[21][22][23] As one of the founding "fathers" of the modern religious ufologies,[24] Van Tassel also created arguably the most prominent UFO group established in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, although not as influential or well-known today.
[3] Van Tassel also interpreted the Christian Bible in terms of extraterrestrial intervention in the evolution of the human race, and claimed that Jesus was a being from space.
[26][27] Van Tassel's early purported messages from Ashtar contained a great deal of apocalyptic material, which focused on concerns regarding the development of the soon-to-be-tested hydrogen bomb.
[13][31] Van Tassel also claimed that Ashtar had provided specific messages that he was expected to pass on to the U.S. federal government regarding the potential negative impacts of the proposed upcoming bomb tests.
[34][35] Although his purported method of communication with extraterrestrial intelligences resembled what is commonly referred to as "channeling", Van Tassel claimed to have established a new form of telepathic communication with these "sources", utilizing a method which included both natural human abilities and the use of an allegedly advanced form of alien technology, rather than the more traditionally religious, non-technological, spiritual medium-based approach taken by many other early channelers of the era.
[2][30][39] By the mid-1950s, the concept of Ashtar and a galactic law enforcement agency preparing an imminent rescue of humanity had become well-established, and included various well-known, esoteric channelers of the era.
[40] However, as time and scientific knowledge progressed, the public failure of these predictions had an enormous negative impact on the expansion of the Ashtar Command movement due to the lack of a central authority that could undertake damage control.
[30] The Ashtar Command evolved into a movement that had a central authority for several decades up to the mid-1990s, and has been described by Robert P. Flaherty as "the common property of a diffuse New Age Spiritualist milieu".
Grunschloss maintains that most of the Ashtar millenarian concepts involve a transformation of human beings, via these technologies, who will then return to the planet Earth to enjoy a golden millennium.
[44] In 1971, a British radio talk show devoted to UFOs received a strange call-in claiming to originate from outer space, which some of the guests believed to be genuine.
[46] Yvonne Cole, who claimed to be channeling Ashtar messages from 1986, predicted the destruction of all Earth civilizations and the arrival on the planet of various alien cultures in 1994.
[29][47] Despite these failures, during the 1980s a number of individuals began to claim contact with the Ashtar Command through channeling, and various small groups were formed to receive and disseminate the messages.
It was claimed that in order to participate, a person's vibrations were raised through an eight step contemplative procedure; and that the Pioneer Voyage would occur during the period of a devotee's meditative state and would later be revealed to the individual in some form of conscious recall.
This eventually evoked "memory recall" from a core group of Ashtar Command members meeting in Australia who began providing accounts of their "time aboard the ships".
[53] By the mid-1990s (and continuing up to the present) several of these channeling groups began to utilize the Internet in order to promulgate their beliefs and to attempt to unify the movement by establishing a single "authoritative" source for all Ashtar messages.
[47] Individual channelers espousing messages which differed and continued to focus on themes such as the destruction of Earth, conspiracies, extraterrestrial mass evacuations and general fear-mongering were declared invalid.
It was claimed that these channelers had been deceived by negative space beings who had rebelled from the Ashtar Command, made alliances with similar others, and begun operating on the "lower planes closest to Earth".
[56] The new framework claimed that the millions of spaceships believed to be constantly in the vicinity of Earth would never interfere on the planet's surface unless there was a serious problem such as a third world war or an "astrophysical catastrophe".
[57][58] Helland points out the failure of the July 1952 prediction channeled through Van Tassel that life on Earth will be destroyed "when they explode the hydrogen atom" because in November 1952 the first H-bomb was detonated with no such effect.
The main shifts in content seem due to failed prophecy, which has moved the emphasis from a physical space fleet averting doom, to the more theosophical concept of an Ascended Master aiding spiritual advancement.