14.

There was an interesting, if weird book that caught my eye among the shelves of interesting if weird books in the library that Miller had accumulated. It was a Fawcett Gold Medal paperback entitled Mankind — Child of the Stars, and it begins with an examination of some strange anomalies in the theory of evolution, pointing out that only man himself seems to contradict biological law, being guilty of periods of impossibly swift advances in physiognomy and culture, certain startling mutations at very fixed pre-historical points. The authors begin their theorizing beyond the limited fossil and artifact remains with the very obscured passage of the Bible, Genesis 6:2;

And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born of them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were fair, and they took them wives of all which they chose.

Astute as they are, Flint and Binder don’t mention another version of this same material, in The Book of Enoch, a "lost book" of the Bible, dating from the second century BC and finally rediscovered in an Ethiopian monastery in 1773. There was a copy of it in Miller’s room though, underlined:

VI. 1. And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters.

2. And the angels, the children of heaven, saw and became enamored of them, and said to one another, "Come let us choose wives from among the children of men and beget us children."

VII. 1. Then they took wives, each choosing for himself; whom they began to approach, and with whom they cohabited; teaching them charms and enchantments, and the cutting of roots, and made them acquainted with plants.

Of course, a certain kind of mind sees UFO’s in this, slumming members of a custodial race swooping down to jazz our women like Seniors poaching at a freshman mixer. However they got here the authors posit that at some point an otherworldly beings came to earth with decisive results for civilization. You can see it from the very beginning — the snake chose Eve to talk to, didn’t he, and as far as I can tell he told her the truth. Certainly there’s Gaea, Io, Pandora, Europa, Danae, Leda, Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, even Malintzin, Cortez’s native concubine and interpreter, all the innumerable women whose attractions to the alien have altered everything. And admit it or not, it must have been some kind of allure, some beauty that drew God to the Virgin Mary — look at the paintings, it’s all there, in the most advanced parts of our unnecessarily advanced brains a beautiful woman is the only way we can understand that kind of grace.

According to the Gnostics the first thought emanating from the primordial One was Sophia, Wisdom, a goddess and in their time a whore. Why did the one become many? It’s the Gordian knot isn’t it, even in the latest Big Bang theory. Could it have been to look at Sophia? In other words the universe was created by the hidden one for the same reason most guys do anything – to get chicks.

Flint and Birden take a similarly biological approach, noting the five major sexual differences between the human female and those of other species;

…for she alone:

1. Enjoys orgasm during intercourse.

2. Is almost always "in heat."

3. Has a vaginal angle conducive to either front or back mating.

4. Posses voluptuous breasts and buttocks that are spurs to male desire.

5. Posses a hymen during virginity.

The main difference between male humans an other primates is more of a lack, an indication of how important imagination and those spurs to man’s desire are — we have no penis bone – only your head can get you hard. (That and the fact that a nine foot four hundred pound gorilla only has a three inch dick. But you can tell that from any football locker room).

All inherited from our visitors, the children of heaven. But look at what scientists say distinguishes us from apes in general — true smiles, true crying, long flowing hair, complete nakedness, flexible hands. subtly expressive faces, the ability to enjoy recreational sex — there’s all of art history right there. In other words, I guess the idea is that the beauty and sexual attractiveness of women is the key to human destiny. If the children of heaven couldn’t resist Earth women, how can we?

How about this then — according to Budd Hopkins, there are people who claim to have had alien abduction experiences, dreamlike childhood memories of being brought together for socialization with a member of the opposite sex whose name they could never remember. These dream meetings lasted for a fixed period of time, about 45 minutes, and occurred over a long period of years at six month intervals, the boy and the girl growing up together, becoming intimate in these brief, strictly enforced increments, many couples actually becoming lovers.

Then there’s the day they accidentally meet the person in their reoccurring dreams, the lover that they thought was imaginary, and they find out that, not only does that person recognize them, but has also been having the same dreams at the same times. What kind of love is that? Hopkins thinks it’s all part of a "complex breeding experiment."

But doesn’t a cosmic theory like that say more about the person who came up with it more than anything else? Did the fact that I really believed I was startled into consciousness by them, by Virginia that day in the woods or Heather in the cave that afternoon, make my psychosis universal or even from beyond the universe? Did it matter?