A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

esearches was a tailor by the name of Levingston, who conducted his research with a variety of
young local boys, the most gifted of whom appeared to be Davis. Under Levingston’s
ministrations Davis discovered that the trance state rendered the human body transparent to his
eyes, thus granting him the power to render medical diagnoses.
In 1844 Davis experienced a spiritual epiphany, in which he claimed to have “flown,”
while in a trance state, some forty miles out of Poughkeepsie into the Catskills. Awaking in the
mountains, Davis was met by Swedenborg and Galen who had materialized from beyond the veil
for the purpose of illuminating the young man. Following this experience Davis began to travel
as a speaker and practitioner of entranced diagnosis. Davis’ fame as a medical mesmerist
quickly spread through upstate New York. His ostensible medical abilities were quite similar to
those exhibited by many earlier mesmerized practitioners. When presented with a patient, Davis
could readily “see” the organs of the latter, each standing out with its own special luminosity,
which allowed him to diagnose the patients' illnesses. In the provision of these diagnoses, he
sometimes combined traveling clairvoyance with his medical expertise, traveling out of state via
his astral body to conduct an examination at the behest of a third party. After successfully
demonstrating his powers of medical diagnosis while mesmerized, Davis began traveling broadly
within the U.S. in 1845 and presenting entranced lectures on his Harmonial Philosophy in which
spirits held forth through Davis on questions of cosmology, life after death and spiritual hygiene.
His interest in presenting such lectures followed from a series of visions which began shortly
after his acquaintance with Levingston, visions in which he conversed with numerous departed
spirits, including Christ, Swedenborg and Galen. It was this ongoing communication with the
dead and/or ascended that allowed Davis to expound his emergent philosophy, a philosophy that
was to receive extended treatment in the aforementioned Principles of Nature.
Principles was a key element in Davis’ notoriety. The book, along with Davis’ public
performances, clearly exemplifies one of the key elements of the Spiritualist movement. It is
quite easy to focus upon the physical proofs of Spiritualism as the thing that captured the
imagination of the American public. After all, this is clearly the case - floating objects,
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