George Van Tassel claimed to be receiving messages from Ashtar, a divine being in charge of protecting Earth, beginning in the 1940s. Over the next few decades, the mythology of Ashtar Galactic Command grew out of Van Tassel's channeling and the broader UFO and contactee movements. Ashtar Command believes Earth is being helped by extraterrestrials and ascended masters to ascend to a higher dimension, and that channeling is the way to communicate with these beings. However, the movement has faced challenges of ridicule from mainstream sources. As interest in UFOs increases in popular culture, Ashtar Command and similar groups may see more growth and acceptance.

1. Ashtar Galactic Command
Timeline
 18th Century Emanuel Swedenborg claimed to be in psychic contact with
extra terrestrials
 1891 George Adamski is born
 March 12, 1910 George Van Tassel is Born
 1940’s Van Tassel Claims to be receiving channeled messages from Ashtar
 February 25, 1942 Battle of Los Angeles
 1946 George Adamski began his campaign of contact with extraterrestrials
 July 7, 1947 Roswell Incident
 1950’s The “Solar Government” is created by “Ashtar” under Van Tassel’s
Channeling
 1973 The Raelian Movement is founded by Claude Vorhilorn
 November 26, 1977 the Southern Television Broadcast Interruption
 1997 Heaven’s Gate ends in a mass suicide

2. FOUNDERS/GROUP HISTORY
Ashtar Galactic Command has a complicated history that is further
complicated by a broad range of similar UFO groups and movements. Ashtar
Command naturally evolved out of a motley crew of UFO believers and movements,
the most important of which was the Contactee movement and George Van Tassel.
Before arriving at Van Tassel however, the first contactee must be introduced.
Another George, George Adamski was arguably the earliest and most prolific UFO
contactees.
The Contactee movement began as early as the 18th century when Emanuel
Swedenborg claimed to have conversed with spirits from planets throughout the
solar system. This began a slow growing but steady evolution of the UFO movement
in general. George Adamski was one of the first to bring major attention to the
contactee movement after his initial claims of contact in 1946. Because of it’s timing
with the Roswell Incident and other distinct UFO sightings of the era, his bogus
claims became mainstream and his following grew. Out of the movements that
Adamski influenced arose George Van Tassel’s contact.
He claimed Contact With Lord Ashtar, a divine being in charge of the
protection of the planet earth and all its inhabitants. Over the course of the next two
decades the mythos behind Ashtar grew and the Solar Government slowly came into

3. being through his discussions with Ashtar. With instructions from a Venusian Alien,
Van Tassel began work on constructing a cellular rejuvenation device called the
Integratron. The Integratron became the core aspect of the Ashtar movement for
some time while the lore shifted and evolved along side other such new religious
movements as the Raelians and Heaven’s Gate Founders Applewhite and Nettles.
After Decades of construction on the Integratron and no working prototype
completed, Van Tassel’s movement diminished, until finally, on November 26 1977,
The Southern Television Broadcast Interruption happened. A message from Vrillon,
one of the leaders of the Ashtar Galactic Command interrupted a normal television
broadcast and in a 5 minute long broadcast warned the people of earth of
impending danger and how to avoid it. By getting rid of atomic weapons, Vrillon
says, Ashtar Command came to,
“Serve like midwives in the birthing of humanity from dense-physical to
physical-etheric bodies of light, capable of ascending into the fifth dimension
along with the Earth."
(Ashtar.galactic.to)
DOCTRINES/BELIEFS
Ashtar Command is comprised of a plethora of divergent UFO movement
beliefs, a core group of which is the lore behind the different species that are
members of the Interdimensional Federation of Free Worlds. Ashtar Command is

4. seen only as the Airborne Division of the “Great Brotherhood of Light”.
(http://www.ascension-research.org/gwb.html)
The Great Brotherhood of light is a group of Ascended Masters, being who
have transcended dense-physical bodies and ascended into physical-etheric bodies
that are closer to the divine. These Ascended Masters and their disciples work
together as part of the “Interplanetary Confederation” to maintain stability in our
solar system. These earthly ascended Masters are subservient to the greater Ashtar,
who is seen as a true Son of God, one of the non-fallen celestial beings.
Ashtar originally contacted George Van Tassel and began the direct earthly
contact that followers of the Ashtar Command Movement have said has never
diminished. There are plenty of followers of Ashtar who believe themselves to have
begun Ascended Mastership and claim to have travelled to various planets and been
a part of interplanetary delegations to the confederation.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxgCsp1OOKg)
Ashtar Command beliefs such as these arise out of several different new
religious movements of the 1930’s-80’s such as the Theosophic movement that the
Ascended Masters come from, and these groups were subsequently the result of
even older religious movements such as Aleister Crowley and the Knights Templar.
As such, Ashtar Command salvages and scavenges components of past and present
religious movements to place itself firmly betwixt and between all of the major UFO
and New Age spirituality movements.
Members of Ashtar Command believe in a multitude of extraterrestrial
beings, ranging from aliens from our solar system, such as Van Tassel’s Venusian, to

5. Interdimensional beings such as Ashtar and Vrillon, members of a higher
dimensional order, an order that spans all of creation.
RITUALS/PRACTICES
The basic Ritual/practice that brought about this specific UFO movement
was that of Channeling. The ritual Channeling of extraterrestrial entities became a
phenomenon in the early 20th century and persists to this day with a plethora of

6. channelers practicing their craft on places such as youtube. The Practice that began
Ashtar Command in particular and that is still practiced today is a ritual similar to a
séance or group meditation, however it is held outside in open air. Psychic signals
are sent out by the channelers in hopes of reaching an Ashtar Spaceship and
influencing it to come show itself for the members of the séance.
These group meditations are often done in the hills of the Midwest, such as
the fateful day that George Van Tassel had his first extraterrestrial encounter in the
Mojave Desert. Since then he continued to have his group meditations and created
the Giant Rock Spacecraft Convention, which he held yearly until his death in 1978.
LEADERSHIP
The Leadership of Ashtar command began with the initial contact with
Ashtar by George Van Tassel, however, the leadership quickly turned digital after
the secondary contact during the 1977 broadcast by Vrillon. Van Tassel did not
remain the sole contactee and leader of the movement simply because he had failed
to deliver on the Integratron and a year after the broadcast in 1978, he died. With
Van Tassel’s Death, much of the information about Ashtar Command could be found
on the newly created Internet. One of the most prominent conspiracies of the times,
the UFO conspiracy gained traction with new age groups, nerd culture and a special
kind of UFO researcher, the UFOlogist. These different interconnecting movements
have worked hand in hand for the last 40 years to create an intertwined
spiritualistic UFO movement known as Ashtar Galactic Command.

7. The organization within the movement’s mythology however is far more
entangled. Led by the Celestial Being Ashtar, Ashtar Command has several Ascended
Masters working towards the Ascension of humanity. Vrillon is one such emissary,
another being Yeshua, or Jesus Christ, who Van Tassel Claimed to have simply been
an emissary of Ashtar command, sent in an attempt to redeem human souls.
ISSUES/CHALLENGES
One of the biggest challenges that Ashtar Command has faced is
misinformation and anti-conspiracy dogmas. The Belief that extraterrestrial beings
have been in contact with humanity for centuries is a belief that is, and has been,
publically ridiculed and laughed out of the face of public media. As early as the
1940’s, people who came out with UFO stories or stories of contact or even
abductions were met with negative and harsh responses. This has led to the
continued dismissal of UFO accounts by the government and mainstream media.
It has been only recently that mainstream media has began to alter its view
of UFO culture. 2015 has shown a recent number of mainstream media reporting on
UFO news, this shift in the social view of UFOs has made itself known in popular
culture such as Hollywood and the video game industry. Hardly a month goes by
without a new UFO sighting coming out or a UFO themed video game releasing. The
challengers have slowly shifted to the other side of UFO movements from mocking
to reporting.

8. Because of this shift in the challenges to movements such as Ashtar Galactic
Command, their reception has gotten warmer and growth has begun to set in. As
more and more popular media outlets give attention to UFOs, Ashtar Command and
similar movements will continue to grow and evolve.

9. REFERENCES
 Helland, Christopher, "From Extraterrestrials To Ultraterrestrials: The Evolution
of the Concept of Ashtar" in Partridge, Christopher Hugh (2003), UFO Religions,
Routledge, Chapter 8 pp. 162–178
 Partridge, Christopher, "Understanding UFO religions and abduction
spiritualities" in Partridge, Christopher Hugh (2003), UFO Religions, Routledge
,Chapter 1 pp. 3–44
 Festinger, L., & Riecken, H. (1956). When prophecy fails,. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press.
 Morris, M. (1999). Angels & aliens: A journey west. New York: Picador USA.