STARTLING NEW RESEARCH FROM THE MAN WHO "TALKS" TO PLANTS, by Janice and Charles Robbins

Here's another piece from National Wildlife magazine, about former CIA interrogation specialist and polygraph innovator Cleve Backster. Backster was a pioneer in the movement to explore plant consciousness and ESP, and the authors mention previous coverage by National Wildlife from 1968. Backster would also feature in the smash hit 1973 book The Secret Life of Plants, by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird (themselves also former OSS/CIA men).

In this article, Janice and Charles Robbins describe some testing by Backster including plants recoiling at a murderer - a murderer of plants, that is, as Backster has a volunteer destroys one unlucky plant and then records the reactions of other plants to this person's presence. At the end of the article Backster describes another attempt at unmasking a real murderer via plant ESP that didn't pan out. Chicken eggs are also hooked up to the polygraph electrodes. Backster and the Robbins assure us that this is all very scientific and thorough.

More than fifty years later, sadly, lie detectors and plant ESP are looking a little less reliable than Backster's "slam dunk" claims. A recent New Age scam podcast with some mainstream cachet has featured plant ESP in an episode, but the subject is mostly confined to the New Age ghetto and the "human potential" hopes of yesteryear, when it seemed like all it would take is a breakthrough here or there to unleash all the power of the universe.

This article is also available to read and download at archive dot org.

From National Wildlife magazine, Vol. 9 - No. 6, Oct/Nov 1971.

WITCHES U.S.A. by Susan Roberts

Witchcraft '71! Author Susan Roberts covers big names in the midcentury American witchcraft scene like Joseph Wilson, the Air Force man who publishes a quarterly zine called The Waxing Moon, and Bill and Phyllis Janney, heads of a Cincinnati coven. There's another Bill on the scene, last name Saffin, and together he and Janney are "the two Bills." Get ready to meet a lot of Bills and Eds and Jennies who all swish about mysteriously over coffee and casseroles and cocktail parties while dropping cryptic hints about the divine thread and the caves of the unknown.

Roberts' perspective emerges early as she claims that a witch named Joe told her to write this book the day before her agent calls with the same suggestion ... spooky, right? 

Joseph Wilson's zine

As far as gossipy guides to midcentury magic go, Roberts' work here pales in comparison to Today's Witches (1970) by Susy Smith. There's way too much self satisfied preening by random witchy ding dongs and too much filler from Roberts about how kind, beautiful, intelligent, and wonderful your neighborhood witches are. Watch out, though, because Roberts also warns us that witches can zap us if we cross them! This is a dopey section where Roberts claims on the one hand that dedicated witches won't use their powers to harm people, but on the other hand, the universe might hit us with karma if we cross them! How convenient!

The most interesting chapter concerns the law firm of Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie and Alexander - yeah, that Nixon!

Yet the law firm in which President Nixon served as senior partner until his inauguration on January 20, 1969 — Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie and Alexander — apparently agreed with the views of Bill and Joe when they filed a petition at 4:47 p.m. on June 7, 1968, before the National Labor Relations Board. They requested that the Board set aside the victory of the International Association of Machinists in an election held on May 31, 1968. The employer the Nixon firm represented was the General Cigar de Utaudo of Puerto Rico.

The attorney’s charge? Witchcraft. Their client, they claimed, was hexed.

The National Labor Relations Board puts the kibosh on things, but Roberts goes over the 13 page white paper on historical witchery the firm filed to support their claim. This overview, covering grimoires and folk traditions, makes up a good chunk of Robert's historical treatment of witchcraft, and elsewhere her background on the craft also repeats the basic witch-cult hypothesis that a lot of vintage witch books took as read. Beside the high point of the Nixon chapter, the real meaty bits here are the profiles of real, random witches across America, who despite all their protestations come across as your average atomized suburbanites, searching for deeper meaning just like the rest of us.

Roberts ends with a ritual of self-blessing to "bring the individual into closer contact with the Godhead."

Above, a 1974 edition from Phoenix House. Susan Roberts also wrote The Yogi Cookbook (1968) with Yogi Vithaldas and The Magician of the Golden Dawn (1978), about Aleister Crowley. Roberts briefly covers Crowley in Witches U.S.A. too, along with the de rigueur chapter on Anton LaVey. 

Bill Janney died in a car accident before publication, but Roberts (tastefully) doesn't ask if this could be another case of karmic zappage. Witches U.S.A. is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Dell Publishing, 1971

MAPS OF THE UNKNOWN: Yeti Across the Land

"Maps supplied by Plawinski," reporting sightings of the Yeti and Almas across Asia. From In Pursuit of the Abominable Snowman by Odette Tchernine. Available to read and download at archive dot org.

Courtesy Taplinger Pub. Company, 1971. 

ARCHIVAL UPDATES: HOW TO BECOME A SENSUOUS WITCH

The groovy gonzo witchcraft guide How to Become a Sensuous Witch by Abragail and Valaria is now available to read and download at archive dot org. Featuring erotic eggnog and Pan (the god that is) cakes!

Courtesy the Paperback Library, 1971.

SHARK! UNPREDICTABLE KILLER OF THE SEA by Thomas Helm

We're not out of the water yet! In fact, we've got a full blown feeding frenzy on our hands, as author Thomas Helm throws in some more bloody chum with SHARK! UNPREDICTABLE KILLER OF THE SEA!

This is pre-Jaws sharking, with Helm plunging the murky depths of myth and midcentury neurosis - he tells one story of being aboard a sport fishing boat that came upon some friendly porpoises. Some he-men with him took it upon themselves to spear a curious visitor! Ultimately only one man could finish the deed, and afterwards Helm says his boasting fell on deaf ears. Elsewhere he describes the "diabolical" method of drano poisoning sharks. We haven't even gotten to post-Jaws supercharged shark mania and we can see the era's blunt, singleminded hatred of the natural world, the need to kill, maim, destroy!

Our author, Thomas Helm (1919-1993)

Helm peppers his work with plenty of salty dog tales (like his own supposed sighting of a 30 foot monster great white in the Caribbean) and sport fishing, but works hard against the anti-shark, anti-nature attitude, some of it via an appeal to the shark's place in human commerce similar to Captain Hal Scharp in Shark Safari. Helm's species guide section benefits from his drawings, putting it ahead of Captain Scharp's similar rundown.

The photo spread in the middle of the book is a fun mix of gruesome shark pics, other sea friends like octopus and porpoises, and Captain Bill Gray of the Miami Seaquarium posing with dead fish and only sometimes with a shirt.

Helm describes other killers of the deep like sawfish, swordfish, octopus, Portuguese man-of-war, stonefish, sea urchins, moray eels, and the deadly orca! Helms calls the orca the most dangerous animal in the sea and relates a tale from Zane Grey of seeing a pod of orcas slaughter porpoises until the water turned red. The humble stingray (or stingaree), meanwhile, is Helm's admitted least favorite sea killer, while manta rays are (of course) completely harmless and so undeserving of a bad reputation. The fearsome barracuda, meanwhile, gets his own chapter to himself!

Helm ends his book with a record of shark attacks in the USA, a form to report new attacks to the Smithsonian, and a brief bibliography:

Helm's acknowledgments and bibliography credit George A. Llano, who would later pen his own paperback shark attack!

Hardcover edition

Sea serpent/monster text by Helm from 1962

Shark! is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Collier Books, 1971 (original pub. 1961)

FEEDING THE FLAME by T. Lobsang Rampa

The RAMPATHON continues! Up next is Rampa's big eleventh book: he says that thus far he's been lighting a candle in the darkness, and now's the time for FEEDING THE FLAME!

The point of this book, Rampa says, is to answer some questions from his dear and loyal readers. He also has plenty of stupid readers who waste his time with idiot letters, and he kvetches about these drooling morons for pages and pages ... what can he say, Rampa loves bitching and moaning! But anyways, to those dear and loyal readers who send in thoughtful queries, Rampa is ready to answer you!

"I hate you, the reader."

Would it surprise you that a lot of the answers are recycled from his last book? If you missed it last time: pets go to heaven, astral travel is possible, and Rampa absolutely unconditionally does NOT commune with any mediums charging fees for services. And when he departs this plane, Rampa assures us, he will NOT be taking any calls. He also addresses the specious text My Visit to Venus, assembled out of old Rampa articles by Gray Barker and presented by John Keel. Rampa does not approve!

Rampa's health is clearly on his mind. He spends much of this book in hospital, and is spared from the Angel of Death only by the astral appearance of his old friend, the Lama Mingyar Dondup, who tasks him with the writing of this book.

It's a hard life for ol' Rampa, living in shitty apartments in shitty towns like Halifax, having to listen to gibbering French Canadian patois outside and awful new British "music" on the radio, and, as he said, dealing with piles and piles of worthless letters from total dipshits. Rampa's not gonna tell you how to win the Irish Sweepstakes or make girls do what you want! He's here to answer the REAL questions, about real weighty subjects like life and death and the great beyond ...

Rampa's a grump, but at least he has his cats. The man loves writing on and on about his kitties, in that syrupy British style. Miss Cleo and Miss Tadalinka provide him much comfort, and again Rampa emphasizes that you'll meet your dear pets again on the other side.

Rampa and a friend. Courtesy David Michie.

Some new facts: Negroes are naturally rhythmic due to kharmic suffering, and homosexuals are to be pitied, NOT hated, for their mixed up souls! What a humanitarian! Rampa also dumps some atrocity tales on us about Chinese oppression in Tibet, and complains that the Dalai Lama doesn't want to team up with him for the cause! It's all the fault of the lying press, another Rampa bugbear. Soon now, by the way, there's going to be a big scandal where high ranking US officials will be exposed as Communist collaborators! It's a pity Rampa and John Pendragon never collaborated, they've both got the same slightly addled spirit as to predictions.

Rampa elaborates on the astral world, and the things you can get up to there after you leave your physical body in this life. You don't have to wear clothes or eat, but most people end up cladding themselves in some kind of thought-robes and taking sustenance from the ether. Details are also provided on the great astral Overself and its avatars - that's us! It's all part of the cosmic plan, as the Overself sends out feelers to explore and experience life, over and over again.

Rampa's wife Ra'ab does graphology for big firms, a neat detail that he works into a chapter on palmistry, clairvoyance, etc. He also burns some pages on the ol' Kennedy/Lincoln coincidences - Rampa's nothing if not longwinded and shameless about random padding.

Some more psychic potpourri: organ transplants are dangerous because of possible astral discontinuities between donor and recipient. Rampa says that artifical organs should be perfected as soon as possible! He also knows the truth about the lost submarines Thresher and Scorpion, but the story is too weird to be told right now. Rampa's also seen a genuine astral telephone, but the inventor was harassed by the press and Rampa himself is too broke to replicate the work. Ouija boards are not genuine conduits to spirit communication with the other side, but you can get yourself in trouble through self delusion or through trickery by lower astral forms imitating human spirits. These lower forms are harmless unless you allow yourself to be manipulated.

Rampa notes near the end of the book that he's deliberately answered questions in a "higgly piggly" order to prevent readers simply looking up the one or two specific answers they'd want. That's a nice excuse for the book being a disorganized ramble.

Some of the good readers thanked: Mr. and Mrs. "Yeti" Thompson, Mr. de Munnik, Mr. and Mrs. Hanns Czermak, and the Worstmann Ladies. And a big hand for the folks at home ... or maybe not, if you don't send return postage!

Like all of his work, Rampa's Feeding the Flame is available to read and download on the official website for T. Lobsang Rampa.

Corgi Books, 1975 (original pub. 1971)