Proceedings of the College of Universal Wisdom

History

The Proceedings of the College of Universal Wisdom was the newsletter of the College of Universal Wisdom, the teaching branch of the Ministry of Universal Wisdom, Inc., the organisation founded by the contactee George W. Van Tassel (1910 to 1978) at Yucca Valley, in the California desert near Giant Rock. Van Tassel edited and published it from 1953, and it carried the messages he said he received from space visitors, together with material on his desert projects. A masthead from 1977 records it as being in its twenty-fourth year of publication, which is consistent with a start in 1953.

Van Tassel was one of the central figures of the 1950s contactee movement. He leased the airstrip at Giant Rock, hosted the annual Giant Rock Interplanetary Spacecraft Convention from 1953, and built the domed structure he called the Integratron. The Ministry of Universal Wisdom was the body through which he organised his teaching, and the College of Universal Wisdom was its educational branch. The Proceedings was the printed channel for both.

The Proceedings belongs to the documentary record as one of the longest-running publications of the classic contactee era. Where many contactee newsletters lasted only a few issues, Van Tassel's ran for some twenty-five years, and it documents both the convention culture of the Mojave Desert and the move from saucer contact towards the energy and consciousness themes that the New Age movement later took up.

Van Tassel died in 1978. His widow continued the Proceedings briefly, with a further issue appearing in 1979 and a final number into 1980, after which it ceased. Documented examples include Volume 11, Number 7 (October to December 1977) and Volume 12, Number 1 (January to February 1980).