© 2008 by Linda Moulton Howe
“People were reporting ‘comets.’ But they were clearly not comets from the descriptions. People were reporting bright flying objects and said the aerial objects were spraying gas, which they called ‘mists’ that caused the Black Death.” – William Bramley, Atty., The Gods of Eden
The classic sign of the 14th Century bubonic plague was the appearance of buboes shown in the illustration, which are swollen lymph nodes in the groin, the neck, and armpits that oozed pus and bled. Most victims died within four to seven days after infection. Illustration of the Black Death from the Toggenburg Bible in 1411.
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August 22, 2008, Modesto, California – Every once in a while, there is a book that grabs the mind as a revelation. In my life, one such book is The Gods of Eden by William Bramley, first published in 1989. William Bramley was then 36-years-old, an older student in law school at Santa Clara University in California. Between high school graduation and law school, he had gotten a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology because he was always fascinated by the political and war dynamics of human societies. But he needed to earn a practical living for his family and worked in hotel management for fifteen years. Finally, in his decision to go to law school, he also started a book about a question that had always troubled him: why does humanity war so much?
To William Bramley’s great surprise, the more he read about wars as far back as Mesopotamia, he also found a recurring theme of strange lights and aerial objects in the sky. Sometimes eyewitnesses connected the mysterious aerial lights to foul-smelling mists that reached the ground.
So, finally, when his book was published, William Bramley called it The Gods of Eden and the book flap explained why in his own words: “UFOs have been lurking in the shadows of history for centuries. Surprisingly, they might be a key to unraveling the human puzzle.”
One of his chapters has haunted me. It’s entitled, “The Black Death.” This week I talked with William Bramley to ask him about his research into the plague that killed nearly half of Europe in the mid-1300s and the links he found to the UFO phenomenon.
Interview:
William Bramley, Attorney and Author, The Gods of Eden © 1989, Modesto, California: “Yes, that chapter to me is really the core of the book. To me, the whole book revolves around that chapter. When I started The Gods of Eden, I just thought it was an economic motive for the humans who get other people to participate in the war. You’ll have an armaments manufacturer or you’ll have a political leader – somebody who has an obvious economic motive.
Then I started getting into the religious beliefs that trigger war. That really became interesting to me that you can get people to go to war over religious beliefs. And that’s really obvious today in the people who are Islamic suicide bombers and all of that. A certain type of religious belief seems to trigger violence and apocalyptic beliefs – the end of the world, the Messiah. For a lot of people that seems to be enough to get them to participate in warfare, thinking that they are part of a grand apocalyptic scenario.
So, then I looked at: where did all these apocalyptic beliefs come from? When you trace the origin of the Christian apocalyptic belief, the Jewish beliefs, the Islamic beliefs, they all trace down to these angels and these entities that come from the sky and instill these beliefs in certain prophets. Then the prophets go out and get everybody very excited about them. That’s when I finally hit Zecharia Sitchin and some other books about the ancient astronauts that the angels and entities could be UFOs.
[ Editor’s Note: Zecharia Sitchin (born 1922 and raised in Palestine) is an author of eight books, including his first The Twelfth Planet © 1976, that attribute the creation of the ancient Mesopotamian Sumerian culture to the “Annunaki” or “Nephilim,” a race of extraterrestrials from an undiscovered planet called Nibiru that Sitchin thinks orbits this solar system every 3,600 years.
Ancient Sumerian cylinder seal that depicts the Annunaki flying in an aerial machine.
Annunaki from Mesopotamia were described as “Great Gods from the sky.”
Mesopotamia is 21st Century Iran, Iraq and Syria.
Sitchin has based his books on translations of 5,000-year-old cuneiform clay tablets and cylinder seals. Academics don’t agree with all his translations of Sumerian texts or his understanding of astrophysics.]
William Bramley: “At that point, I thought, ‘This is getting pretty wild!’ It became a grand conspiracy theory that whoever these UFOs are, they are here deliberately instilling religious beliefs that easily trigger people into going to war with each other. I was really on the fence about that because as I started reading more of the UFO literature, a common idea is that UFOs are benign. They are here to help us, but the reason they stay in the background is because we are so warlike, they don’t want to risk being attacked or there is a reason for them to stay in the background, which is more benign.
I couldn’t really decide, which way is it? Then I decided to explore the apocalyptic eras in human history where you have a lot of disease and strange religious movements arise, or a lot of warfare, and see if there are UFO reports from those eras. Of course, one of the biggest of apocalyptic eras was the Black Death where one-third to possibly one-half of Europe’s population was wiped out during a relatively short period.
THE BLACK DEATH, ALSO KNOWN AS BUBONIC AND PNEUMONIC PLAGUE, WAS 1347 TO 1350 – ONLY FOUR YEARS WHEN ALL THIS DEATH OCCURRED.
Yes, it was an incredible apocalyptic era. So I decided to see if there were any reports of unusual aerial activity. (laughs) I’ll never forget it! I went to the UCLA research library and looked up under Black Death any books that they had. There were two or three. The second book I looked at, I was just stunned. What the author had done, writing the book back in the 1920s, he had collected reports of unusual phenomena connected to the Black Death.
THAT WAS JOHANNES NOHL AND HIS BOOK HAS A COPYRIGHT DATE OF 1926, ENTITLED THE BLACK DEATH: A CHRONICLE OF THE PLAGUE.
Correct. I was flabbergasted. People were reporting ‘comets.’ But they were clearly not comets from the descriptions. People were reporting bright flying objects and said the aerial objects were spraying gas, which they called ‘mists’ that caused the Black Death. This was a very common thing that happened from town to town and region to region.
This started with the first outbreak in China and then hit Europe the hardest. Nohl also found that people reported only ground mists. They didn’t necessarily see the bright lights, and in a couple of cases, the mists were even bluish in color.
The third phenomenon, which I found very intriguing, was the men in black happening at that time, too. In a number of villages and towns, people would report human-like figures dressed in black would appear on the outskirts of town with a long instrument they would wave back and forth. Right after that, a plague would break out. Sometimes people reported seeing these figures walking through town with these long instruments and right afterwards, the plague would break out in those towns.
The interesting thing is that when the figures in black were out in the fields, the eyewitnesses called the instruments ‘scythes.’ The idea was that symbolically, the figures were mowing down the wheat or whatever grain was growing and this was symbolic of the death of the people later. But eyewitnesses reported that the wheat or grain was never actually cut by the mysterious moving scythes. So, I interpret that to mean the figures had some instrument that they were waving around and spraying out in the mist whatever germs they were spraying around the town.
Plaque in Weymouth, England, noting the entrance of plague into the country
(other accounts say 1347 was the beginning). Photograph taken by Mark A. Wilson,
Department of Geology, The College of Wooster, U. K.
Scythe of Black Death
Scythe of Death illustration by Johnny Gruelle.
WEREN’T THESE FIGURES SUPPOSED TO HAVE HOODED CLOAKS AND BECAME THE BASIS FOR WHAT IS CALLED THE ‘FIGURE OF DEATH’ IN EUROPE, THE CLOAKED FIGURE WITH THE SCYTHE?
That’s correct. That’s where we get the figure mowing down with scythes during the Black Death.
Friends of God
IN YOUR CHAPTER 19, ‘LUTHER AND THE ROSE’ – IN THE VERY YEAR 1347, THE BEGINNING OF THE BLACK PLAGUE, IT IS ALSO THE SAME YEAR THAT THE ‘FRIENDS OF GOD’ ORGANIZED BY JOHANNE TAULER EMERGED. THIS IS A LINK TO ROSECRUCIANS IN EUROPE AND GERMANY SPECIFICALLY AT THAT TIME. THEIR FOCUS WAS ON APOCALYPTIC EVENTS TO COME.
That’s correct. What happened in that environment, there was a lot of apocalyptic fear going on. People were wondering why the Catholic Church couldn’t do anything about the Black Death and a lot of people felt that God was ushering in the end of the world at the time. What happened was that these unusual, strange, organizations came up such as the Friends of God, which is the main one that I focus on, where they had great apocalyptic beliefs with a connection to a network of secret societies, of which the Rosicrucian’s were one. This network of secret societies throughout history sort of parallels and connects to the UFO phenomenon from very early in human history.
And that was one of the eras where we find in which we have all the UFO events happening in connection with the Black Death. Meanwhile, at the same time out of the network of secret societies comes that new apocalyptic movement, Friends of God, that eventually results in the Protestant Reformation in the 16th Century.
[ Editor’s Note: Wikipedia – The Friends of God (German: Gottesfreunde) was a Middle Age group and center of German mysticism, founded between 1339 and 1343 in Basel, Switzerland. It was led by two members of the Dominican order, the preacher John Tauler and the writer Blessed Henry Suso. Some consider the group to have been a precursor to the Protestant Reformation in 1517.
The name, Friends of God, might have been inspired by the Gospel of John 15:15: “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.” ]
Custodians of Earth
CAN YOU EXPLAIN THE WORD YOU USE FOR OTHER INTELLIGENCE CONTROL OF EARTH AND WHAT YOUR OVERALL VIEW IS NOW OF A RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN A NON-HUMAN INTELLIGENCE AND THIS PLANET?
Yes, I use the word Custodians, meaning an extraterrestrial society that appears to have actual custody of the Earth. The Earth is their property. This kind of goes back to the work of Charles Fort who wrote in the early part of the 20th Century, The Book of the Damned and New Lands, where he speculated exactly that – that all the strange phenomena he was finding back then led him to conclude that the Earth was a possession of the intelligences flying around in the aerial objects that were extraterrestrial in origin. In some secret method, through secret societies, humankind was being directed by the E. T.s.
[ Editor’s Note: Wikipedia – Charles Hoy Fort, born August 6, 1874 and died May 3, 1932. Fort was a Dutch-American writer and researcher of anomalous phenomena. In his first published book, The Book of the Damned (1919), the title referred to “damned data” that Fort collected, phenomena for which science could not account and was thus rejected or ignored. Fort wrote seven books, though only four survived: The Book of the Damned (1919); New Lands (1923); Lo! (1931) and Wild Talents (1932). One of his famous quotes is: “The Earth is a farm. We are someone else’s property.” ]
So, I just gave it the term ‘Custodians’ and then I followed through history going way back to ancient Sumeria and the ancient religions. They were talking about how they had these human-like gods who came down from the skies, they were the controllers and leaders of the human race, and that the human race was at best a slave race at that time. The Custodians, in some of the texts, talk about the way to keep control of humans and that is to breed factions. You have one group of people fight another group of people. That’s one way for the Custodians to keep control over all humans. That’s something that Machiavelli wrote about in The Prince – devious political moves.
The Gods of Eden – the book came out back in 1989. At the time I thought it would be interesting to see if my theory held up. Back in 1989, the Iron Curtain was coming down and the Communist bloc was breaking up, which I thought was a very positive thing and I still do. I’m very glad it happened. But then I noticed there were still little flare ups involving Islam. Back in either 1989 or 1990, I was giving a talk to one of my audiences and people were asking me, ‘Do you think this is really true that we have the great struggle ending between the West and Communism?’
I thought, ‘Well, this will be an interesting test, but if The Gods of Eden is true, my prediction is that Islam will become the next great faction to breed hot war. What I thought was the West versus Communism was not breeding hot war anymore. Hot war is actual armed conflict. We had the Vietnam War and that ended. We had a small war in Angola, but it wasn’t generating a lot of armed conflict. Now we have another faction that I trace in my book also to the UFO phenomenon and that is Islam, which has now become the faction that is helping to breed more hot war with actual violence.
What Do Earth’s Non-Human Custodians Want?
IF NON-HUMANS HAVE BEEN MANIPULATING HUMAN LIFE ON THIS PLANET FOR CENTURIES AND ARE BEHIND THE WARS – INCLUDING THE AMERICAN PRESENCE IN IRAQ RIGHT NOW – WHAT DO YOU THINK IS THE REASON? WHAT IS IT THAT THE NON-HUMANS WANT?
Well, that’s an awfully good question. From my point of view, at least in doing The Gods of Eden, I feel I’m at that point where there seems to be some evidence here, but I don’t totally understand the motive, other than – I think Charles Fort back in the early 1900s, said we humans have the equivalent status of cattle or sheep.
MEANING WE ARE OWNED BY SOMETHING, MONITORED BY SOMETHING AND USED BY SOMETHING?
Yes, exactly. That was his theory and it still seems to be holding up – that basically we humans are a possession. And the means of holding on to that possession is like they were before. Now, if you go back to the old creation stories, it was very obvious that human beings were essentially engineered to do labor – to toil in the mines, to get mineral substances for the gods, and keep the gods fed and housed.
What happened, though, is that the ‘gods among us’ became less obvious because the UFOs did not disappear, but simply went into the background. They started following more of a Machiavellian pattern. So, then we have to ask: OK, they are no longer here just out in the open as people were claiming they were before saying, ‘Go ahead and build this pyramid for us.’ So, what’s the motive now? And here, I guess you have to look at the abduction testimony.
There seems to be some kind of breeding program. There is still some benefit that humans provide in breeding us or using us for hybrids. So somewhere, there still seems to be an interest and activity related to genetics. What that might be? I don’t know.
Could Non-Humans Be Interested in Human Death?
WAR IS AN EVENT THAT CAUSES A LOT OF DEATH. IS IT POSSIBLE THAT HUMAN DEATH ITSELF IS ONE OF THE NON-HUMAN AGENDAS?
I feel there is good evidence that the soul/spirit is separable from the body. That’s an idea that goes way back and continues to be expressed in the New Age movement and Christians express it pretty much as do most religions. They just all have a different idea about what happens to the soul after death.
I think the Near Death Research provides evidence that the process of death seems to involve the soul leaving the body, going through some kind of amnesia process and then being reborn. That’s the old idea of reincarnation that was especially expressed by the Hindus. The Mormons express that idea also in some of their writings. And the whole process of dying, having amnesia and being re-born seems to further the Custodian Agenda on Earth.
One thing I notice also in the UFO phenomenon that we read about today, a lot of the abductees seem to be given commands or some kind of mental process that is inflicted on them by their captors to make them forget. So the ability of the UFO technology to instill amnesia in human beings seems to be part of their practice. So, the question: Is this being done on a very large scale?
That’s where death might fit in because if we keep forgetting we are souls and keep being re-cycled over and over again thinking we are not recycling souls, it maintains being imprisoned here – which is something the Gnostics talked about and the Essenes talked about – the imprisonment aspect of human life on this planet. [The Essenes were an ascetic Jewish religious group associated with Jesus Christ that flourished from the 2nd century BC to the 1st century AD.]
War, Death and Souls
IF REINCARNATION IS THE MACHINERY OF THE UNIVERSE AND THERE ARE NON-HUMAN INTELLIGENCES THAT ARE FOCUSED ON REINCARNATION HERE ON EARTH – MEANING THE RECYCLING OF A SPIRIT/SOUL IN AND OUT OF CONTAINER BODIES OVER A LONG PERIOD OF TIME – THAT MIGHT EVEN EXPLAIN DIVIDING THE HUMAN POPULATION INTO DIFFERENT RELIGIOUS PERSPECTIVES ON PURPOSE TO MAKE THEM WAR WITH EACH OTHER BECAUSE WAR CAUSES DEATH AND DEATH WOULD LEAD TO THE SOULS HAVING TO RECYCLE.
You know, I never thought of that. That’s very interesting. War certainly would contribute to that just like disease and old age would. And war does it in an especially violent way. I’d have to wonder if there is a difference in how people experience death, how the soul would experience death differently if they suffered violently? Or if they suffered gradually through disease and old age? Does that difference serve a purpose? Does it fit into a Custodian program?
E. T. Business As Usual?
IF THE MANIPULATION BY ONE OR MORE NON-HUMAN INTELLIGENCES STILL HAS A GRIP ON WHAT IS HAPPENING TO HUMAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY ON EARTH, WHAT PERPETUATES THEIR HOLD ON THE EARTH AND WHAT DO THEY WANT?
The furthest that I can go is that it’s just business as usual. The patterns we are seeing today are exactly the patterns we saw thousands of years ago. It hasn’t changed. But the underlying forces keep going on. Whatever the UFO society is, they probably have a different perception of time than we do. To them, maybe 1,000 years is like 20 years to us. So, this can be sustained longer. This is only speculation.
WHAT DO YOU SPECULATE ARE THE AGENDAS OF THESE CUSTODIANS, AS YOU DESCRIBE THEM?
Just to keep Earth as a possession as it’s always been. To quote Charles Fort, ‘Whatever our mysterious usefulness might be,’ we still have that same usefulness we had thousands of years ago. And that might be all that there is to modern Earth UFO phenomenon. To me, the use of a Machiavellian technique is simply a technique of management.
MEANING UNDER THE SURFACE IS THE CONTROL, NOT OUT IN FRONT OF US?
Yes, exactly. And the way you do that is keep the inhabitants not knowing what’s really going on and keeping humans so consumed with fighting each other and all the problems that brings, that all we have the time to think about mostly are our Earth problems. We’re worried about paychecks and now we’re worried about what Russia is going to do in Georgia and we’re worried about whether Iran is going to be bombed by the United States or Israel and this dominates our thoughts so we don’t see the Big Picture.
It baffles me that it is still going on. In the early history, there was the obvious benefit of the Custodians having a slave labor force. But now, they don’t have that. (Or do they?) Now there is the abduction evidence and great interest in harvesting DNA and doing the hybrid experiments – maybe that’s the key to what the agenda is. Our usefulness has changed, but we are still useful in a different way.”
“Clone nursery” of hybrid human-alien fetuses drawn by abductee, Angie.
“One of the aliens touched her forehead,” Angie said, “and a series of graphic
images exploded” in her mind. She saw “a reddish-gold desert planet with two setting suns,”
a “galaxy,” a “blood-red moon and a fiery orange sun exploding,” and an “underground city”
before she blacked out. When she regained consciousness, an alien told her their home
was “Cassiopeia in the heavens,” but that they had made a home for themselves on Earth
before humans were created. Source: Taken: Inside the Alien-Human
Abduction Agenda © 1994 by Karla Turner, Ph.D.
To underscore that stumbling upon the UFO link to the odd and frequently violent state of human affairs has happened to other thoughtful researchers before, William Bramley told me he had never read early 20th Century Charles Fort until his third draft of The Gods of Eden. Then he knew he had to include a quote from the 1919 first book by Charles Fort entitled, The Book of the Damned – in which Fort explained the damned were all subjects excluded from formal science and one of those “damned subjects” was the involvement of other non-human intelligences with planet Earth.
“ Human beings appear to be a slave race breeding on an isolated planet in a small galaxy. As such, the human race was once a source of labor for an extraterrestrial civilization and still remains a possession today. To keep control over its possession and to maintain Earth as something of a prison, that other civilization has bred never-ending conflict between human beings, has promoted human spiritual decay, and has erected on Earth conditions of unremitting physical hardship. This situation has existed for thousands of years and it continues today.”