Hybridization: Or, Intimacy With Alien Flesh

Perhaps UFOlogists interpret reports of a hybridization program too literally. Like shamanic initiation, abduction seems a transformative experience—could hybridization take place on a metaphysical level?

—Joshua Cutchin Thieves in the Night: A Brief History of Supernatural Child Abductions

The UFO phenomenon is utterly sidelined in conventional discourse, though as we’ve been detailing on this site, it’s central to so much of our contemporary existence: the global black economy, the potential breakaway civilization/secret space program, suppressed anti-gravity and “free energy” physics, the refutation of philosophical materialism, etc.

Within UFO discourse, abduction research is highly marginal and controversial, even though it too is an utterly central topic in our day as I’ve written about before.

Finally even within UFO abduction research, the concept of potential hybridization programs is itself very marginalized, making it the marginalized margins of the margins. And yet it’s a crucially important topic. In this piece I want to explore the interface between weird naturalism and trauma studies in relationship to the claimed hybrid phenomenon, just as I’ve done similarly around past life regressions, mediumship, ascension symptoms, and the abduction phenomenon.

First some definitions. Hybridization as defined in the UFO discourse is the notion that human individuals are abducted and then within those abductions used to foster alien/human hybrid offspring. Sometimes this occurs through experiences of extracting ova and/or sperm. Other times there are claimed sexual encounters with these entities—some consensual, others not. Women have claimed that they have undergone “missing pregnancies”, whereby they experience a human-alien hybrid baby being inserted into their womb and then removed in a subsequent abduction experience. This often ends with an experience of being shown (in a still further abduction) the hybrid baby, along with some experiences of essentially “wet nursing” these entities.

What are we to make of all this?

First to establish some grounding it is important to note that structurally this hybrid phenomenon—or whatever it is—has been experienced for a long time. As Peter Levenda established in his Sekret Machines: God, Man, and War (vol. 2 Man) the hybridization and sexualization aspect of the alien UFO phenomenon has precedents in the experience of the Witches Sabbath where “witches” claimed they were “taken up” in the air by entities/demons in their sleep to have sexual encounters with the Devil/demons, typically in a form of spiritual rape. These individuals (similar to our own day) are then labeled cursed, insane, or possessed. Levenda also notes that the tradition of the succubus and incubus, creatures which come at night and steal women’s ova and men’s sperm in their sleep parallels exactly claims made in the UFO phenomenon.

Joshua Cutchin’s book (Thieves in the Night), which is to my mind the best book on the subject, makes much the same argument. Cutchin shows how the UFO stories of hybrids—babies, “wet nursing”, missing pregnancies—are all already in the Celtic lore concerning the fairly folk, particularly in the changeling phenomenon.

Also there is a long standing lore concerning sex (and hybrid offspring) between Greek gods and humans (including again rape), as well as between angels and humans (“The Nephilim”). Hybridization, it would seem, is everywhere.

So whatever is going here it’s been going on for a long time. Just as Jacques Vallee argued decades ago, every single aspect of the UFO phenomenon is a contemporary replication of an ancient dynamic.

The second point is that any attempt to form a more nuanced understanding of this topic is made much more difficult by the extreme polarization that dominates this field. On the debunker skeptic side of course is the notion that anyone claiming such experiences is mentally ill (or it’s some consequence of sleep paralysis).

On the side of those who accept something real is occurring in this phenomenon you have those like David Jacobs who treat it as part of a larger sinister alien invasion plot. Jacobs’ work suffers in my view from it’s excessively materialist philosophical bias. The “aliens” are seen as extra terrestrial biologic entities (ETs/EBEs) and so these seemingly sexual and birthing phenomenon are taken in a very literalistic sense. Jacobs’ work suffer in much the same way as the nuts and bolts UFO discourse does with it’s overly materialistic bias.

From the spiritual side, there are those who see it entirely as a pure love and light phenomenon. The love and light brigade tend to pronounce in a fundamentalist way a Spiritualist New Age and “alien” spirituality discourse. I’ve explored the work of Dolores Cannon in that regard in a previous piece. Also see Mary Rodwell as a further example of this trend. I’ve been on the whole fairly critical of the too easy importation of 19th century Spiritualist theological overlay into the field of contemporary spirituality and here is no exception.

When one combines Spiritualist ideas with alien abduction lore there is the notion that individuals signed a “pre-life” soul contract in order to be taken and used for a supposed hybridization program. The pre-life soul contract notion is a classic one in Spiritualism—it extends to past-life regressions as well as mediumship tendencies as I’ve written about elsewhere on the site.

In contrast to much of the Spiritualist discourse that dominates the New Age (and it’s subset of UFO cults), I promote a more weird naturalist interpretive framework. As I’ve repeatedly argued, a weird naturalist lens allows us to uphold the validity of these types of highly strange experiences (as real enough) without having to necessarily adhere to the interpretations automatically given for framing those experiences. In this case, if one does not fully agree with the Spiritualist notion of pre-life contracts then that opens up different avenues of reflection relative to encounters and hybridization type scenarios. There’s no way to prove or disprove this assertion of pre-life contracts. It’s stated as an ultimate fact when in reality it’s a belief or spiritual interpretation. If one wanted to take a more Gnostic route, one might wonder whether the belief in pre-life abduction contracts has been implanted into human minds for nefarious purposes by the very abducting entities themselves in order to “soften up” the target population.


The consistent them in much abduction literature is the experience of individuals feeling their rights and consent have been violated—this is taken to an even further extreme in the cases of claimed non-consensual sexual encounters with entities. For the Spiritualist, this contradiction is no contradiction at all for the person already signed up for these experiences in some “life between lives”, which raises the question of whether pre-life contract beliefs are ultimately a form of spiritual bypassing and the denial of concrete trauma.

Or there might be a partial point to all this pre-life soul contact business that needs to be integrated but in a way that does not bypass or dissociate from the painful aspects (perhaps as shamanic initiations).

As I’ve written about before I believe the UFO/contact phenomenon is best seen in light of the psychic realm, which is the numinous or highly strange dimension of the material world. This explains how the UFO phenomenon has both material and conscious/immaterial aspects. UFO craft shimmer in and out of radar and physical eyesight. These craft also propel themselves against the conventional understanding of gravity. Cryptids, as Cutchin points out, similarly go in and out of a more gross material form. The same applies to Poltergeists which can effect electrical systems but also walk through walls.  The Jinn, another entity whose lore parallels the UFO/alien one, are beings of “smokeless fire” (fire = material, smokeless = psychic/immaterial). This combination of material and immaterial shared by all those entities would make sense if all of them arise from the same realm (the psychic).

If someone like Jacobs takes the experience too literally denying the consciousness side of the equation, the New Age Spiritualist tradition tends to downplay the material side. It’s the strange combination of the two that is so crucial to understanding (and ultimately working with) these encounters—what I’ve called elsewhere a Hegalien approach.

All this brings us back to the Cutchin quotation with which I started the piece:

Perhaps UFOlogists interpret reports of a hybridization program too literally. Like shamanic initiation, abduction seems a transformative experience—could hybridization take place on a metaphysical level?

I would add to Cutchin’s statement not just UFOlogists but experiencers and abductees themselves as well. Too many of them take the experience too “literally” in a “spiritual materialist” New Age sense. There’s a lack of understanding that any such encounters take place in liminal and imaginal spaces—spaces that co-create us, just as we co-create them.

In order to get a clearer picture of the hybridization phenomenon I believe it must be thought through in light of the psychic state. Speculatively, what might hybridization mean if taken in a high strange/weird naturalist/ontologically flooded/non-literal yet somehow physical in some sense way? In particular, how are we to understand the specifically sexual dimensions of these encounters?

Scholar Jeffrey Kripal says that Eroticism (of one form or another) is central to all mystical experience. The erotic does not only mean the sexual, though it certainly includes the sexual component. The erotic (Eros) is the alluring force that draws life together. Another way of saying that is that “hybridization” is a metaphor, a subset of a wider reality of relationality. Humans bring their relational metaphors and understandings to high strange encounters.

Consider the contactee movement of the 50s/60s which often spoke of “space brothers and sisters”. In that case, a sibling metaphor structures the nature of the connection—e.g. there’s no sexual dimension with a sibling. It’s interesting in that regard to realize the contactees never really spoke of sexual type encounters (nor abductions by the way). The encounters, in their case, were far more serene and loving in the way one would love a brother or sister. It should be noted the contactees largely saw these entities as “big brothers and sisters”, thereby adding an element of hierarchical top-down quality, of a big sibling guiding a younger (in this case human) one.

Friendship would be a different (though related) metaphor of relationality. Friendship would speak more to a peer dynamic. The history of religion and spirituality is full of metaphors of relationally in connection to encounters with other presences/forces whether gods, angels, ancestors, etc. Sometimes they are siblings, other time friends, other times parents (God the Father, Mother Earth), other times as tricksters, still yet others as enemies, and yes sometimes as lovers.

For example in certain Tantric and Taoist sexual practices, two individuals will visualize themselves as incarnate deities (usually a god and goddess) and therefore in their erotic embrace two deities are intertwined. In some Tantric traditions one might treat a tantrika, for example, as an embodiment of a goddess and treat her as one would a goddess.

That all may seem far removed from abductions and hybridization with inter-dimensional beings but it really isn’t. They are all part and parcel of how one interacts with the subtle forces (and entities) in life and how one understands the nature of such interactions. The understanding and interpretation of such interactions is inevitably going to be deeply filtered by human cultural constructs of relationality. Hence the recurring major metaphors throughout spiritual literature of the most common human to human relationships replicating themselves at a spiritual level—siblings, friends, parent-child, lovers, extended family (Grandfather Spirit, Grandmother Spider) and lovers.

This can even include forms of relationship, in human terms, based in exploitation, falsehood, and manipulation, as much as it could include ones based in generosity, reciprocity, wisdom, and empathy.

As Prof. Kripal makes abundantly clear in his works, all such high strange interactions inevitably are imaginal in nature—imaginal meaning they are both partly constructed by us and we are partly constructed by it.

Hence interactions with high strange entities are going to be filtered through a human lens. It’s unavoidable to some degree. What we can do is be more self-conscious and aware (or less so) of such influence. Most reflections, both by UFOlogists and experiencers themselves, lack that level of self-critical awareness whatever their particular flavor of interpretation.

To bring it back to the hybridization topic, hybridization can’t and shouldn’t be reflected upon outside such an understanding. Otherwise it just seems like a super odd “one off” in the Universe, when in actuality it’s part of a much broader question of relationally (and therefore ethics) in connection with entities.

Now to be clear some individuals argue that they willingly (and in some cases very enthusiastically) consent to such sexual encounters with entities. Now as weird as that may sound at first, consider something like the Tantric example cited earlier whereby two humans partake in sexual encounter to intentionally cultivate spiritual and psychophysical energies (what Western occultists tend to call, not very helpfully, “sex magick”). A variation on that trend is for a practitioner to go into a visualization state and in the state imagine a god/dess and visualize being in sexual congress with such a being. The experience can lead to actual physiological arousal and kinaesthetic erotic experiences.

Catholic nuns from the Middle Ages on (e.g. St. Teresa of Avila) describe in direct detail their experience of a very psycho-physical sense of having sex with Christ. They allegorized and spiritualized it in order to not run afoul of the Church, but it doesn’t take much reading between the lines in their texts to realize they are having—in whatever weirdly natural way this is possible—very physiological effects to “intimacy with Christ.”

Remember the psychic state-realm is the high strange and numinous dimension of gross materiality. As such encounters in this realm have physical correlations and expression: including sexual aspects.

In the kundalini yoga tradition the coiled serpent is said to rise from the base of the spine through the chakras—a serpent being a phallic symbol of course. When the energy rises up to the second chakra (creative-sexual center), it will tend to excite strong movements of libido and spontaneous sexual arousal and fantasies in meditation.

Even the experience of having a lucid dream and within the lucidity choosing to imagine and create in the dream space some idealized fantasy being and then having sex with him/her/it/them would fit within this broader category.

While I’ve never heard of anyone claiming in a psychedelic or plant medicine experience that they had sex with an entity—e.g. Mother Ayahuasca—I have heard stories of individuals claiming in the dream/journey space that their sexual organs were healed of past sexualized trauma.

Now these examples would generally fall more on a spectrum of consent whereas others named earlier—e.g. the Witches Sabbat and incubus/succubus—largely fall more on the scale of non-consensual high strange sexualized encounters.

All that to say sexual encounters with entities in the psychic-subtle realm is just as fraught as it is with humans in the gross realm (if not more so). All manner of sexual encounters can be had on either level—accidentally traumatizing, intentionally manipulative and degrading, superconsciously ecstatic, “cheap quickies”, etc.

Humans don’t understand sex (see all of art and psychology for proof of that assertion)—why would one assume that other-than-human intelligence/entities are any more (or less) evolved and wise in the sexual domain?

Whatever would occur in such a high strange sexual between a human and “alien” (interdimensional), what if that interaction was “fruitful?” What would we call the product or “offspring” of such an intermingling? Presumably a hybrid, some kind of cross-fertilization or unique admixture of two seemingly distinct species.

Does that literally mean a creature? Only if you assume that such beings are more gross material realm Extraterrestrial Biological Entities. I tend to question that assumption. Is it possible however for a being to be created by the union of a gross realm human being (though in an altered state let’s recall) and a more psychically oriented entity? I suppose that’s theoretically possible (here's a claimed example along those lines).

It seems more likely to me however that some “formation” or “genesis” might occur in such a situation, which in the human imaginal co-construction can only be envisioned as a child/offspring. Recall again the Biblical story of the (angelic) sons of God “going into” the daughters of men, leading to hybrid offspring (“Nephilim”). Or the changeling phenomenon of fairy-human hybrids. Or the stories of Greek gods and other high strange entities (dryads, nymphs, etc.) having sex with humans—with or without their consent—creating divine-human hybrid heroes of renown.

Both high strange sexual encounters and some form of “offspring” or resulting mixture of the two entities (human + other) has been going on for thousands of years at least. That’s not to deny that again the physiological correlates of the experience can’t be very real. For example, a human woman may well have physiological pregnancy-like reactions and symptoms in her body.

For high strange sexual encounters that are traumatizing the first response is the one I’ve been articulating throughout many of these articles, including on the abduction phenomenon, namely bring trauma awareness and practice to bear in healing.

The documentary Extraordinary: The Seeding examines the hybridization subject broadly and “enforced alien surrogacy”/“missing pregnancy” angle particularly. In the film woman who claim they were used as surrogates against their will share their stories. There’s clearly real trauma expressed through their narratives (whatever the exact origin and nature of that trauma may be). A number of them seem to take the coping strategy of just not “going there” with the thought of having lost a baby (or babies). It’s an understandable response I can sympathize with but in the long run only drives the trauma further underground.

I think it’s very likely true that the pain of working through such an encounter would be potentially as intense and visceral of that of a woman who had a miscarriage or a still birth or decided to give a (human) child up for adoption. Weird naturalism and ontological flooding allows us to hear these stories and allow them to be, without immediately trying to prove or disprove. Some high strange encounter is going on there (very likely) which is then being interpreted through the human lens of sexuality, pregnancy, birth, etc, resulting in very much the same set of emotional and physiological responses—including grief in the cases of lost pregnancy (human or hybrid). In weird naturalism the goal is to “normalize the paranormal”. In fact, research has shown that claimed alien abductions--whatever their ultimate ontological status--do create physical effects in the body.

Birth as the doorway into the mystery of life is profoundly mysterious on a human level. It’s just as mysterious as it’s twin death. Just because scientifically humans can describe the process of sperm and ova, cell division, and chromosomes, doesn’t mean the process of bringing life into the world is any less numinous or inexpressible.

When it come to (human) birth, humans are increasingly relying on technological and scientific processes to participate with (even “engineer”) the very reproductive process itself: IVF, surrogacy, gene testing, abortion. There are even increasing pushes for gestating human offspring entirely outside the womb (very Brave New World that one). Genetic experimentation either through a hybridization program and/or directly upon humans is a core motif of the abduction lore.

Is it perhaps possible that human development of genetic engineering (on both animals and humans) has filtered the human consciousness in such a way as to interpret the highly strange encounters as forms of experimentation? In a previous piece on the abduction phenomenon I explored the work of Dolores Cannon who argued that the abduction narrative is a consequence of researchers primarily accessing information from an intermediate and traumatized layer of the human subconscious. Perhaps the genetic experimentation angle fits precisely that script?

Or in some almost Philip K. Dick-style narrative, have the encounters with these entities influenced humans to dive deeper and deeper into genetic experimentation? Or maybe some combination of the two?

With a trauma-aware lens it’s possible to neutralize any dysregulation in the human nervous from overwhelming high strange encounters. With ontological flooding and weird naturalism we are able to, as experiencer Whitley Strieber said, to “live the question”. Or rather live the experience with an open, curious, and non-fixed mindset.

Strieber’s latest book is entitled A New World. In it, Strieber argues that the entire point of contact is to grow into communion (the title of his first book). According to Strieber, humans have not learned to intentionally engage The Visitors (as he calls them) in a conscious, collaborative fashion. For humans to move forward with the many simultaneous systemic collapses and failures, we must evolve in relationship to them and they must evolve in relationship to us. I wonder if that may well be the key to what the metaphor of hybridization is really pointing towards—not literal human-Visitor offspring but rather some exchange of consciousness and connection?