It is a given that many of the beliefs currently held by the New Age movement have their origins in ancient times. Nevertheless, the modern incarnation of the New Age community of belief, which often dovetails quite neatly with the UFO phenomenon and its attendant benevolent aliens, can be said to have begun much more recently, in the late 1800s, long before Kenneth Arnold’s sighting and the Roswell crash of 1947.
One of the primary pieces of evidence for this assertion is the recently republished book Secrets Of Mount Shasta And A Dweller On Two Planets
,” a seminal work that lays the groundwork for so much of what was to come after. The book is the latest release in the tireless campaign by Timothy Green Beckley’s publishing house Global Communications to revivify works nearly – but not completely – forgotten in the annals of UFO and paranormal lore.
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The authorship of the primary section of “Secrets Of Mount Shasta And A Dweller On Two Planets ,” which was published in 1905 as “A Dweller On Two Planets,” remains a cloudy issue even today. While it was in practical, real-world terms credited to a young American named Frederick S. Oliver, Oliver himself claimed it was channeled through him by an entity he called “Phylos,” an entity from lost Atlantis who chose Oliver to be a conduit for his strange wisdom. However, the book is not a philosophical treatise but instead a gripping “novel” that spans countless centuries in telling its tale. The plot itself is something in literature sometimes called a “conceit,” an idea that is fanciful yet achingly profound. To put it in its simplest terms, it is the story of an ambitious young man in Atlantis who climbs the ladder both socially and professionally, attaining both high rank and entering into a marriage with the daughter of another highly ranked Atlantean official. It is also a cautionary tale along the lines of “Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it.”
In spite of all he gains, the young Atlantean, called “Zailm,” also breaks the heart of a young woman of lower station than his chosen bride. The rejected woman commits suicide in public at the wedding of Zailm and his trophy wife, using a method of Atlantean magic/technology that renders her a lifeless piece of stone. Thus Zailm begins to accumulate burdensome sins that he must carry with him into his future incarnations.
The second half of “A Dweller On Two Planets” takes up the tale of Walter Pierson, a 19th century American who makes his fortune as a gold miner in the mountainous area that includes Mount Shasta. Pierson is Zailm reincarnated, and must balance the sins of his forgotten life in Atlantis in his new existence as a young seeker of material wealth in faraway California. But Pierson continues to have a strong spiritual curiosity and is driven to search for truths beyond the prosaic yet colorful world of the Old West.
Pierson’s Chinese servant, a spiritual adept named Quong, leads him to an inner chamber in a mountain where the young American is quickly initiated into a secret society of shamanic wonderworkers. Pierson is swept up into a spiritual odyssey into alternate dimensions and various levels of the afterlife that combine to form a fascinating education into what lies beyond our physical senses. As strange as the journey is, it seems plausible and consistent with what we have learned since through alien abduction and Near Death experiences. The astral world is undeniably there, and it is possible to travel into and out of it and return with the other reality’s profundities still ringing in one’s ears.
By rescuing a young woman from poverty and squalor, even eventually making her his wife, Pierson manages to balance the negative karma from his Atlantean incarnation that came from his duplicitous dealings with the young female suicide. Meanwhile, his generosity with his American gold redeems him from the blind ambition of his political ascendancy in Atlantis. Pierson makes the most of his second chance, and thereby hangs the tale of what it may mean to be “born again.”
Which brings up another important point about “A Dweller On Two Planets”: No matter how far into the long ago, ancient past of Atlantis, or how esoterically bizarre the experiences of Pierson, there is a continual and heartfelt affirmation of the Christian faith made by the author/channeled source. The entity sees no conflict between occult beliefs and Christianity, and even declares that both are needed for true spiritual salvation in Christ. This presages the kind of New Age religious liberalism that is so increasingly widespread today and is a refreshing alternative to repressive, greedy Christian fundamentalism and indeed religious fanaticism of all kinds.
THE PREDICTIVE FACTOR
There are also several interesting predictive elements to the story told in “Secrets Of Mount Shasta And A Dweller On Two Planets .” The denizens of Atlantis are already equipped with things like television and even cell phones that permit users to see one another’s faces as they speak. Atlanteans travel in airships that exceed the speeds of our most modern jet airplanes. As a further example of prescience, Oliver provides drawings of the airships, some of which closely resemble some of the UFOs sighted by contactee George Adamski much later in the 20th century. In Atlantis, comfort and luxury are everywhere, even for the poorest of citizens. The latter may be wishful thinking when applied to our times, but who knows where the New Age will lead us politically and in terms of the general welfare?
Returning to the subject of the book’s authorship: The mortal conduit for Phylos the Tibetan and his engrossing story was the aforementioned Frederick S. Oliver. He began the “writing” in his adolescence and completed the book in his twentieth year, 1886. Oliver explains that he does not consider himself to be the true author, but is forced to say so as a matter of publishing protocol. That a story so richly complex in plot and moral gravity could come from a mere teenager is doubtful at best, and it is more credible to take Oliver at his word and acknowledge that it was received by him from elsewhere. Oliver died in 1899, in his early 30s, and, six years later, his mother arranged to have the book published in 1905. It has been a rock of New Age literature ever since.
ENTER SHIRLEY MACLAINE
But Beckley and Global Communications don’t leave us there. The new edition also includes a short but thoughtful introduction by Beckley in which he grapples with channeling and whether it is grounded enough in reality to be trusted. He notes that the actress Shirley MacLaine was said to have begun her own interest in metaphysics and the New Age after reading “A Dweller On Two Planets,” which resulted in her bestseller “Out On A Limb” and its sequels. From “Rat Pack” follower to modern day believer, MacLaine was also moved by the heartfelt story transmitted by Phylos the Tibetan.
“In addition,” Beckley writes, “we find that Mount Shasta, where the epic was channeled, is a wondrous place in itself, a zone of pure enlightenment. People go to this incredible natural landmark not only to hike and sightsee but to meditate and have a spiritual experience.”
The celebrated British paranormal writer Nick Redfern continues this theme in a chapter called “Mount Shasta: The Most Magical and Mysterious of All Mountains!” Redfern offers up Native American lore about Mount Shasta dating back thousands of years about a battle between the god of the underworld and the god of the skies. There is also the Hopi legend of a race of lizard-like people that built thirteen underground cities along the Pacific Coast, one of which is said to still exist deep within the cavernous bowels of Mount Shasta.
Mount Shasta is also said to be the former home of a race called the Lemurians, who occupied a Pacific continent long ago lost in eons of time. The story was picked up by Helena Blavatsky, a cofounder of the Theosophical Society, the original mandate of which was the study and clarification of occultism.
According to Blavatsky’s findings, the Lemurians stood around seven feet in height and “were egg-laying hermaphrodites that, while not overly mentally developed, were, spiritually speaking, far more advanced than those who came before them. They were ultimately destroyed by appalled and angered gods after they, the people of Lemuria, turned to bestiality and in doing so sealed their doom, around 12,500 B.C.,” Redfern writes.
However, unbeknownst to the gods, some of the Lemurians escaped to Mount Shasta, which was a central belief of Frederick S. Oliver as well.
LEMURIANS AND THEIR LINEAGE WITH THE ATLANTEANS
“The book caused a firestorm of controversy,” Redfern writes, “with its claims that the Lemurians shared a lineage with the Atlanteans, and that those Lemurians that escaped the pummeling wrath of the gods made their secret and collective way to Mount Shasta, just as Blavatsky had asserted. And they weren’t just living ON the mountain, but deep WITHIN it, too, in certain secret cavernous depths that Oliver claimed could be accessed if one only knew the specific and secret entrance points of old.”
It is in one of these caverns that Walter Pierson, the gold miner of the latter half of the book, meets his spiritual instructors and begins his amazing otherworldly adventures. Redfern recounts the story of another prospector named J.C. Brown who claimed to have seen a similar structure deep inside Mount Shasta, but added the chilling detail of finding the skeletons of numerous gigantic humanoids, specimens of nothing less than a race of ancient giants, strewn across the floor. Both amazed and frightened, Brown fled the scene and said nothing for several years. When he went public with his story some decades later, he intended to return to the cavern but disappeared mysteriously on the eve of his departure for Mount Shasta and was never seen again.
In the discussion of channeling in Redfern’s chapter, the late flying saucer contactee George Hunt Williamson’s story is told. Williamson had a checkered past that included time spent with William Pelley, who headed a fascist organization called the “Silver Shirts.” Williamson helped to produce the group’s monthly publication, “Valor.” Occult lore had fascinated Williams since he was a teenager, and under Pelley’s influence he began to take an interest in flying saucers as well, eventually trying to contact extraterrestrial intelligence through occult methods like automatic writing. Williamson later teamed with the better known contactee George Adamski and helped pioneer the modern flying saucer channeling movement, a direct descendant of Frederick Oliver’s work.
In 1930, Guy Ballard, an occultist and the leader of a movement called I AM, said that during a visit to Mount Shasta he encountered the Count of Saint Germain, an 18th century alchemist often credited with finding the secret of immortality, which enables him to turn up repeatedly in our own time and create still another New Age legend.
During this experience on Mount Shasta, Redfern writes, the Count told Ballard many things regarding America’s future role in ushering in a new era for the people of Earth, as well as his personal knowledge of the so-called Ascended Masters, who included the living Christ. By the 1940s, Ballard’s followers exceeded the one million mark, people who apparently believed Ballard had been chosen to impart words of deep wisdom sent to him by the Ascended Masters. Unfortunately, Ballard also had ties to the fascistic Silver Shirts, led by the racist and anti-Semitic William Pelley.
After Ballard’s death in 1942, his widow and son were charged with 18 counts of mail fraud on the grounds that the claims made in their literature relative to the Ascended Masters and Mount Shasta, in books and pamphlets sold through the mail, could not be proven. They were convicted on all 18 counts, but the convictions were later overturned in what turned out to be a landmark case concerning what claims could and could not be made in the name of religion.
Now, more than 70 years after Ballard’s passing, devotees of his movement continue to hold an annual event on Mount Shasta called the “I AM Come!” pageant which gives praise to Jesus Christ.
Redfern also touches on the many Bigfoot sightings on Mount Shasta and the fact that the magical mountain is also a part of the same Cascade Range as Mount Rainier, where Kenneth Arnold had his famous 1947 sighting this is often said to be the beginning of the modern UFO era. The lore surrounding Mount Shasta is complex and varied, and Redfern does an excellent job of summarizing many of the highlights.
KING OF MOUNT SHASTA
Paul Dale Roberts, a writer Beckley calls the “King of Mount Shasta,” has long written about the mountain and the strange events that seem to continually take place on its slopes. The town nearest Mount Shasta, called Weed, is often the scene of ghostly activity in the local hotels, and Roberts has interviewed many witnesses to some of the more recent hauntings. Also featured in the chapter by Roberts is a brief account of a creature called “Batsquatch,” a huge creature with leathery wings seen around Mount Shasta by an anonymous source who contacted Roberts in the hope of getting answers to the bizarre sighting mystery.
In the interest of full disclosure, I must say that I helped to modernize the language of the actual “A Dweller On Two Planets” portion of the book. Timothy Beckley felt that the 21st century reader might not enjoy slogging through some of Frederick Oliver’s antiquated language. Particularly the first section of the book, set in Atlantis, might bog the reader down with frequent “thous” and “thees,” as well as expressions and phrases that have long ago passed out of common usage. I attempted to make only small, subtle changes that do not disturb the lovely poetic quality of Oliver’s writing, and it is up to future readers of this newly revised edition to determine if I have succeeded.
In any case, if you believe in the coming of a New Age paradise or have an interest in learning more about the seeds of metaphysical and occult thinking currently blossoming in our own time, then you owe it to yourself to read “The Secrets Of Mount Shasta And A Dweller On Two Planets.” Frederick S. Oliver has done mankind a service in serving as a channel for a voice that comes from the ancient past and foresees a future of previously unknown bliss, perhaps more of Secrets Of Mount Shasta And A Dweller On Two Planets a service than the adolescent author ever dreamed possible.
SUGGESTED READING
SECRETS OF MOUNT SHASTA AND A DWELLER ON TWO PLANETS
http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Mount-Shasta-Dweller-Planets/dp/160611154X
MYSTERIES OF MOUNT SHASTA: HOME OF THE UNDERGROUND DWELLERS AND ANCIENT GODS
http://www.amazon.com/Mysteries-Mount-Shasta-Underground-Dwellers
OTHER TONGUES OTHER FLESH REVISITED
http://www.amazon.com/Other-Tongues-Flesh-Revisited
[If you enjoyed this article, visit Sean Casteel’s “UFO Journalist” website at www.seancasteel.com]
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