Everyone from ancient Hindus to modern-day schizos believes in shape-shifting reptilians who influence humankind. What is going on?

Why is it that so many fringe-type people end up believing in the existence of reptilian creatures who rule over humanity?

It’s an exceedingly common belief—as most recently evidenced by the “crazy plane lady” meme, in which many internet commenters believed Tiffany Gomas had glimpsed a shape-shifting reptilian while aboard an American Airlines flight—and was most significantly popularized by author David Icke in the 90s in his book The Biggest Secret. His allegations that a certain subset of our political and financial elite are actually lizard people masquerading as human beings has remained popular in fringe circles, though of course they have been met with derision by the mainstream media and the general populace. 

Icke has been labeled a crazy person, a charlatan, and most damningly, an anti-Semite. His critics have said that his theory that a reptilian menace has its hands around the throat of human institutions is clearly a thinly veiled allegory for the type of anti-Semitism espoused by texts such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which submits that a small Jewish cabal has complete control over the whole media apparatus and all political institutions. For his part, Icke has strongly denied any anti-Semitism in his models, stating that he’s not speaking allegorically; instead, he’s talking about literal lizard people.

I understand why even open-minded people are tempted to dismiss Icke, despite the tremendous breadth of the research in his books. Sometimes it seems that there’s not a conspiracy that Icke isn’t ready to work into his model of the how the world works. For example, take Icke’s claim that the moon is hollow. He states that he arrived at that belief upon having "the overwhelming feeling out of nowhere that the moon was not real” while working at his computer one day, suddenly realizing that the moon was a hollow, artificial satellite. It would seem that a driving force behind Icke’s many of Icke’s beliefs is a concept considered in the West to be murky, to say the least: intuition.

That’s not to say that we know that the moon isn’t hollow; when NASA deliberately crashed part of the Apollo 12 lunar module onto the moon’s surface, they found it rang “like a bell” for almost an hour, leading some scientists to conclude that it was in fact hollow. And in 1970, two Soviet scientists, Michael Vasin and Alexander Shcherbakov, cited elements on the surface of the moon which are exceedingly rare in nature, such as Uranium-236 and Neptunium-237, to suggest that the moon was a spaceship created by unknown beings.

Intuition can be a mysterious thing. But in the world we live in, intuition isn’t enough to convince anyone of anything. What is needed instead is evidence, so I’ve gathered one of the more comprehensive compendiums of evidence on the internet that reptilian people are not only real, but have played a direct role in influencing human civilization.

Psychedelic Visions

I’ve never personally smoked dimethyltryptamine, a psychedelic chemical lauded for its revelatory and mystifying effects by figures as diverse as contemporary writer Tao Lin, esoteric rapper Jay Electronica, and podcaster Joe Rogan, who recently brought DMT to mainstream discourse like no one else could.

Though it was first synthesized in 1931, dimethyltryptamine (DMT) is by no means a new compound. Not only has it been utilized by Amazonian peoples for at least many thousands of years in their psychedelic brew ayahuasca, but it’s also naturally found in the human body. Many believe that the tryptamine in DMT is produced by our lungs or aggregated by the pineal gland, a part of the brain which various spiritual traditions have associated with the “third eye” and which Rene Descartes famously postulated was the “seat of the soul.” 

One of the most common DMT experiences is being met by some exterior entities. The DMT-taking individual can encounter beings such as “machine elves,” “insects,” and—you guessed it—“reptilians.” We have reports of these reptilian creatures in the DMT-state from the work of Rick Strassman, a scientist who reintroduced the world to psychedelic research after the massive governmental overreach of the Controlled Substances Act of the 1960s.

Strassman (who’s contributed to Countere in the past), spent five years in the 90s administering DMT to 50 volunteers. He published his research in DMT: The Spirit Molecule, a book now considered essential for those interested in psychedelics. Although much of the text elucidates experiences that were fantastical, healing, divine, and rife with all kinds of weirdness, there were also a few reports of what might at times be called “bad trips.” A volunteer named Ken recounted his experience: 

There were two crocodiles. On my chest. Crushing me, raping me anally. I didn’t know if I would survive. At first I thought I was dreaming, having a nightmare. Then I realized it was really happening…it was awful. It’s the most scared I’ve ever been in my life. I wanted to ask to hold your hands, but I was pinned so firmly I couldn’t move, and I couldn’t speak. Jesus!

Ken went on to say “I haven’t the slightest idea [why I was being attacked]. It was as if I were being punished.” Ken’s horrifying experience, to me, feels reminiscent of the notion of a reptilian race of beings that derive pleasure from the suffering of humanity and who enjoy dominating and having power over us.

Terence Mckenna, an ethnobotanist and philosopher, as well as the premier psychedelic advocate of the 90s, also related a reptilian-seeped psychedelic experience. While under the influence of LSD, he turned on a badly wired heater that made a strange sound that catalyzed his entrance into “Lizard Land”:

I entered into this completely coherent thing, which lasted for hours, about this world inhabited by these intelligent reptilian beings, and we went through their art, their history, their theories of jewelry making, their philosophy, their polity, their science, their religion, their fashion, and it was like endless, endless stuff about this very specific reptilian world.

McKenna speculated that the imagination might be simply “hyper-dimensional perception” and that under the psychedelic trance we are actually seeing “worlds and places that truly exist somewhere scattered through the galaxy like grains of sand.” It’s interesting to me to consider that instead of finding the portal to another dimension, the place that Mckenna transported to may have instead been the Earth itself many millions of years ago, when the primary intelligent inhabitants were reptilian in nature. 

That these reptilian creatures are regularly interacted within the psychedelic realm could cause one to consider the possibility there might be more to their existence than the imaginings of humans with a tenuous grasp on reality. For many, the notion that what people experience on DMT could possibly be representative of something “real” or even “realer than real” will be a leap too great. For those who feel that way, I recommend perhaps smoking DMT or reading Supernatural: Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind, a book by writer Graham Hancock that explores the role psychedelics seem to have played in the explosion of human culture in the Stone Age some tens of thousands of years ago.

Nāgas

A variety of cultures all around the world venerate serpent deities, and have for many millennia. The Nāgas for example, are a common reference that originate from Ancient India and are well-known in Hindusim, Buddhism, and Jainism. The Nāgas are commonly reported to live underground, being connected to the underworld Patala, the lowest dimension of which is called Nagaloka, or “the region of the Nāgas.” Often they are depicted as humans above the waist and snakes below the waist.

Rituals devoted to the Nāgas have been taking place in South Asia for at least 2000 years. The Nāgas are often reported to have the ability to take the shape of human beings, lending potential to the notion that a portion of our leadership are reptilians in disguise. It’s striking that the belief of reptilian shape-shifters that live underground, known in our time as the conspiracy of “Vril Lizards,” has endured for thousands of years, far longer than extant political ideologies such as communism or capitalism.

Lizard Man Sightings

In 1988, the sighting of a supposed lizard man in Bishopville, South Carolina gripped the nation. A 17-year-old, Christopher Davis, described the reptile as “green, wetlike, about 7 feet (2.1 m) tall and had three fingers, red eyes, skin like a lizard, snakelike scales.” He was subsequently given a polygraph test at a local police station, which he passed (not that polygraph tests should be relied upon).

Today, the Bishopville Cotton museum maintains an exhibit dedicated to the “Lizard Man of Scape Ore Swamp,” and claims to have documented sightings of it the way back to Native American times. While Davis passed away in 2009, the area’s lizard man remains a hot topic to this day.

Ex-CIA Officer Comes Clean

John Ramirez is a retired officer with 25 years of CIA experience under his belt, during which he attained a high-grade GS-15 security clearance. In a recent interview with YouTuber Holly Wood, he publicly stated his belief that non-human intelligent beings, such as reptilians, exist alongside us on Earth, and that these beings have influenced the course of human society and civilization. He says that many of these beings are here to help humanity, but conflicts among them have led to different agendas. He mentioned Prometheus as an example of a non-human being bringing fire to humans against the wishes of other “gods.”

Ramirez believes that these entities are involved in the highest levels of society and governmental structures. He recounted a peculiar experience of his while working for the CIA: one night, he encountered a being he described as “reptilian.” He fought with it and had physical claw marks and injuries the following morning. He also remembers seeing a green shroud with sparkles in his bedroom that night, which made him feel safe and protected. Ramirez clarifies that when referring to reptilians, he does not mean actual lizards, but rather individuals with reptilian ancestry who may appear human. To learn more about them, he suggests “looking back at ancient myths and legends as lost human history.”

Reptilian Culture Heroes

There are many ancient cultures which believe that a reptilian played a primary role in founding their civilization. Here are just a few.

Quetzalcoatl

Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent, is known by a variety of names in Mesoamerican cultures. His legend involves a serpent being approaching from across the sea to deliver advanced technological knowledge to the populace. The fact that Quetzalcoatl has a feather seems to imply that in addition to walking among us on Earth, the creature has dominion of the sky—suggesting that reptilians, or at least some of them, could be extraterrestrial in nature. 

Cecrops I

The first king of Athens, Cecrops, was mythologized as being part-serpent, part-man. He was credited for introducing the first elements of “civilized life” to the Athenians, such as marriage, Zeus-worship, and banning the sacrifice of living beings.

Fuxi

Fuxi was the first mythical emperor of China and was “a divine being with a serpent’s body.” In Chinese mythologies, he is credited for creating human beings and music, as well as the Cangjie writing system.

Sobek 

Sobek was an ancient Egyptian deity with the body of a man and the head of a crocodile. He was considered to have a central role in creation as a manifestation of the sun-god Ra.

The Jinn

In Islam, humans are not the only intelligent creation of Allah, or even necessarily the first to inhabit Earth. According to Arabian lore, mankind was preceded by a variety of other beings, such as the Binn and the Hinn, of which little is known.

In the Quran, the only other intelligent creation with free will given any focus are the Jinn. The Jinn seem to live in a sort of parallel world to humanity, but often involve themselves in human affairs. The Prophet is believed to have been sent as a Messenger to both mankind and the Jinn. Just like humans, the Jinn have the option to embrace the commandments of Allah, to worship Him, and live righteously. 

The Jinn are believed to possess “subtle bodies” capable of shapeshifting, and as such take many different forms. They are often described as favoring the form of a snake. Unfortunately, we can’t be sure that the Jinn are the mythical reptilians, but—if they are—the fact that the Jinn are considered to not be entirely of this dimension would bolster Icke’s claim that lizard people come to us from the “fourth dimension.”

Credo Mutwa

Credo Mutwa, a Zulu sangoma—a practitioner of traditional healing closely related to what Westerners call a shaman—was one of David Icke’s foremost sources on all things African. Mutwa was a proponent of the theory that the horrors plaguing Africa were of an extra-human nature. Namely, he spoke of the Chitauli, a mainstay of Zulu legend and an advanced race of reptilian beings who fed off the fear and bloodshed of a frightened and sinful humanity.

Mutwa relayed a Zulu legend that gives further clues about the Chitauli and their nature in his book Africa’s Hidden History, in a narrative which he claims can be found “everywhere in Africa,” in “shamanic secret societies and other places that our knowledge and wisdom are still preserved”:

Originally, the Earth was covered by a very thick blanket of fog or mist…the world was thickly covered with great forests, great jungles, and people lived in peace on Earth at that time. 

…It is said, however, that when the Chitauli came to Earth, they arrived in terrible vessels which flew through the air…

And the Chitauli told human beings…that they were great gods from the sky and that from now on they would receive a number of great gifts...

[They were] very tall, with a long tail, and with terrible burning eyes, some of them had two eyes-yellow, bright eyes-some had three eyes, the red, round eye being in the center of their forehead.

These creatures then took away the great powers that human beings had: the power of speaking through the mind…of moving objects with their mind…of seeing into the future and into their past…the power to travel, spiritually, to different worlds. 

The Chitauli did something which has never been done before: they gave human beings people to rule over them, and they said, “These are your kings, these are your chiefs. They have our blood in them… you must listen to these people…if you don’t, we are going punish you very terribly.” 

Now, the Chitauli, further, removed the sacred rain-bringing mist from the sky…

You see, originally, human beings had believed that God was underground, that she was a very great mother who dwelt under the Earth…

But when the Chitauli turned humans’ eyes towards the sky, people started believing, now, that God is in the sky and that those who die from this Earth don’t go underground, but go up into the sky.

Alien Abduction

Along with Grays and Nordic aliens, reports of abductions by reptilian humanoids are among the more common over the last half-century. Herbert Schrimer, a Nebraskan police officer, reported being abducted in 1967 and being brought into an alien spacecraft in which he encountered a being wearing an emblem of a “winged serpent.” Niara Isley, a former U.S. Air Force radar tracking operator, wrote in her book Facing the Shadow, Embracing the Light about being abducted on a number of occasions over a period of months in 1980 and forced into slavery and sexually assaulted on a joint Gray-human-reptilian secret base on the moon. Here she is speaking about her experience at a recent convention in Colorado.

Conclusion

A part of the reason that science seems to have so much trouble with fringe and “paranormal” phenomena is that this stuff, by its very nature, is impervious to data-driven empiricism. Skeptics then make the assumption that all such reports must be fraudulent instead of exploring the possibility that the “rational” mode in which modern scientists operate is insufficient for grasping the full mysteries of the universe. 

Where there’s smoke, there may very well be a great flame. It’s interesting to note just how often the concept of reptilian humanoids turns up in our history and stories: beginning with the myths of our ancient civilizations; continuing in the modern era with “The Shadow Kingdom” by Robert E. Howard, a 1929 pulp fiction tale in which ancient pre-human Serpent Men rule and influence humanity; painstakingly researched by David Icke in the 90s; and ever-relevant in the present moment. Just look at the millions upon millions of views on TikTok for supposed proof that Joe Biden is a reptile in disguise.

That a lot of people believe a thing doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s true but, in my experience, a lot of people believing the same thing often speaks to a core of truth that people intuitively recognize. In the same way, global references to serpent beings should be investigated as potentially representative of some sort of truth that we can feel, even if we can’t yet confirm it as empirical fact.

It could just be that the characterization of elites as reptilian is just a symbolic association we form about people who behave in ways that seem to us cold-blooded and driven by ancient parts of the mind that are obsessed with ritual and aggression. Or there could be actual reptilian humanoids that walk among, hide beneath, and fly above us.

The degree to which these possible reptilians might influence events in the human domain is not easily known. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do everything in our power to investigate the ways unseen forces have power over us, and to keep our minds open to the fact that—symbolically, spiritually, or literally—reptilians do in fact walk among us.

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