The Method of (UFOlogical) Science, the Aim of (Theosophical) Religion

Brinsley Le Poer Trench, scion of English and Dutch aristocracy, would inherit the title of Earl of Clancarty in 1975. This gave him a seat in the House of Lords, which he largely used to lobby the British government for information on UFOs he was convinced they possessed, establishing a House of Lords UFO study group, arrange a memorable 1979 debate on the UFO subject in the House, and other such entertaining endeavours.

Such activities provided UFOlogists with much material to cite if they wanted to discuss official governmental and parliamentary interest in the subject (see, for instance, Timothy Good’s Above Top Secret), but Le Poer Trench’s actions didn’t come out of nowhere. For years prior to him becoming Earl, he had been putting out a steady stream of now mostly-forgotten books on the subject, demonstrating his sincerely held beliefs concerning UFOs.

Perhaps the most interesting of these books his his very first offering, The Sky People, hailing from 1960. Whilst many UFOlogists of the era attempt to take at least a superficially scientific approach to the subject matter – or to at least maintain the appearance of doing so (think George Adamski’s purported academic credentials and his willingness to let people conflate his amateur little telescope on his little plot of land on Palomar Mountain with the actual Paloma Observatory) – Le Poer Trench makes no pretence of a scientific approach whatsoever. The worldview he espouses here is a matter of philosophical, spiritual, and religious conviction on his part, and it is absolutely wild.

You know you are in for a good ride when, right out of the gate, Le Poer Trench starts arguing that it is impossible to actually communicate ideas from one mind to another. I’m not paraphrasing here, he literally writes stuff like “One of the greatest obstacles to the advancement of humankind is the stubbornly held notion that knowledge is transferable, that it can be taken out of one head and put into another.” Essentially, he takes the view that all you can really do is remind people of ideas and concepts which they already possess in some fashion, and if they do not already have some suitable precedent in their head, they’ll just reject any information you offer them out of hand.