Before December 2017 (that is, before the New York Times articles), it was not uncommon for people to assume that the UFO phenomenon was not serious, that it was “New Age,” or that it was somehow a “California thing.” This is not entirely wrong, since the New Age movement in fact took the UFO phenomenon seriously (it was correct about so many things) and spun out a number of UFO religions. Some scholars of the New Age have even argued, quite convincingly, that particular currents or strands of these esoteric movements began among UFO contactees of a particular Theosophical persuasion in the
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