A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

space brother myth continued in its development without any substantial mention of flying
saucers and one that included the saucer primarily, if not solely, as mode of transport. In the two
cases, those of Dorothy Martin and George Adamski, the saucer was marked in turn as absent or
superfluous. What did emerge from these two cases was the clear contour of the fully imagined
space brother myth: elements of continuity with earlier occult traditions found in members’
beliefs, in the content of messages, and (sometimes) in the mode of communication via which
the messages were received; intimations of the cosmic importance of both message and recipient;
warnings of imminent disaster based upon negative human affect (hatred, violence, greed,
selfishness) and/or the rapid pace of technological development (particularly atomic weaponry);
and lastly the promise of the potential for accelerated evolutionary growth - moving to the “next
level” of consciousness/existence. But before treating the emergence of the fully formed space
brother myth, let us turn first to the UFO’s tantalizing promise and the ever-receding material
verification of the spiritual.
UFOLOGY AND THE CULT OF MATERIAL VERIFICATION
The champions of Spiritualism imagined a process of demystification as one of the primary
effects of open communication between the dead and the living. As articulated by Professor
W.M. Lockwood in The Molecular Hypothesis of Nature, Spiritualism was not an investigation
of the “supernatural,” it was merely “the effort to extend the boundary line of scientific
verification into the domain of the ‘Unknown Country.’” 197
In the spirit of rational progress,
communication with the dead was not a matter of occult wisdom but rather evidence of the evergrowing
mastery of Man over Nature. Thus the attendant phenomena of Spiritualism were read
197 W.M Lockwood. “The Molecular Hypothesis of Nature: The Relation of its Principles to Continued Existence and to the
Philosophy of Spiritualism,” in Spiritualism I: Spiritualist Thought, ed. Gary L. Ward. (New York: Garland Press, 1990) 4.
125