A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

actions of some semi-divine or extraterrestrial Other over the actions of the terrestrial mortal as
the engine of radical social change. One central understanding that promotes this tendency is
that our current sense of what is real is somehow fundamentally askew. In the traditional
Gnostic worldview, a demiurge, a blind idiot god, created the world we live in, and our existence
as fleshly forms in this world clouds our perception, dividing us from the true creator of the
universe and thus from reality. True existence lies outside the material realm, and thus true
power does as well. If we are crippled by our embodiment and are imprisoned on this earth, we
must place our hopes for change in beings that have somehow escaped, or at least begun to
escape, the material plane. Thus is the urge toward disembodiedness inextricably linked with the
understanding that the true fulcrum of change lies outside human agency.
It was the Comte de St. Germain who, after centuries of fruitlessly searching Europe for a
suitable vessel for his wisdom, turned to America and met Ballard on the slopes Mt. Shasta. This
meeting comprised the founding moment of the I Am Ascended Master Religious Activity, or
the Great I Am (an organization that still exists and which provided the primary source material
for one of the more infamous of modern cults, Elizabeth Claire Prophet’s California-based
Church Universal and Triumphant). 181
Upon meeting St. Germain, Ballard was presented with a
cool creamy liquid to quench his thirst. That draught of fluid, whose origin Germain claimed as
the “Universal Supply,” was the first in a series of lessons through which St. Germain would
reveal the wisdom of the ages via his chosen “Accredited Messengers,” Guy Ballard, his Wife
(Edna), and son (Donald) with the goal of bringing about the Seventh Golden Age, The Age of I
Am on earth.
181 James R. Lewis and J. Gordon Melton. Church Universal and Triumphant in Scholarly Perspective (Stanford:
Center for Academic Publication, 1994).
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