A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

keeping with the recurring integration/disintegration dynamic, the Greco-roman ambience lent
stability to an experience that would have otherwise been wholly vertiginous.
Pelley learned during his sojourn that his body was merely an “overcoat.” This language
implies a sort of Gnostic disgust in which the body is some encumbrance to be shed. In the case
of the “overcoat,” said shedding would presumably occur in a place where inclement weather is
no longer—what spiritualists sometimes referred to as “Summerland.” This implicit revulsion
for the body was both reflected in Pelley’s repressed sexuality—Pelley was relieved to find that
eternity was “strangely sexless”—and his chaste, white-on-white vision of redemption. 153
Classical motifs are selectively used in American mysticism—the Dionysian (centrifugal)
element is markedly absent in Pelley’s vision. The presence of this Gnostic disgust could also be
felt in the broader currents of which Pelley was part. The sense that perfection lies always
somehow beyond the mortal coil and the prevalence of disembodied modes in the perception of
that perfection all speak to a troubled relationship with the human body. This relationship was
clearly present in Spiritualism, as attested to by the understanding that while spirits still wore
clothes and lived in houses, their redemption extended to a release from grosser corporeal needs.
Spirits were apparently sustained by the air around them and engaged neither in sex nor in
defecation. 154
Pelley was later to describe his return from beyond the vale in terms that most
graphically indicate the power of Gnostic disgust: “Something awful closed about me! It seemed
as though a great suit of clammy, cloying armor, a miasma of implacable sinew, had shut around
me. It clutched me horridly, an excruciating agony that ended in a click.” 155 The sense of the
153 Ribuffo, 51
154 As an interesting side note, constipation was ostensibly a common complaint among mediums.
155 Ribuffo, 51.
15 William Dudley Pelley, Soulcraft 78 th Discourse: Redemption: How the Early States of Man worked for Spirit’s
Concept of Society (Noblesville IN: Soulcraft Chapels Press). Undated material recovered from Noblesville, Indiana
Public Library’s vertical file archive on William Dudley Pelley in July of 2005.
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