George Van Tassel

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George Van Tassel

George Van Tassel
Born George Wellington Van Tassel(1910-03-12)March 12, 1910Jefferson, Ohio, U.S.
Died February 9, 1978(1978-02-09) (aged 67)Santa Ana, California, U.S.
Occupations Aircraft mechanic, flight inspector, contactee, author, organizer
Known for Ashtar contact; Giant Rock Interplanetary Spacecraft Convention; Integratron
Spouse Dorris Van Tassel
Children 3 daughters

George Wellington Van Tassel (March 12, 1910 – February 9, 1978) was an American aircraft mechanic, contactee, and desert promoter who operated the airstrip at Giant Rock in the Mojave Desert, reportedly received a sustained series of telepathic transmissions beginning in early 1952 from a fleet of extraterrestrial starship commanders including "Ashtar, commandant quadra sector, patrol station Schare," hosted the annual Giant Rock Interplanetary Spacecraft Convention from 1953 until the late 1970s, founded the Ministry of Universal Wisdom and the College of Universal Wisdom, and built the Integratron at Landers, California to specifications he said had been transmitted to him during those contacts.

Early life and aviation career

Van Tassel was born on March 12, 1910, in Jefferson, Ohio, and developed an early interest in aviation. In 1930 he moved to California, where for the next eleven years he worked for Douglas Aircraft. In 1941 he became the personal flight inspector of experimental aircraft for Howard Hughes, and two years later he went to work for Lockheed as a flight inspector on Constellation aircraft. He left the aerospace industry in 1947.

Giant Rock residence

In 1947, Van Tassel, his wife Dorris, and their three daughters left Los Angeles and moved into the high desert between Yucca Valley and Joshua Tree, leasing some 2,600 acres from the Bureau of Land Management that included Giant Rock, a seven-story freestanding boulder. The family took up residence in rooms that a previous occupant, Frank Critzer, had blasted out of the rock's underside in the 1930s; Critzer had died there in 1942 after being blown to pieces with his own dynamite during an altercation with local deputies. Van Tassel wired the quarters for electricity and in time opened a restaurant, the Giant Rock Airport, and a dude ranch. He reportedly hosted small weekly meditation groups in the excavated room beneath the boulder, which he said were held in near-total electromagnetic quiet.

1952 initial channelings

Beginning in early 1952, Van Tassel allegedly received a series of psychic messages from a variety of extraterrestrial starship ("ventla") commanders. The first, received January 6, 1952, came from "Lutbunn, senior in command first wave, planet patrol, realms of Schare." Subsequent transmissions were attributed to Elcar, Clota, Totalmon, Latamarx, Noma, Leektow, Luu, Oblow, Kerrull, Locktopar, Molca, Clatu, Hulda, Lata, Singba, and others; one contact, "Ashtar, commandant quadra sector, patrol station Schare, all projections, all waves," would become a fixture of later channeling literature. On September 12, 1952, Van Tassel reportedly received an extended message from Ashtar warning that continued atomic experimentation risked destabilizing the solar system. Van Tassel reprinted many of the messages in I Rode a Flying Saucer! (1952), one of the first post-1947 contactee books. In early 1953 he began holding weekly Friday-night channeling sessions at Giant Rock. Scholar Catherine Wessinger has noted that the name "Ashtar" was likely derived from the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar, known variously as Ashtarte, Ashtar-Chemosh, and in the Hebrew Bible as Ashtoreth.

On August 24, 1953, Van Tassel reported that a being named Solganda roused him from his quarters at Giant Rock and escorted him aboard a hovering ship, where Solganda and three other crew members purportedly gave him a tour of the interior before returning him to the desert floor.

Council of Seven Lights transmissions

Van Tassel stated that the operation reaching him was being directed by the Council of Seven Lights, a governing body said to reside on the planet Shanchea, and that Ashtar served as a commanding officer reporting to this council. The transmissions expanded from single warnings into a running commentary on human affairs, reincarnation, the structure of matter, and alleged prior extraterrestrial interventions on Earth, with the stated aim of raising humanity's "vibratory attunement" so that earthlings would not threaten "the wise and peace-loving space people." Van Tassel compiled this material in Into This World and Out Again (1956) and The Council of Seven Lights (1958), and circulated it in the newsletter Proceedings of the College of Universal Wisdom from 1952 until his death, seeding the broader Ashtar Command channeling tradition later extended by Tuella and others.

Giant Rock Interplanetary Spacecraft Convention

In the spring of 1953, Van Tassel hosted the first of what would become the annual Giant Rock Interplanetary Spacecraft Convention, a gathering of contactees, speakers, and spectators that ran until 1977 and, at its peak, reportedly drew thousands of attendees. Guest speakers included figures such as George Adamski, Daniel Fry, Orfeo Angelucci, and George Hunt Williamson; in 1956 Van Tassel used radio and television appearances to introduce Howard Menger to a national audience. Ashtar and Council transmissions were read aloud at the convention, with Van Tassel reportedly moving into trance speech on the rostrum.

Integratron

In the mid-1950s, Van Tassel allegedly received a distinct set of technical communications said to contain the design specifications for the Integratron, a four-story domed wooden structure at Landers, California a few miles from Giant Rock. He reported that the plans, attributed to Ashtar and the Council and supplemented by channeled communications he said came from the spirit of Nikola Tesla, described a non-metallic resonant chamber intended to produce cellular rejuvenation, anti-gravity, and time-differential effects by drawing on the electromagnetic properties of Giant Rock itself. Van Tassel said that once complete the machine could rejuvenate as many as 10,000 persons per day — not returning their bodies to outward youth, but "recharging" the cells. By 1959 the four-story domed shell, 55 feet in diameter and built mostly of wood without nails, screws, iron, or steel, was in place.

During construction, Van Tassel reported that the Integratron also functioned as a time machine, with "strange images and television signals from other times" appearing inside, which he attributed to his claim that "the time reference is a third dimension in electronics." He funded the project for eighteen years through lectures, the annual convention, subscriptions to Proceedings, and donations raised via the Ministry of Universal Wisdom.

Press coverage and political activity

The contactee press and mainstream media gave Van Tassel considerable attention through the late 1950s. Life magazine reported that he was running for President of the United States in 1960 on a "straight space ticket" and was "busily collecting funds for rejuvenating machines designed by his Venusian pals," and that the cover of Proceedings had featured one of the notorious "H. O. Pictures" — saucer photographs later identified as fakes made with cocktail shakers and ping-pong balls by a New York attorney writing under the pseudonym "Henry Owen." The anti-contactee Civilian Saucer Intelligence of New York, while skeptical of his claims, described Van Tassel as "a handsome, broad-faced, fair-haired man... with a pleasant, deep voice and an easy-going manner of speech," adding that "it is impossible not to be struck at once by his evident 'sincerity'."

Later transmissions and Ashtar tradition

Through the 1960s, Van Tassel stated that the Council's messages increasingly addressed coming geological upheavals, a forthcoming "time of transition," and the eventual open arrival of the Ashtar Command fleet. His Ashtar material was subsequently taken up and extended by later channelers including Tuella, establishing a continuous Ashtar Command tradition within the contactee and New Age literatures.

Death and afterlife of the project

Van Tassel died of a heart attack at 3:30 a.m. on February 9, 1978, in Santa Ana, California. The Integratron was left with its interior mechanism unfinished, and the Giant Rock convention ended the same year. In 1979, unable to meet an estate tax bill, his widow Dorris sold the property to a San Diego real-estate developer who reportedly announced plans to convert the Integratron into a discotheque; Van Tassel's followers raised money to buy the site back in 1981, and in the late 1980s it was purchased by Emile Canning.

Posthumous channeled messages purportedly from Van Tassel began to appear within the wider Ashtar tradition: on September 24, 1984, Tuella (Thelma B. Turrell) reported that Ashtar introduced her to Van Tassel in the afterlife, and that he relayed that upon "returning here to 'home base'" he had been "taken into fellowship with the Great Masters of the Council of which I wrote."

Works

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References