Are Mormons the Aquarians?

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 3/28/11

A psychologist in Switzerland who treats people with visions of UFOs suggested once that these images might be understood as messages from the Unconscious, as angels were when the world awaited the birth of the Christ. But today they anticipate a new age. As C.G. Jung put it in his first psychological study in 1958, UFO visions and cultural images are manifestations of psychic changes which appear at the end of one age and the beginning of another: “We are now nearing that great change which may be expected when the springpoint enters Aquarius.” And so I was interested in the juxtaposition of two stories in the Sunday op-ed pages of The New York Times; one by professor Ray Jayawardhana on alien life, to whom it “seems absurd, if not arrogant, to think that ours is the only life-bearing world in the galaxy,” and the other on Mormons by the Times long-in-the-tooth columnist, Maureen Dowd.

They kind of converge. Traditional Christianity in all its branches emerge from earth-based consciousness, with the Christ rising out of the cave or crypt as if out of the womb of the Earth Mother. Mormons believe higher consciousness comes to us from the universe. It can be seen figuratively as a UFO-related cosmology. The past 50 years of UFO dreams and visions do relate to some kind of cosmic "awakening” which is why they are rendered so important to those that have them. And incidentally, Mulder and Scully’s fabled “Area 51” of UFO cult lore is just a few hours’ drive from where Brigham Young declared, “This is the place.”

It fits Jung’s model. The previous age was one of earth and water; the Earth Mother morphed through millennia from Mary of Nazareth to Victoria. Aquarius is the age of Titans, one of sky, space and electricity (fire). Of course Aquarius is fixed in the collective consciousness as something about the Sixties. That’s the mischievous suggestion of Hermes, the Trickster. It actually began to open in 2001, the same year as the great tragedy of 9/11.

It’s the Mormon moment, says Dowd, meaning something else entirely: “The Republican Mormons Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman may run for president, braving more questions about whether they wear the sacred undergarment and more resistance from evangelicals who consider Mormonism an affront to Christianity.”

That Mormons are being met with mockery by the squalid likes of the writers of “South Park” in their new Broadway play, “The Book of Mormon” is good news for Mormons. It is what Joseph Smith expected and intended. They are being engaged and those who live inside the box – and Dowd’s been there so long she’s about to turn to stone – are afraid of them.

So Mormons may be added to the rising karma of the suddenly relevant being met in shock and denial by the suddenly irrelevant. Along with Ron Paul, Sarah Palin, Judge Andrew Napolitano, Libertarianism, the Tea Party movement and the “Twilight” series. And incidentally, commentary suggesting that the popular “Twilight” series is a mythic tale; an indigenous “creation myth” shifting American consciousness from the Italian/British model to Native American spirit and Mormon order, morality, responsibility and work ethic, brought Mormon interest and some enthusiasm.

Outside the box. But as the brilliant and brave Thomas Woods, author of “Meltdown” and “Nullification” has been saying in the Tenth Amendment Center’s current Nullify Now! national tour, "It's not enough to think outside of the box. The box needs to be crushed to the ground and set on fire..."