A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

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instruments that play themselves, tables which alternately are too heavy to lift or which float into the air seemingly of their own accord - all of these phenomena continually played out in parlors around the country throughout the heyday of Spiritualism. But it was arguably the knowledge purveyed by the medium that constituted the main attraction, knowledge that emerged not from the mind of the medium but from some “beyond.” More particularly, the attraction was (and is) to revealed prophetic knowledge that tapped worlds beyond the reach of rational cognition. In the case of Swedenborg, the knowledge pertained to the nature of the afterlife and the relationship between that life and the present one. Swedenborg placed mortal life into a universal and infinite context. It is no coincidence that his earlier scientific works were concerned with questions of geology and cosmology - probing the deep pasts of the earth and the universe. Davis also dealt both with questions of the after life as well as with questions of terrestrial and stellar origins. There are a number of reasons for this parallel, one being the clear influence of Swedenborg on Davis (Swedenborg was, after all, one of Davis’ primary spiritual interlocutors). Another reason would be market oriented. There was an established audience both within the U.S. and abroad for treatises on ultimate origins. Such ruminations were common in both popular science and theology. At a more general or textual level, Swedenborg and Davis’ work is consonant with a temporal collapse that runs through both the nineteenth century movements under discussion in this chapter and the later developments around the UFO and the extraterrestrial. Spiritualism, Theosophy and discourses of the extraterrestrial are concerned with ultimate questions, one set of which concerns the origins of humankind and the earth itself. In addition, the displaced utopian imaginary concerns itself with an attendant series of questions on the ultimate fate of humankind and its terrestrial home. Any attempt to grapple with questions of human destiny must deal both with the puzzle of ontology and that of teleology. For given the model of destiny, origin contains and implies outcome. The displaced utopian imaginary is thus engaged both with the ancient and the far-flung future. This engagement follows both from the fact that such questions of origin and destiny are perennial human 47
concerns and from the fact that the Others that figure so centrally in the displaced utopian are anachronistic in the most literal sense - simultaneously residents of past, present and the future. The dead, ascended masters and aliens transcend time as it is experienced by mortal humans, exhibiting that most coveted of traits—immortality. Under the guise of the eternal such temporal markers as “past” and “future” are merely that, “markers,” with no value except as abstractions. The displaced utopian imaginary reveals the ultimate origins and fate of humankind to its believers. Furthermore, it does so through the agency of beings that exist outside of time. In these senses, Spiritualism as discourse promises the collapse of time, putting past, present and future all into communication. One might recall that as a complement to this collapse of time, the so-called “higher phenomena” of mesmerism - phenomena that were exhibited under the guise of Spiritualism as well - included “traveling clairvoyance.” The latter term implies the ability to report back information (most commonly visual information) that originates from a geographically distant source. Swedenborg’s report of the Stockholm fire—an event that he viewed from a distance of 280 miles—is one example of this. Other examples are legion in the literature of Mesmerism and Spiritualism. One commonly reported application of traveling clairvoyance is the diagnosis of illness from afar, often with the subject of diagnosis being unknown to the medium. As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle writes in his chapter on Davis, “Prophet of a New Revelation”, Davis’s ministrations were not confined to those who were in his presence, but his soul or etheric body could be liberated by the magnetic manipulation of his employer [Levingston], and could be sent forth like a carrier pigeon with the certainty that it would come home again bearing any desired information. Apart from the humanitarian mission on which it was usually engaged it would sometimes roam at will, and he has described in wonderful passages how he would see a translucent earth beneath him, with the great veins of mineral beds shining through like masses of molten metal, each with its own fiery radiance. 59 Thus, in addition to the collapse of time a central component in the powerful appeal of Spiritualism was the collapse of space. Together, this collapse of time and of space embodies 59 Doyle, 44-45. 48
Page 1 and 2: The Extraterrestrial in US Culture
Page 3 and 4: The Extraterrestrial in US Culture
Page 5 and 6: III. Chapter 2: Contact…………
Page 7 and 8: oth in their rich and bizarre detai
Page 9 and 10: Fukuyama also describes the histori
Page 11 and 12: and belonging that are native to th
Page 13 and 14: modernity, Weber stressed over and
Page 15 and 16: While positivism would emerge as th
Page 17 and 18: figure that serves as a medium betw
Page 19 and 20: sources of Spiritualism, Swedenborg
Page 21 and 22: The series of moments and discourse
Page 23 and 24: estful comprehension. It straddles
Page 25 and 26: The second chapter examines the eme
Page 27 and 28: Ch.1 The Dead INTRODUCTION Since th
Page 29 and 30: sense this dream of perfected commu
Page 31 and 32: political registers as well. This c
Page 33 and 34: In the late eighteenth century, Mes
Page 35 and 36: inverted form) along which the unde
Page 37 and 38: consciousness that is highly mobile
Page 39 and 40: up the process of thinking”. 38 S
Page 41 and 42: umor - and irony - would have it, w
Page 43 and 44: sense that Swedenborg’s researche
Page 45 and 46: Spiritualist movement, whose medium
Page 47 and 48: minded, loves to roam in the woods
Page 49 and 50: etween humans and God as unthinkabl
Page 51: esearches was a tailor by the name
Page 55 and 56: simultaneously in the world of the
Page 57 and 58: which God has revealed to them and
Page 59 and 60: assessed the Fox sisters as the “
Page 61 and 62: each in turn Lockwood elaborated hi
Page 63 and 64: as miraculous or supernatural? 85 T
Page 65 and 66: hearts of men to help their brother
Page 67 and 68: the corrupting influence of the wor
Page 69 and 70: All manner of proscribed activities
Page 71 and 72: dawn of a new era, and you must not
Page 73 and 74: qualities the coarser and heavier t
Page 75 and 76: full of mischief as any child in th
Page 77 and 78: keynote in public (and much of the
Page 79 and 80: masculine traits), the figure of th
Page 81 and 82: The first was that all world religi
Page 83 and 84: space brother religion, The Great I
Page 85 and 86: and the menopauses.” 141 A genera
Page 87 and 88: Ch.2 Contact INTRODUCTION Contact w
Page 89 and 90: as spiritual aspirations embodied.
Page 91 and 92: magazine, the latter edited by icon
Page 93 and 94: featured female characters who were
Page 95 and 96: keeping with the recurring integrat
Page 97 and 98: harmony with the universe (“if yo
Page 99 and 100: world were still struggling to asce
Page 101 and 102: hermetic credo as above, so below,
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insistence on the survival of the i
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evolutionary nomenclature of the co
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Pelley exhibited a variety of trait
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Chelas, which in the Hindu traditio
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the Theosophical Society along with
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Ballard was told during his initial
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Masters. Members of the I Am Ascend
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operative in most later “space-br
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promises of evolutionary progress h
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such as St. Germain could make thei
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Ch. 3 The Saucer INTRODUCTION The t
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The arrival of the saucer promised
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salvation through the union of oppo
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potential public responses to the f
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as rationally comprehensible and a
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attached to cultivating a following
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percentage of unidentifieds to the
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extraterrestrial communicant suppli
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perpetrators of willful deception i
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signing.” 210 Gill’s amused res
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practicing theoretical astrophysici
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DOROTHY MARTIN While ufology began
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attention. Without knowing why, I p
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One message from an assistant of Sa
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Dr. Laughead first encountered Doro
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In the case of Dorothy Martin and h
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II space brother religions to large
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he could think of to obtain permiss
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other myth. You will recall that in
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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
Page 251 and 252:
_____. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan
Page 253 and 254:
_____. Something about Soulcraft. N
Page 255:
Streiber, Whitley and Anne, ed. The
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