The story of Helene Smith

 The woman known as Helene Smith, but whose real name was Catherine-Elise Muller, was a famous French medium of the late 19th century. She claimed to be the reincarnation of the Hindu princess, Marie Antoinette, and also claimed to communicate with beings from the planet Mars.

In 1900, Élise Müller, which was her real name, gained fame thanks to the publication of the book "From India to the Planet Mars" by Théodore Flournoy, a professor of psychology at the University of Geneva. The medium and the psychologist worked closely together until 1899, when the French edition of this work was first published.

The book documented Müller's diverse series of experiences, referred to as "romantic cycles" - the "Martian", "ultramarian", "Hindu", "oriental", and "real" cycle. The publication was very well received, but Müller herself felt that it was misinterpreted by Flournoy, who presented her various "cycles" as figments of a child's imagination, and the Martian language as merely a sophisticated linguistic construction.

In her "Mars Cycle," Smith described the environment and inhabitants of the red planet, communicating on their behalf. In her visions, Mars appears as a world inhabited by humanoid beings with a roughly Asian physiognomy, using a variety of futuristic devices, such as self-propelled vehicles and airplanes. Other interesting features on Mars included dog-like creatures with cabbage-like heads that not only grabbed unexpected items for their masters, but also dictated texts to them.

The Martian Cycle gave way to a related "Roman Cycle" set to take place in a place called Ultra-Mars, perhaps another part of the planet. Ultramartian trolls looked more like human beings, spoke a different language than the Martians, and used an ideographic script instead of a phonetic one.

Flournoy argued that Smith's personalities and languages were the product of subconscious fantasies and represented a huge variety of regressive behavior. He further maintained that the complexity and strangeness of trance stories, rather than indicating their veracity, demonstrated the medium's subconscious desire to satisfy the imagination of listeners.

In the following years, Helene Smith, generously sponsored by an American spiritualist, turned to Christian spiritualism with extraterrestrial elements. Her departure from Flournoy was deepened by a sometimes public fight over the rights to From India to Planet Mars, which Smith viewed as largely the result of her work. Over the next two decades, Smith held less frequent séances, devoting herself to painting, which also attracted much attention, including from André Breton and the Surrealists.

According to Flournoy, Helene Smith not only had the ability to remember everything she read or heard, but also used her imagination and storytelling skills to create wonderful stories about her alleged past lives or visits to other planets. Was she a fraud or a person with extraordinary psychic abilities? This remains a controversial issue to this day.