Miracle Visitors

I really didn't know what to expect when I picked up a copy of Miracle Visitors. Watson starts simply enough with a classic encounter with the blond Nordics, a sexual liaison, and then concern, by them (who ever or what ever they are) about our nuclear capabilities and the possibility of our destruction.

All three elements were commonly reported in the early days of the UFO phenomenon. I know something of these matter from books like UFOs and the National Security State by the Oxford educated historian Richard Dolan. Books like it document the UFO doings from what we know the government knew through their own documents, publicly released and those acquired through FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests. The early days can be summed up with three statements.

Move on; there's nothing to see here.

You're hiding everything.

It's nuts and bolts craft from somewhere else.

These three statements form a pillar, the core of what the UFO and the UFO cover-up has wrapped itself around, like an iron pilling, set deep within the Earth - unmoveable. It's both a support and a limitation of thought. It was in 1969 that Jacques Vallee published his now seminal work: Passport to Magonia. This changed the landscape of the UFO debate even if most in the "mainstream" UFO community didn't notice.

And the publication date of Miracle Visitors is 1978. This means Ian was paying attention.

From such a prosaic start we quickly sheer off into altered state of consciousness, Men in Black, unbelievable aliens, Basses on the Dark Side of the Moon, Gaia Theory and Khidr (who is a Islamic prophet figure, mystic, guide, bringer of wisdom).

Simply put, Miracle Visitors is something of a miracle itself since the vast majority of the novel deals with the UFO phenomenon from a perspective one could expect in the contemporary literature and not the prevalent thoughts of the 1970ies.

Watson truly seems to have nailed the ambiguous nature of the phenomena. Things happen but they happen in a manner that leave little one could point to as evidence. These seems to be a message, but this gets garbled through our perspective. We're not perceiving that the medium is part of the message.

Watson adds Vallee (this has been going on for a long time) and Gaia theory (the planet itself is alive) topping it all off with Khidr (as a ambiguous guide - touching upon the universality of the experience for humanity) and wraps thing up with an enlightenment. It's all like nested systems of thought, one within the other, not directly perceptible to each other unless one goes up the ladder of existence. This phenomenon is something completely natural, the nature of the universe creates it, and it's designed to lead one to higher and higher levels of understanding. It's a fascinating take on the whole situation, especially for when it was written. And that interpretation may have more than a little truth to it.

I seem to read few books where I immediately think I'll need to read this one again. Most can just pass into the mists, forgotten. This one stuck.

Highly recommended.