by Jacques Vallee

1969

from GreyLodge Website

When folklore becomes degraded to a minor literary form, as the fairy-faith was degraded to the fairy tales we know today, it naturally loses much of its content: precisely those "adult" details that cannot be allowed to remain in children’s books. The direct result of the censorship of spicy details in these marvelous stories is that they really become mere occasions for amazement.

The Villas-Boas case [the well documented Brazilian "UFO abduction" case wherein farmer Antonio Villas-Boas was allegedly taken on board a UFO craft, given an aphrodisiac liquid to drink then made to copulate twice with an attractive red-haired, pointy-breasted "space alien" female who made odd animal-like grunting noises during the act.

We certainly hope it was as good for him as it apparently was for her. -B:.B:.] is hardly appropriate for nursery-school reading, but to eliminate the little lady from the story would turn it into a tale without deep symbolic or psychological value. The sexual context is precisely what gives such accounts their literary influence. It is what provides impact to the fairy-faith.

Without the sexual context -- without the stories of changelings, human midwives, intermarriage with the Gentry, of which we never hear in modern fairy tales -- it is doubtful that the tradition about fairies would have survived through the ages. Nor is that true only of fairies: the most remarkable cases of sexual contact with non-humans are not found in spicy saucer books, nor in fairy legends; they rest, safely stored away, in the archives of the Catholic Church.

To find them, one must first learn Latin and gain entrance into the few libraries where these unique records are preserved. But the accounts one finds there make the Villas-Boas case pale by comparison, as I believe the reader will agree before the end of this chapter.

Let us first establish clearly that the belief in the possibility of intermarriage between man and the non-human races we are studying is a corollary to the apparitions in all historical contexts. This is so obvious in biblical stories that I hardly need elaborate. The sex of the angels is not the most difficult -- on the contrary, it is the clearest -- of all theological questions. In Anatole France’s Revolt of the Angels it is Arcade, one of the celestial beings, who says:

"There’s nothing like having sound references. In order to assure yourself that I am not deceiving you, Maurice, on this subject of the amorous embraces of angels and women, look up Justin, Apologies I and II; Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, Book I, Chapter 111; Athenagoras, Concerning the Resurrection; Lactantius, Book 11, Chapter XV; Tertullian, On the Veil of the Virgins; Marcus of Ephesus in Psellus; Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, Book V, Chapter IV; Saint Ambrose, in his book on Noah and the Ark, Chapter V; Saint Augustine in his City of God, Book XV, Chapter XXIII; Father Meldonat, the Jesuit, Treatise on Demons, page 248..."

Thus spoke Arcade, his guardian angel, to poor Maurice, as be tried to apologize for having stolen his mistress, pretty Madam Gilberte. And he added shamelessly,

"It was bound to be so; all the other angels in revolt would have done as I did with Gilberte."

"Women," saith the Apostle, "should pray with their heads covered, because of the angels."

This is clear enough. But fairies and elves? Are they subject to such carnal desires? Consider the following facts.

In the Preface of the Saga of Hrolf, Torfeus, a seventeenth-century Danish historian, records statements made about the elves by Einard Cusmond, the Icelandic scholar:

"I am convinced they really do exist, and they are creatures of God; that they get married like we do, and have children of either sex: we have a proof of this in what we know of the love of some of their women with simple mortals."

William Grant Stewart, in The Popular Superstitions and Festive Amusements of the Highlanders of Scotland, devotes the second part of his discussion to fairies. In a chapter entitled "Of the Passions and Propensities of the Fairies," he has this to say on sexual intercourse with them:

"The fairies are remarkable for the amorousness of their dispositions, and are not very backward in forming attachments and connections with the people that cannot with propriety be called their own species."

This is a beautiful example of convoluted phraseology. Stewart is less obviously embarrassed when he reports that such events no longer seem to take place between men and fairies:

"We owe it, in justice to both the human and the fairy communities of the present day, to say, that such intercourse as that described to have taken place between them is now extremely rare; with the single exception of a good old shoemaker, now or lately living in the village of Tomantoul, who confesses having had some dalliances with a ’lanan-shi’ in his younger days, we do not know personally any one who has carried matters this length."

If Stewart came back today, he would have to revise this statement after reading UFO material. Kirk stated the case more clearly when be said:

"In our Scotland there are numerous and beautiful creatures of that aerial order, who frequently assign meetings to lascivious young men as succubi, or as joyous mistresses and prostitutes, who are called Leannain Sith or familiar spirits."

I hardly need to remind the reader of the importance of such "familiar spirits" in medieval occultism, particularly in Rosicrucian theories. Nor do I need to mention the number of accused witches who were condemned to death on the evidence that they had such familiar spirits.

There is no gap between the fairy-faith and ufology regarding the sexual question. This is apparent from the study made by Wentz, who records, for example, the following story:

"My grandmother Catherine MacInnis used to tell about a man named Laughlin, whom she knew, being in love with a fairy-woman. The fairy-woman made it a point to see Laughlin every night, and he being worn out with her began to fear her. Things got so bad at last that be decided to go to America to escape the fairy- woman. As soon as the plan was fixed and he was about to emigrate, women who were milking at sunset out in the meadows heard very audibly the fairy-woman singing this song:

"What will the brown-haired woman do When Lachie is on the billows?"

"Lachie emigrated to Cape Breton, landing at Pictu, Nova Scotia; and in his first letter home to his friends be stated that the same fairy-woman was haunting him there in America."

The comments by Wentz on this case are extremely important:

"To discover a tale so rare and curious as this ...is certainly of all our evidence highly interesting. And aside from its high literary value, it proves conclusively that the fairy-women who entice mortals to their love in modern times are much the same, if not the same, as the succubi of middle-age mystics."

This allows us to return to the religious records mentioned above, one of which offers one of the most remarkable cases of apparition I have ever come across. It is difficult to believe that stories exist that surpass, for their amazing contents or shocking features, some of the reports we have already studied, such as the Hills case or the Villas-Boas report. But, remarkable as they are, these latter two accounts refer only to one aspect of the total phenomenon; they can be interpreted only after being placed within the continuum of hundreds of lesser- known cases, which provide the necessary background. The following case stands alone, and it is unique in that it relates the apparition of an incubus with the poltergeist phenomenon.

The authority upon which the case rests is that of Fr. Ludovicus Maria Sinistrari de Ameno, who reports and discusses it in his manuscript De Daemonialitate, et Incubis, et Succubis, written in the second half of the seventeenth century. Who is Fr. Sinistrari? A theologian-scholar born in Ameno, Italy, on February 26, 1622, he studied in Pavia and entered the Franciscan Order in 1647. He devoted his life to teaching philosophy and theology to numerous students attracted to Pavia by his fame as an eminent scholar. He also served as Councilor to the Supreme Tribunal of the Inquisition and as Theologian attached to the Archbishop of Milan. In 1688, be supervised the compilation of the statutes of the Franciscan Order. He died in 1701.

Among other books, Fr. Sinistrari published a treatise called De Delictis et Poenis, which is an exhaustive compilation "tractatus absolutissimus" of all the crimes and sins imaginable. In short, Fr. Sinistrari was one of the highest authorities on human psychology and religious law to serve the Catholic Church in the seventeenth century. Compared to his De Daemonialitate, Playboy is a rather innocent gathering of mild reveries. The good father writes:

"About twenty-five years ago while I was a professor of Sacred Theology at the Holy Cross Convent in Pavia, there lived in that city a married woman of excellent morality. All who knew her, and particularly the clergy, had nothing but the highest praises for her. Her name was Hieronyma, and she lived in the St. Michael Parish.

"One day, Hieronyma prepared some bread and brought it to the baker’s to have it baked. He brought it back to her, and at the same time be brought her a large pancake of a very peculiar shape, made with butter and Venetian pastes, such as they use to make cakes in that city. She refused it, saying she bad not prepared anything like it.

"But," said the baker, "I have not had any bread to bake today but yours. The pancake must come from your house too; your memory probably fails you."

"The good lady allowed herself to be convinced; she took the pancake and ate it with her husband, her three-year-old daughter, and a servant girl.

"During the following night, while she was in bed with her husband and both were asleep, she found herself awakened by an extremely fine voice, somewhat like a high-pitched whistling sound. It was softly saying in her ear some very clear words: ’How did you like the cake?’ In fear, our good lady began to use the sign of the cross and to invoke in succession the names of Jesus and Mary.

"’Fear naught,’ said the voice. ’I mean no harm to you. On the contrary, there is nothing I would not do in order to please you. I am in love with your beauty, and my greatest desire is to enjoy your embraces.’

"At the same time, she felt that someone was kissing her cheeks, but so softly and gently that she might have thought it was only the finest cotton down touching her. She resisted, without answering anything, only repeating many times the names of Jesus and Mary and making the sign of the cross. The temptation lasted thus about half an hour, after which time the tempter went away.

"In the morning, the lady went to her confessor, a wise and knowledgeable man, who confirmed her in the ways of the faith and appealed to her to continue her strong resistance, and to use some holy relics.

"The following nights: similar temptations, with words and kisses of the same kind; similar opposition, too, from the lady. However, as she was tired of such lasting trials, she took the advice of her confessor and other serious men and asked to be examined by trained exorcists to decide whether or not she was possessed. The exorcists found nothing in her to indicate the presence of the evil spirit. They blessed the house, the bedroom, the bed, and gave the incubus orders to discontinue his importunities. All was in vain: he went on tempting her, pretending he was dying with love, and crying, moaning, in order to invoke the lady’s pity. With God’s help, she remained unmoved.

"Then the incubus used a different approach: he appeared to her in the figure of a young boy or small man with golden, curling hair, with a blond beard gleaming like gold and sea-green eyes. To add to his power of seduction, he was elegantly dressed in Spanish vestments. Besides, he kept appearing to her even when she was in company; he would complain, as lovers do; he would send her kisses. In a word, he used all the means of seduction to obtain her favors. Only she saw and heard him; to all others, there was nothing.

"This excellent woman had kept her unwavering determination for several months when the incubus had recourse to a new kind of persecution.

"First, he took from her a silver cross full of holy relics and a blessed wax or papal lamb of Pope Pius V, which she always had on her. Then, rings and other jewels of gold and silver followed. He stole them without touching the locks of the casket in which they were enclosed. Then he began to strike her cruelly, and after each series of blows one could see on her face, arm, or other areas of her body bruises and marks, which lasted one or two days, then vanished suddenly, quite unlike natural bruises, which go away by degrees.

"Sometimes, as she suckled her daughter, he took the child from her knees and carried her to the roof, placing her at the edge of the gutter. Or else he would hide her, but without ever causing her harm.

"He would also upset the household, sometimes breaking to pieces the plates and earthenware. But in the blink of an eye he also restored them to their original state.

"One night, as she lay in bed with her husband, the incubus, appearing to her under his usual form, energetically demanded that she give herself up. She refused, as usual. Furious, the incubus went away, and a short time later he returned with an enormous load of those flat stones that inhabitants of Genoa, and of Liguria in general, use to cover their houses. With these stones be built around the bed such a high wall that it reached almost to the ceiling, and the couple had to send for a ladder in order to come out. This wall was built without lime. It was pulled down and the stones were stored in a corner, where they were exposed to everyone’s sight. But after two days they vanished.

"On the day of St. Stephen, the lady’s husband had invited several military friends to dine with him. To honor his guests he had prepared a respectable dinner. While they were washing their hands according to the custom -- bop! -- suddenly the table vanished, along with the dishes, the cauldrons, the plates, and all the earthenware in the kitchen, the jugs, the bottles, the glasses too. You can imagine the amazement, the surprise, of the guests. There were eight of them, among them a Spanish infantry captain who told them:

"’Do not be afraid. It is only a trick. But there used to be a table here, and it must still be here. I am going to find it.’ Having said that, be went around the room with outstretched hands, attempting to seize the table. But after he had made many turns, seeing he was only touching air, the others laughed at him. And since dinner time had passed, everyone took his coat and started for home. They had already reached the door with the husband, who was politely accompanying them, when they beard a great noise in the dining room. They stopped to find out what it was, and the servant girl ran and told them the kitchen was full of new plates loaded with food, and the table bad come back in the dining room.

"The table was now covered with napkins, dishes, glasses, and silverware that were not the original ones. And there were all kinds of precious cups full with rare wines. In the kitchen, too, there were new jugs and utensils; they bad never been seen there before. The guests, however, were hungry, and they ate this strange meal, which they found very much to their taste. After dinner, as they were talking by the fireplace, everything vanished, and the old table came back with the untouched dishes on it.

"But, oddly enough, no one was hungry any longer, so that nobody wanted to have supper after such a magnificent dinner -- which shows that the dishes which had been substituted for the original ones were real and not imaginary.

"This persecution had been going on for several months, the lady consulted the Blessed Bernardino of Felter, whose body is the object of veneration in St. James Church, some distance outside the city walls. And at the same time, she vowed to wear for a whole year a gray monk’s gown, with a rope as a belt, like those used by the minor brothers in the order to which Bernardino belonged. She hoped, through his intercession, that she would be freed from the persecutions of the incubus.

"Indeed, on September 28 -- which is the Vigil of the Dedication of Archangel St. Michael and the Feast of the Blessed Bernardino -- she took the votive dress. The next morning was the Feast of St. Michael. Our afflicted lady went to the church of that saint, which was, as I have said, her own parish. It was about ten o’clock, and a very large crowd was going to mass. Now, the poor woman had no sooner put her foot on the church ground than all of a sudden her vestments and ornaments fell to the ground and were carried away by the wind, leaving her as naked as the hand. Very fortunately, it so happened that among the crowd were two knights of mature age who saw the thing and hurriedly removed their coats, to hide as well as they could that woman’s nudity. And having put her in a coach, they drove her home. As for the vestments and jewels stolen by the incubus, be returned them six months later.

"To make a long story short, although there are many other tricks that this incubus played on her, and some amazing ones, suffice it to say that he kept tempting her for many years. But, at last, perceiving he was wasting his efforts, he discontinued these unusual and bothersome vexations."

As a theologian, Fr. Sinistrari was as puzzled by such reports as most modern students of UFO lore are by the Villas-Boas case. Observing that the fundamental texts of the Church gave no clear opinion on such cases, Sinistrari wondered bow they should be judged by religious law. A great part of his manuscript is devoted to a detailed examination of this question. The lady in the above example did not allow the incubus to have intercourse with her.

But there are numerous other cases in the records of the Church (especially in witch trials) in which there was intercourse. From the Church’s point of view, says Fr. Sinistrari, there are several problems. First, how is such intercourse physically possible? Second, how does demoniality differ from bestiality? Third, what sin is committed by those who engage in such intercourse? Fourth, what should their punishment be?

The earliest author who uses the word "demonialitas" is J. Caramuel, in his Theologia Fundamentalis. Before him, no one made a distinction between demoniality and bestiality. All the moralists, following St. Thomas Aquinas, understood by bestiality "any kind of carnal intercourse with an object of a different species." Thus Caietan in his commentary on St. Thomas places intercourse with the demon in the class of bestiality, and so does Sylvester when he defines luxuria, and Bonacina in De Matrimonio, question 4.

There is here a fine point of theology, which Sinistrari debates with obvious authority. He concludes that St. Thomas never meant intercourse with demons to fall within his definition of bestiality. By "different species," Sinistrari says, the saint can only mean species of living being, and this hardly applies to the devil. Similarly, if a man copulates with a corpse, this is not bestiality, especially according to the Thomist doctrine that denies the corpse the nature of the human body. The same would be true for a man who copulates with the corpse of an animal.

Throughout this discussion, the great intelligence and obvious knowledge of human psychology of the author is remarkable. It is quite fascinating to follow Fr. Sinistrari’s thoughts in an area that is directly relevant to UFO reports. And relevant it is indeed; for Villas-Boas or Betty and Barney Hill would certainly have had a hard time before the Inquisitors if they had lived in the seventeenth century.

[Benoit de Berne, at age seventy-five, confessed he had had intercourse for forty years with a succubus named Hermeline. He was burned alive. In passing, let us remark that the most eminent of our scientists choose, with Condon, to ignore such reports, which they label "crackpot" material. Yet, a few centuries earlier, the best minds saw in similar accounts an occasion to increase their knowledge of human nature and did not feel it was beneath their dignity as philosophers to spend considerable time in this study. If, as a twentieth-century scientist, I need an apology to write the present book, this should be as good a precedent as any.]

The act of love, writes Sinistrari, has for an object human generation. Unnatural germination, that is, intercourse that cannot be followed by generation, constitutes a separate type of sin against nature. But it is the subject of that germination that distinguishes the various sins under that type. If demoniality and bestiality were in the same category, a man who had copulated with a demon could simply tell his confessor: "I have committed the sin of bestiality." And yet he obviously has not committed that sin.

Considerable problems arose, however, when one had to identify the physical process of intercourse with demons. This is clearly a most difficult point (as difficult as that of identifying the physical nature of flying saucers!), and Sinistrari gives a remarkable discussion of it. Pointing out that the main object of the discussion is to determine the degree of punishment these sins deserve, be tries to list all the different ways in which the sin of demoniality can be committed. First he remarks:

"There are quite a few people, over-inflated with their little knowledge, who dare deny what the wisest authors have written, and what everyday experience demonstrates: namely, that the demon, either incubus or succubus, has carnal union not only with men and women but also with animals."

Sinistrari does not deny that some young women often have visions and imagine that they have attended a sabbat. Similarly, ordinary erotic dreams have been classified by the Church quite separately from the question we are studying. Sinistrari does not mean such psychological phenomena when he speaks of demoniality; he refers to actual physical intercourse, such as the basic texts on witchcraft discuss.

Thus in the Compendium Maleficarum, Gnaccius gives eighteen case histories of witches who have had carnal contact with demons. All cases are vouched for by scholars whose testimony is above question. Besides, St. Augustine himself says in no uncertain terms:

"It is a widespread opinion, confirmed by direct or indirect testimony of trustworthy persons, that the Sylvans and Fauns, commonly called Incubi, have often tormented women, solicited and obtained intercourse with them. There are even Demons, which are called Duses [i.e., lutins] by the Gauls, who are quite frequently using such impure practices: this is vouched for by so numerous and so high authorities that it would be impudent to deny it. "Now, the devil makes use of two ways in these carnal contacts. One he uses with sorcerers and witches; the other with men and women perfectly foreign to witchcraft."

This is a point of paramount importance. What Sinistrari is saying is that two kinds of people may come in contact with the beings be calls demons: those who have made a formal pact with them -- and he gives the details of the process for making this pact -- and those who simply happen to be "contacted" by them. The implications of this fundamental statement to occultism for the interpretation of the fairy-faith and of modern UFO stories should be obvious to the reader.

The devil does not have a body. Then, how does he manage to have intercourse with men and women? How can women have children from such unions if they specifically express the desire? All the theologians answer that the devil borrows the corpse of a human being, either male or female, or else he forms with other materials a new body for this purpose. Indeed, we find here the same theory as that expressed by one of the Gentry and quoted by Wentz:

"We can make the old young, the big small, the small big."

The devil then is said to proceed in one of two ways. Either he first takes the form of a female succubus and then has intercourse with a man. Or else, the succubus induces lascivious dreams in a sleeping man and makes use of the resulting "pollution" to allow the devil to perform the second part of the operation.

This is the theory taught by Gnaccius, who gives a great number of examples. Likewise, Hector Boethius, in Historia Scotorum, documents the case of a young Scot who, for several months, was visited in his bedroom, the windows and doors of which were closed, by a succubus of the most ravishing beauty. She did everything she could to obtain intercourse with him, but be did not yield to her caresses and entreaties.

One point intrigued Sinistrari greatly: such demons do not obey the exorcists. They have no fear of relics and other holy objects, and thus they do not fall into the same category as the devils by which people are possessed, as the story quoted above certainly shows.

• But then, are they really creatures of the devil?

• Should not we place them in a separate category, with the fairies and the Elementals they so closely resemble?

• And then, if such creatures have their own bodies, does the traditional theory that incubi and succubi are demons who have borrowed human corpses hold?

• Could it explain how children are born from such unions?

• What are the physical characters of such children?

If we admit that the UFO reports we have quoted earlier in this chapter indicate the phenomenon has genetic contents, then the above questions are fundamental, and it is important to see bow Sinistrari understood them. Therefore, I give in the following a complete translation of his discussion of the matter.

"To theologians and philosophers, it is a fact, that from the copulation of humans (man or woman) with the demon, human beings are sometimes born. It is by this process that Antichrist must be born, according to a number of doctors: Bellarmin, Suarez, Maluenda, etc.

[Le Brun’s comment throws more light: ’If the body of these children is thus different from the bodies of other children, their soul will certainly have qualities that will not be common to others: that is why Cardinal Bellarmin thinks Antichrist will be born of a woman having had intercourse with an incubus.’]

"Besides, they observe that as the result of a quite natural cause, the children generated in this manner by the incubi are tall, very strong, very daring, very magnificent and very wicked...

Maluenda confirms what has been said above, proving by the testimony of various classical authors that it is to such unions that the following owe their birth:

• Romulus and Remus, according to Livy and Plutarch.

• Servius-Tullius, sixth king of the Romans, according to Denys of Halicarnassus and Pliny.

• Plato the philosopher, according to Diogenes Laertius and St. Jerome.

• Alexander the Great, according to Plutarch and Quinte-Curce.

• Seleucus, king of Syria, according to Justin and Applian.

• Scipio the African, according to Livy.

• Emperor Caesar Augustus, according to Suetonius.

• Aristomenes of Messenia, the illustrious Greek general, according to Strabo and Pausanias.

• Let us add the English Merlin or Melchin, born of an incubus and a nun, the daughter of Charlemagne.

• And finally, as writes Cocleus, quoted by Maluenda, that damned heresiarch whose name is Martin Luther.

However, in spite of all the respect I owe so many great doctors, I do not see how their opinion can stand examination. Indeed, as Percrius observes very well in Commentary on Genesis, Chapter Six, all the strength, all the power of the human sperm, comes from spirits that evaporate and vanish as soon as they issue from the genital cavities where they were warmly stored. The physicians agree on this.

Therefore, it is not possible for the demon to keep the sperm he has received in a sufficient state of integrity to produce generation; for, no matter what the vessel where he could attempt to keep it is, this vessel would have to have a temperature equal to the natural temperature of human genital organs, which is found nowhere but in those same organs. Now, in a vessel where the warmth is not natural, but artificial, spirits are resolved, and no generation is possible. A second objection is that generation is a vital act through which man, from his own substance, introduces sperm through the use of natural organs, into a place proper for generation.

To the contrary, in the special case we are now considering, the introduction of the sperm cannot be a vital act of the generating man, since it is not by him that it is introduced into the matrix. And, for the same reason, it cannot be said that the man to whom the sperm belonged has engendered the fetus that is procreated. Neither can we consider the incubus as the father, since the sperm is not of his own substance. Thus here is a child who is born and has no father -- which is absurd. Third objection: when the father engenders naturally, there is a concourse of two causalities: a material one, for he provides the sperm that is the material of generation; and an efficient one, for be is the main agent in the generation, according to the common opinion of philosophers.

But, in our case, the man who does nothing but provide the sperm simply gives material, without any action tending toward generation. Therefore be could not be regarded as the child’s father, and this is contrary to the notion that the child engendered by an incubus is not his child, but the child of the man whose sperm was borrowed by the incubus....

We also read in the Scriptures (Genesis 6:4) that giants were born as a result of intercourse between the sons of God and the daughters of Man: this is the very letter of the sacred text. Now, these giants were men of tall stature, as it is said in Baruch 3:26, and far superior to other men. Besides their monstrous size, they called attention by their strength, their plunders, their tyranny. And it is to the crimes of these giants that we must attribute the main and primary cause of the Flood, according to Cornelius a Lapide in his Commentary on Genesis.

Some state that under the name of sons of God we must understand the sons of Seth, and, under that of daughters of men, the daughters of Cain, because the former practiced piety, religion, and all other virtues while the latter, the children of Cain, did exactly the opposite. But, with all the respect we owe Chrysostom, Cyril, and others who share this view, it will be recognized it is in disagreement with the obvious meaning of the text. What do the Scriptures say? That from the conjunction of the above were born men of monstrous corporeal proportions. Therefore, these giants did not exist previously, and if their birth was the result of that union, it is not admissible to attribute it to the intercourse between the sons of Seth and the daughters of Cain who, of ordinary size themselves, could have children only of ordinary size.

Consequently, if the intercourse in question has given birth to beings of monstrous proportions, we must see there not the ordinary intercourse of men with women but the operation of the incubi who, owing to their nature, can very well be called sons of God. This opinion is that of the Platonist philosophers and of Francois George of Venice, and it is not in contradiction with that of Josephus the historian, Philo, St. Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian, according to whom these incubi could be angels who had allowed themselves to commit the sin of luxury with women. Indeed, as we shall show, there is nothing there but a single opinion under a double appearance.

What we have here is a complete theory of contact between our race and another race, non-human, different in physical nature, but biologically compatible with us. Angels, demons, fairies, creatures from heaven, hell, or Magonia: they inspire our strangest dreams, shape our destinies, steal our desires......

But who are they?