Aetherius Society

Aetherius Society

Type	Organization
Also known as	Aetherius

The Aetherius Society is a new religious movement founded in London in the mid-1950s by George King (1919–1997). King said he was in telepathic contact with extraterrestrial beings he called "Cosmic Masters". The society's aim is to work with these Masters to help humanity solve its problems and move into a New Age.^[1][2] Mikael Rothstein describes it as a syncretic religion based mainly on Theosophy, with millenarian, New Age and UFO-religion elements. It combines contactee claims with yoga and with ideas from Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity.^[1] John A. Saliba notes that, unlike many New Age and UFO groups, it is generally seen as uncontroversial, although its esoteric and millenarian teachings are sometimes questioned. Its members meet in congregations much like churches.^[1]

George King

George King was born on 23 January 1919 in Wellington, Shropshire, into a Protestant family with strong occult interests. His father was a schoolteacher and his mother a nurse and small-business owner. The family moved several times, for a while living in North Yorkshire, and King went to Guisborough Grammar School. At 18 he moved to London. A pacifist, he was a conscientious objector in the Second World War and served in the Auxiliary Fire Service. He later worked as a chauffeur and security officer.^[2]

As a young man King studied Theosophy, spiritualism, anthroposophy, Rosicrucianism and yoga. He was deeply involved in spiritual healing and joined several small Theosophy-based groups in London. According to the society, he took up yoga in 1944, mastered several forms of it, reached the state of samadhi and developed psychic powers.^[1][2]

Origins

King said that on 8 May 1954, while he was living in a small bedsit in Maida Vale, London, a voice told him to prepare himself to become "the voice of Interplanetary Parliament". He said that a week later a famous swami, later named by the society as Swami Sivananda, came into his locked flat, told him to form a group to help the planet, and taught him yoga, prayer and meditation. According to King, this training let him receive telepathic messages from Venus, the first from a Cosmic Master called Aetherius, after whom the society is named. He hired Caxton Hall in London, where he said he channelled the Masters, and their messages were recorded.^[1]

The Wikipedia account of the society dates its founding to 2 August 1956. The account of King's life says he founded it in 1955, the year he published Contact Your Higher Self Through Yoga. The sources read here do not reconcile the two dates.^[1][2] The earlier version of this article said only "the mid-1950s", which fits both.

Scholars stress that this account comes entirely from the society's own hagiography rather than from independent sources. Rothstein notes that reliable facts about religious leaders are often scarce. He reads King's story as an attempt, common to all religions, to present the founder as extraordinary and so give the movement legitimacy.^[1] In 1959 King was interviewed on BBC television. Rothstein notes that the society treated this as a landmark, although contemporary press coverage of King was mostly negative.^[1][2]

Beliefs

The Cosmic Masters

The society teaches that great religious teachers, including the Buddha, Jesus and Lao Tzu, were Cosmic Masters who came from other planets to show humanity how to live, and it regards them as avatars. In its teaching Krishna came from Saturn, home of a "Cosmic Hierarchy" or "Interplanetary Council", while Jesus and the Buddha came from Venus. The society concludes that the world's religions share a single source and the same principles.^[1] It describes these beings as existing on a spiritual plane at a "higher vibratory rate", a view that the Wikipedia account links to the 1950s understanding that bodily life on other planets was unlikely. It uses the idea to explain why UFOs seem to blink in and out of sight. It also interprets the vimanas of Hindu texts and the Star of Bethlehem as UFOs carrying peaceful visitors.^[1]

The society presents itself as a plural, liberal faith that holds God does not favour any religion, country or race. It calls itself a spiritual path rather than a religion as such, which aims to add a "cosmic dimension" to existing faiths rather than replace them. Its services use both Christian prayers and Eastern mantras.^[1] Its theology is Theosophical: everything is God at different stages of evolution, and all beings are evolving back towards that source. Some beings are so far advanced that they are called "Gods" to set them apart.^[1]

Karma, the Earth and spiritual warfare

King taught reincarnation under the "Law of Karma", by which humanity moves life by life towards perfection, and everyone will one day become a Master.^[1] The society regards the Earth itself as a living being far more advanced than its inhabitants. Because humans lag behind, it says, the planet has often been attacked by evil forces from elsewhere in the universe, which the Cosmic Masters fight off. Scholars have compared this to the Christian idea of "spiritual warfare" without its sense of imminent apocalypse.^[1]

Like other New Age groups, the society accepts alternative medicine, spiritual healing, yoga and dowsing. It has campaigned against pollution and nuclear power and generally shares the ideals of the Green movement. It sees environmental and social problems, however, as symptoms of a deeper "spiritual energy crisis".^[1] It also holds that space beings have contacted governments, but that a "silence group", a term it takes from the UFO researcher Donald Keyhoe's The Flying Saucer Conspiracy, has hidden this from the public. King said this group controls humanity through fear and ignorance.^[1]

The New Age and the "Next Master"

King said he had been contacted by many beings, including Venusians, Martians, Devas and the Great White Brotherhood. Their message, as he gave it, was that humanity faced a choice between destroying itself and entering a New Age, and that the Masters had intervened through the society to help.^[1] In a study of apocalyptic thought in UFO religions, Zeller notes that King did not expect a catastrophic end of the world. Instead he expected a coming millennium of peace and enlightenment, the Age of Aquarius, that would require human effort to bring about. Zeller compares this to Christian apocalyptic thinking, with King's transmissions in place of the Bible as the moral standard.^[1]

The society awaits a "Next Master" who will arrive in a spacecraft at an unspecified time, depending on human progress and the balance of karma. He will present his credentials to the world's leaders, and his power will be greater than all the world's armies. Those who wage war or ignore "Divine Law" will be reborn on another planet to continue their progress, while those who understand the law will stay on Earth to enjoy the new millennium.^[1]

Practice

King designed a number of devices meant to hold and redirect "spiritual energy". The best known is the "Spiritual Energy Battery", whose exact design has not been made public. Members pray, chant mantras and focus energy into the battery, which is said to hold its charge indefinitely and can be released through a "Spiritual Energy Radiator", also designed by King.^[1]

• Operation Prayer Power. In this practice stored energy is released in a crisis and, the society believes, directed by the Masters to where it is needed. The society claims that in this way it has prevented wars and eased the effects of natural disasters.^[1]
• Spiritual Pushes. Members pray and meditate to draw prana to Earth from an orbiting spacecraft called "Satellite Number Three", which the society says is shielded from telescopes and radar.^[1]
• Service. The society holds that service to humankind is the most important form of yoga or religion today.^[1]

The society now regards King as an avatar and Cosmic Master, although he did not claim to be either during his lifetime. It also holds that he was the only member ever to receive the mental transmissions.^[1]

Holy mountains

In "Operation Starlight", between 1958 and 1961, King and other members climbed eighteen mountains around the world so that they could be "spiritually charged" by the Cosmic Masters, with King acting as the link. Members go on pilgrimage to these peaks, where they have painted the movement's symbol, believing they can send out more power through prayer there.^[1] The society recognises 19 holy mountains:^[1]

• England. Holdstone Down and Yes Tor in Devon, Brown Willy in Cornwall, the Old Man of Coniston in the Lake District, and Kinder Scout in the Peak District.
• Wales. Pen y Fan in the Brecon Beacons and Carnedd Llewelyn in Snowdonia.
• Scotland. Ben Hope and Creag an Leth-choin in the Cairngorms.
• Continental Europe. Le Nid d'Aigle in France and Mederger Flue in Switzerland.
• United States. Mount Baldy and Mount Tallac in California, Castle Peak in Colorado, and Mount Adams in New Hampshire.
• Elsewhere. Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania; Mount Kosciuszko and Rams Head in Australia; and Mount Wakefield in New Zealand.

The eighteen mountains climbed in Operation Starlight and the nineteen now recognised are both figures from the Wikipedia account. The sources read here do not explain the difference.^[1]

Criticism

• Credibility. Simon Smith notes that the society has had to bridge growing credibility gaps as science advanced, above all the absence of life elsewhere in the Solar System and the scant evidence of spacecraft visiting Earth. It answers with "higher spheres of existence" and humanity's "lowly karmic position", which explains why extraterrestrials do not land openly. Smith adds that such explanations matter less to members as their acceptance of King's charismatic authority grows.^[1]
• The Kyshtym "scoop". In 1958 the society's magazine Cosmic Voice claimed to report, from the Cosmic Masters, an atomic accident in Russia, which it identifies with the Kyshtym disaster that became widely known in the West only in 1976. When the society contacted New Scientist, the magazine ran a short item headed "Scooped by a UFO!" among other light-hearted news. The society took this as recognition of King's integrity.^[1]
• Other claims. Cosmic Voice also reported in its early years that King's mother often travelled in flying saucers and once met Jesus aboard a Martian spacecraft. King said Aetherius had given him the ability to speak every language on Earth, yet he reportedly could not answer questions put to him in Norwegian and French.^[1]
• Titles. The society calls its founder "Dr. George King" without saying where the doctorate came from. David V. Barrett says it came from an unaccredited degree mill. King also held a bishop's consecration from the Theosophy-linked Liberal Catholic Church and a foreign chivalric order styling him "Sir" that, according to Barrett, no mainstream body recognised. A grant of arms he received from the College of Arms in 1991 was annulled the following year. The skeptic James Randi described his titles of "Reverend", "Doctor" and "Sir" as unverified.^[2] The radio host Long John Nebel, who had King on his show, wrote mockingly about the way King styled himself.^[2]

The society today

According to the society, King died in Santa Barbara, California, on 12 July 1997, aged 78. His death was not reported in major newspapers.^[1][2] The membership is international but small. In 2011 Barrett put it in the thousands worldwide, with the largest numbers in the United Kingdom, the United States (especially Southern California) and New Zealand.^[1]

King's books, most of them published by the society in Hollywood, include Life on the Planets (1958), You Are Responsible! (1961), The Nine Freedoms (1963), The Flying Saucers (1964), Operation Space Power (1987) and, with Richard Lawrence, Contacts with the Gods from Space (1996).^[2]

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “Aetherius Society”, “George King (Aetherius Society)”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.