A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

mystery, and consolation for the bereaved, but they lacked clear objectives, positive
doctrines, proper rituals and coherent organization. Something more was needed. 127
As we have seen, Washington exaggerates the case somewhat. The spirits did indeed have
“positive doctrines” and the séance is nothing if not highly ritualized. However, the more
popular manifestations of Spiritualism did tend to bear the marks of popular entertainment and
the information offered by the spirits tended toward the parlor trick. More importantly, its
emphasis on physical proofs literalized spirituality in a way that leached it of much of its power
and appeal, chasing spirit into what Emerson called “the rathole of revelation.”
The “something more” that was needed, Washington goes on to argue, was to be
provided by the emergence of the western guru in the person of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and
her successors C.W. Leadbeater and Annie Besant et al. in the case of Theosophy; Rudolf Steiner
in the case of Anthroposophy and G.I. Gurdjieff with his “fourth way,” among others. Like the
spiritualist medium, the guru’s ability to communicate with other-worldly presences was the
mark of a unique talent and like the earlier mediums, the Guru returned from her celestial
journeys with messages of both cosmic and terrestrial import. Unlike the mediumship of
Spiritualism, the faculties of the Western Guru were those of the adept—marking off a kind of
occult aristocracy. Spiritualism was broadly democratic in the sense that anyone could
potentially be a medium and all one needed to do to access one’s nascent power was hold a
séance—an event which occurred in parlors all across America. The powers of the Western
Guru were not casually obtained but were a function of both native talent and intensive training
and study—a combination that lends itself to a re-mystification of the world of spirit—an
esoteric versus exoteric set of practices. Regardless of the fact that the founding exponent of the
tradition, H.P. Blavatsky, was a woman (albeit a woman who by all accounts exhibited many
127 Peter Washington, Madame Blavatsky’s Baboon: A History of the Mystics, Mediums, and Misfits Who Brought
Spiritualism to America (New York: Schocken, 1996) 46.
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