A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

qualities the coarser and heavier the substance; the more highly developed being robed in
ethereal or gauze-like texture.
Clothing in realms where it is worn—and there are spheres encircling spheres out
in the immensity of space—is not woven by loom and manufactured by aid of machinery,
or even by the seamstresses’ art; the substance, in all but the lower spheres, is gathered
from the atmosphere, from flowers, from all the forms of animate life, by the will of the
Spirit, and magnetically treated until it grows into such shape, beauty and perfection as
the artisan designs; the art of such production is taught in the schools, even the
Kindergarten babies learn to concentrate, gather material from the air and flowers, and
fashion it into sweets, toys and ornaments; while older classes acquire skill in creating
substance and fashioning from it their own garments, homes, or appointments, as they
choose. A Soul can go on with such study, design and workmanship until he or she
becomes as a very God in power. 113
Thus we see a vision of the afterlife in which the individual strove toward the perfection and
powers of a god yet maintained a striking level of familiarity—carrying over to the other side
shame, the basic need for food and shelter and a love of beauty. They lived in houses over there,
albeit created from flowers and air, and they had children and schools. This stability of the
human form speaks to Spiritualism and neo-enchantment as a force of integration. Rather than
assuming some dramatically new form or dispensing with form altogether, the clearly delineable
self survived the passage to the other side of the veil—a passage into perfection fulfilling the
desire for the maintenance and reaffirmation of the subject, warding off the “old dread, so hard to
charm away, lest in the vast and wandering air the homeless Animula might lose its identity, that
eternal form would no longer divide eternal soul from all beside.” 114
While so many elements of
spiritualist practice and belief spoke to the disintegration of self, one of its central obsessions and
tenets of belief was, as the title of Frederic W. H. Myer’s magnum opus so aptly articulated,
Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death.
113 James H. Fletcher, “Letters from Astrea: In Spirit Life to Astrala in Earth Life also from Spirit John Pierpont
through Mrs. Mary T. Langley, Psychic Amanuensis and others,” in Spiritualism I: Spiritualist Thought, ed. Gary L.
Ward (New York: Garland Press, 1990) 41-42.
114 Hyslop, 89.
115 Aber, 15.
116 Moore, 47-48.
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