Clarkson, Glen gclarkson@FS.COM

The War of the Worlds. Orson Welles as an unwitting servant of Tipareth. Radio was young, and Tipareth wanted to show just how powerful it could be. Therefore, the famous broadcast of an invasion of outer space. A hoax, which reinforced the illusion? A demonstration of power? A firecracker for the imagination to stretch the boundaries of the illusion? The answer depends on the asker, but is almost always yes.

So I was thinking of events on the illusion throughout history, and I came to that famous radio broadcast of "War of the Worlds". This is nifty because I'm tying together important historical events with the UFO stories that seem so odd in Kult.

I'm working off the idea that UFOs had a mixed effect on the illusion, at least in my universe. UFOs and the whole extra terrestrial phenomena reinforce the illusion in a couple ways 1) We look out instead of in for divinity, *and* 2)a lot of UFO stuff a re-engineered hoaxes so that all

unexplained events fall under the "engineered hoax" category. One could even envision a game where investigators go to a sleepy little town to investigate a UFO hoax, and reveal it as a hopeless sham, only to discover that the REASON such a hoax occurred is rather interesting (and deadly)

However, that little piece of our divinity -- imagination -- can take such things and go wild with it. UFO cults range from the insane to the too sane. Hapless pawns and seekers of truth, the seekers are the most dangerous to the illusion. Why, these are advanced races out there!

They show us what we can BECOME! Beings of pure energy and thought! They show

us our future. All of a sudden, everyone is using UFOs for their agendas. Da Vinci shows some poor yokel pieces of the machine, and what most consider just another hoax now has diagrams which *weren't* supposed to get out. Wisdom and lies, all in one bundle.

About the UFOs...I don't know. Sometimes I think Greys and Razides don't make a good mixture. There was, some time ago in this list (I saw in the archives), a discussion about UFOs in Kult, and, I think that one of the ideas, one about them being just a collective "illusion" provided by Demiurge or other super being.

Actually, I have plans for using them in my campaign, but as beings that came from other various dimensions that exist. IF, I don't use largely the universe concepts that I get in Clive Barker's books, like the Imajica thing, etc.

The idea of Kult in space is nothing that really fascinates me. I read a very interesting essay about the planets being artifacts by the demiurge to keep up illusion. I do not remember who wrote that, but I think it has been posted in this list, and I'm certain that there are some copies of it around in the WWW. As I am not a science fiction fan at all, and not really interested in UFOlogy my Kult world does not contain elements of this kind at all. I do have some kind of humanoid robots, which I mostly explain by the idea of the Lore of Cybertechnology, which I like quite a lot, and which also can be found somewhere on the Web. The Kult world that we use in our games doesn't have place for aliens, mostly because they do not fit into our concept at all, and that they would drag away the attention for the gnostic background (to which I do not want to link them).

There is a reference in the Conjurer's Guide "Beyond the Boundaries" which would seem to preclude the use of aliens and UFOs as anything other than a mere part of the Illusion. In the section on Astrology it says: "[Man] can read the fate of the world by studying the stars. This is possible because space itself, and the placement and the motion of the stars through the universe is a reflection of the Illusion. The macrocosm, the shape and movement of the universe, is a reflection of Malkuth, the Archon that created the entire world from her own essence. The zodiac is a schematic image of the plans of the Illusion of the Demiurge. It is possible to read about imprisoned man in the planets and far galaxies and stars that contain information of what is going to happen on Earth."

This, of course, does not mean that the GM is bound to dismiss the little Grey fellows. It could be argued that only the parts of the universe which we can see are parts of the Illusion and that aliens could conceivably live beyond the Illusion the Demiurge created. They might fit into an X-File style of campaign with them working with the jailors to keep mankind imprisoned.


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