Cyd Charise Ropp, Ph.D.

During the lost months of the 2020 shutdown, I spent much of my time watching the History Channel series “Ancient Aliens.” I began with a skeptical mind, but was soon persuaded by the variety of evidence presented. Many years earlier I had read Erich von Danikens’ Chariots of the Gods, so I had the basic outline of ancient alien theory already in my head. I had also read Whitley Streiber’s Communion when it came out, so I felt I had a passing familiarity with the concept of alien abductions. But the evidence presented on “Ancient Aliens” goes far beyond those early revelations. By this point in time, only a dedicated naysayer could remain completely skeptical.

Here’s the ancient aliens theory: that a variety of aliens from off-planet have been visiting our earth for thousands, if not millions, of years. That the stories told around the world by ancient human cultures of gods descending from the sky and living among them are true histories and not mere fables. That ancient aliens have given knowledge to humanity, particularly technological knowledge, to assist in the progress of human culture. That ancient aliens may have edited our DNA to make us into the modern human form we see today, and that they are possibly continuing to edit our DNA by means of alien abductions.  Moreover, it is even suggested that our entire ecosystem may have been seeded by aliens from the get-go, including the placement of our moon to stabilize earth’s axis and to create tidal motion.

I persuaded my brother, Bill, to watch the program with me, and so it is that we have watched and discussed every episode of their 15-season run that has been rebroadcast over the past couple of years, some more than once. Yes, many of the stories presented in the series overlap, and most of the evidence shows up time and again with the same commentary attached, yet my brother and I have found the repetition helpful in our effort to discern the truth of various aspects of the ancient aliens claim.

Bill and I are nothing if not open-minded, yet we anchor our gullibility with an unusually well-developed sense of logic and critical thinking. As you know, both of us are PhDs with specialties in Philosophy and Rhetoric, and we have both taught critical thinking and logic at universities. So do not come away with the idea that we uncritically bought every claim hook, line, and sinker. 

We have paid special attention to the question continually raised by the ancient aliens theorists—were these “gods” of the pre-flood era merely misinterpreted alien visitors with alien tech? Are the “fallen angels” of the Book Enoch angels from God, or were they actually ancient astronauts who moved to earth and occasionally married human women? It is said that the worldwide flood was sent by God to wipe out the angel-human offspring known as Nephilim. What were the Nephilim and what God would have wiped out the entire earth and everyone on it to kill them off, and how is it that some humans were spared by warnings from “angels”?

As observed by the program’s resident theorists, these types of stories can be taken as fables or as true histories and, if histories, are these actually the Biblical God, angels, and the gods of ancient cultures, or are they actually advanced, off-planet aliens who are apparently engaged in disagreements over human destiny, with sometimes catastrophic consequences?  These are the questions that have occupied much discussion between Bill and me over the past couple of years, and they have run on a parallel track to our Gnostic Theology pursuits as we untangle the differences and origins of archons, aeons, angels, and fallen angels, and the difference between the God Above All Gods and the God of this world. I am happy to announce that we have turned a rhetorical corner and landed upon some sound hypotheses at last. Perhaps you can use our analysis the next time you consider the role of extra-terrestrials in our world.

I realize that the following memes I’m going to share with you may sound new and strange unless you have previously studied gnostic cosmology. If you are new to Gnostic Insights, I encourage you to go to the GnosticInsights.com website and open the menu tab called “The Gnostic Gospel Primer.” There you will find a Valentinian Gnostic cosmology based upon the Tripartite Tractate book of the Nag Hammadi library. These initial eight episodes lay out in a clear and understandable way the basic cosmology of our universe and the origins of all things. The story is not difficult to understand, but it helps to listen to it from the beginning and go in order. There you will find episodes describing the God Above All Gods, as well as entities known as Aeons which dwell in a space called the Fullness of God, also known as the Pleroma. Aeons, by virtue of the fact that they dwell in the Pleroma, are by definition a type of ET.

This ancient well in Sardinia, Italy, the Santa Christina well, is said to represent the “keyhole shape” found throughout the ancient world. To me, it looks like the Pleroma.

Ancient alien theorists speak of ETs directing evolution to create our intelligent hominid species. Ancient alien theorists call into question the mainstream theory of evolution. They rightly point out that this planet of ours has not been around long enough for evolution to have spontaneously bumbled upon our exquisite design. They even call into question the premise that life on earth evolved randomly from a primordial soup into ever-increasing complexity and function. “Pan-spermia” has been proposed as a method by which primitive alien life forms hitchhiked their way across the heavens on asteroids to seed our oceans. According to ancient alien theorists, ETs probably interfered throughout ancient history to promote life on earth, including many interventions in protohumans to direct our upward evolution.

I tend to agree with much of what they say about the impossibility of Darwinian evolution to achieve our current biosphere. I invite you to listen to the Gnostic Insights podcast called “Evolution and Conscious Aeonic Design,” which you can find at the Gnostic Insights.com website menu under the tab “Complete Episodes Library.”  In that episode I call into question Darwinian evolution in favor of the same sort of planned evolution promoted by the ancient alien theorists. But where they identify “ETs” as the source, I identify those ETs as Aeons of the Fullness directing evolution.

Episode Four of the Gnostic Insights Primer describes these Aeons that came before this universe. The Aeons populate the Fullness of God in the Pleroma, and they consist of names, places, personalities, powers, and forces, all arranged in a hierarchy, each of them representing a quality of God that would come to realization in this cosmos in which we dwell. It is through their intervention in our universe that evolution occurs to bring about their vision of our material cosmos.  Simply ascribing evolution to the intervention of flesh and blood ETs merely pushes back the same ontological problems of random evolution—order cannot arise spontaneously out of disorder. 52 card pickup never finds the cards stacked in suits, and endless games of 52 card pickup over billions of years simply cannot achieve endless results of order from chaos. The physics of entropy always wins out. No matter how many times you toss the components of life up into the air, they never assemble themselves into complex working structures on the way down.

What is true for physical evolution is also true of technological innovation. Ancient alien theorists point out that our most important technological innovations are often discovered simultaneously by multiple inventors worldwide. Whether it’s old tech such as language, medicine, metallurgy, and architecture, or new tech such as radio, relativity theory, and the telephone, these inventions appear without evolutionary precedent, arriving fully formed to multiple people, often through dreams and visions. The ancient alien theorists ascribe these technological innovations to ETs guiding our development, either through physical manifestation as the benevolent gods of ancient earth cultures, or nowadays through the transpersonal field or Askashic record. They suggest the Akashic record is a pre-scripted, computer-type code, existing in a transdimensional space, that humans are programmed to access as needed.

Ancient alien theorist include our DNA as a form of proof of non-evolutionary technological leaps, as our modern human form does not appear to have evolved from more primitive versions. Yes, there were numerous protohumans, but they all mysteriously disappeared by the end of the last ice age, or the time of the great flood.

I agree that there is a transpersonal field, which is the repository of our collective memes—all that were, are, and will be. But I ascribe this transpersonal field to the divine dimension of the mind of the Universal Unit of Consciousness as described in my Simple Explanation blog and book. And I would agree that we are triggered to access this field as needed. It happens all the time in our daily lives for all sorts of information. Same thing holds true for inventors who see a need and whose contemplation leads them into the field for solutions.

The ancient alien theorists suggest that it is our familiarity with the field that is leading us in the trans-human direction of hooking our human brains up to a computer-mediated “cloud” so we can access information on demand and even download our complete consciousness, thereby achieving non-material immortality. Here I strongly disagree. I would say that the force behind such a drive for incorporeal immortality has two motivations. One motivation is our innate spiritual connectivity to the Fullness of God, the Son, and the Father, which promises the continuation of our immortal souls after death. The other motivation is from the other side of the coin—that of the archonic desire to achieve god-like status, including omniscience and immortality, without the benefit of God’s will and blessing. In other words, it’s replay of the presumptuous thought that brought about the Fall of Logos. It seems clear to me that our tech billionaires who are leading the way with transhumanism and space exploration are themselves personally playing out the Fall of Logos in their attempt to play God.

Again, if you have not listened to the Gnostic Insights Primer episodes, you will find a full episode devoted to the Fall of Logos and its cosmic consequences. You will find these episodes at the Gnostic Insights.com website under the menu tab labeled “The Gnostic Gospel Primer.”

Ancient alien theorists suggest that ancient astronauts developed our planet in order to create a sentient species fit to house the Ba, or soul, as described by ancient Egyptians. They theorize that ETs created humans to be vessels for souls, which implies that without their intervention, creatures do not have souls. Of all the theories proposed, this one strikes me as completely off-base. I would say that all creatures have souls. According to Gnostic cosmology, all creatures are the fruit of the Aeons. The Aeons sent their fruit into creation in order to populate creation with the Fullness of God. This fruit is called the Second Order of Powers, and we are all Second Order Powers, from bacteria on up to humans and beyond. If the universe is indeed populated by extra terrestrial life forms, then these, too, would be Second Order Powers because all life forms are. And all of us Second Order Powers possess souls.

There is, however, one type of entity in the universe that does not possess a soul, because these entities are not creatures from the Fullness of God. These entities are called archons. Archons are the inverted shadows of Aeons. Archons are incorporeal waves of entropy that emanate from the Demiurge. Archons are not “fallen angels” because they never were angels. We know these archons as demonic forces that frustrate and bedevil us in order to feed off of our negative energy. The world’s bad habits and cruelty are shepherded by archons. They are the forces the Second Order Powers were sent to do battle with in a never-ending war for dominion of the cosmos. For more on this topic, listen to Episode Five of The Gnostic Gospel Primer called “The Deficiency and Boundary.”  

Knowing what we know about archons, we can identify the non-physical entity known as Satan as an archon. Satan is also called The Accuser, and he is the source of temptation and illness, and the head of an army of demons or archons. Traditional theology identifies Satan as a fallen angel who rebelled against God because God elevated humans above angels. I would reinterpret this myth in a Gnostic way by saying that the God against whom Satan rebelled was not the Father God Above All Gods, but rather the God of this world, who is called the Demiurge in Gnostic texts. It is the Demiurge that Satan sprang from and it is the Demiurge with whom Satan struck the wager concerning the fate of Job. Satan is also credited with advancing human technology.

The archons appear to be very interested in advancing human technology. I suspect this is because it is easier to distract, delude, and even destroy humanity via technology than with any other means. Not only war technology and weaponry, but more benign appearing helpful technologies. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how destructive and divisive the internet has become through the innovation of social media. And how appealing and irresistible television has become! Then there is the realm of virtual reality—a realm controlled by archons who want nothing more than to delude and ensnare human souls. This type of delusion and division is the bread and butter of archons. So, when ancient aliens theorists point out the leaps made in technological innovation by the influence of incorporeal beings, I suspect archons at play.

Which brings us to angels. Angels are described as beings who appear to be trans-dimensional. By that I mean that sometimes they appear as physical humans and sometimes they appear as incorporeal light beings. They can physically touch humans, as when Peter was awakened in his prison cell by an angel’s touch, yet the same angel can pass through solid walls, as recounted in Acts 12:7. It is said that angels were sent to earth to protect and assist humans, and 70% of Americans believe they have a guardian angel. In Gnostic cosmology, it appears that angels are a type of being created by the Fullness of God, specifically for the benefit of humans, to assist them in the never-ending war against the archons. Angels are possibly aeonic personalities that have come from the Pleroma to assist. Therefore, when ancient alien theorists tell of incidents where non-corporeal beings appear as light forms to interfere in a positive manner with human technology, these are angels. Examples of angelic interference include the occasions where mysterious forces have appeared above U.S. ICBM sites and disabled nuclear-armed missles in their silos. These beings have also appeared outside the windows of the International Space Station and U.S. space missions to the moon.

So far we have identified Aeons, archons, and angels as entities who insert themselves into human affairs. But what of actual off-world, flesh and blood ETs from other planets and galaxies? Do they really exist? Yes, the remainder of encounters appear to be ETs. Ancient alien theorists propose that in the days before the flood, “gods” lived side by side with humans and occasionally took human women as sexual partners. These ETs claimed to have come from the star systems of Sirius and Orion in particular. These ETs had advanced technologies that they shared with the humans around them. They designed the ancient monolithic structures, including the pyramids found around the earth on every continent. They were the ones who used their tech to levitate gigantic boulders into place in stone structures all over the earth. Many of them appeared to have elongated skulls and green or blue skin. Some of them had reptilian, birdlike, or insectoid features, and some appeared to have non-human heads of canines, lions, and other animals. The Book of Enoch reports that some ETs mated with human women and produced monstrous offspring known as the Nephilim.  Enoch says that the great flood unleashed to cleanse the earth of these hybrid abominations, as they were not part of God’s plan for humanity. After the flood, the ETs on earth seem to have retreated or gone into hiding. Occasional modern sightings of strange humanoid creatures living deep underground, under the ocean, or under the ice of Antarctica, hint at their possible continued presence.

The woodcut above depicts a “celestial battle” that allegedly took place at sunrise above the city of Nuremberg in 1651. The battle was witnessed by many people, involved hundreds of spheres, cylinders,cross-shaped objects, and a large black triangle.

It is my opinion that the extra-terrestrials can be thought of as Second Order Powers just like us. It is often suggested by ancient alien theorists that the ET civilizations may be a million years more advanced than our own, and that is how it is they have interstellar flight and other advanced powers and technology. Looking at this theory with a Gnostic eye, it is my theory that we can think of their home planets as exactly like ours, but far ahead of us in time. In keeping with the concept of fractals, I suggest that these ET civilizations advanced with the aid of Aeonic design, and struggled with their own archonic influences, exactly as we do now. It is highly likely that civilizations all eventually fall as the egos of the ETs struggle against one another for dominion and control, even as we do—a fractal replication of the Fall of Logos. Ancient alien theorists point to evidence of space battles above and on earth in the past, including a notable battle above Nuremberg in 1561.

Just as we are planning to do, it is likely that ETs sent out their own exploration and colonization missions, and that some of them came to planet earth. They probably had the same motivations that our own tech billionaires have—preservation of their genetic line against future catastrophes married to the archonic drive to be as gods and terraform worlds to their own ends. There is also pictorial evidence that some of these ETs may have been robots given the task of seeking out and terraforming worlds. It is also quite possible that the civilizations that sent out the ET missions have already destroyed themselves through plague or warfare.

Finally, let us turn to the question of the ultimate ET: God. Who and What Is He? 

Episode Two of the Gnostic Insights podcasts describes the attributes of the Father, also known as the God Above All Gods. Briefly, the Father is the Illimitable, Eternal, Omniscient Consciousness that underlies our reality. The Father does not look or sound like anything.  He doesn’t hold conversations the way we do. The Father is undifferentiated consciousness itself. This Consciousness is the ground state from which all subsequent events emerge.

Possibly the most egregious heresy in Gnosticism is the proposition that the God of the Old Testament, Creator of Heaven and Earth, the Jealous God of the Hebrews, Yahweh, or Jehovah, is not the Father on High that Jesus called Father. The God of this earth is known to Gnostics as the Demiurge, and He arose as a result of the Fall of Logos the Aeon due to Logos’s presumptuous thought. To learn more about this topic in depth, please listen to Episode Four of the Gnostic Insights podcast.

The God of the Old Testament, Yahweh, is more tangible than the Father Above. Yahweh has discussions with humans as well as with entities such as Satan. He uses language and engages in prolonged conversations, as when He gave precise building instructions for the ark to Noah. He even makes wagers over Job and appears to change his mind regarding the sacrifice of Isaac.  When people refer to God as an old white man with a beard, it is the image of the Demiurge to which they refer, not the undifferentiated consciousness of the Father. This Demiurge character is the God Yahweh, the God of this world and the God of the Hebrews especially. It is the Demiurge that has a special relationship with the children of Abraham. Yahweh takes care of the Hebrews when they pray to Him and follow His rules, and He has arranged a variety of cataclysms, plagues, and floods, to preserve their particular line of DNA. Yahweh favors the Hebrews in battles.

Therefore, it seems to me that when ancient alien theorists refer to God as having sent the world wide cataclysm and flood that wiped out the Nephilim and all but about 3,000 surviving humans, it is the work of the Demiurge calling himself God. This is the jealous God who wants sole control of the earth and the God who is angered by uppity archons like Satan and other “fallen angels.” This is the God who wants Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, on the mountain as a show of faith. But it was a true angel of the true Father Above who stayed Abraham’s hand and saved Isaac’s life. It is the Demiurge who tired of his people’s captivity in Egypt and sent the plagues so the Pharoah would release the Hebrew slaves and who parted the seas to make good their escape. But it was true angels from the true God who protected the Hebrews during their 40 year trek through the desert, guiding them with their light bodies and feeding them with mana.Well, there you have it. Aeons, archons, angels, or aliens?  I hope these distinctions help you sort out the ancient aliens theory.