I was once watching a taped episode of “Roswell”—that science-fiction show where several kids living in modern day Roswell, New Mexico were really aliens and had to figure out how to deal with that, as well as with being in high school—and during the opening credits, when the name of the show fades in above a scene of the desert, I suddenly had the oddest feeling that it meant something.Something more than just the name of the infamous town in the South West where supposedly a chance UFO crashed way back in the 40’s and people have been arguing ever since about a. whether it really happened b. whether it’s some sort of government conspiracy and c. what it all means, anyway. I suddenly had the oddest feeling that it somehow related to contact with the Otherworld and to the Craft.

Snatching up the remote, I paused the show at that moment and went to go get one of my baby name books (always good for finding names for characters when you’re a writer) and soon discovered that the name “Roswell” is actually Old English for “field of roses.” The minute I read that, the odd feeling turned into an overwhelming “yes!” sensation and I knew then that it was no coincidence that this particular “UFO crash” had happened at Roswell. I knew that it had happened for a reason and that this reason was both symbolic and also related in some fashion with the forces at work in that region, in particular the ley lines that exist in America and the power nodes that connect them, the currents that flow through and empower this land.

Of course, the concept of a “field of roses” has appeared before in relation to the past and to the Craft. Carlo Ginzburg wrote about the Benandanti in his books, a folk who went in spirit four times during the year to battle for the fertility of the land, once “over the wheat and all the other grains, another time over the livestock, and at other times over the vineyard.”2 There, they “fought, played, leaped about, and rode various animals, and did different things amongst themselves; and…the women beat the men who were with them with sorghum stalks, while the men had only bunches of fennel.”1 The place they went to they sometimes called the Field of Josafat and it was said to be the “meadow of the dead overflowing with roses.”3

It seems a common theme and idea that roses are linked to the Craft. Roses of the past were pink rather than red—much like the wild rose which remains today—and had only five petals. Thus, they symbolized the five-pointed star, the Four Quarters plus the center. Earth, air, fire, water, and spirit. Roses are also ancient symbols of love and of sacrifice; roses were special to Venus and red roses represented the fallen blood of Adonis. Roses also symbolize both life and death and the Rose of the Winds is drawn as a circle enclosing a double cross, thus displaying eight directions. While, in Rosicrucian belief, the rose placed in the center of the cross becomes the unity between the four elements.

Years ago, oddly enough, we had once asked the Goddess about the incident at Roswell. We were discussing the faery at the time and how they relate to us, the witches. The Goddess seemed both proud and sad at the same time when She spoke about the incident, and there was this feeling that it had involved a sacrifice of some sort on the behalf of the faeries. (Faeries being the same kind of being as the “aliens” that people see today, just under another guise.) She gave the impression that in Roswell there had been a reaching out in some way, a testing of the waters, so to speak, about whether people were really ready to deal with them.

A close reading of the Whitley Streiber book about the incident at Roswell, “Majestic,” gives much the same impression. Definitely, it seems that there was a reaching out at that time from the Otherworld, from beyond the veil, and the people of the day—mostly government and military folks—had been found wanting. Perhaps, mostly of having open minds?

Instead of an alien crash, what really happened back on that fateful day and the days immediately afterward, was more of an attempt at a kind of spiritual awakening and connection to other planes of existence (like most “alien abduction” experiences, despite the media portrayal of them and UFO fanatics sometimes paranoid thoughts of rectal probes, wars in space between “greys” and “Nordics,” human-alien hybrid experiments, organ harvesting, etc, you take your pick). Unfortunately, the people of the day simply couldn’t handle it and so it transformed itself into something that they could understand: aliens and spaceships and invasion scenarios and super-advanced technology.

Be that as it may, the fact that Roswell means “field of roses,” makes it seem likely that the whole experience of what happened there had more to do with sacrifice and the Otherworld and making those kinds of connections. It was intended as a flowering of sorts, and so it had much more to do with symbolism than in some actual spaceship crashing out there in the desert and the government ending up with some alien bodies to autopsy (or not).

According to Whitley Streiber’s book, some spiritual/metaphysical experience did seem to be going on at the time with those involved, as of a door being partially opened, and it was only closed again when it was realized that they couldn’t deal with it, that they weren’t ready for it. Or, maybe, it was only intended to plant the seed for some eventual and hopeful future. One where connection with the Otherworld and with those called the faery/aliens could happen and not have people freak out.

Shortly after this, back in the 50’s, all those movies started coming out with bad and evil aliens starring in them, which was probably the inevitable knee-jerk reaction to what happened in Roswell and all the UFO sightings which happened around that time. People just weren’t ready to deal. However, by the 60’s and 70’s, the science fiction movies and television shows that began to be released had more to do with nice aliens than bad ones, or aliens at the very least who had very human impulses and emotions and could end up being either friends or enemies. ET comes to mind, and Star Trek, Star Wars, and Enemy Mine, just to name a few. Aliens were no longer just feared because they were alien.

This transformation of perception seems pretty typical. When UFO’s first appeared back in the 40’s, they seemed more cigar-shaped to those who spotted them. Then someone claimed that they looked more like plates or saucers in an article and the term “flying saucer” was born and rapidly caught on. The UFO’s seen after this article appeared then tended more towards this shape instead. Expectation had altered the experience. Or, in other words, the things and beings of the Otherworld had changed to match how people thought they should see them, or how they could perceive them.

Faery or alien or angel…the shape that those of the Otherworld take on changes and changes again. William Butler Yeats found this out when he went around the Irish countryside collecting tales about faeries and ghosts in order to publish them before they were lost forever. One old woman he talked to said that the faery could be either tall or small and that it was all in the eye of the beholder as to how they appeared. Whitley Streiber also mentions how those alien beings he came into contact with could transform to match or deliberately contradict what he was thinking about them, mostly in order to sooth his fears or to prove a point or make a statement that needed making.

So when those faeries or “aliens” appeared to the government and the military people back in the 40’s, they were perceived through that particular lens—the lens of men who had just come through World War II and were terrified and paranoid of Communism and had acquired, or were in the process of acquiring, the Cold War mentality. They were afraid of the new and different and so saw what happened as a threat and responded to it as a threat. They weren’t ready or able to handle a spiritual transformation or revelation, an opening of the mind and heart and soul which is needed to forge a bridge to Other. Not then, and probably not now either.

Except that times have changed and are still changing; even if the government remains behind the times and isn’t ready to believe, there are many who are. Roswell has been a hotspot for years now, drawing in folks from all over the world, folks seeking to have some sort of experience or vision. Of course, many of them probably don’t know what they are really asking or looking for, but the first step is that they are looking…and might, just might, one day find something else looking back.

The television show Roswell was yet another link in the chain, another step along the road towards acceptance. I doubt that it’s a coincidence that the aliens in the program, along with their human friends, were the “good guys” and that the government officials were seen primarily as being the “bad guys.” Or that the alien kids and humans were portrayed as forming close relationships and working to both protect each other and to discover their origin. Or that they could even fall in love with each other.

If this was some sort of experiment on the part of the faeries, then there are probably multiple meanings to it and it was never just any one thing. But, to be sure, something important happened out in the desert of Roswell, New Mexico back in the late 40’s. Something that people are still investigating and fixated on and arguing about and going on pilgrimages for today, about sixty years later. Of all the so-called UFO experiences, it is the one which is most remembered and the one that seems to have had lasting repercussions on the human race.

Obviously, it was a pivot point of some kind. And finding out the origin of the name, what it means, only lends credence to that concept—that of the ancient and Otherworldly field of roses, the field of the dead, where spiritual battles are fought that will have a powerful and lasting impact upon the world of men. Where flowers spring up from sacrifice. Where there was an attempt to make a connection that still has its echoes today. A field of roses in the middle of the desert, a flowering where none should be—how symbolic is that?