What is Clipeology ?
Clipeology is the search for possible UFO manifestations in the past. The term derives from "clipeus", the round shield of Roman warriors, and finds justification in the fact that the ancient Latin writers, such as Pliny the Elder, described certain strange celestial apparitions of the time as "clipei ardentes" (fiery shields).
The clipeological assumption is that these apparitions are comparable, in appearance and behavior to current UFOs.
The word clipeology is purely Italian: proposed, it seems, by the Milanese Umberto Corazzi in 1959, it has found diffusion in our country above all thanks to a magazine published (since 1964) by the Centro Studi Clipeologici of Turin and entitled, precisely, "Clypeus".
However, the term has not had success abroad, probably because our literature on the subject, given the lack of knowledge of the Italian language in the international arena, has remained practically ignored beyond our borders. This does not mean, of course, that the search for UFO references in the past has been neglected abroad. Far from it: there are valid foreign scholars, among whom we can mention, for example, the Englishman Raymond Drake and the Italians Gianni Settimo and Solas Boncompagni.
Clipeology is based on two assumptions:
- the ufo phenomenon is not exclusive to our time: it has its roots in history, up to the most remote eras;
- its manifestation through the centuries has remained documented, in the form of descriptions, allusions, references, in mythologies, in sacred texts, in the books of ancient authors, in medieval chronicles, in travel diaries, in logbooks, etc...
The purpose of clipeology is therefore to discover these presumed traces and to present them as such after having stripped them of the mythical, religious or legendary guise with which they have come down to us. Which, of course, often implies a very daring and inevitably subjective work of interpretation.
And right here clipeology meets its limit, which is precisely the impossibility of going beyond the threshold of personal opinion. Ultimately, all it can do is to present a series of passages enucleated from texts of various kinds and to suggest an interpretation in a UFO key. But he will never be able to prove beyond a doubt that such an interpretation is the right one.
The same passage can admit different and all equally legitimate interpretations. It is therefore inescapable to conclude that clipeology is essentially a "conjecture fair".
Furthermore, it is not at all clear what clipeology means by "ufo". In other words, it remains to be established whether his work has an exclusively historical function, that is, regardless of the problem of the nature of the UFO phenomenon, or whether it also has an explanatory theoretical intent, that is, it presumes to demonstrate the constant presence of extraterrestrials in history.
Conventionally, 1947 is indicated as the birth year of the UFO problem. In fact, that was only the year in which, following Kenneth Arnold's sighting on Mount Rainier, the problem became public knowledge.
But the UFOs had already been seen for some time, even if they were called by other names. During the Second World War they appeared on various theaters of operations and were called "Foo-Fighter" (burning fighters); in the summer of 1946 they "invaded" the skies of the Scandinavian countries, where they were christened "ghost rockets".
Naturally, we are still in the specific field of ufology here. Mysterious aircraft (whose origin has remained unknown) were observed over England and New Zealand in 1909; on Russia, Poland and again England in 1913; in South Africa in 1914. Further back still, between late 1896 and early 1897, what is now considered the first major wave of "ufo" sightings occurred in the United States: a bizarre type of flying craft, which was called "airship" appeared several times in the skies of many states of the Union. There were hundreds of sightings, cases of landings and even observations of "occupants". The phenomenon has never been explained. In 1878 a Texas farmer, John Martin, witnessed the passage of a dark flying object, with "impressive" speed, which he described, anticipating K. Arnold by 69 years, as having the shape of a "dish".
All this casuistry is still ufology. And it is for the simple reason that it has the same news features as the current one. All the sightings I have mentioned are in fact published in the newspapers of the respective eras, and can therefore be re-read as they were reported immediately after their occurrence, without the passage of time having been able to alter their details with the superimposition of legendary elements.
It is probably right here, in the type of documentation, that we have to identify the main discriminating factor between ufology and clipeology. The latter, in practice, begins where the availability of direct news reports ends. Interestingly, the aforementioned documentary discrimination is likely to translate into a tool for chronological separation. In fact, it can be seen that the characteristics of today's ufological phenomenology begin to be recognizable, without the need to interpret them as such, starting from a period that can be located, with a good approximation, around the middle of the last century.
