George Adamski (April 17, 1891–February 26, 1965) was the first of a new breed of flying-saucer witness to report UFO contacts,not to the military or to the police,but to the general public.In this way he also became the first person to gain celebrity by claiming to transmit spiritual wisdom from extraterrestrial visitors to humanity.He authored several books and articles detailing his travels with the Space Brothers,as he called the aliens he encountered.In these publications,Adamski reported their “revelation”of an occult philosophy identical to the one he had long propagated in other guises.

Adamski was born in Poland and moved to the United States with his family at the age of two.Little other information is available about his life from that point forward until he settled with his wife in Southern California and in 1936 founded the Royal Order of Tibet. He actually claimed to represent the Royal Order and to lecture on its behalf. Material originally composed and presented as the teachings of the Royal Order would later be modified slightly and propagated as the teachings of the Space Brothers.He was also briefly associated with the Order ofLoving Service,a metaphysical group in Laguna Beach,California.

His day job was in a cafe near Mt.Palomar and its observatory. In the early 1940s he became interested in unidentified flying objects,long before they were much discussed by the public.On October 9,1946,he reported seeing a UFO for the first time and in 1949 published Pioneers of Space to generate interest in the subject.On November 20, 1952, he reported telepathic contact with a humanlike Venusian and the following month reported another contact in which a hieroglyphic message was given to him.These encounters were reported in his second book (written with Leslie Desmond), Flying Saucers Have Landed (1953). This became one of the most popular flyingsaucer books ever written.He gained a broad following and became a popular lecturer.

Adamski’s many claims included one in which he and six others in 1946 had seen a large,hovering craft, and another during the following summer in which he saw a full 184 UFOs pass over him in groupings of 32 each.He also claimed that the government and scientists knew about spacecraft flying near earth and had in fact tracked one with radar as it was preparing to land on the far side of the Moon.Further,according to Adamski,science knew all planets to be inhabited by beings far more advanced but nonetheless human and had photographic proof that the “canals”on Mars were not natural phenomena but had been constructed by intelligent beings.

Some of his wilder (though by no means his wildest) claims concerned an event that supposedly took place on November 20, 1952, when, Adamski maintained, he had actually seen and spoken to a Venusian and had seen his spacecraft up close. During this meeting, he learned that many Venusians already lived, in disguise, upon the earth and that they came in peace—primarily out of a concern for humanity’s warlike ways,especially nuclear testing,which,the alien told him, was “upsetting the harmony of the universe.” Adamski’s most extravagant claim, however, may have been that he traveled to Saturn aboard an alien craft, which he boarded on a U.S.Air Force base, in order to attend a conference with beings from other planets.

This is related to another of his claims:that he was supported by some of the world’s highest officials.Adamski said that he had had a secret meeting with the Pope at the Vatican in May 1963—a claim denied by the Vatican—and that he had had secret meetings with President John F. Kennedy and various White House personnel and UN leaders. Because all such meetings were clandestine, none of his statements about these events could ever be confirmed or discounted.

Adamski’s following was gained from not only those interested in UFOs but also those interested in the knowledge, advice, and wisdom Adamski claimed to receive from the space people.In 1957 he organized the International Get Acquainted Club to bring his followers together.The pinnacle of his career was reached with a world tour in 1959,the publication of Cosmic Philosophy(1961), and the establishment of Science Publications Newsletter in 1962.

Adamski’s career was plagued by charges of fraud that were supported by counterevidence to his claims.Even in the early 1950s,his assertions about the surface conditions on the various planets of the solar system contradicted then-known scientific data.According to investigator James W. Moseley,writing in Saucer News, witnesses of the first sighting Adamski reported were all close friends,and at least one recanted his story,admitting to having never seen such a craft and stating that he doubted any ofthe others had,either.

Perhaps the most blatantly contradictory story Adamski told was one in which he claimed that a flying saucer had actually given him a ride during an unscheduled train stop. The saucer, he said, landed as he was stretching his legs outside and picked him up,taking him to his destination and saving him a 20-minute wait. A check with the railway company on the part of Arthur C. Campbell, however, showed that neither had the train stopped during that trip in question,nor had the vestibule been opened at any point along the way. A final criticism that has been leveled against Adamski concerns his anti-Semitism and Nazi sympathies.Not coincidentally,all of the extraterrestrial humanoids he described were white,beautiful,and blond.

Finally,Adamski’s work was also discredited in the eyes of many people when UFO researcher Moseley in 1957 stated that Adamski had faked his photographs,taken the “hieroglyphs”from an obscure scholarly work, and plagiarized old science fiction as space messages.Adamski’s close associate C.A.Honey broke away in 1963 after confirming for himselfapparent fraudulent activity.

Like many other contactee groups, the late Adamski’s believers have no formal congregation or rituals beyond the informal International Get Acquainted Club he had created in 1957.Between 1958 and 1964,he published his metaphysical-extraterrestrial wisdom in courses and books. His teachings are today kept alive by various individuals and organizations who use the Internet, newsletters,and correspondence to maintain contact and disseminate information. Perhaps the most prominent of these is the Adamski Foundation; its website claims to be the “only authorized and original source for George Adamski information.”Founded in 1965, it promotes a philosophy “pertinent to understanding that Human Life is the rule, not the exception, throughout the universe” and that humanity has the capacity for peace. Confidence in the validity of this philosophy comes from contact with benevolent beings from other planets in our solar system; a contact that has also produced, according to the foundation, “advancements in science, agriculture and human understanding”and that has the potential to usher the earth into a new age of peace.

Written by — Ryan T.O’Leary

See Also:Contactees;Religions,UFO;Space Brothers

Further Reading :

• Adamski,George.Cosmic Philosophy.Freeman,SD:Pine Hill Press,1972.
• ———. Flying Saucers Farewell.New York:AbelardSchuman,1961.
• ———. Inside the Space Ships.New York:AbelardSchuman,1955.
• ———. Pioneers ofSpace:A Trip to the Moon,Mars,and Venus. Los Angeles:Leonard-Freefield,1949.
• Clark,Jerome.The UFO Encyclopedia.2nd ed.Detroit: Omnigraphics,1988.
• Curran,Douglas.In Advance ofthe Landing:Folk Concepts ofOuter Space.New York:Abbeville Press,1985.
• Flammonde,Paris.The Age ofFlying Saucers:Notes on a Projected History ofUnidentified Flying Objects.New York:Hawthorn Books,1971.
• Melton,J.Gordon.The Encyclopedia ofAmerican Religions.3rd ed.,2 vols.Detroit:Gale Research,1989.
• Melton,J.Gordon,and George M.Eberhart,eds.The Flying Saucer Contactee Movement,1950–1990.Santa Barbara,CA:Santa Barbara Centre for Humanistic Studies,1990.
• Stupple,David.“Mahatmas and Space Brothers:The Ideologies ofAlleged Contact with Mahatmas and Space Brothers.”Journal ofAmerican Culture7 (1984): 131–139.
• ———.“The Man Who Talked with Venusians.”Fate 32(1) (January 1979):30–39.
• Thompson,Keith.Angels and Aliens:UFOs and the Mythic Imagination.Reading,MA:Addison-Wesley,1991.
• Vallee,Jacques.Messengers ofDeception:UFO Contacts and Cults.Berkeley:And/Or Press,1979.

Taken from : UFOs and Popular Culture – An Encyclopedia of Contemporary Myth
Written by : James R. Lewis – Copyright © 2000 by James R.Lewis