A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

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Like other movements which have as their credo the “saving of America,” the flag of the American republic is displayed prominently on the stage…Also, little American flags are displayed prominently on the lapels and white dresses of men and women in the audience. The man on the stage has his little flag too. Everywhere there seems to be flags—little stripes of red and white and rectangles of blue—adding more color and sentiment to gala event. But you soon learn to your surprise that the color red is simply intolerable to Saint Germain and his “Accredited Messengers.” It is the color of the communists and all that is vicious, says the announcer. “You students should not wear it... No Ascended Master ever uses it.” The only exception seems to be the flag of our country. “Some day, however,” the announcer quotes Saint Germain as saying, “when the Ascended Masters take charge of the affairs of this country, there will be gold stripes instead of red ones in the flag of the new American republic!” “This is not a religion,” the announcer adds, “but a patriotic movement.” He goes on to extol the “marvelous” patriotic work of the “Minute Men of Saint Germain.” This you learn is a men’s patriotic organization within the parent body which has dedicated itself to fly to the rescue of America, as did the minute men of 1776. You learn also of the activities of the “Daughters of Light,” a sort of ladies auxiliary, with similar patriotic aims and purposes. 187 Under the guidance of the Ascended Masters, America was to serve a privileged role in the world to come. Bryan’s exposé (not an unimpeachable source given the author’s estranged relationship with the Great I Am, but generally consistent with other sources of information on the Ballards relates that one of the stated goals of the church was to replace the then current American government (Roosevelt was a great villain in the Ballards’ creed just as he was in Pelley’s) with a more enlightened version - presumably led by Ascended Master Daddy Ballard. 188 Both the Silver Legion and the Great I Am, like Spiritualism before them, draw on the political sentiments of their day, specifically anti-communism. 189 The nativist chauvinism indicated by the Ballardian sense that America was to lead the world into the new millennium bore a striking resemblance to the broader terrestrial chauvinism 187 Bryan, 9-10. 188 Rosemary Ellen Guiley, “The ‘I AM’ Religious Activity.” in Harper’s Encyclopedia of Mystical and Paranormal Experience (New York: Harper Collins, 1991); Texe Marrs, “I AM,” in Texe Marrs Book of New Age Cults and Religions (Austin, Texas: Living Truth Ministries, 1990). 189 The Ballards largely jettisoned the overt anti-Semitism of Pelley, though anti-Semitism and anti-Communism are bound together at the root. 111
operative in most later “space-brother” discourse. Earth is always the pivotal planet in some intergalactic plot or struggle. Humanity itself is, of course, the key element in the great interest expressed by extraterrestrial parties regarding the earth and its destiny. The tropes of what were to become the human potential and new age movements are key here. Central to both of the latter movements and their multiple variants is the sense that humanity is nearing some potential evolutionary leap in consciousness (if not physical state). This leap will be brought about by the concerted efforts of groups and individuals of advanced abilities—groups who through the application of whatever occult practice (meditation, visualization etc.) will achieve some higher level of harmony with the universe and thus collectively usher in the new eon. The Great I Am professed itself to be such a group. The attraction of the ascended masters and various alien intelligences to humanity was based largely upon humanity’s supposed potential. The term potential was key here because humanity might also potentially continue down the path on which it was already headed. Rather than bootstrapping itself up to the next level of consciousness, humanity might simply destroy itself along with the planet. The sense communicated by messages from various space brothers was that we were at the pivot point. It could go either way, enlightenment or Armageddon and with these stakes in mind, the space brothers had important missions for their contactees. In short, the space brothers promised nothing less than their own version of the Judeo- Christian apocalypse, a version that was a strange hybrid of the religious and the secular. Proceeding from its Greek root, the apocalypse was an uncovering or revelation. In its scripturally based historical meaning, the apocalypse was the divine disclosure that ushered in the end days. It was “the eschatological crisis in which the cosmic powers of evil are destroyed, 112
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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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which God has revealed to them and
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assessed the Fox sisters as the “
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each in turn Lockwood elaborated hi
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as miraculous or supernatural? 85 T
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Page 87 and 88: Ch.2 Contact INTRODUCTION Contact w
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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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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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