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The Secret of the Saucers
This is one of the best contactee accounts of the 1950s. Mr. Angelucci's Secret of the Saucers is a memoir of a more innocent time, and a tale of spiritual growth. It was edited by Ray Palmer.
Angelucci (or Palmer?) does some seminal UFO myth-building here. There was a being named Lucifer who lived on a planet between Mars and Jupiter. His hubris led to the planet being shattered into the asteroid belt. Humans were imprisoned on Earth, to work off the karmic debt. There is a 'prime directive' which prevents the UFO builders from interfering in Earth's affairs. However, humanity's spiritual evolution is helped along by extraterrestrial, godlike entities such as Jesus. The contactee is instructed to spread the UFO builders' message to the world at large, and only a handful are picked from the multitudes. All of these themes have become incorporated in one form or another into various UFO belief systems.
There is a field guide to UFOs at the end with some fascinating details. The UFOs are grown as a single large crystal with all of the subsystems intact, and work on some kind of magnetic principle. They have capabilities such as tractor beams, cloaking devices, and inertial dampening; the concepts were so fresh in 1955 they didn't even have names yet. Some are small drones, used for surveillance. Others are huge motherships.
Among the highlights on earth are a description of the first ever UFO convention, and a speaking tour that goes horribly wrong. The book makes a brisk read (again, a hallmark of Palmer), and if you suspend disbelief, it works as science fiction as well.
Angelucci (or Palmer?) does some seminal UFO myth-building here. There was a being named Lucifer who lived on a planet between Mars and Jupiter. His hubris led to the planet being shattered into the asteroid belt. Humans were imprisoned on Earth, to work off the karmic debt. There is a 'prime directive' which prevents the UFO builders from interfering in Earth's affairs. However, humanity's spiritual evolution is helped along by extraterrestrial, godlike entities such as Jesus. The contactee is instructed to spread the UFO builders' message to the world at large, and only a handful are picked from the multitudes. All of these themes have become incorporated in one form or another into various UFO belief systems.
There is a field guide to UFOs at the end with some fascinating details. The UFOs are grown as a single large crystal with all of the subsystems intact, and work on some kind of magnetic principle. They have capabilities such as tractor beams, cloaking devices, and inertial dampening; the concepts were so fresh in 1955 they didn't even have names yet. Some are small drones, used for surveillance. Others are huge motherships.
Among the highlights on earth are a description of the first ever UFO convention, and a speaking tour that goes horribly wrong. The book makes a brisk read (again, a hallmark of Palmer), and if you suspend disbelief, it works as science fiction as well.
89 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1955
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About the author
Orfeo M. Angelucci
4 books2 followersOrfeo Matthew Angelucci was one of the most unusual of the mid-1950s contactees who claimed to be in contact with extraterrestrials.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 15, 2022
A very interesting, perhaps even moving, take on theology wrapped in a very odd story about meeting people from another planet, The Secret of the Saucers is probably best known for being the one and only book by the aptly named Orfeo Angelucci.
A worker at the Lockheed aircraft plant in Burbank, California, Orfeo, an amateur inventor and scientist, experiences a series of weird, and sometimes disturbing, but never overtly hostile encounters with Neptune and his cosmic cohort, the crew of a manned flying saucer. These strange, mythologically named figures slowly initiate Angelucci into their cosmic perspective, easing him into his true identity. It could easily be mistaken for a purely religious text, were it not for the occasional, clumsy attempts to explain the visitors' technology in Cold War era technobabble.
All this through the editorial filter of literary showman Ray Palmer, famous for his sanitizing (blatant rewrites) of Richard Shaver's work in the 1940's. One can't help but wonder how much of this is Palmer, though Angelucci remained very public about his experiences in a way Shaver did not.
The writing is tedious and stilted, not at all uncommon for the time and genre, yet there are several beautiful, if not profound, moments that make the book worth reading. Rants about the evils of communism and fears of "being ribbed by the boys at the factory" for what he's seen make Angelucci's reality seem as cardboard as he ultimately suggests, and serve as a not entirely unhelpful metaphor for his spiritual message.
It's worth noting, among contactees, Angelucci remains unique. His experiences are genuinely troubling and bizarre, have chemically induced components, relate to his physical illnesses, and skip and stutter throughout his life. They are both intensely spiritual, and border on alarming. Not at all like the tales of time, common among hucksters like George Adamski and Truman Bethram.
This book can be found on sacred-text's archive in the ufo section, for the curious.
A worker at the Lockheed aircraft plant in Burbank, California, Orfeo, an amateur inventor and scientist, experiences a series of weird, and sometimes disturbing, but never overtly hostile encounters with Neptune and his cosmic cohort, the crew of a manned flying saucer. These strange, mythologically named figures slowly initiate Angelucci into their cosmic perspective, easing him into his true identity. It could easily be mistaken for a purely religious text, were it not for the occasional, clumsy attempts to explain the visitors' technology in Cold War era technobabble.
All this through the editorial filter of literary showman Ray Palmer, famous for his sanitizing (blatant rewrites) of Richard Shaver's work in the 1940's. One can't help but wonder how much of this is Palmer, though Angelucci remained very public about his experiences in a way Shaver did not.
The writing is tedious and stilted, not at all uncommon for the time and genre, yet there are several beautiful, if not profound, moments that make the book worth reading. Rants about the evils of communism and fears of "being ribbed by the boys at the factory" for what he's seen make Angelucci's reality seem as cardboard as he ultimately suggests, and serve as a not entirely unhelpful metaphor for his spiritual message.
It's worth noting, among contactees, Angelucci remains unique. His experiences are genuinely troubling and bizarre, have chemically induced components, relate to his physical illnesses, and skip and stutter throughout his life. They are both intensely spiritual, and border on alarming. Not at all like the tales of time, common among hucksters like George Adamski and Truman Bethram.
This book can be found on sacred-text's archive in the ufo section, for the curious.
August 27, 2018
This is badly written but does contain some interesting information. The author talks about the technology of the saucers and it is interesting to see it is very different to ours. We have a vision of the Starship Enterprise as the spaceship of the future, while this book brings a different type of technology to light. Whether this is all true of fruit of Orfeo Angelucci's imagination I honestly don't know.
October 1, 2021
This is a good book. I like the knowledge that it tells you about the destroyed beautiful planet we once lived on. I always heard Earth may be a prison planet but I could never connect the dots until now.
It is a older good one and not to long.
It is a older good one and not to long.
January 3, 2026
Amazing Read!
I love UFO literature. What is fascinating is that because this work was written in the 1950s its not subject to any of the current terminology today. At times it seems the author is trying to describe holograms. Nevertheless, this work pulls together a lot of the theories we are piecing together today. This book is like 70 years ahead of its time. It is certainly dealing with modern themes of the phenomenon. Its a compelling read.
I love UFO literature. What is fascinating is that because this work was written in the 1950s its not subject to any of the current terminology today. At times it seems the author is trying to describe holograms. Nevertheless, this work pulls together a lot of the theories we are piecing together today. This book is like 70 years ahead of its time. It is certainly dealing with modern themes of the phenomenon. Its a compelling read.
August 11, 2011
Mr. Angelucci is out of his mind and CG Jung did a study on this book. But what an imaginative book schizophrenia makes. He's mad as a hatter, but people say he was one heck of a nice guy. Paints a picture of California and early fifties that's nice. Moves into religious fanaticism in the end.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews