Pillars of Fire, Holy Crosses and Flying Wheels
As there is a growing “mountain” UFO material [soon there’ll be a veritable “Everest”!], I’ve been very selective regarding craft type. Putting to one side the traditional discs and spheres, I’ve taken up where I left off with Ezekiel in atech_4. While it’s clear that his mysterious “visions” are alien craft, the Pillar of Fire in Exodus has proved more difficult to identify with certainty. In that article I wondered, as Velikovsky did, whether this was volcanic in origin, possibly the cataclysmic eruption of Thira. But supposing that this also had an E.T. explanation?
For centuries strange “rods” and “spindles” have been observed globally, and these accounts, beginning with Exodus, I feel, are some of the most intriguing. I’ve arranged them according to date, location and witnesses, if known:
| Date | Area | Witnessed by | Details |
| c.1450 BC | Red Sea | The Israelite exiles | The Lord guided them from the front by night in “a pillar of fire to give them light.” |
| 4 Nov. 1322 | Uxbridge,England | Unknown | A pale, intense and slow-moving fiery column the size of a small boat. From its front “a fervent red flame burst forth with great beams of light. Its speed increased...” |
| 1 Nov. 1461 | Arras, France | Unknown | A half-moon long rod-like object, “shape like a ship, from which fire was seen flowing.” |
| 22 Jan. 1694 | Montgomeryshire, Wales | Reported by John Evelyn, a diarist | “A fiery exhalation...a furlong broad” rose out of the sea burning straw, hay and barns. Grass tainted, killing cattle, and skin affected. |
| 9 Aug. 1762 | Lausanne & Sole, Switz., & Paris | M. de Rostan, a friend, and M. de Messier. | A spindle-like object traversing the Sun. Rostan, an amateur astronomer, observed it for a month. Sadly, his drawing, sent to the Royal Academy of Sciences, Paris, is no longer extant. |
I found three accounts of “holy crosses”, the last two from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:
| Date | Area | Witnessed by* | Details |
| 312 | Miluvian Bridge,nr.Rome | **Emp. Constantine the Great.* | He claimed to have been shown a cross on the Sun as a sign from Christ that he would triumph over Maxentius. |
| 776 | Not known. | Not known. | “A red cross appeared in the sky after sunset.” |
| 4 Jun.806 | Not known. | Not known. | “The sign of the...cross appeared in the Moon.” |
These accounts of mostly silent “flying wheels” [there were 11 between 1848 and 1910] I find the most interesting of all:
| Date | Area | Witnessed by | Details |
| C16th BC | Egypt | Phar.Thutmose*III* and army | Possibly the earliest record of a Close Encounter. Thutmose’s scribes noted “a circle of fire...coming from the sky...one rod long and one rod wide” and brighter than the Sun. It and later arrivals all had “a foul odour.” |
| c.595/4 BC | R.Chebar,*Iraq, and Jerusalem | Ezekiel | The craft had wings and spoked wheels within wheels with “rims...full of eyes.” [See atech_4.] For the full account see Ezekiel 1-10. |
| Nov. & Dec.1387 | Leics. & Northants. | Unknown | “A fire in the sky, like a burning and revolving wheel...emitting fire from above.” |
| 22 Mar. 1870 | Off N.W. African coast. | Capt. F.W. Banner and crew | “A semi-circle divided into four parts, and a central shaft...extending far outward & curving backward.” Emitted vivid shafts of light. |
| 15 May 1879 | Persian Gulf | S.S. Vulture | Two luminous rotating wheels, about 130 ft. across, seen above the water before diving. |
