A Genealogy of the Extraterrestrial in American Culture

concerns and from the fact that the Others that figure so centrally in the displaced utopian are
anachronistic in the most literal sense - simultaneously residents of past, present and the future.
The dead, ascended masters and aliens transcend time as it is experienced by mortal humans,
exhibiting that most coveted of traits—immortality. Under the guise of the eternal such temporal
markers as “past” and “future” are merely that, “markers,” with no value except as abstractions.
The displaced utopian imaginary reveals the ultimate origins and fate of humankind to its
believers. Furthermore, it does so through the agency of beings that exist outside of time. In
these senses, Spiritualism as discourse promises the collapse of time, putting past, present and
future all into communication.
One might recall that as a complement to this collapse of time, the so-called “higher
phenomena” of mesmerism - phenomena that were exhibited under the guise of Spiritualism as
well - included “traveling clairvoyance.” The latter term implies the ability to report back
information (most commonly visual information) that originates from a geographically distant
source. Swedenborg’s report of the Stockholm fire—an event that he viewed from a distance of
280 miles—is one example of this. Other examples are legion in the literature of Mesmerism
and Spiritualism. One commonly reported application of traveling clairvoyance is the diagnosis
of illness from afar, often with the subject of diagnosis being unknown to the medium. As Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle writes in his chapter on Davis, “Prophet of a New Revelation”,
Davis’s ministrations were not confined to those who were in his presence, but his soul or
etheric body could be liberated by the magnetic manipulation of his employer
[Levingston], and could be sent forth like a carrier pigeon with the certainty that it would
come home again bearing any desired information. Apart from the humanitarian mission
on which it was usually engaged it would sometimes roam at will, and he has described
in wonderful passages how he would see a translucent earth beneath him, with the great
veins of mineral beds shining through like masses of molten metal, each with its own
fiery radiance. 59
Thus, in addition to the collapse of time a central component in the powerful appeal of
Spiritualism was the collapse of space. Together, this collapse of time and of space embodies
59 Doyle, 44-45.
48