MAPS OF THE UNKNOWN: Land of the Nude Lamas

ARE NUDE TIBETAN LAMAS THE MONSTROUS ABOMINABLE SNOWMEN OF THE HIMALAYAS? Holy cannoli, what a headline from the May, 1959 issue of Fate magazine! The story comes from one Father Franz Eichinger, a far east missionary who was visiting a tribe of "Shavrong nomads" on a medical mission in the mountains of Qinghai when he met a strange holy man. The mysterious man had set up camp next door in a "torn, ragged flax tent" ... and emerged the next morning almost totally nude, seeming to have no issue with the brutal subzero temps that had Eichinger and his local hosts shivering in thick furs! Eichinger's hosts told him the holy man normally went completely nude, but wore a thin cloth for modesty when visiting people. The fascinated Eichinger got a photo, with a caveat:

Eichinger's hosts explained further that there was a whole class of Nude Lamas who wandered the mountains, sleeping in caves and surviving without furs or shelters. Sometimes they would briefly visit nomad camps to perform healings. Eichinger theorized that sightings of the Nude Lamas may account for tales of Abominable Snowmen, with their long unkempt hair, tanned bodies, and sometimes shocking, sudden appearances in hostile terrain. He noted that the wandering holy men are fully human nonetheless, though possessed of uncanny powers of survival. Eichinger reached a bit when he claimed that the footprints of the Nude Lamas' might somehow melt and refreeze to appear larger than they originally were, accounting for Yeti footprints ... I don't know about that part, man!

Fate follows Eichinger's story with a 10 page excerpt from influential orientalist/explorer Alexandra David-Neel's book Magic and Mystery in Tibet (original pub 1932), explicating some of the mystical concepts behind the Nude Lamas' hardiness in subzero climes - it all boils down to an inner fire produced through the spiritual practice of tumo (or tummo).

Fate titled David-Neel's excerpt as a riposte to Eichinger's account, but it's really just a deeper exploration of the phenomenon and doesn't mention the Yeti at all. The full text of Magic and Mystery in Tibet is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Alexandra David-Neel (1868-1969)

Different editions of Magic and Mystery in Tibet

Later in the issue we get a two page spread for Magic and Mystery from the Mystic Arts Book Club:

Along with David-Neel's Magic and Mystery, the full May 1959 issue of Fate is also available to read and download at archive dot org. A look at the table of contents gives us a good time capsule of occult and paranormal thinking ... as does the cover price of 35 cents:

ASTROLOGY ANSWERS YOUR QUESTIONS by Edward Lyndoe

Self help before it got so slick, originally published in 1949 as Plan With the Planets. Celebrity astrologer Edward Lyndoe gives some BS straight talk in the introduction, promising that this book isn't for those seeking "empty flattery" or "amusing half-truths." Indeed, this volume is for those brave searchers who seek only the highest universal truths, such as ... their "special foods?" Yes, it turns out that "Capricorns are in greater need of meat diets than any other group!" Locations are covered as well: "It must be taken, too, that the capitals of the Indian states now incorporated as Hindustan have a Capricornian rulership." Lyndoe assures us that no calculations or charting are required on our part. Just read on, and file away the foods, locations, days, colors, and so on associated with your sign! Learn your high and low attributes as well, along with health afflictions common to your sign. Even just an hour of reading will elucidate, Lyndoe promises.

The author's portrait by Howard Coster

Some famous folk are listed by sign, de rigueur for this genre. Stalin was a celebrated Capricorn! Speaking of communism, Lyndoe once analyzed Karl Marx's chart for Prediction magazine, and British socialist Harry Young took some offense at his sloppy science:

What Mr. Lyndoe is completely ignorant of, and what he must do, to write about Marx for intelligent people is get some idea of what it was that Marx was advocating. Significant for the ideas of Marx is not that he was born in the conjunction of Uranus— Neptune, but in the early stages of a new kind of social order—Capitalism.

Incidentally Mr. Lyndoe cannot have it both ways. If the actions of individuals are not their own, but predestined by their "charts" or "stars," what is Mr. Lyndoe complaining about —fraud, hypocrite, spy or not, Marx was merely fulfilling his destiny—he couldn't have been anything else. But the critic makes these actions the grounds for moral strictures and homilies. He complains that "Marxian Communism is the religion which not only glorifies the ends regardless of the means, but glorifies the means themselves. We should not be too sanctimonious about some of the methods used in our part of the globe—but, at least we do not feel disposed to trumpet them abroad as a new morality." What all this has to do with Marx and his stars nobody will ever know!

November 1958 issue of Prediction

For shame, Mr. Lyndoe. The promise of transcendental knowledge crashes against the rocks of history. Marx was a Taurus, by the way.

Original title

A Fawcett Gold Medal Book, 1969 (original pub. 1949)

GALLERY OF GHOSTS by James Reynolds

Some ghostly deja vu here as the Paperback Library recycles a cover photo originally used by Dell Publishing for Susy Smith's Reincarnation For the Millions. Hey, it's a good pic! And these are good stories, a cut above the tripe peddled by Steiger and Smith in so many of their "strange" collections. All the ghost stories here are true, in as much as they're actual existing legends as opposed to random nonsense made up to fill page counts. Some are especially bloody history, like the sad tale of Inês de Castro, and some are unearthed folklore like the Norwegian Saga of the Seven Spruce Trees, but what they all have in common is a focus on fear that stems from human darkness, rather than rattling chains and similar spectral cliches. 

Here's a contemporary review by author and poet Dorothy Quick, taken from an archival copy of the New Castle Tribune of NY:

(Click to embiggen)

Paperback Library, 1970 (original pub. 1949)