Heavenly Lights: The Apparitions of Fatima And the Ufo Phenomenon [Anglais] [Broché]

First published in 1982(!) in Portuguese (which has kept it

virtually invisible to most of UFOlogical community), this book

is now published in translation, complete with an imprimatur in

the form of a forward by Jacques Vallee.

What do you get if you take away the Christian interpretation

from the Fatima apparitions? Only the largest and most dramatic

mass UFO sighting in history, witnessed by ~50,000 people!

In this meticulous phenomenological presentation, the authors

have dug deep into the historical record as only Portuguese

speaking researchers could, tracking down accounts from the time

in the form of newspapers, meteorological reports, letters

written by witnesses to their relatives, and even a couple of

eye witnesses still alive when they were doing their research.

What is crucial here was going back to the original testimonies

and stories. Lucia, the primary "seer" ("experiencer"?), later

entered a convent, and her story became progressively more and

more attuned to the Catholic paradigm, her writings made

subject to approval by Church authorities. The authors have put

less emphasis on these later "official" versions, and relied

more on the first reports. Lucia originally never said it was

the Virgin Mary she saw, it was the adults around her that

jumped to that conclusion. Based on the time and culture they

lived in, how else could they have interpreted it?

What emerges is something far stranger and less easy to

interpret than a "simple" Marian apparition. Through careful

analysis and comparison with other UFO cases, they show that

most if not all elements present in the Fatima apparitions are

found throughout the UFO literature as well.

Of course the unique element of this case is the mass sighting

on October 13, 1917, when a large crowd of approximately 50,000

people including all social classes from farmers to professors

and journalists witnessed a whole host of dramatic phenomena

involving the sun (or possibly a craft or energy phenomena

appearing similar to the sun), strange atmospheric effects, as

well as objects traveling through the sky, some apparently with

occupants. There is a chapter of statistical analysis of witness

testimonies, correlation of descriptions of the event from four

towns using trigonometry, as well as discussion of chromatic,

thermal and atmospheric effects, mechanical breakdowns,

simultaneous cures, and much more.

While others have raised the issue of Fatima in relation to the

UFO phenomena, this book is the first to my knowledge to present

in-depth original research on anything like this scale. I

believe it is indeed an instant (20 years later!) classic

describing one of the most important cases on record.

This book attempts to explain the 1917 Fatima phenomena from outside the religious envelope and to base conclusions on facts as stated by first hand witnesses. The Fatima happening was viewed by probably the largest number of people ever assembled for such a event (50,000) and, therefore, a large number of witness testimonies are available. The authors were even able to interview some witnesses still living. The large number of witnesses allowed for some statistical analysis which revealed some startling discoveries, such as defining the narrow physical area in which "drying" and "healings" took place. Additionally, by determining the physical location of some distant witnesses, they were able, using some simple trigonometry, to calculate the physical size of the object that the crowd said they saw. The majority of the crowd was illiterate, so consequently much of the testimoney is within the confines of their religious believe system. The authors do a good job of accounting for this fact. A number of witnesses were also educated people, which adds credence to the testimonies.

For readers interested in the continuing investigations into the UFO phenomenon, this book is a must to read.

"Heavenly Lights: the Apparitions of Fatima and the UFO Phenomenon" is the first volume of a trilogy of books (in English) whose primary author is Portuguese professor/writer Joachim Fernandes, with some volumes co-authored by writer Fina D'Armada. These two authors have been among Portugal's most prominent resident UFOlogists for close to the last 30 years. The other books of the trilogy series are "Celestial Secrets: The Hidden History of the Fatima Incident" and "Fatima Revisited: The Apparition Phenomenon in Ufology, Psychology and Science". These books represent a loose summary of the authors' long-term traditional work in this "UFOs at Fatima" fantasy, with additional material input from other authors, editors and translators.

The core theme of all 3 Volumes is to seek to co-opt and displace the well known Fatima, Portugal visionary events of 1917 as a religious apparition. This is done by attempting to superimpose a case that although the authors agree that stupendous events did indeed occur there on October 13, 1917, they were in reality a major example of a visit to Earth by extraterrestrials in UFOs. Furthermore, that submit that they could not be the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Lord Jesus, as the Catholic church has supported and promulgated as "worth of belief" for close to the last 80 years. The authors and promoters strive to buildup interest and credibility for this particular book series by highlighting their document research at the Fatima archives in 1978, and by being repeated exponents of the "we saw the original documents" of Fatima mantra.

A brief summary follows of these original Fatima apparition reports. There were reported to be 6 major apparitions by a beautiful young lady on a small holm-oak tree (Carrasqueira) purported to be witnessed by 3 very young shepherd children, Lucia 10, Francisco 9 and Jacinta 7, beginning on May 13, 1917 and ending on October 13, 1917. The children reported that the lady announced on her final visit that she was "The Lady of the Rosary", known by Catholics worldwide to be none other than the Virgin Mary herself. This last visit climaxed with a 15 minute series of totally spectacular cosmic and solar phenomena, that has come to be known as the "Miracle of the Sun", and was reportedly witnessed by approx. 70,000 people, up to 40 miles away. On the prior July 13th, statements were made by the seer children of the prediction given to them by the lady that she would perform a miracle on Oct 13th, so that all may believe. This prediction spread quickly throughout Portugal and thus...the vast crowd that was in attendance on October 13th, as reported by all of the major secular newspapers of Portugal on that day.

In recent months, I have had in my possession several of the Portuguese language books that have been used by the authors in their trilogy series as some of their reference sources. Comparing these volumes with "Heavenly Lights..." and the rest of the trilogy as a 31 year research veteran myself of technical, religious and historical subjects, I regret to say that I am really stunned by the poor detail quality of this trilogy work that passes itself off as a unique and serious research project.

I really do support a "let the documents speak" sentiment, as in any research project, but in my opinion the authors and editors have demonstrably failed in their attempts to "let them speak" here. They have instead relied on fantasy, gross misrepresentations, and some poor rendering of Portuguese language translations that are woven around and interlaced with some of the accepted historical elements of those 1917 events. The writers in this trilogy have also employed frequent use of selective "cherry-picking" of key phrases out of context, displayed much creative logic and otherwise have submitted a boring exercise of poorly evidenced, gymnastic literary arguments. The result is a statement of sophistic reasoning, a deeply flawed and a fallacious product of so-called meticulous research. The examples of the above are far too numerous to list them all here, but please see my review of "Celestial Secrets: The Hidden History of the Fatima Incident" on this website called "THE LADY OF THE CARRASQUEIRA", for only a few examples of the above authors' methodology.

Instead of letting the evidence lead one to eventually compelling logical conclusions, this work and its complements are a prime example of preconceived biased arguments that are amalgamated with historical Fatima data and then all shaped and shoe-horned to fit into their own belief system of "Extraterrestrial visits to Earth via UFOs." and specifically into ones that just had to be the entities responsible for the Fatima events of 1917 !.

To any believers of UFOlogy reading this, I would say that my words here are not disavowing any or all possibilities of occasions of UFO visits to Earth throughout history, nor is it any critique directed toward UFOlogy in general. To each his/her own faith in their own individual belief systems. I am only saying that these authors have not produced credible or convincing evidence for any serious scenario that E.T.s in UFOs had visited our planet in Fatima, Portugal in 1917.

In summary, the closest description that comes to my mind of this book and its companions of the trilogy is that it is another exercise of Sigmund Freud's "free-association" technique of thought generation. Its use of fantasizing betrays a woeful lack of detailed real knowledge of the Fatima events of 1917, and it is saturated by imprecision, fallacious reasoning, and nonsensical conclusions.

"Heavenly Lights..." and the rest of this trilogy might appeal to those fans of science fiction masters such as Isaac Asimov and many others, because this book series is indeed full of fiction and if so, I hope they would all enjoy it. Most importantly though, it is definitely not a work of straightforward definitive research that will give a prosaic answer to all those who may be looking for a different but credible version of the Fatima 1917 events, an alternative to the one that has been promulgated at Fatima for close to the last 90 years, first mainly by those who witnessed it all and since then by their successors in faith.

Edmund Grant