Pleiades is an open star cluster in the constellation Taurus, 400 light-years from Earth. That’s far enough away that just seven of the stars can be seen without a telescope. Perhaps because seven has long been thought of as a lucky number in our culture, the star system has been pegged as the alleged home of a group of multi-dimensional, uber-evolved, benevolent beings that make contact with a very limited number of Earthlings.

The assertion that aliens and less than half a dozen humans are telepathically communicating on how to improve mankind brings to mind Christopher Hitchens observation that, “What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”

But that would make for a two-paragraph blog post, so let’s branch beyond Hitchens’ reasonable declaration and find other points against the idea. A major one is that the Pleiades system is only 150 million years old. When Earth was that age, it was still being regularly bombarded and shaped by asteroid impacts. According to Scientific American, oxygen would not make its Earthly debut for another two billion years. Further, if the history of the universe were consolidated into a one-year calendar, humans would not have appeared until late on Dec. 31.

So if there is a populated Pleiades planet, its inhabitants would had to have evolved exponentially quicker than us to be even single-celled amoebas at this point, much less be capable of inter-solar system travel and possessing vast mind control powers.

And for being this advanced, they have supremely limited communication skills, as evidenced by their having reached only four people. In these cosmic missives, they reveal that they are concerned about our planet and our future and wish to help us ascend to another dimension.

Beyond that, there’s not a lot of constancy. Depending on who the Pleiadians are sending messages to, the ideas change. For instance, they are variously described as descending from the alien species Lyrans,  having coexisted with the Lyrans, or being synonymous with them. With regard to their connection to Earthlings, they are either ancestors of whites, Native Americans, or none of us. The extent of their travel can be either switching between the third and the ninth dimensions, residing permanently in the fifth dimension, or living in dimensions whose only specificity is that they are higher and mightier than what we can access – although, per the narrative, they are here to change that.

There are also contradictory reports as to their appearance. In some tales, Pleiadians are humanoids, albeit better looking versions of us. They are slender, with their women folk tending to be curvaceous. These descriptions, along with their vast intelligence, accomplishments, altruism, and pioneering spirit, represent an idealized version of humanity.

This often means Aryan features, although for those that prefer the mystical romanticized version of Native Americans, there are the aforementioned assertions that tribe members are descended from the aliens. A modified version has the Native Americans not being related to the Pleiadains, but continuing their teachings. This is the script favored by Lia Shapiro, who informs us that indigenous North American legends about Pleiadians have been encoded and kept secret, although she knows all about them, despite her being neither Native American nor Pleiadian.

Today’s aliens are only extremely distant cousins of tribe members, so much so that the former are portrayed as lacking pigmentation, possessing little to no hair, and having skeletons that are largely cartilage. Their brains have large frontal lobes and this provides a possible explanation for Pleiadians’ sense of intuition and their adeptness at multidimensional communication.

Unusual for extra-planetary visitors, some of these space tourists reveal their  personal names. This includes Semjase, a 330-year old expert in robotics, space travel, teleportation, and intergalactic linguistics. Depending on the channeler, Semjase and the other Pleiadians are said to be connected to Atlantis, Lemuria, or various New Age healing methods, particularly crystals, magic energy, and the unblocking of chi. They are also responsible for bringing dolphins to Earth, at least that’s what the ghost of JFK told channeler Barry Martin, who claims that the former president has assumed marine mammal form and communicates with him telepathically.  

It is noteworthy that Pleiadians brought us an esthetically pleasing, intelligent creature with a reputation for friendliness. None of the channelers have reported that the Pleiadians are the avenue which bestowed Earth with mosquitoes, cobras, or the stars of Monsters Inside Me. This is consistent with the mantle of idealism and benevolence that believers wrap Pleiadians in.  

Those believers include Barbara Marciniak, whom the aliens told they share a common ancestor with humans, and that Pleiadians came from another universe to seed various planets in ours. The Pleiadians appeared before we humans did, and ascended to the next evolutionary stage, Akashic plane, or some such locale. While the Pleiadians have been around for hundreds of millions of years, we current Earthlings have the great fortune of living during the precise time that our interplanetary visitors have reached out to our fellow human Marciniak. And she is ready to guide us through our ascendancy to the next stage of existence.

If we reach high enough, may be able to do what the Pleiadians do. This includes traveling in time and to higher dimensions, where they contact beings that inhabit those realms. They are also capable of speed of light tricks to get around any annoying physics issues. This really comes in handy because they are known to bandy about in 10⁴⁹ universes.

Like Young Earth Creationists, Pleiadian advocates believe in an unseen, benevolent higher power who communicates silently with humans. Both groups also ignore scientific evidence for the age of the universe. But while YECs think that starlight from hundreds of millions of light years away arrived here in 6,000 years, Pleiadian believers think the universe is much older than the cosmic background radiation and the amount of hydrogen in the universe indicates. And while Marciniak and her ilk think the universe will collapse, they also hold that it will immediately rebound to form another one, presumably with more shiny happy people.   

Another one of the four humans the Pleiadians have the means and desire to contact is Billy Meier, who claims to have been communicating with them since 1975. Unlike Marciniak, Shapiro, and Martin, Meier writes little if anything about what the Pleiadians tell him, but he has photos of alleged encounters. However, investigator Karl Korff has shown these to be hoaxes, and rather lazy ones at that. The photos came from magazines, catalogues, books, TV screen shots, etc. Meier also claims to possess a piece of alien metal, but has declined to offer it for examination.  

Because his “proof” is mostly photographs, he doesn’t mess with the obtuse indecipherable messages that Marciniak, Shapiro, and Martin deliver. Here’s an example from each. Marciniak: “If you can clear people of their personal information, they can go cosmic.” Shapiro: “One can come awake and realize the divine nature of who we are.” Martin:  “Aliens came to Earth with a sort of engineering animal to begin breeding softer, gentler creatures.”

The Pleiadians are 400 light years away and how they journey to Earth in far less than 400 years is not among the knowledge they are showering on their Earthly conduits. What they are letting them know, per Shapiro, is that they “bring wisdom and their purpose is to enlighten you.” They do this not by telling us themselves but through books and music that Shaprio sells. The music, she notes, is meant “to raise your frequency and vibration closer to the light created by a Pleiadian.”

Shaprio runs the pleiadians.net website, not to be confused with pleiadains.com, which is Marciniak’s domain. On that website, Marciniak writes that the Pleiadians are “here to assist humanity with the process of spiritual transformation in the years leading up to December 2012.” This was presumably to counter the Mayan apocalypse. That this is still on the front page shows that what Marciniak has in interstellar telepathic communication skills she lacks in website maintenance abilities.

Other than Meier, whose collection has been shown to be phony, the channelers give us nothing falsifiable. Nor is there affirming evidence of their extraordinary claims, nor proof of these experiences, nor an explication of the mechanisms behind telepathy and faster-than-warp speed travel. It would be within the capabilities of Pleiadians to explain how they have accomplished these supremely advanced scientific achievements. But there is none of that among their cosmic communiques. Instead, Marciniak offers digital recordings, books, videos, speaking schedules, and a way to make contact – with Marciniak, not with the Pleiadians.