Appropriately enough, in the week I spoke to Erik Davis, early July, the Stella Maris Gnostic Church left their base in Cartegena, Columbia and disappeared in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountain range. It is said they sought salvation from an alien spacecraft. By early October, nothing more had been heard of them. Discussion immediately turned to such matters ufological:

Heaven's Gate, although they didn't use the word Gnostic, were a totally Gnostic group - it amazes me how much the Gnostic and metaphysical mythology can sit alongside technology. Of course the UFO is the central object of the technological unconscious in the modern world, and the fact that the religions and cults that have grown up around UFOs have such an emphasis in many different ways - it's not just the idea that there's this transcendent technology from the cosmos that's going to save us and take us somewhere else, it's also the communication, the whole idea of channelling.