Supernatural superstar: Hélène Smith, the first Swiss on Mars

Hélène Smith in a self-portrait. zvg

After work, Elise Müller would travel to Mars in her mind. Then a researcher wrote about her case, and she became famous as Hélène Smith. This is the strange story of a creative woman from Geneva.

In the decades leading up to 1900, people around the world were puzzling over Mars. Astronomers thought they had spotted a system of canals on the desert planet, and people were convinced that only advanced beings could have built this planet-wide irrigation system.

Sketches of the Martian canals by Percival Lowell, who popularised the theory in the US. zvg

Imagination ran wild regarding what the Martians might look like. While some depicted them as human-like, others gave them wings; in the writings of HG Wells, violent, tentacled creatures attacked Earth.

The boundaries between fiction and serious contributions remained blurred in the debate. Scientists wrote novels, while novelists dabbled in astronomy.

Hélène Smith – Visions of Mars

Among the prominent figures producing images of Mars at the time was a woman from Geneva: Hélène Smith. Her real name was Catherine-Élise Müller, and she was born in Martigny, Valais, in 1861. Between 1894 and 1900, she conducted some 150 spiritualist séances. Her visions of Mars made her world-famous.

Spiritualism was at its height in Europe at that time. Secret societies would meet for séances – sessions in which people sought to make contact with spirits.

At the centre of these gatherings was the medium: an intermediary who, while in a trance, made contact with the afterlife – or at least claimed to do so. Mediums would, for example, interpret the knocking sounds made by poltergeists or allow their writing hand to be guided by spirit beings.

The spirit world as a means to freedom

It was strikingly common for mediums to be women. For women, who in the 19th century were regarded as particularly sensitive but incapable of having a significant voice of their own in society, making contact with spirits was very much an act of emancipation.

The historian Claudie Massicotte, who has written a book on female mediums, writes: “Even if she spoke only on behalf of others, the medium was given the opportunity to express herself and assumed a position of influence – whereas otherwise she would have remained silent.”

The case of Hélène Smith also illustrates such a rise – through the borrowed voices of deceased celebrities. By day she worked in a Geneva fabric shop; after work and on Sundays, she welcomed guests to séances with the spirit world in her carefully furnished salon.

The first spirit Müller made contact with was the writer Victor Hugo, who had died only a few years earlier – and who, during his lifetime, had been a follower of spiritualism himself. Later, she relived past lives as a Hindu princess and as Marie Antoinette.

Tremors, mist, colours: Mars!

The question of how to communicate with Martians was a major concern for people at the end of the 19th century. Smith’s contact with Mars came unexpectedly in 1894: she was hosting a Madame Mirbel, who hoped to make contact with her son, who had died at the age of 17.

Looking back, Smith described following a bright light high above – whereupon she felt a trembling so intense that her heart almost stopped beating. She found herself in a mist of shifting colours, then suddenly felt solid ground beneath her: Mars.

In subsequent séances, she would repeatedly walk upon Mars – much to Madame Mirbel’s delight – accompanied by a reincarnation of her dead son, who now served as Smith’s guide through this alien world.

Hélène Smith drew a Martian in his Martian landscape. zvg

The Martians whom Smith encounters in her visions look rather unremarkable and resemble humans – except that men and women wear the same traditional dress.

They travel in “carriages without horses or wheels, which sent sparks flying as they glided past”, as Smith recorded, or in a sort of one-man rocket.

According to her accounts, the landscape, too, differs little from that of Earth. More interesting are her drawings of Martian architecture, as well as of plants and insects.

Lunar landscape, painted by Hélène Smith. (Geneva Library) zvg

In 1896, Smith began to speak and write in a foreign language: Martian. At first glance, the language did not resemble other languages and appeared to have its own distinct grammar – even the Geneva-based linguist Ferdinand de Saussure attended séances to investigate this linguistic phenomenon. It transpired, however, that the language’s structure was in fact heavily based on French.

A sample of Hélène Smith’s ‘Martian’ handwriting. zvg

However, it was another “foreign” voice – this time that of a living human being – that brought Hélène Smith to international attention. Her visions became known to the wider world through their portrayal in a book by the Geneva-based psychologist Théodore Flournoy: Des Indes à la planète Mars (From India to the Planet Mars).

Subject of psychological research

Flournoy had observed and documented Smith’s séances for many years. It was he who came up with the pseudonym Hélène Smith, under which Müller became known worldwide. For Flournoy, Elise Müller was a subject of psychological research.

Flournoy’s book occupies a curious place in the history of psychology: it was published at the turn of the century, almost simultaneously with Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams.

Spiritualism claimed that our homes are haunted by spirits and that we can speak to them. Freud argued (in a figurative sense) that we are not masters of our own homes but are guided by unconscious desires – and that psychoanalysis makes it possible to come into contact with them. Flournoy took a middle course: he did not regard the visions of the medium Smith as messages from Mars or the afterlife, but rather as her way of communicating with her own inner self.

To this end, he developed the theory of “cryptomnesia”: that the unconscious mind can automatically bring forth deeply hidden knowledge.

Worldwide fame

Hélène Smith with Théodore Flournoy. zvg

The history of psychology is full of women who were consigned to oblivion as anonymous patients, while those who described them rose to become heroes of science.

In a sense, Müller suffered the same fate: she fell out with Flournoy, whose pathologising analysis she rejected. Most of her works, which she had intended to bequeath to the City of Geneva in her will, were scattered after her death, and her estate was left in disarray.

However, following the publication of Flournoy’s book, even the most remote local newspapers soon began reporting on Smith’s visions.

Quite a few newspapers reinterpreted her collaboration with Flournoy as suggesting that Smith’s visions could in fact be taken at face value. “Scientists believe Hélène Smith, a Swiss girl, has visited Mars,” read a 1900 article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Belated attention from the art world

An American patron also took notice of her: the American millionaire Mary Jackson secured her a pension for the rest of her life.

‘Marsblume’ (Mars flower) by Hélène Smith. zvg

Smith subsequently became a heroine to the Surrealists. Given their creative interest in the subconscious, they were already fascinated by sleepwalkers, people who spoke in foreign tongues, and spiritualist mediums.

André Breton, the leading thinker of the avant-garde group, celebrated Smith in 1933 as the muse of écriture automatique, or automatic writing. Her work received further recognition in 2022 at the Venice Biennale, where her “Mars’ paintings were exhibited as part of the exhibition André Breton, the leading thinker of the avant-garde group, celebrated Smith in 1933 as the muse of écriture automatique, or automatic writing. Her work received further recognition in 2022 at the Venice Biennale, where her “Mars’ paintings were exhibited as part of the exhibition André Breton, the leading thinker of the avant-garde group, celebrated Smith in 1933 as the muse of écriture automatique, or automatic writing. Her work received further recognition in 2022 at the Venice Biennale, where her “Mars” paintings were exhibited as part of the exhibition “The Milk of Dreams”.

She left her most striking mark on the Finnish artist Jenna Sutela’s video artwork “nimiia cétiï”. In it, Sutela had a neural network learn Smith’s Martian language.

In the video, this network generates a new language and script that responds to the movements of Bacillus subtilis, a bacterium that Sutela chose as her medium partner because it could, in theory, survive on Mars.

Edited by Balz Rigendinger. Translated from German, sub-edited by Thomas Stephens