Reptilian aliens

Reptilians (also called reptoids,lizard people,reptiloids, saurians, Draconians) are purported reptilian humanoids that play a prominent role in fantasy, science fiction, ufology, and conspiracy theories. The idea of reptilians was popularised by David Icke, a conspiracy theorist who claims shape-shifting reptilian aliens control Earth by taking on human form and gaining political power to manipulate human societies. Icke has claimed on multiple occasions that many of the world leaders are, or are possessed by, so-called reptilians.

Michael Barkun, Professor of political science at Syracuse University, posits that the idea of a reptilian conspiracy originated in the fiction of Conan the Barbarian creator Robert E. Howard. The first appearance of "serpent men" in literature was in Howard's story, "The Shadow Kingdom", published in Weird Tales in August 1929. This story drew on Theosophical ideas of the "lost worlds" of Atlantis and Lemuria, particularly Helena Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine, with its reference to "'dragon-men' who once had a mighty civilization on a Lemurian continent". Howard's "serpent men" were described as humanoid with human bodies but snake heads, able to imitate real humans at will, who lived in hiding in underground passages, using their shapechanging and mind control abilities to infiltrate humanity.Clark Ashton Smith used Howard's "serpent men" in his stories, as well as themes from H. P. Lovecraft, and he, Howard and Lovecraft together laid the basis for the Cthulhu Mythos. In the 1940s, a non-fiction writer, Maurice Doreal, wrote a pamphlet entitled "Mysteries of the Gobi" which described a "serpent race" that had "bodies like man but...heads...like a great snake" and an ability to take true human form. These creatures also appeared in Doreal's poem, "The Emerald Tablets", in which he claimed the titular tablets were written by "Thoth, an Atlantean Priest king". Barkun asserts that "in all likelihood", Doreal's ideas came from "The Shadow Kingdom", and that in turn, "The Emerald Tablets" formed the basis for David Icke's book, Children of the Matrix.

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