field that hot August noon, but only five remained disciples in December. To all of them, in various degrees, the failure of the predicted saucer landings must have been a disappointment; some never recovered, apparently, and dropped Mrs. Keech forthwith, as a false prophet. Two disappeared from her influence for a time, but returned later; only the Armstrongs remained steadfast throughout. They were with Mrs. Keech in the immediate aftermath, when they “all agreed that something had happened” at the field, and remained with her, as her house guests, the next day when the revelation from Sananda was dictated. If they had had doubts of Mrs. Keech’s extraordinary powers on Sunday afternoon, these must have been dispelled by Monday when they read Sananda’s message and noted Mrs. Keech’s radiant confidence, her renewed faith, and her touching humility. Indeed they seem to have felt the same sentiments themselves.
Theoretically, we would expect an increase in proselyting following the disconfirmation of the Lyons field prediction. Unhappily, our report of this incident suffers from the same lack of data as do most of the historical examples we discussed in Chapter I. There were no observers present to report Mrs. Keech’s activities during August and we have no direct evidence of what she did. Although the messages she received during that month contain some urgings to proselyte, our collection of messages from this period is so fragmentary that we can hardly draw any conclusions.
A couple of weeks after the incident of the sice Mrs. Keech went for an extended visit to Collegeville. There she continued to receive extraterrestrial messages and wrote sometimes for as many as fourteen hours a day. Lengthy discussions with the Armstrongs about esoteric matters seem to have affected Mrs. Keech’s beliefs. One notices an increasing emphasis in her lessons on religious matters, such as the nature of heaven, the crucifixion of Jesus, the power and glory of God, the relationship between “the God of Earth” and “the Creator.” There is a lesson devoted to comments on the identity between angels and “higher density” beings from outer space, and, in this connection, a discussion of “the miracle of Fatima in the land of California.” More and more frequent references to “the Father” and “the Father’s children” (believers) occur in the lessons. Simultaneously, there begin to appear in the lessons references to geophysical prehistory, especially accounts of the submersion of Atlantis, and of its sister “continent” Mu, in the Pacific Ocean (which occurred during a deadly war of “atomic” weapons between Atlantis and Mu).
An account of the origin of the earth’s population also begins to emerge. It seems that eons ago, on the planet Car, the population divided into two factions: “the scientists,” led by Lucifer, and “the people who followed the Light,” under the banner of God and in the command of Christ. The “scientists,” having invented something analogous to atom bombs —in those days, the name was “alcetopes” — threatened to destroy the hosts of Light and, through their fumbling cleverness, succeeded in blowing to pieces the planet Car. The disappearance of Car, as an integrated mass, produced enormous disturbances in the balance of the omni-verse (“all universes”) and nearly caused complete chaos. Meanwhile, the forces of Light had retreated to other planets, such as Clarion, Uranus, and Cerus, where they regrouped and considered their next strategy. Lucifer led his troops, their minds now obliterated of cosmic knowledge, to earth.
Since that prehistoric day, “the cycle” has begun anew, and threatens to repeat itself. Lucifer is abroad today, in disguise, and has been leading our contemporary scientists in their construction of ever greater weapons of destruction. If the headlong plunge into fission is allowed to continue, the tragedy of the destruction of Car may be repeated: Earth will be fragmented and the whole solar system disrupted. The forces of Light have not been idle; Christ’s visit to earth, as Jesus, was the initial attempt to reclaim mankind, to persuade them to desert the Prince of Darkness, and it was partially successful. There is a portion of the population of the earth who are open and receptive to “the Light,” who can hear the still voice of the Creator, or God, and act rightly in His service. But the forces of evil (and science) are extremely powerful, and the followers of Light may not be able to conquer in time to escape another explosion.
This sketchy account cannot do justice to the complexity of the rationale that the Armstrongs and Mrs. Keech appear to have assembled during July, August, and September, but it may orient the reader to the view they had of the future. It may also explain, to some extent, their deep concern with both the dimmest events of the distant past and the most awful possibilities of the immediate future. We have had to confine ourselves, in this account, to only the most salient features of the ideology and have omitted many of the elaborations it contains. Thus we have perhaps given an impression of greater orderliness than actually exists in the lessons themselves, for they contain an extraordinary range of material complexly interwoven from a whole host of sources. If nothing else, the Armstrongs and Marian Keech were eclectics.
We use this term advisedly, for we must make it perfectly clear to the reader that the ideology was not invented, not created de novo, purely in Mrs. Keech’s mind. Almost all her conceptions of the universe, the spiritual world, interplanetary communication and travel, and the dread possibilities of total atomic warfare can be found, in analogue or identity, in popular magazines, sensational books, and even columns of daily papers.
The notions of reincarnation and spiritual rarification (through changes in “vibratory density”) are likewise echoed in many “modern cults and minority religious movements.”* There have been numerous accounts of the “continents” of Atlantis and Mu, and attempts to explain their “disappearance” into the oceans. The idea that heavenly representatives will visit earth to instruct mankind through chosen instruments and to rescue those whose conduct and beliefs have marked them for salvation is older than Christianity.
[*To borrow a phrase from the subtitle of Charles S. Braden’s book These Also Believe (New York: Macmillan, 1949), which see for an objective, scholarly, readable account of several marginal groups of believers in America. See especially his descriptions of theosophy, the I AM movement, Psychiana, spiritualism, and Jehovah’s Witnesses.]
Furthermore, there is evidence that all these ideas, singly or in combinations, are sincerely and fully believed by a great many people. Certainly, the books and periodicals in which they appear are widely read. Equally certain is that many of the readers engage in various actions that testify to their faith, such as joining particular groups, adopting certain ritual practices, giving money, and trying to convince others that the ideas are true.
So, if the reader has come to the hasty conclusion that the ideology constructed by Mrs. Keech’s pencil is merely the unique raving of an isolated madwoman and that only “crazy people” would be able to accept and believe it, let him take further thought. True, Mrs. Keech put together a rather unusual combination of ideas —a combination peculiarly well adapted to our contemporary, anxious age — but scarcely a single one of her ideas can be said to be unique, novel, or lacking in popular (though not, for the most part, majority) support.
The Armstrongs and Mrs. Keech had more than an abstract connection with other groups having interests similar to their own. The Armstrongs belonged to at least one flying saucer club and Mrs. Keech had often attended lectures on the subject. Both homes were on the subscriber lists for such publications as the Proceedings of the College of Universal Wisdom, the Round Robin of the Borderland Sciences Research Associates, and the Newsletter of the group called Civilian Research on Interplanetary Flying Objects. Such periodicals were often proffered to visitors at the Keech and Armstrong homes, and references to them were frequently made to substantiate Mrs. Keech’s point of view. Mrs. Keech declared that there were a number of other groups in the United States that were also receiving enlightenment from outer space, although from a different set of teachers.
It was against the background of this ideology that the prediction of cataclysmic disaster began to emerge. With Mrs. Keech in Collegeville, she and the Armstrongs had formed a team. While Mrs. Keech wrote, Daisy Armstrong busied herself typing out carbon copies of the lessons, and the doctor scanned them, adding here and there a commentary or citing
