A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

speak to a muddying and displacement of gender norms and invoke the excluded middle, both
man and woman. In writing on Spiritualism and mediumship, William Danmar went so far as to
claim that “the few materializing mediums who were men were close to being true
hermaphrodites” and that furthermore, “Hermaphroditism is the principle of the world.” 50
Blavatsky argued that “Esotericism ignores both sexes.” 51
This troubling of gender in turn
troubles the identity of the subject. Gender, along with race, religion, age, occupation and
nationality, is a key element in defining self. Asked to identify themselves with three
descriptors, most people would include gender in that short list. I am a white, male writer. The
collapse of a clear gender binary is one step toward the Foucauldian dissipation of self.
Catherine Wessinger refers to the “often noted connection between women’s religious
leadership and spirit possession” (1993 2). 52
Spirit possession, or shamanism, has historically
allowed women, and other marginalized populations, to strongly express opinions and to offer
advice without disturbing social standards that hold women as inferior and thus not acceptable as
sources of either. When a person is possessed it is not they who offer opinion or advice but
rather the tutelary spirit who occupies them. Depending on the time and place, this spirit might
be part of a pantheon of divine entities, an ancestor or a famed historical personage. It is the
credibility and prestige of the informing spirit that is taken into account when weighing the value
of a medium’s utterance.
The shaman’s capacity as bridge between the world of humans and that of the spirits
makes her valuable to her community and grants her a kind of power that transforms her
weakness into a source of social prestige. This “weakness” is key, for shamans are classically
afflicted. Eliade notes that in the Siberian tradition “the youth who is called to be a shaman
attracts attention by his strange behaviour; for example, he seeks solitude, becomes absent
50 William Danmar, Modern Nirvanaism (Jamaica, New York: William Danmar, 1920) 24, 26.
51 Besham, 199.
52 Catherine Wessinger, “Introduction: Going Beyond and Retaining Charisma: Women’s Leadership in Marginal
Religions” in Women’s Leadership in Marginal Religions: Explorations Outside the Mainstream, ed. Catherine
Wessinger (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993) 2; See Wessinger, fn 3, for list of sources noting this
connection.
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