A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

creates inharmonious vibrations resulting in sickness…” 107 This connection between attitude and
well-being is shared amongst all “harmonial” religions, defined by Sydney Ahlstom as “those
forms of piety and belief in which spiritual composure, physical health, and even economic wellbeing
are understood to flow from a person’s rapport with the cosmos.” 108 This emphasis on
perfect alignment with the universe as primary goal brings again to the fore the underlying desire
of Spiritualism, and in fact all forms of the displaced utopian imaginary – perfect
communication. The broader implication of harmonial thought was that, to a large extent,
mental activity generates reality. Thus Ella Wheeler Wilcox could claim “We build our futures
by the shape of our desires, and not by acts.” 109
This general sensibility should be familiar to
any student of new age thought. The implications of this sort of magical thinking for traditional
political action are clear enough. If the correction of one’s own relation to the cosmos is
sufficient to bring about change, then proceeding through protest, organization and direct
struggle becomes superfluous. The belief that one can change the world via desire and belief is a
key principle in the displaced utopian imaginary.
A third, related problem concerning Spiritualism’s ostensibly radical politics stemmed
from the sense of inevitability that attends all forms of millennialism. At the very inception of
the movement, the Fox sisters’ spirit band (mediums generally were attended not by a sole
spiritual interlocutor, as with contemporary “channelers” but by a whole coterie, referred to
ensemble as a “spirit band”) relayed that “You must proclaim these truths to world. This is the
107 Sprague, 31.
108 Robert Ellwood and Catherine Wessinger, “The Feminism of ‘Universal Brotherhood’: Women in the
Theosophical Movement,” in Women’s Leadership in Marginal Religions: Explorations Outside the Mainstream,
ed. Catherine Wessinger (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993) 75.
109 Bowman, 36.
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