Ancient Aliens – Aliens and Deadly Cults: Mass suicides. Human sacrifices. Unholy rituals. Throughout history, people have claimed to have otherworldly knowledge, and have led followers to commit horrific acts of violence.
Are they con men? Are they insane? Or might the voices in their heads really be of an extraterrestrial origin? And if so, did they simply misinterpret the messages they received? Or might there be extraterrestrials with a sinister agenda?
Aliens and Deadly Cults
This week’s Ancient Aliens used its conceit as an excuse to rehash the most salacious aspects of ancient and modern cults, including Heaven’s Gate and the Thugees of India. Mostly the show talked about human sacrifice, murder, castration, mass suicide etc. and then threw in random moments of ancient astronaut theorists (AATs) claiming that the gods worshipped by the cults were actually aliens.
But this is largely irrelevant, since the cults were comprised of human beings, and the aliens or the gods never showed up. Later, when the show said AATs believe that aliens were really in touch with modern cult leaders like Marshall Applewhite of Heaven’s Gate through brain implants and ordered them to commit mass suicide, the show crossed the line from irresponsible to perverse.
Much hay is made of the so-called “Brotherhood of the Snake,” a supposedly ancient secret society founded by extraterrestrials but perverted into a sinister force. The AATs attribute evidence of this society to unnamed “ancient legends,” but so far as I can tell the first mention of this supposed secret society didn’t come until the twentieth century, when William Bramley described them in 1989’s The Gods of Eden, which drew its “knowledge” of Mesopotamian (Sumerian and Babylonian) mythology from Zecharia Sitchin’s eccentric interpretations.
