A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

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terrestrial life. Thus Spiritualism as a mythic discourse allowed for a displaced discussion of emergent social issues, but its connections to reform were not solely displaced. There were more direct links as well. Philosopher and essayist Orestes Brownson declaimed in his 1854 romance The Spirit- Rapper: An Autobiography that reform, as the spirit of the age, was populated by “seers and seeresses, enthusiasts and fanatics, socialists and communists, abolitionists and anti-hangmen, radicals and women’s-rights men of both sexes.” 61 The connections between Spiritualism, feminism and the various reform movements of the nineteenth century are varied and complex. As noted in the beginning of this chapter, it would be easy to dismissively classify Spiritualism as a last gasp of Foucault’s Renaissance episteme, some atavistic current running counter to the beliefs and aspirations of the day. There are certainly reasons for drawing this conclusion. As R. Laurence Moore points out, spirit messages often “portrayed the universe as an interrelated and mutually responsive system where distant events in the macrocosmic arena of space determined what happened in the microcosmic world of man.” 62 This understood link, “as above, so below” is a central tenet of the hermetic tradition, elements of which were carried over into Spiritualism via the teachings of Emmanuel Swedenborg. Thus Spiritualism demonstrably subscribed to pre- or early-modern intellectual traditions. While Spiritualism as a movement and philosophy consistently maintained an interest in matters which were traditionally linked with the “occult” and its world view often drew from the wells of hermeticism, Spiritualism strove to distance itself from the occult and align its ethos with the rational, progressive spirit of its day. According to one central Spiritualist Journal, the Banner of Light, Occultism is the old, old story…Establish a system of religion or philosophy invested with this; place it in the keeping of a priesthood or brotherhood claiming to hold secrets 61 Kerr, 84. 62 Moore, 232. 51
which God has revealed to them and withheld to everybody else, but a knowledge of which at the same time is requisite for the salvation of all, substantiating their claims by the working of divine ‘miracles’ or occult ‘wonders’ and you have the power that has in all past times held mankind in mental bondage and consequent physical slavery. 63 Similarly, Professor W.M. Lockwood’s The Molecular Hypothesis of Nature speaks eloquently to the links between the ethos of Spiritualism and the spirit of rational progress. 64 While the text is from a relatively late moment in American Spiritualism (1895) it nonetheless captures some of the basic tenets of the movement. Professor Lockwood floridly intoned throughout on the scientific basis of Spiritualism and the new era that the knowledge gained through contact with spirit world would inaugurate. 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’.” 65 The good professor consistently decried the bugaboos of both superstition and faith. “Human love bids civilization arise from the suppliant attitude of faith, and walk erect in the sunshine of natural progression.” 66 “Science is loudly knocking at the portals of thought, demanding that reason dethrone superstition, unlock the shackles of bigotry, and bid humanity rise from the slavery of fanaticism into the domain of liberty and truth.” 67 That Spiritualism bypassed faith was a truism of the movement. Spiritualism or the “spiritual 63 Review of The Occult World, by A.P. Sinett, Banner of Light, June 3 (1882). 64 Many of the sources on Spiritualism discussed in this chapter will be unfamiliar to non-specialists, so a brief note on their context and import is in order. The focus, in terms of the texts I use for analysis, is on primary sources. More specifically, I am especially interested in examining texts that operate from a position of belief and emerge out of the Spiritualist milieu. A number of them come out of a two volume collection, edited by religious studies scholar Gary Ward. Ward’s stated goal in his compilation of texts is to outline the basic parameters of Spiritualism as movement and philosophy. The texts are presented in facsimile form. I sought out further texts to provide additional examples of the tendencies that emerged out of my analysis of the texts collected by Ward. I chose some because of their mention in the key secondary literature on Spiritualism and some because they were included in the university collections that constituted my basic research pool. All of them share a common desire, emerging from a position of belief, to unravel the mysteries of communication between the living and the dead. 65 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. 66 Lockwood, 4. 67 Lockwood, 26. 52
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The Extraterrestrial in US Culture
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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
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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 and 52: esearches was a tailor by the name
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Page 55: simultaneously in the world of the
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
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Page 73 and 74: qualities the coarser and heavier t
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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
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Page 99 and 100: world were still struggling to asce
Page 101 and 102: hermetic credo as above, so below,
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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
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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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