UFOs and Spaceships

UFOs and Spaceships is the final entry in the Galactic Systems section of The Alien Archive and runs across two pages (42–43). Rather than describing a single being, the Archive gives a field guide to twelve archetypal kinds of craft reported in UFO and UAP literature, from the classic 1940s flying disc to the "Tic Tac" of modern military reports and the shifting plasma forms that blur the line between vehicle and perception. For interpretation, this page draws on Carl Jung, who read the flying saucer as a mandala projected onto the sky; Jacques Vallée, who proposed an interdimensional "control system"; and the U.S. government's official UAP investigations. It also draws on the Gnostic picture of the heavens as the domain of the Archons.

From the Alien Archive

The Archive sorts reported craft into twelve archetypes.

Disc / Saucer craft

• Classic circular or disc-shaped craft with a smooth metallic appearance and no visible propulsion systems.
• Silent or near-silent movement.
• Rapid acceleration and changes of direction.
• Often associated with early UFO sightings (1940s to the present).
• Frequently reported hovering or traversing the atmosphere at high speed.

Triangle craft (TR-3B archetype)

• Large triangular or delta-shaped craft with luminous corner points.
• Three or more light nodes at the vertices.
• Stable hovering and slow atmospheric drift.
• Often reported in military sightings and night-sky observations.
• Sometimes associated with stealth or observational behavior.

Orb / Sphere

• Perfect or near-perfect spherical luminous objects.
• Smooth motion; erratic or seemingly intelligent pathing.
• Often described as glowing or metallic.
• Frequently observed in atmospheric or orbital environments.
• Sometimes appear in groups or formations.

Capsule / Tic Tac craft

• Elongated, featureless cylindrical or pill-shaped objects.
• No visible wings, propulsion or exhaust.
• Extreme maneuverability and changes of speed.
• Common in modern military UAP reports.
• Often described as white or matte metallic.

Morphing / Non-linear craft

• Objects that shift shape, density or structure during observation.
• Shape instability or phase-like transitions.
• May appear partially translucent or reflective.
• Often linked to "non-solid physics" interpretations.
• Behavior suggests advanced adaptive technology or perceptual distortion.

Mothership / Large structured craft

• Massive structured or geometric craft, often associated with multiple smaller objects.
• Complex architecture or layered geometry.
• Stationary hovering or slow movement.
• Frequently described in deep-space or oceanic UFO reports.
• Sometimes linked to "command platform" interpretations.

Atmospheric / Liminal phenomena craft

• Unclear or partially perceived craft emerging in clouds, fog or electromagnetic disturbances.
• Obscured visibility or partial manifestation.
• Often seen during anomalous atmospheric events.
• May appear briefly before disappearing or fading.
• Linked to perception-ambiguity or dimensional-interpretation theories.

Cylinder / Cigar craft

• Long tubular craft, sometimes described as windowless "sky vessels".
• Smooth, elongated body (cigar, tube or rod shape).
• Often seen hovering or moving slowly at high altitude.
• Occasionally reported entering or exiting larger craft or clouds.
• Common in both historical and modern sightings.

Reflective / Metallic "mirror" craft

• Highly reflective objects that appear to mirror the sky or environment.
• Chrome-like or liquid-metal appearance.
• Hard to track visually because the reflection blends with the background.
• May appear "invisible until light catches it".
• Often associated with high-altitude sightings.

Multi-object formations (swarm craft)

• Groups of coordinated objects behaving as a single system.
• Multiple lights or craft moving in synchronized patterns.
• Split/merge behavior observed.
• Sometimes interpreted as a single intelligence distributed across units.
• Frequently reported in modern drone-like UAP waves.

Nested geometry / Cube-in-sphere craft

• Geometric craft with visible internal structures.
• A cube within a sphere, or layered geometric shells.
• Often reported as hovering or rotating slowly.
• Strongly associated with "structured intelligence" interpretations.
• Sometimes described as partially translucent.

Plasma / Energy form craft

• Objects described more as structured energy than solid matter.
• Shifting, luminous, plasma-like forms.
• Highly unstable appearance and rapid morphing.
• May split, merge or vanish suddenly.
• Often debated as perception effects versus fluid vehicles.

Gnostic perspective

The ancient Gnostics did not report flying saucers. They did, however, regard the sky as a contested space. Above the earth lay the heavens of the Archons, and beyond them the realm of light, and messengers were said to pass down through the spheres. Twentieth-century interpreters of the UFO phenomenon, especially Carl Jung, have drawn on the same religious imagination.

The heavens as the rulers' domain

In Gnostic cosmology the seven planetary heavens (the Hebdomad) belong to the Archons, the "rulers" who built and administer the material cosmos and who prevent souls from rising beyond it.^[1] In the Hypostasis of the Archons, the repentant ruler Sabaoth is given the seventh heaven, and there "he made himself a huge four-faced chariot of cherubim, and infinitely many angels to act as ministers".^[2] A throne-chariot attended by countless angels is part of the ancient visionary vocabulary that modern readers sometimes set beside UFO reports. The Archive's "mothership" and "command platform" archetypes have a distant ancestor here.

The texts also describe descents of light through the spheres. In On the Origin of the World, "Light came out of the eighth heaven above and passed through all of the heavens of the earth", and "a human likeness appeared within it, very wonderful", seen by the prime ruler and troubling "all the forces of the heavens".^[3] In the Apocryphon of John, the elect of the flood story hide "in a luminous cloud".^[4] These are visionary images, not reports of machines. Still, luminous presences crossing the heavens and a saving "luminous cloud" are close in spirit to the Archive's "plasma" and "atmospheric/liminal" craft.

Jung: the saucer as mandala

The most influential psychological reading of UFOs comes from Carl Gustav Jung, who took a lifelong interest in the Gnostics and helped call attention to the Nag Hammadi library in the 1950s.^[5] In Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies (German 1958; English translation by R. F. C. Hull), Jung set aside the question of whether UFOs physically exist and asked "what it may signify that these phenomena, whether real or imagined, are seen in such numbers just at a time when humankind is menaced as never before in history."^[6] His answer drew on the mandala, the circle-and-center image that he found across religions and in his patients' drawings, and that he treated as a symbol of psychic wholeness.^[7] In a summary by the writer John Fraim: "It was very relevant to Jung that the shape of the flying saucers was round, the shape of the ancient Mandala, symbol of wholeness throughout history." Fraim quotes Jung's view that, at a time "when the world is divided by an iron curtain", one might expect "symbols of wholeness and unity" to appear as compensation.^[8]

For Jung, then, the disc in the sky was a modern religious image, an archetype of the Self appearing in a technological age. It has the same function as the Gnostic longing for the lost fullness above: a picture of wholeness in a divided world. The Archive's "disc/saucer" and "orb/sphere" archetypes are the classic forms of Jung's modern mandala, and its "nested geometry / cube-in-sphere" craft looks almost like a mandala diagram.

Vallée: the control system

The astronomer and computer scientist Jacques Vallée began by defending the extraterrestrial hypothesis. By 1969 he had concluded it "was too narrow and ignored too much data", and in Passport to Magonia he traced parallels between UFO encounters and folklore of fairies, demons, angels and apparitions.^[9] He argued that UFO entities "could be multidimensional beyond space-time; thus they could coexist with humans, yet remain undetected", and that "the apparent ability of UFOs to manipulate space and time suggests radically different and richer alternatives" to space visitors.^[9] His later work culminated in a "control system" theory, which "posits an unidentified intelligence that regulates human perception and access to the phenomenon."^[10]

Vallée's hypothesis has an obvious resemblance to the Gnostic picture of powers in the heavens that shape what humans can perceive and believe. The Apocryphon of John describes a fate by which "the whole creation was made blind, in order that they may not know God".^[4] The parallel is thematic, not historical. Vallée does not cite Gnostic texts in the sources consulted here. Both, however, ask whether the lights in the sky are messages, tests or veils. The Archive's "morphing", "atmospheric/liminal" and "plasma" craft, "often debated as perception effects vs. fluid vehicles", sit at the center of that question.

Background and history

From foo fighters to flying saucers

Allied airmen in the Second World War used "foo fighters" for unidentified lights and objects seen from November 1944 onward over Europe and the Pacific.^[11] The modern era began on 24 June 1947, when the pilot Kenneth Arnold reported nine shiny objects near Mount Rainier, Washington. The press quickly coined "flying saucer" and "flying disc", although Arnold later said he had described their motion ("like a saucer if you skip it across the water") rather than their shape. Hundreds of similar reports followed within weeks, and the U.S. Air Force opened Project Sign, the forerunner of Project Blue Book.^[12] This is the origin of the Archive's "early UFO sightings (1940s–present)".

Triangles and formations

"Black triangle" reports describe large, silent, slow-moving triangular craft with pulsating lights. Notable waves include the Hudson Valley sightings of the early 1980s (several pilots later claimed responsibility, flying ultralights in formation) and the 1989–1992 Belgian wave, when two Belgian Air Force F-16s tried to intercept a radar contact.^[13] The "TR-3B" name in the Archive comes from rumors of secret U.S. aircraft. Wikipedia's article notes that "there is little evidence to support the TR-3's existence".^[13] The Phoenix Lights of 13 March 1997 included "a triangular formation of lights seen to pass over the state" of Arizona.^[14]

The "Tic Tac" and the Pentagon videos

On 14 November 2004, Commander David Fravor of the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group saw an object, "white and oval", "hovering above an ocean disturbance" off southern California. A weapons systems officer, Lieutenant Commander Chad Underwood, recorded it on infrared and coined the description "Tic Tac".^[15] Videos of this and later encounters were published by The New York Times in December 2017 and formally released by the Pentagon on 27 April 2020.^[15] The Archive's "Capsule / Tic Tac" archetype comes directly from this case.

Official investigations

In June 2021 the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. It examined 144 reports from U.S. government sources and explained only one with high confidence ("a large, deflating balloon"). It proposed "five potential explanatory categories: airborne clutter, natural atmospheric phenomena, USG or U.S. industry developmental programs, foreign adversary systems, and a catchall 'other' bin." In 18 incidents, "Some UAP appeared to remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, maneuver abruptly, or move at considerable speed, without discernable means of propulsion."^[16] In 2022 the Department of Defense created the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). In March 2024 AARO released the Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), Volume I. Covering official investigations from 1945 onward, it found "no empirical evidence" that sightings represented off-world technology or that the government was hiding alien technology.^[17] AARO has also said that about half its cases have been resolved with mundane explanations such as balloons, and that the remainder lack sufficient data for any conclusion.^[17]

The Archive, true to its "proceed with playfulness" spirit, presents the craft archetypes as they appear in the lore without ruling on their origin. The official record, the psychological readings and the Gnostic sky-imagery can all sit alongside that catalogue as different ways of looking up.

Reflection

• Jung asked why so many people saw wholeness-shaped objects in a divided age. What shapes do you look for in the sky, and why?
• If some craft are "perception effects", what does that say about perception?
• Vallée wondered whether the phenomenon teaches or tests. Which would you rather it did?

See also

• Galactic Systems
• Galactic Federation
• Crop Circles
• Artificial Probes
• Interdimensional Beings
• Greys
• Zeta Reticulans
• Archons
• Ogdoad and Hebdomad
• Gnosticism

References