A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

students of ufology. They were familiar with both the I AM movement and the writings of
William Dudley Pelley. Their affiliations prior to becoming followers of Martin clearly hewed
to the trajectory traced by the preceding chapters. Thomas had also enjoyed a long interview
with George Adamski, more on whom shortly, and emerged convinced of the reality of flying
saucers and their mission of exploration and observation. The Laugheds' link to Adamski is one
instance where Dorothy Martin’s milieu does rub up against the UFO.
Thomas came away from his meeting with an enlarged version of Adamski’s drawing of
the footprints of his Venusian contact, a drawing “whose curious interior markings seemed to
him symbols of a mysterious sort” and whose referent, if real, would constitute a singularly
material piece of evidence. “Armstrong” would continue to show his students this drawing as
“proof” of the alien presence. 225
Upon his return home after meeting with Adamski, Laughead
presented the drawing to his wife who dedicated herself to deciphering the aforementioned
mysterious symbols. “Her interpretation of the footprints forecast a rising of the submerged
continents of Mu and Atlantic, an event that would be consistent with the flooding of the North
American continent.” 226
Here we see another common trope of new age and space brother
prophecy; the prediction of massive “earth changes”—California falls off the map and into the
sea, the new ice age dawns, ancient continents rise from the sea. 227
The prediction of such
changes pointed to the fundamental dream and desire of the Space Brother religions and the New
Age ones that followed, the vision of a world utterly changed; unrecognizable with relation to
what came before. Prophecies that predict such massive transformations in the very geography
of the planet constituted both a gross material metaphor for the desired “psychic” changes as
well as foreseeing a purely physical change which predicated some radical shift at the social
level. Clearly things would be dramatically different if suddenly half of North America were
underwater.
225 Festinger 41.
226 Festinger 42.
227 Earth changes and the teachings of the Great I Am come together most explicitly in one current incarnation of the
Ballards teachings, Lori Toye’s I Am America- see www.iamamerica.com.
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