---

The following talk was delivered to MUFON, Rhode Island members on October 20, 2000.


An on-line report by Hebrew scholar Zecharia Sitchin (www.sitchin.com) describes a meeting between Sitchin and High Vatican official Monsignor Corrado Balducci. As this story relays, Balducci and Sitchin met in Bellaria, Italy in March of this year at a conference entitled "The Mystery of Human Existence." Monsignor Balducci holds the following impressive credentials:

> he is a member of the Curia of the Roman Catholic Church,

> he is the Prelate of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples and the Propagation of the Faith,

> he is the leading exorcist of the Archdiocese of Rome,

> he is a member of the Vatican's Beatification Committee,

> he is an expert on Demonology, and

> he was reportedly appointed by the Vatican to study the matter of UFO's and extraterrestrials.

At this conference in Italy, Sitchin presented his compelling research into the Sumerian texts, which is now known as the "genetic engineering hypothesis." For those of you familiar with von Daniken's "ancient astronaut" theories, we can essentially describe Sitchin's work as an extension of these earlier theories, except that Sitchin has worked out the details of this genesis story by his ability to translate ancient Sumerian documents. According to Sitchin, ancient Earthling notetakers wrote on every possible piece of material they could find - clay, stone, parchment - telling us not only that Earth had been visited by spacefaring humanoid beings, but that Earth humans and cultures are a direct result of periodic visits by these advanced genetic scientists.

Sitchin's translation of these ancient texts - described in detail in six books of the Earth Chronicles series - describes a pre-history very different from the one taught to us in our pre-history, science and anthropology courses. When uttered outside of rented rooms like this one, these ideas make people very uncomfortable. His translations tell us that earth humans are not alone, even in our own solar system.

At this conference in Italy, Sitchin reiterated the ancient Sumerian story of Nibiru, also known as Marduk to the Babylonians, and to our own scientists as Planet X. According to Sumerian accounts, Nibiru is a huge planet which is part of our solar system, but which travels in a vastly elliptical orbit, nearing Earth about every 3,600 years. According to Sitchin's translations, this tenth planet is the home of space travelers called the Anunnaki, which he translates as "Those Who From Heaven to Earth Came."

You might be interested to know, the Hubble telescope has recently discovered numerous planets and moons in other solar systems with highly elliptical plunging orbits and clockwise orbits, suggesting that such an eccentric orbit may actually be the norm in other solar systems. If Sitchin is right, it may also, unbeknownst to us, be occurring in our own solar system.

At this conference in Italy, Sitchin reiterated his theory that the Anunnaki began visiting our planet about 450,000 years ago. Sitchin suggests that about 300,000 years ago, these space travelers engaged in genetic engineering which "upgraded" then-existing hominids to the status of Homo sapiens: a being capable of accepting cultural indoctrination. In his presentation, Sitchin made sure he stated that in this act of creation, "the Anunnaki were acting as Emissaries for the Universal Creator - God."

Following his presentation, Sitchin was given an opportunity to meet with Monsignor Balducci. As Sitchin reports, Balducci's position on UFO's was that "there must be something in it." Balducci felt that "the hundreds and thousands of eyewitness reports leave no room for denying that there is a measure of truth in them...". Balducci stated, "Witnessing is one way of transmitting truth, and in the case of the Christian religion, we are talking about a Divine Revelation in which witnessing is crucial to the credibility of our faith." Regarding life on other planets, Balducci admitted to Sitchin:

That life may exist on other planets is certainly possible... The Bible does not rule out that possibility. On the basis of scripture and on the basis of our knowledge of God's omnipotence, His wisdom being limitless, we must affirm that life on other planets is possible... credible and even probable.

Cardinal Nicolo Cusano (1401-1464) wrote that there is not a single star in the sky about which we can rule out the existence of life, even if different from ours.

On the subject of intelligent extraterrestrials, Balducci stated: "When I talk about extraterrestrials, we must think of beings who are like us; more probably beings more advanced than us, in that their nature is an association of a material part and a spiritual part, a body and a soul, although in different proportions than human beings on Earth." As Balducci made clear, "Angels" are beings who are purely spiritual, devoid of bodies, while humans are made up of spirit and matter, but the spiritual part would be at "at a low level". Balducci then made the following provocative statement:

It is entirely credible that in the enormous distance between Angels and humans, there could be found some middle stage, that is beings with a body like ours but more elevated spiritually... In spite of what some people think, we would be in a position to reconcile their existence with the Redemption that Christ has brought us.

Regarding the Anunnaki and the Creation of Man, Balducci explained that Sitchin's approach is based on physical evidence, and concerns itself with matter, not with spirit. Balducci reiterated the view of Father Marakoff, who is still alive and is greatly respected by the Church. Marakoff has suggested that when God created man and put the soul into him, "perhaps what is meant is not that Man was created from mud or lime, but from something pre-existing, even from a sentient being capable of feeling and perception." So, Balducci suggested to Sitchin in their meeting, "the idea of taking a pre-man or hominid and creating someone who is aware of himself is something that Christianity is coming around to. The key is the distinction between the material body and the soul granted by God."

Sitchin explained that while he does deal with physical evidence, in his first book The 12th Planet, he raises the question "if the extraterrestrials 'created' us, who created them on their planet?" However, when I personally interviewed Sitchin in Washington DC in 1995, his point-blank answer to the question of the genesis of the Anunnaki on their planet was "evolution." In this interview, Sitchin was adamant that the ancient Sumerian texts state that these physical beings created mankind as a "Primitive Worker," for the express purpose of extracting gold from the mines of South Africa.

Yet, with the writing of his last book in the Earth Chronicles series, Sitchin's thinking had slowly evolved from this idea that the Anunnaki were products of evolution on their planet. As he later began to explain it, the Anunnaki were "emissaries" of God. By the time he met Monsignor Balducci earlier this year, Sitchin had long made room for the possibility that the Anunnaki were carrying out "the Almighty God's wishes and plans," and did not merely "come here for selfish reasons and to fashion us because they needed workers." We must wonder what has caused Sitchin's change of heart.

As Balducci has argued, "If such extraterrestrials were so involved, even by your own interpretation they had to do with Man's physics, body and rationality; but God alone had to do with the Soul!" Sitchin's second book, which deals with "Man's aspiration to ascend the heavens," is titled The Stairway to Heaven. Sitchin ended his conversation with Msgr. Balducci by saying, "it seems to me that we are ascending the same stairway to heaven, though from different steps."

Let me make it clear that I respect Mr. Sitchin's work, but I'm a little wary of this suggestion. Call me paranoid, but are Sitchin and Balducci really climbing the same ascending path, or has this path been theologically "tweaked" in order to force its convergence? As Sitchin explains, his approach is based on physical evidence, and Balducci's seeks the spiritual or divine aspects. Yet, Sitchin claims, "our conclusions converged." But it seems to me the problem Balducci is having with the genetic engineering scenario has still not been solved. As Balducci argues, "God alone has to do with the Soul."

Now, where would traveling biochemists from another planet pick up souls? What is a soul? Do these presumably humanoid beings have permission to act as little 'gods'? This appeared to be on Sitchin's mind when I interviewed him in 1995, yet at the time I couldn't get him to drop the idea that Darwinian evolution does not fit into this scenario. When I pressed the issue, he ended the interview. In 1997, when I sent him the chapter from my book questioning all this, he sent it back to me with the written remark, "I don't read unpublished manuscripts." I respect Mr. Sitchin's work, but I will continue to respectfully call attention to problems I find with it. Let me outline those problems right now.

"Seeds": DNA or Creative Potential?
In my book Space Travelers and the Genesis of the Human Form, I have noted the 'evolution' of Sitchin's genetic engineering hypothesis, which essentially comprises a change in heart regarding where the concept of God fits into the picture. According to Sitchin's translations published in Wars of Gods and Men, Sumerian texts describe the process whereby the semen of a chosen male Anunnaki was combined with the egg of a female Earth hominid. The fertilized eggs were then implanted into the wombs of female Anunnaki "Birth Goddesses." In this way, the Anunnaki began a slow process of genetically engineering a "Mixed Worker" by binding upon the less evolved beings the "mold of the gods." There was "considerable trial and error to achieve the desired 'perfect model' of the Primitive Worker." It was truly a slow process, for the hybrids were unable to reproduce and the wombs of fourteen Birth Goddesses had to continually serve as the containers. Eventually, the workers were put to work in the gold mines of South Africa.

The Sumerian Creation of Man story describes a second wave of genetic manipulations which would enable the beings to procreate on their own, since the initial hybrids were not able to do so. The Biblical story of the creation tells that man and woman were not created at the same time but, rather, the female was created (or as Sitchin translates, "cloned") from the male. During this operation, as the Bible tells us, a "rib" was removed from The Adam - the first man. According to Sitchin's research, something was extracted from the "rib" in order to "construct" the female. However, it is not clear what this means. Sitchin points out that cloning requires the least differentiated cells, so the stomach cells are used. So, he surmises that being near the stomach, the rib had something to do with a process of cloning.

Sitchin explains, since it is apparent that female workers already existed, something was required from the male in order for the female to become compatible for mating purposes. The clue to what the rib supplied, Sitchin writes in Genesis Revisited, lies in the translation of the meanings of the Sumerian words for life, belly and clay. Although the original Sumerian texts describing this process have not yet been found, Sitchin surmises that it had something to do with the genetic compatibility of the sperm and the egg. This physical translation for a potentially esoteric event is typical of Sitchin's books.

As Balducci has noted, Sitchin's approach is based on physical evidence and is concerned with matter, not with spirit. I have also noted that Sitchin's translations are overly based on physical interpretations. One of the most important potential mistranslations I have noted is that Sitchin assumes the Sumerian word for seed to mean "DNA." This mistranslation may essentially be, in Balducci's words, "the key [to] the distinction between the material body and the soul granted by God." This "key" may be discovered in the writings of Vedic scholar, Richard Thompson, in his book Alien Identities. Thompson indicates that the word for a special type of 'seed' in Vedic texts is called bijas.

According to the ancient Vedic scripts, the Universe is under intelligent control. High-level controllers - the Devas - arrange for the "transmigration" of souls from one material body to the next, in a process of movement toward higher consciousness. The bodies of Brahma and the Devas, which emanate from the Supreme Being, are made of "subtle forms of energy," and do not contain DNA. But, they do carry genetic information in the form of bijas, or seeds, that are also made of subtle energy. For humans to descend from the Devas, something else is needed; a "transformation" must take place in order to convert subtle energy into material substance. This sounds strangely like Sitchin's process.

It is evident here that there may be a problem with Sitchin's translation of seed as "DNA," and the concept of bijas may be the missing 'substance' which Sitchin's analysis seeks - the soul which can only be provided by the sacred or divine. This seed (the bijas) is not to be confused with DNA. These types of beings are able to generate any form of living being by a combined process of mating and transformation of subtle to gross energy - the infusion of divine soul into matter. The conversion of genetic information from subtle form to gross form involves the storage of different types of vibratory energy. The "seeds" are this storage container.

The genetic engineering hypothesis may be a mistaken translation of a more subtle process or transformational principle. As Thompson maintains, the Vedic version of the origin of humankind on Earth is not that they were "genetically engineered" by crossing the DNA of the Devas with the DNA of the primitive "ape-man," but that it involved mating between Devas that generated human offspring through the transformation of genetic and vibratory information. The Indian Vedas teach that different humanoid races on separate worlds were produced in this manner and, thus, have a common ancestry. The Vedas state that the human form is common in the Universe.

The Devas can be thought of as "archetypes," or as giving birth to the archetypes for all living creatures on the Earth. The Devas, along with other beings on that level or higher, contain the capacity on the creative level to produce offspring that are not of their own bodily type. As a matter of fact, I was reading a magazine in a doctor's office one day; I wish I had it to show you. One of the artifacts that had been discovered at an ancient Near East site portrayed a Birth Goddess giving birth to a tiger or some similar beast. The beast was coming right out through her legs! The archeologists were completely puzzled by it. But it's not puzzling at all if we read the ancient Vedic creation documents.

The "seeds" of life may refer to a vibratory transference of subtle energy to material energy, rather than to the physical DNA structure. This would essentially be considered an act of special creation. Indeed, if Sitchin has mistranslated this transformational process to be equivalent to a physical cloning process, his 'genetic engineering hypothesis' is actually a 'creation hypothesis.' Sitchin doesn't have to 'make room' for God. As a creative guiding intelligent force, field, entity or MIND alive in all aspects of Universal Creation, the life force from the Supreme Deity emanates down the hierarchy of creative entities who transfer this energy to the material plane.

As Balducci has offered, "It is entirely credible that in the enormous distance between Angels and humans, there could be found some middle stage, that is beings with a body like ours but more elevated spiritually." Are there intermediaries who have implicit 'permission' to act as little 'gods'? This notion of a "hierarchy" of seraphim and cherubim appears to be at the bottom of the Balducci/Sitchin discourse.

Out of Africa
What kind of physical evidence does Sitchin actually deal with in his books? He simply states, "Evolution cannot account for the appearance of Homo sapiens, which happened virtually overnight in terms of the millions of years evolution requires, and with no evidence of earlier stages that would indicate a gradual change from Homo erectus." Yet, this simple statement is misleading. As I have noted in Space Travelers, the timeline of Sitchin's hypothesis is fairly consistent with the "Out of Africa" evolutionary model put forward by mainstream evolutionary theorists, including Richard Leakey in The Origin of Humankind. If this model is accepted, mankind's lineage can be traced to 100,000 to 300,000 years before present, which meshes with Sitchin's dates. However, if we consider alternative theories of the age of mankind based on marginalized worldwide fossil evidence, the theory of the emergence of mankind out of Africa during this crucial and set time period is demolished, and Sitchin's theory is 'dust in the wind.'

If Michael Cremo and Richard Thompson are correct, mankind's age is considerably older than either of these theories might suggest, and, further, mankind's emergence cannot be plotted solely on a course winding out of Africa. In their book, Hidden History of the Human Race, Cremo and Thompson discuss various skeletal remains of anatomically modern humans, as well as various human artifacts, which have been dated in the range of 2 million all the way up to 55 million years B.P. (before present). This furthest range would put human beings in the early Pliocene era right along with the emergence of the first mammals. Yet, such dates are considered "anomalous" within the context of the currently accepted paradigm of human evolution.

Why are these dates considered "anomalous"? Because they are marginal in terms of the currently-accepted evolutionary paradigm.  This is due to the fact that the assumption of the progressive evolution of humans from the great ape family guides the acceptance and rejection of the evidence for evolution itself. In the study of logic, this is known as a tautology. You start with a theory, and only facts which support this theory are considered. So everything inside of this neat little box is TRUE because no contradictory facts are allowed to enter the box.

As I explain in great detail in my book, this is essentially what we have with the prevailing theory of human genesis. Darwinian evolution is a classic tautology. It is scientism, not science. Scientism masquerades as true science and never recognizes itself as a belief system based on an emotional attachment to Western materialist philosophy.  This is why evolution stands at the top of the list along with politics as a subject to avoid in the public arena. Yet, let me be so bold as to bring a few questions to fore regarding this taboo topic, and if I see a few red faces in the audience, I will perhaps regret my mistake.

Recent discoveries have forced anthropologists to reconsider the commonly-held paradigm that humankind evolved and dispersed in the warmer climate of Africa. Some anthropologists now believe a recently discovered Siberian site called Diring to be one of the oldest Paleolithic sites in the world, dating from between 1.8 to 3.7 million years B.P. (before present). This Siberian site has produced more than 4,000 artifacts, with some 500 of them identified as stone tools. The finding that Stone Age people lived this far north as long as 3 million years ago upsets the prevailing Out of Africa model in several ways. While some archeologists are not convinced that the site is 3 million years old, all are convinced that the site is at least 500,000 years old. What are humans doing in Siberia even this long ago?

As Cremo and Thompson write, in the past, "anomalous" evidence was often the center of serious controversy in anthropology. Now, anomalous findings are rejected outright. Let's also consider the following evidence hidden in humanity's closet:

> Simple eolithic implements have been discovered on the American continent in Pliocene strata dated at 2-4 million years.

> Primitive bone implements, as well as shark teeth with holes for use as jewelry and carving implements, have been found in Suffolk, England, in formations dated at 2-55 million years.

> Simple chopping tools have been discovered in Pakistan in formations dated at 2 million years. Tools of the same age have also been found in Siberia and India. (The authors point out that modern tribal people continue to manufacture very primitive types of stone tools.)

> A modern-type human jaw thoroughly infiltrated with iron oxide was discovered in a quarry at Foxhall, England, in a 16-foot level dated at 2.5 million years.

> Various finds in Argentina, along with flint tools and intentional use of fire, indicate the presence of humans in the Americas at least 3 million years ago.

> A modern human skull was discovered in the Sierra Nevada mountains, under volcanic ash in a gold-bearing gravel bed ranging in age from 9 to 55 million years old. This is not an isolated discovery. The California gold country has been a 'hotbed' of human skeletal remains and implements having this date range.

There is also strong evidence for the presence of rounded stone bola makers in Argentina approximately 3 million years ago. Stone bolas were used for hunting by wrapping them in leather bags attached to a long cord, swinging them overhead and letting go. Since this advanced technology requires the presence of a leather working culture, bola stones represent the presence of Homo sapiens during the late Pliocene in South America. What are human beings doing in the Americas 3 to 5 million years ago? This is very upsetting to mainstream anthropologists, and they want to sweep it under the rug.  Louis B. Leakey and others have established that the australopithecines of this age were not toolmakers, are not considered to be part of the human lineage, and furthermore, they were still confined to Africa. So who are these American toolmakers? How does Sitchin deal with them? He doesn't.

In addition, if we consider the view of the early catastrophists, there is evidence that mankind has been created and destroyed on the Earth many times over. Immanuel Velikovsky stated this problem when he wrote the following:

Even admitting that by Expulsion from the Garden of Eden is allegorized a catastrophe which quite destroyed mankind prior to the great deluge, it is impossible to declare that it was the first catastrophe. It depends on the memory of the peoples which catastrophe they consider to be the first act of creation. Human beings rising from some catastrophe, bereft of memory of what had happened, regarded themselves as created from the dust of the Earth. All knowledge of ancestors, who they were and in what interstellar space they had lived, was wiped away from the memory of the few survivors.

On this point, Velikovsky and other early catastrophists had noted that the fossil record reflects a series of creatures appearing all at once and fully formed, and disappearing just as suddenly. To them, the facts seemed to tell the story of a cycle of creation and destruction of all life forms on the earth. The fossil record since Darwin's day continues to tell this story. It has never told anything but this story. But "creation" is a dirty word in our scientific culture.

In fact, there is evidence to suggest that fully modern Homo sapiens appears to have existed in Africa, Europe, India, America, Australia, the British Isles, and now Siberia at least two million years before present. Taking into account only the more conventionally accepted evidence, Cremo and Thompson have concluded "the total evidence, including fossil bones and artifacts, is most consistent with the view that anatomically modern humans have co-existed with other primates for tens of millions of years."

Sitchin's genetic engineering hypothesis depends upon us not opening the closet door where these anomalies in the human lineage are kept! Sitchin's date of 300,000 to 350,000 years B.P. for the genetic engineering of the human race by the Anunnaki space travelers conflicts with evidence of human beings scattered over the Earth long before these dates.

As a matter of fact, Sitchin relays a curious account he discovered in Sumerian texts. This story describes the humanoid that lived on the Earth when the Anunnaki arrived. The Anunnaki called them the "Black Headed Ones." They are described by the Sumerians as being a friend to the four-legged animals which the Anunnaki ate for dinner. They were crafty and skillful enough to free their animal pals from the Anunnaki traps. This is a description of a thoughtful being; a being who is self-aware and capable of feeling; an alert and crafty being with unusual manual dexterity, capable of planning, scheming and conniving. Here we have a description of a naked toolmaker and troublemaker: the human being! This isn't simply a description of a tool-maker; this is a tool un-maker. This is not an "ape," capable of picking up a stick and using it to dig. This, we are told, is what chimpanzees do.

This story suggests that human beings already existed on the Earth prior to the Anunnaki settling of Sumeria. As a matter of fact, there is worldwide evidence that space travelers may have arrived from various places in the solar system in an ongoing stream of settlements, settling in what we now call Atlantis and Mu, long before the Great Deluge, and long before the arrival of the Sumerian Anunnaki. These may be our American bola sling makers... the ancestors of the Eskimos and the American Indians. The problem we are presented with is this: Can we actually say that any Earth people are indigenous to this planet? Are we all descendants of human Visitors? Is the human form actually common in the Universe?

Another discrepancy with Sitchin's theory, that the Anunnaki created humans in their own image and after their own likeness, is the fact that the Sumerians describe the Anunnaki as lizard-people; as bipedal reptilian creatures with scaly skin who preferred the water over the land. Sitchin avoids discussion of how humankind could have been created by parents who were lizards, when other sources have verified this odd fact. It has also been suggested that the King James and other bibles have removed these references out of their editions of the bible.

What we are looking at with Sitchin's genetic engineering hypothesis could be many things. Sitchin has chosen to translate it his way, but there are other possible ways to understand the Sumerian material. One possibility has to do with the act of special creation. The Sumerian account may be a creation myth which Sitchin is perhaps taking too literally, or shall we say, too physically. Could this Sumerian account actually be a religious text describing the special creation of man by the Devas, hierarchical spirits who assist in the ongoing creation and re-creation of all life forms after various cataclysms on Earth? If Sitchin's translation can be tweaked in this way, perhaps he and Monsignor Balducci can ascend the same Stairway to Heaven.

Acclimation Program
It is clear that this fabricated religious synthesis between a Hebrew scholar and a Vatican official on the subject of extraterrestrials heralds a momentous occasion approaching what Richard Boylan has called an Acclimation Program. As Boylan reports, Balducci has gone on Italian television repeatedly to declare that ET visitations may be real. As the Church's leading exorcist and an expert on Demonology, he has announced that ETs are "not of the devil," and are likely to be spiritually advanced.

Yet, the sexual and procreative nature of the abduction phenomenon might indicate otherwise. According to the Malleus Maleficarum, printed in 1486, the sexual activity most often attributed to witches was sex with demons who assumed the form of male or female (incubus or succubus) for the purpose of having intercourse with humans. How can Balducci be so sure this is not what is happening, especially if we consider that the Anunnaki shapeshifters were sometimes reptilian.

Is this not remarkable proof that the worldwide consciousness is being "acclimated" to the existence of extraterrestrials? Following the 1961 advice of a think tank called the Brookings Institute, such an acclimation program might be designed to keep religious doctrines intact. The discovery of extraterrestrial life, the Brookings Report projected, would be "electrifying" to the "illiterate and semiliterate" religious masses.

Yet, strangely, of all groups which might be most affected by the discovery of a superintelligence in the universe, the Brookings Report seemed most concerned not about the so-called "illiterate and semiliterate" religious masses, but about "scientists and engineers." The Brookings Report stated, "It has been speculated that, of all groups, scientists and engineers might be the most devastated by the discovery of relatively superior creatures, since these professions are most clearly associated with the mastery of nature." The Brookings Institute warned that meeting up with life forms who had such an advanced understanding of nature might invalidate our own understanding of nature. Of course, I'm happy to point out, the theory that would be most invalidated by the discovery of advanced humanoid beings is Darwinian evolution.

As this think tank warned in 1961, "it is very important to take into account major religions." In keeping with this social control scenario, Sitchin now presents his information a little differently. In his presentation in Italy, with a high Vatican official present, Sitchin made sure he stated that in this act of creation, "the Anunnaki were acting as Emissaries for the Universal Creator - God," and were not merely acting selfishly to produce a mine worker. This can be considered an act of special creation.

As Balducci told Sitchin, even if intelligent spacefaring humanoids exist, "in spite of what some people think, we would be in a position to reconcile their existence with the Redemption that Christ has brought us." This statement alone, coming from the Vatican, is incredible. How would this reconciliation be possible? According to Balducci's statements, it hinges on seeing these space travelers as some form of angelic beings - rather than as demons. Are we witnessing the evolution of the Vatican's modern genealogy of the angelic kingdom? A kinder, gentler Vatican that believes there are no bad apples on the angelic family tree?

Is this Vatican official saying that the Biblical serafim and cherubim travel in spaceships? Is the Vatican coming around to the ancient astronaut theory? And what does this have to do with Sitchin's 'change of heart'? Has Sitchin had a Visitor experience - a visit by a high Vatican official perhaps? In this light, has Sitchin been persuaded to alter his information for the good of the planet?

 

©2000 Joan d'Arc is the author of Space Travelers and the Genesis of the Human Form, and Phenomenal World, both of which are published by The Book Tree (www.thebooktree.com). Joan was the editor of Newspeak Guide to Alternative Press and is the co-founder and co-publisher of Paranoia: The Conspiracy Reader. A shorter version of this talk was published in UFO magazine in October, 2000.

HOME