ET/UFO Art History

Finding the usage of the plural pronouns "us" and "our" as references to God in Genesis prompted me to take a trip to a local bookstore. I told my friend Alex about what I had found, and he joined me, as he, too, was now curious. Finding several books which were related to ancient astronauts and the creation of the human race by extraterrestrials, we thought that we had enough to do some preliminary research. We were about to head to the check-out desk when Alex spotted ‘The Alien Chronicles’ by Matthew Hurley. “Look at this,’ he said, “the cover has a picture of the baptism of Christ with a big UFO above shining its light rays down on Jesus.” I said “That can’t be a real painting”. Alex found the credit inside the cover and he said, “Yes it is, get this, it was painted by Aert De Gelder in 1710, it’s entitled ‘The Baptism of Christ’ and it’s housed in the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge. The cover also states ‘Compelling Evidence for UFOs and Extraterrestrial Encounters In Art and Text Since Ancient Times’. We have to get this.”


I looked again at the front cover of this book, and said to Alex, “This picture takes us from the Old Testament to the New Testament. There is a possibility that celestial beings created us, and now there is also a possibility that there was a connection to Jesus. Like the Star of Bethlehem…maybe it wasn’t a star, maybe it was a UFO? Maybe every time you read ‘angel’ in the bible, it’s really an ET and every time you read ‘star’ or ‘cloud’ or some such thing it’s a UFO.”


When we got home, Alex said “I’ll try to do a ‘find and replace’ function of the bible on the internet and see what I come up with. I agree, this probably involves the entire bible, not just the Old Testament.” He got up and walked towards the computer and I started to thumb through the book.

I turned to the table of contents and found a chapter entitled ‘Creation Stories’. The chapter was broken down into sections: 1) Asia, Mesopotamian Civilizations, Bible Stories, Islam, 2) Africa and Egyptians, 3) North America, 4) South America, 5) Australasia. It referred to a common thread appearing in creation myths and legends of cultures around the world. The common thread was that beings from elsewhere with “Godlike” powers tried to assist in the development in the culture of civilizations around the world. The Indian ‘Vedas’ actually contained descriptions of flying machines, which were called ‘Vimanas’.

I quickly browsed the rest of this chapter and realized that I needed to sit down and read every word, not just browse. The existence of the types of books that we purchased today was evidence that our preliminary suspicion that the ‘god’ reference in Genesis might be extraterrestrial was supported by others. But the newly acquired books were too much of a distraction. I needed to focus on one thing at a time, and I felt that one thing was to finish reading Genesis.

I started to put down ‘The Alien Chronicles’ and then curiosity got the better of me. I turned to the table of contents again and saw there was a chapter ‘UFOs in Western Religious Art’. I had to take a peek at this. The picture on the cover was too enticing.

The first work of art shown in this chapter was ‘The Annunciation, with Saint Emidius’ by Carlo Crivelli, 1430 to 1495. The painting shows the Virgin Mary kneeling inside a building with what appears to be a dove (the holy spirit) above her. But outside in the sky is a UFO which is emitting a beam of light down, through the wall of the house, through the dove, and into the head of the Blessed Virgin. The Angel Gabriel was outside the building speaking with Saint Emidius.

Another painting was that of ‘The Virgin Mary with Saint Giovannino’. The artist is unknown, but has been credited to the School of Lippi, 1406-1469. This picture was amazing. It showed the Blessed Virgin with the baby Jesus. Off to Mary’s left shoulder is a UFO hovering in the sky. There is a man and his dog in the background. The man has his hand up to shield the sun from his eyes and both the man and the dog are looking up at the object. If you missed the UFO at first glance, then looking at the man and dog looking up would draw your attention to it.

Then there was the ‘Glorification of the Eucharist’ by Bonaventura Salimbeni, 1595. This was the most bizarre of all! Toward the upper right side is God the Father, to the left is Jesus, and above is the dove which symbolizes the Holy Spirit. In between Jesus and God the Father is a round object that has two antennae, kind of like rabbit ears, sticking out of the top. And toward the bottom is a round protrusion that looks like a camera or telescope. To me this object resembled a Russian sputnik or one of the earlier satellites. What did this mean?

There were other paintings and tapestries included in this chapter ranging from the 1300’s to the 1800’s. Why did these works contain portrayals of UFO’s? What did these artists know?