Society” appears in an article by defected German Third Reich rocket engineer Dr. Willy Ley, titled “Pseudoscience in Naziland.” Although Ley mentions the Vril Society, he makes no reference to telepathic mediums or extraterrestrial contacts. Instead, meditating upon an apple core reveals the nature of “Vril.”

• 1960: A subsequent reference to the “Vril Society” occurs in the book “The Morning of the Magicians,” which cites Ley’s article and introduces a link to the Theosophical Society and the Rosicrucians with the Vril Society.

• 1990: It is not until the release of Ralf Ettl and Norbert Ratthofer’s narrative, “The Vril Project,” that any claim of telepathic contact, extraterrestrial communication with Aldebaran, or connections to the Thule society or UFOs is introduced.

The Narrative of “The Vril Project”

Ralf Ettl and Jürgen Ratthofer describe a secret meeting held in December 1919. At this meeting, the innermost circles of the Thule and Vril societies gathered. The medium Maria Orsic allegedly presented two stacks of papers. One stack featured a bizarre-looking German Templar secret script, while the other contained what appeared to be a normal, legible text.

According to the narrative, these texts were received via mediumistic channeling—dictated both in a mysterious “temple script” and in a language completely unknown to the medium. Orsic herself believed that the unknown language must have been ancient and Near Eastern in nature. Later, it was asserted that this mysterious language was Sumerian—i.e., the language of the ancient precursors of Babylonian culture. The Aldebaranian language is identical to Sumerian! That’s because the Aldebaranians came to visit Earth 500,000 years ago. And then again later.

(The author Zecharia Sitchin told a similar story in 1976 in his book “The Twelfth Planet.” Only his extraterrestrial Anunnaki came from “Nibiru,” a planet in our solar system beyond Neptune.)

Critical Analysis of the Claims

A closer look at the claims and evidence presented in “The Vril Project” reveals several inconsistencies:

• Sumerian Writing and Language:
Although the Sumerians invented writing, the script they developed—cuneiform—is markedly different from the so-called 13th-century “temple script” described in the narrative. Sumerian cuneiform is recorded on clay tablets that are over 5000 years old and bear no resemblance to any secret “Temple” script.

Moreover, the Sumerian language does not sound like German (click here for a sound sample). This contradicts the report of a language that “almost sounded like German” yet remained incomprehensible.

• The Nature of the Message:

The messages received by Maria Orsic were in German and encoded with a simple substitution cipher. The availability of a cipher key would have allowed for the deciphering of the texts. This undermines the claim of an entirely unknown language.

• The Black Sun Symbol:

A central symbol in esoteric Nazism is the Black Sun, which appears in two distinctly different versions:

– Wewelsburg Black Sun Version:
This version is found at Wewelsburg in Germany, which served during the Third Reich as the spiritual center of an emerging Nazi ideology. It’s only a fairly recent claim that the design resembles a Black Sun.

What is not known:

The spoked mosaic of the ‘Black Sun’ at Wewelsburg (designed after 1934) is derived from the decorative rim of the Samarra Bowl. This bowl was discovered by Ernst Herzfelder around 1914 and later exhibited in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. The bowl’s center features one of the oldest known swastika depictions. Samarra is located in the region historically known as Sumeria.

You can stretch the Samarra bowl’s meandering pattern to match the Wewelsburg mosaic’s pattern. It is strange that the authors of “Esoteric Nazism” didn’t pick up on this Sumerian connection.

– New Black Sun Version from “The Vril Project”:

Another Black Sun version was first presented in Ettl’s 1990 pamphlet “The Vril Project” and later featured in the pseudo-documentary “UFO: Secrets of the Third Reich” (1995). Peter Moon’s “The Black Sun: Montauk’s Nazi-Tibetan Connection” (1997) also presents this design. It is similar to the old flag of the Japanese empire. Additionally, this eye-catching design closely resembles the 16-spoke strobe disk of mechanical, low-bandwidth television. This type of TV was first pioneered in 1925.

In 1985, Carl Sagan posed a hypothetical question in his novel “Contact.” He asked, “What if the Nazis didn’t have television in 1936? Then what would have happened?”

What indeed? The video snippet below is from Ralf Ettl’s UFO film,
which kickstarted the popularization of the “Reichsflugscheibe” theory:

Was Ettl inspired by Carl Sagan’s novel, to design his “Black Sun” based on a TV strobe disk? Could the “Aldebaranian” writing on it serve as evidence of “extraterrestrial influence?”

The Ettl Black Sun version
Around the perimeter of the graphic is a slogan of the Thule Society. This slogan is encrypted using the “Templar Script” substitution cipher in German. By no means is it extraterrestrial. Spoiler: Here is the translation (click).

At the center of the disk, two runes are identified by Ettl and Ratthofer as a double “EH” rune (ᚾᚾ). In reality, the correct reading of the double Naudiz rune is “NN.” We can interpret this as an abbreviation for “Neo-Nazi.” This detail further suggests that the story is a post-war fabrication, as there was no such group before or during World War II.

Conclusion

An analysis of the available evidence exposes a series of anachronisms and inconsistencies within the “Vril Project” narrative. Erroneous claims regarding ancient language, misidentification of historical scripts, and contradictory symbolism all undermine the credibility of the telepathic Aldebaran contact story. In light of these discrepancies, the proposed contact with an Aldebaranian species must be regarded as entirely fictitious.

There are several false claims within the literature; this analysis restricted itself to the claim of telepathic contact by mediums of the Vril society. Almost all other claims are also false. Despite this, Revell created a UFO model based on the claims made in the Vril project about German flying saucers.

Verdict: FAKE

References

“The Sound of the Ancient Sumerian Language (Entemena of Lagash).” YouTube, https://youtu.be/3QticJ8mww4.
Ley, Willy. Pseudoscience in Naziland.
Barkun, Michael. A Culture of Conspiracy.
Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas. Black Sun.
Pauwels, Louis, and Jacques Bergier. The Morning of the Magicians.
“The Vril Project.” 1990.
Farrell, Joseph P. Nazi International.
Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas. The Occult Roots of Nazism.
Zündel, Ernst. UFOs: Nazi Secret Weapon.
de Lafayette, Maximillien. UFOs, Maria Orsic.
Wissensbuch der ILU-Lehre.
Ettl, Ralf. Das Babylonier Buch.
Fort, Charles. The Book of the Damned.
Strube, Julian. Die Erfindung des esoterischen Nationalsozialismus im Zeichen der Schwarzen Sonne.
UFO: Secrets of the Third Reich. 1995.
Moon, Peter. The Black Sun: Montauk’s Nazi-Tibetan Connection. 1997.
van Helsing, Jan. Geheimgesellschaften und ihre Macht im 20. Jahrhundert.
Ratthofer, N.J. Galaxisimperium Aldebaran.
van Helsing, Jan. Unternehmen Aldebaran.
Childress, David Hatcher. Vril: Secrets of the Black Sun
NAZIS ‘FIRST WITH FLYING SAUCERS’
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/139966106
Flying Saucers Do Exist, Says Scientist
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/47626536
ENGINEER CLAIMS ‘SAUCER’ PLANS ARE IN SOVIET HANDS;
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000015471.pdf
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Goodrick-Clarke

February 27, 2025March 2, 2025

On the existence of “Pleiadians”

The Contact Project couldn’t call itself a “Contact Project” if it ignored thousands of contactees, experiencers, and mediums who have claimed to have made contact with non-earthly beings. I don’t believe they are all eccentrics and oddballs.

As a supporter of the extraterrestrial UFO hypothesis, I don’t exclude the possibility that humans from the future will visit Earth in the present day. This is as Michael Paul Masters has laid out in his books. Also, I have reason to believe that it is possible to travel faster than light in a warp bubble. For instance, see the work of Erik Lentz, on plasma warp bubbles. This automatically opens up the possibility of time travel into the past.

Listen to Seth Lloyd, MIT, on time travel:

Theoretical Foundation

1: I believe it is highly likely that future humanity will have spread out into the cosmos. Therefore, when they come to visit us from the future in the present, they will travel in spaceships. The mechanism for physical time travel is laid out in this short article: “Notes about Time Travel.”

2: In addition, the theory for telepathic communication (ESP in general) can be found in this series of articles: “Superluminal Brainwaves: Imagine a World Where Particles Travel Faster Than Light In A Different Dimension. This is the basis for credible claims of instantaneous telepathic communication, potentially spanning lightyears.

The concepts laid out in paragraphs 1 & 2 of the Theoretical Foundation are unique to this website. They have never been published before, neither in Science Fiction nor science.

Who are the Pleiadians?

The term Pleiadians—or Nordic aliens—refers to humanoid beings described in UFO lore as originating from the Pleiades star cluster.

The **Pleaides star cluster** is part of the constellation “Taurus”, as is Aldebaran.

According to accounts from contactees and channelers, these entities hail from the planets Erra and Temmer in the Taygeta star system. Taygeta is a double star in the constellation of Taurus. It is a member of the Pleiades open star cluster (M45). The Pleiades are also known as the “Seven Sisters.” In Mesopotamia, these “Divine Seven” were known as the minor gods “Sebitti.” Praying to them prevented enemies from causing harm.

Image: The Pleiadian Ashtar Sheran refers to an extraterrestrial being or group (of most likely “seven”), that some people claim to have channeled.

The Pleiadians are often described as tall, with fair skin, blue eyes, and blond hair, resembling the Nordic or Scandinavian human races. They are a highly evolved, spiritually advanced race that aims to help humanity progress toward greater understanding and harmony. These narratives derive solely from personal testimonies of experiencers and mediums.

Communication Claims and Contradictions

Pleiadians are allegedly encountered through direct contact or channeling. A prominent figure in these accounts is Ashtar, an extraterrestrial entity first mentioned by UFO contactee George Van Tassel in 1952.

Van Tassel’s claims inspired other mediums to report contact with Ashtar, though their messages often conflicted. Notably, predictions of imminent spacecraft landings linked to Ashtar repeatedly failed, undermining the credibility of such narratives.

Astronomical Context: The Pleiades Cluster

The Pleiades, a young open star cluster in Taurus, lies approximately 440 light-years from Earth. There are about 1000 stars in total in the Pleiades. Taygeta, a binary star within this cluster, is part of a system with no confirmed exoplanets. Crucially, the cluster’s age—100–150 million years—poses a significant problem for claims of native intelligent life.

On Earth, simple life emerged after 500 million to 1 billion years, with complex organisms requiring billions more. Given the Pleiades’ youth, the evolution of indigenous humanoid life there is astronomically improbable.

The Human Mind and Anthropomorphic Projection

Human cognition often interprets unfamiliar phenomena through familiar frameworks.

This tendency appears in Carl Sagan’s Contact. In it, aliens take the form of the protagonist’s deceased father to make an incomprehensible encounter relatable.

Similarly, descriptions of Pleiadians as Nordic humans may reflect a psychological need to frame extraordinary experiences in culturally recognizable terms. Specifically, projecting Aryan-like features onto alleged extraterrestrials. Furthermore, when someone tells of meeting or channeling “Pleiadians,” it is essentially their way of trying to understand the experience. By doing so, they provide a human frame with blond hair and Nordic features.

In summary, these descriptions may serve to bridge the gap between the extraordinary and the familiar. They help individuals make sense of their encounters.

Historical Fascination and Modern Speculation

Humanity’s interest in the Pleiades spans millennia, as evidenced by artifacts like the 3,600-year-old Nebra Sky Disc, which depicts the cluster. While the Pleiades’ stars are too young to host native civilizations, some speculate that advanced beings from older regions of the galaxy might have colonized the cluster. Yet, no credible evidence supports this hypothesis.

Conclusion

Claims of Pleiadians are rooted in mythology, channeling, and UFO culture. Scientifically, the Pleiades’ age and lack of confirmed planets render the existence of indigenous humanoids implausible. While extraterrestrial settlers could theoretically inhabit the cluster, such ideas remain speculative. Ultimately, the Nordic alien narrative likely reflects humanity’s enduring desire to find familiarity and peace—in the heavens as on Earth.

Image: The author’s finger with a replica of the Phaistos Disc from the Minoan civilization on Crete from approx. 1600 BC. Several Pleiades or “Seven Sisters”-like logos or shields appear on it. The alphabet and language on the disk are unknown.

The magnificent Seven

From the second millennium BC onward, the “Sebitti” (Pleiades) were often represented as groups of seven dots. They were always of masculine character, not “sisters.” The icon on the Phaistos disk is therefore possibly a depiction of the Sebitti, as there was a lively exchange between the Mesopotamian/Akkadian civilization and Crete.

On a more fundamental level it appears that the Mesopotamian Sebitti Gods have found a modern expression. This is seen in the belief in the New Age Pleiadians, Ashtar Sheran among them.

Fact Check

Distance: Pleiades is 444 light-years from Earth.
Age: 100–150 million years old (vs. Earth’s 4.5-billion-year history of life development).
Planets: None confirmed in the cluster due to its youth and unstable stellar environment.
Life Potential: Simple life would require 500 million+ years to emerge; complex life far longer. The Pleiades’ timeline makes native intelligence virtually impossible.

Curious about the mysteries of the universe? Dive deeper into the world of UFO lore, time travel theories, and the fascinating stories surrounding extraterrestrial encounters. Explore our collection of articles and stay informed—unlock the secrets of the stars today!