The origins of these three key terms lie not in abstract thought or “primitive” cognitive error but in the endless traumatic and cognitively shocking experiences of countless and often unnamed individuals who, in their own earnest understandings, had made contact with what they believed were other human, nonhuman, or superhuman intelligences. To put an accent on it, these words were not made up out of thin air or fantasy. Individuals suffered them, heard them, saw them, loved them, and even sometimes had sex with them.
