A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

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Man, as Man, is not indigenous to this solar satellite by any means. Contingents of Man species have come to this planet from time to time over the aeons from a wide variety of similarly populated heavenly bodies. They have come in spiritized form—that is, Thinking Units lacking organism, but appropriating or otherwise acquiring the ape organism to “clothe” themselves, because over long periods of observation the ape organism seemed to be the most facile organism to get physical effects in the material world that was the Earth’s composition. 174 Thus the writings and philosophy of William Dudley Pelley both replicated many of the central tropes established by Spiritualism and Theosophy and anticipated both the rise of space brothers and the increasingly paranoid politics of the mid-to-late twentieth century exemplars of the displaced utopian imaginary. THE GREAT I AM It was in the year that Pelley’s legal problems began in earnest, 1934, that Guy and Edna Ballard began their bid to appropriate Pelley’s membership. The Ballard’s Great I Am is generally understood to be the first true space brother religion. As Gordon Melton notes in The Contactees: A Survey: Not only did Ballard become the first to actually build a religion on contact with extraterrestrials (as opposed to merely incorporating the extraterrestrial data into another already existing religion), but this emphasis was placed upon frequent contact with the masters from whom he received regular messages to the followers of the world contactee movement. 175 The Great I Am is a classic example of both religious syncretism and religious hucksterism. The Ballards came to prominence in a time of religious and political ferment, working as contemporaries of Father Divine and Aimee Semple McPherson as well as Father Coughlin. They combined elements of Buddhism, Hinduism (e.g. their followers were referred to as 174 William Dudley Pelley, Soulcraft Seventy-Eighth 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. 175 J. Gordon Melton, “The Contactees: A Survey” in The Gods Have Landed: New Religions from Other Worlds, ed. James R. Lewis (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995) 7. 103
Chelas, which in the Hindu tradition indicates the follower of a guru) and Christianity along with the primary sources of Spiritualism and Theosophy. Gerald Bryan, a disaffected member, reports in his 1940 exposé that the bulk of the I Am’s early membership was drawn from William Pelley’s politico-religious organization. In his 1940 expose of The Great I AM, Psychic Dictatorship in America, Bryan writes of a meeting held by the Ballards in 1934 to which the treasurer of the Pelley organization was invited. At this meeting, the Ballards discussed various spiritual communiqués they had received from no less a personage than the Comte de St. Germain. Said communiqués discussed the Master’s plan for propagating a new government in America, a government based largely on the principles espoused by Pelley. Participants were also alerted by St. Germain to the central role they were to play in bringing about this new order. He told those flattered students of their past incarnations! He recited their marvelous achievements! They had all done great and stirring things! All of them had been associated with him before! They would even be closer to him now! They would now have a part to play in bringing the new civilization into America! “These beloved students,” [the message] begins, “are all far advanced souls with whom we have been closely associated before wherein very great Light has reigned. All of this group that are here were in association in the civilization of 70,000 years ago where the Sahara Desert now is.” 176 Thus, with promises of greatness both past and future, was a key member of Pelley’s organization seduced. And thus began the Ballard’s successful bid to woo and absorb the membership of the Silver Legion into the ranks of the Great I Am. The Great I AM was founded in the 1930s by Guy (1878-1939) and Edna (1886-1971) Ballard. Both Guy and Edna (a.k.a. Lotus and Twin Flame), the latter of whom some argue was the real driving force behind the Great I Am, had been involved with the occult as spiritualist 176 Gerald B. Bryan, Psychic Dictatorship in America (Los Angeles: Truth Research Publications, 1940) 24 http://www.home.gil.com.au/~perovich/Ballards/PsyDict.pdf (accessed July 8, 2005) 104
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The Extraterrestrial in US Culture
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The Extraterrestrial in US Culture
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III. Chapter 2: Contact…………
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oth in their rich and bizarre detai
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Fukuyama also describes the histori
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and belonging that are native to th
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modernity, Weber stressed over and
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While positivism would emerge as th
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figure that serves as a medium betw
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sources of Spiritualism, Swedenborg
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The series of moments and discourse
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estful comprehension. It straddles
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The second chapter examines the eme
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Ch.1 The Dead INTRODUCTION Since th
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sense this dream of perfected commu
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political registers as well. This c
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In the late eighteenth century, Mes
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inverted form) along which the unde
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consciousness that is highly mobile
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up the process of thinking”. 38 S
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umor - and irony - would have it, w
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sense that Swedenborg’s researche
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Spiritualist movement, whose medium
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minded, loves to roam in the woods
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etween humans and God as unthinkabl
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esearches was a tailor by the name
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concerns and from the fact that the
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simultaneously in the world of the
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Page 87 and 88: Ch.2 Contact INTRODUCTION Contact w
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Page 91 and 92: magazine, the latter edited by icon
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Page 123 and 124: Ch. 3 The Saucer INTRODUCTION The t
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Page 145 and 146: DOROTHY MARTIN While ufology began
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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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A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

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