A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

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mediums as well as students of Theosophy for years prior to the foundation of their church. 177 Bryan compared the Ballards to the Fox sisters, calling the Great I Am a “Streamlined” Spiritualism. But in this latter-day happening which assertedly occurred in an equally unpretentious house, although not considered “haunted,” this ancient and primitive belief in the supernormal has taken wings on a flight of fancy far beyond that of the humble happenings at the cottage home of the little Fox sisters. For this later happening deals not with spirit “raps” and “knocks,” but with distinctly more modern and streamlined methods of communicating with the other side of life. In short, instead of having ordinary “spirit guides” and commonplace “ghosts” of departed relatives giving the usual type of spirit messages, we now have, reportedly, great and mighty “Ascended Masters” speaking audibly over a dazzling “Light and Sound Ray!” 178 The Ballards went beyond the spiritual telegraph and Pelley’s “mental radio,” utilizing a device that suggests nothing so much as the then-emerging technology of television. The Ballards, like Pelley before them, combined the two key nineteenth century sources of Spiritualism and Theosophy. Guy Ballard was also apparently familiar with Mesmerism. Bryan described him as making passes over his audiences before leading them in “decrees,” which were basically affirmations intended to create openness toward the guiding power of the Great I Am presence. 179 In 1930, Guy W. Ballard, a.k.a. Godfre Ray King and Ascended Master Daddy Ballard, was ostensibly investigating reports about the presence of a group of Divine Men known as the Brotherhood of Mt. Shasta. While engaged in this investigation Ballard came across a fellow hiker who revealed himself as the Comte de St. Germain, an ascended Master who Blavatsky had claimed as the greatest Oriental adept in Europe. A central figure in the Theosophical pantheon of the Great White Brotherhood, it was Germain, according to theosophical lore, who founded 177 Bryan 178 Bryan, 14. 179 Bryan. 105
the Theosophical Society along with Masters Morya and Koot Hoomi and H.P. Blavatsky. His position as an occultist who wielded both spiritual and terrestrial power and his alleged many lives as a series of great men, made him a figure of great appeal to many generations of spiritual aspirants. The Comte de St. Germain was an actual historical figure in the court of Louis XV. A polymath of international note, Germain engaged in international diplomacy (or according to the detractors among his contemporaries, espionage) at the behest of both Louis and Frederick the Great of Prussia. He also achieved renown as an alchemist and occultist and was linked with both the Knights Templar and Freemasonry’s Egyptian Rite (convened by Germain’s student, Cagliostro). The Comte de St. Germain claimed that he had also lived as St. Alban, the first British martyr, as Proclus, head of Plato’s Academy, as Merlin and so forth. In his guise as Great White Brother, St. Germain lived previously as the High Priest of the Violet Flame Temple, a central institution in the paradisiacal civilization that flourished in what is now the Sahara Desert some 50,000 years ago. The violet flame is still a central element in I Am’s theology. As one authority discusses it, the “violet consuming flame of divine love” is a light, generated by the ‘I AM Presence,’ that surrounds individuals. When the Violet Flame is invoked, it obliterates evil and discord around the believer. The ultimate goal is to purify oneself, with the guidance of the Ascended Masters and the aid of the Violet Flame, so as to leave the human body and become an Ascended Master.” 180 The above description has recourse to the rhetoric of purity and the gnostic disgust for the body so prevalent in the discourses of alien-human communication discussed thus far—the goal is to shed one’s skin via the purifying power of fire and move to the next plane of existence. This recurring desire toward disembodiedness captures something essential about the displaced utopian imaginary. One hallmark of the displaced utopian imaginary is the favoring of the 180 Donny Wyatt, “I AM Religious Activity” in Religious Movements Home Page Project ed. Douglas E. Cowan. http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/iam.html (accessed July 8, 2005) 106
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The Extraterrestrial in US Culture
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The Extraterrestrial in US Culture
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III. Chapter 2: Contact…………
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oth in their rich and bizarre detai
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Fukuyama also describes the histori
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and belonging that are native to th
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modernity, Weber stressed over and
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While positivism would emerge as th
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figure that serves as a medium betw
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sources of Spiritualism, Swedenborg
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The series of moments and discourse
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estful comprehension. It straddles
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The second chapter examines the eme
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Ch.1 The Dead INTRODUCTION Since th
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sense this dream of perfected commu
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political registers as well. This c
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In the late eighteenth century, Mes
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inverted form) along which the unde
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consciousness that is highly mobile
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up the process of thinking”. 38 S
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umor - and irony - would have it, w
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sense that Swedenborg’s researche
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Spiritualist movement, whose medium
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minded, loves to roam in the woods
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etween humans and God as unthinkabl
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esearches was a tailor by the name
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concerns and from the fact that the
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simultaneously in the world of the
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which God has revealed to them and
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Page 81 and 82: The first was that all world religi
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Page 87 and 88: Ch.2 Contact INTRODUCTION Contact w
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Page 123 and 124: Ch. 3 The Saucer INTRODUCTION The t
Page 125 and 126: The arrival of the saucer promised
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Page 145 and 146: DOROTHY MARTIN While ufology began
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and a Saturnian named “Ramu.” 2
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ecome small, self-sufficient commun
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paranoia in another context but in
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the space brother narrative further
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Adamski—the UFO was effortlessly
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communism. The connection between t
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The shift from contact to abduction
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science. 256 The Hill case was the
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abduction scenario in a variety of
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In September of 1963, some two year
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car and gone into a field with bino
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The cadences of Barney’s recollec
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And he said it was a pregnancy test
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motif also speaks to a relationship
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on a human is smooth and rounded. S
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seems to have suggested that humans
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The mesmerist and hypnotherapist bo
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communiqués emerge not from the la
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David E. Mack, a Harvard trained an
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dystopian, or in the language of No
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In the space brother scenario, the
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Everything is now. The past is now;
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effectively cut off from that possi
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eaching our innate potential. The h
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It is in this desire for dissolutio
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abductees feeling like guinea pigs.
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attack. Nietzsche writes of the blo
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Hill. Barney recalled his first gli
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The Gaze as philosophical and psych
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constituted modes of visuality. To
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traum or dream further indicates th
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educed not in the relatively benign
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will of the abductee—all speak to
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esultant exposure to the Real. The
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understood moorings, left to drift
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desired utopian state. The Others c
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were, more or less, ascended master
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Reports back from the spirit realm
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generally silent, but when they do
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to narrative structural positionali
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sensibilities, though one that woul
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of full transparency between interl
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Aber, W.W. “A Guide
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_____. “Adamski, George (1891-196
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_____. Discipline and Punish: the B
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_____. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan
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_____. Something about Soulcraft. N
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Streiber, Whitley and Anne, ed. The
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