Ashtar Command

Ashtar is the name of a purported extraterrestrial being, who was first claimed to be channeled by early UFO contactee George Van Tassel, on 18 July 1952.

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Van Tassel

Although the method of communication resembled what is commonly referred to as "channeling",[1] Van Tassel claimed to have established a new form of telepathic communication with extraterrestrial intelligences[2] utilizing a method which included both natural human abilities and the use of an allegedly advanced form of alien technology, rather than the more traditionally "religious" non-technological spiritual medium based approach taken by many other early channelers of the era. Van Tassel maintained that the method he utilized was not a "paranormal" or "metaphysical" activity, but rather an example of the application of an allegedly advanced extraterrestrial science, that anyone could implement with the proper training.[1]

Residing near a large boulder, situated in the desert of southern California called Giant Rock, in a UFO focused community he founded in 1947, the earliest messages Van Tassel claimed to have received from Ashtar were first presented to the public at an annual event called the Giant Rock Spacecraft Convention, which he himself organized. Van Tassel's early purported messages from Ashtar contained a great deal of apocalyptic material, which focused on concerns regarding the development and soon to be tested hydrogen bomb.[3] Van Tassel also claimed that Ashtar had provided specific messages that he was expected to pass on to the U.S. federal government regarding the potential negative impacts of the proposed upcoming bomb tests.[4]

Ashtar Command

As the weekly channeling sessions at Giant Rock continued through the early 1950s, the Ashtar messages became much more elaborate and began to provide details of the purported existence of an extraterrestrial "government", which claimed to closely monitor activities on earth and offered material and spiritual support to its citizens. This concept of an Ashtar Command, was appropriated for use by a number of prominent early channelers, both inside and outside the Giant Rock community, and was soon being utilized by several in the context of their own personal claimed messages from Ashtar, along with the use of the figure of Ashtar himself, originally developed by Van Tassel.[5]

By 1955, a few well known channelers of the era, including Elouise Moeller, had incorporated the concept of an Ashtar Command and related ideas, as key components of their own developing systems. Several channelers, including Van Tassel himself, began publishing accounts which described predictions of the imminent arrival of an Ashtar-led UFO armada on earth, in order to guide and protect mankind. The public failure of these predictions had an enormous negative effect on the expansion of the Ashtar Command 'movement'. Without Van Tassel's role as a single authority constituting the sole source of messages from Ashtar, the movement became less cohesive and began to splinter from internal pressures. Several dozen channelers were simultaneously claiming to be obtaining, in some cases, competing authoritative messages directly from Ashtar. The overall movement began to wane in relative popularity because of infighting.[6]

Tuella

After decreasing in popularity within the New Age community for a period of roughly twenty years, the concept of an Ashtar Command was revitalized by a channeler named Thelma B. Terrill, (best known as "Tuella") who channeled messages and wrote a series of books on the subject in the 1970s and 1980s.[7] Her work shifted the focus from Van Tassel's extraterrestrial technological model, to a more 'spiritualized' approach. Tuella's version of the Ashtar narrative tended to play down the necessity of the direct involvement of UFOs in human affairs, with the shift of importance being laid onto purely interior spiritual development as a means of reaching "higher dimensions" and receiving the assistance of Ashtar Command. Despite Tuella's influences, several channelers maintained a separate more UFO-based cosmology, which insisted on the importance of messages from Ashtar containing predictions of the imminent destruction of earth, and the need for a literal physical evacuation of the planet, with the assistance of the spacecraft of Ashtar Command. By the 1990s the movement began to splinter into factions once again.[8]

Yvonne Cole

One individual, named Yvonne Cole, who claimed to be channeling Ashtar messages from 1986, predicted the destruction of all earth civilizations and the arrival on the planet of various alien cultures in 1994. Cole claimed that governments were working with extraterrestrials to prepare for contact.[9][10] These prophecies furthered the continued fracturing and disappointment within the movement when they failed to occur.[11]

Developments after the mid-1990s

Despite these failures, by the mid-1990's, and continuing to the present,[2] several of these channeling groups began to utilize the Internet in order to promulgate their beliefs and to attempt to encourage a movement toward unifying the movement and establishing a single 'authoritative' source for all Ashtar messages. Individual channelers espousing messages which differed and continued to focus on themes such as the destruction of earth, were declared invalid. It was claimed that channelers who had avowed such messages in the past and continued to do so, had in fact been deceived by spiritual forces who opposed Ashtar's benevolent intentions. Most significantly of all, the new more unified movement declared that in future no new channeled messages from Ashtar would be accepted as valid unless they complied with criteria established by the recently formed and authoritative core group. The criteria consisted of a set of twelve "guidelines", which it was claimed established a baseline of 'orthodoxy' for the movement.[12]

Footnotes

1. Partridge (2003), p. 163.
2. Denzler (2001), p. 46.
3. Lewis 2003, pgs. 422-423.
4. Partridge (2003), p. 163-165.
5. Partridge (2003), pgs. 168-170.
6. Partridge (2003), pg. 170.
7. Wojcik (1997), pgs. 186-187.
8. Partridge (2003), pgs. 170-173.
9. Reece, Gregory L. (2007), UFO Religion: Inside Flying Saucer Cults and Culture, I. B. Tauris, p. 138, ISBN 9781845114510, https://books.google.com/books?id=_r4nAAAAYAAJ
10. Cole, Yvonne (1994). Connecting Link Magazine 23: 12-13.
11. Partridge (2003), pg. 173.
12. Partridge (2003), pgs. 173-174.

References

• Denzler, Brenda (2001), The lure of the edge, Berkeley: University of California Press, ISBN 9780520224322, https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/46836738
• Partridge, Christopher Hugh (2003), UFO Religions, Routledge, ISBN 9780415263245, https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=zHT8CeeiWlIC Chapter 8 From Extraterrestrials To Ultraterrestrials: The Evolution of the Concept of Ashtar; by Christopher Helland pgs.162-178
• Lewis, James R (2004), The Oxford handbook of new religious movements, Oxford, ISBN 9780195149869, https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/59290339
• Wójcik, Daniel (1997), The end of the world as we know it, New York University Press, ISBN 9780814792834