COSMIC DEBRIS: Unlock Character Analysis With Key Books!

For just $2.00 apiece - or three for $5.00 - you too can unlock the secrets of character analysis. The folks at Key Publishing Company have even included a "no-risk" coupon, so frankly you'd be wasting money if you didn't order all of 'em!

For some reason, the ad doesn't credit the authors of each book, which include Walter B. Gibson, Felix Fairfax, and Leona Lehman ... plus our old friend Dr. Leo L. Martello!

I guess the overall theme was more important - buy now!

From Fate magazine, Volume 23 - Number 11, November 1970.

CAN ASTROLOGY SOLVE "THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE" MYSTERY? by M.A. Smollin

The readers were clamoring for answers! Writer M.A. Smollin starts off with disclaimers about the Triangle's per capita spookiness and the responsibility of relevant authorities to investigate accidents and disappearances ... and with that out of the way, we're ready to interrogate how Uranus, Mercury, and the rest might influence us towards evil, self destructive ends! This is on top of more earthly issues such as instrument failure, which Smollin says can aggregate alongside the heavenly alignments to cultivate a sense of impending doom. Smollin picks out the Cyclops and Flight 19 as the most important Triangle mysteries requiring this astrological analysis.

Smollin also says that theories of Atlantean atomic piles under the Triangle are unsupported.

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

From Dell's Horoscope magazine, Volume 41 - Number 11, November 1975. If this article put you on edge, you could always try to relax with the same issue's astro-word puzzle!

COSMIC DEBRIS: Astro-Word Puzzle

It's fun for all with our big 500th post! Theme: authors and their birth-signs. From Dell's Horoscope magazine, Volume 41 - Number 11, November 1975.

COSMIC DEBRIS: Successful Meditation With Lobsang Rampa

The Rampathon returns for a limited time with unbeatable prices on spiritual enlightenment! Robes, prayers, incense, figurines, and THE ONLY AUTHORIZED RECORDING of Lobsang Rampa's meditation guide can all be yours if you enclose a check or money order now! Note the botched title Caves of the Ancients in the third party advert from the Metaphysical Centre of San Francisco, which should read as a singular cave:

See?

Rampa's meditation record is available for listening on youtube:

From Fate, Volume 23 - Number 02, February 1970. 

ANCIENT ASTROLOGICAL SECRETS OF THE JEWS REVEALED by Reuven Shomroni

Before the fall, when they wrote it on the wall 
And there wasn't even any Hollywood 
They heard the call and they wrote it on the wall 
For you and me, we understood

By now we've seen plenty of midcentury pop astrology guides, offering love, prosperity, and understanding for those bold enough to grasp them. But now comes "the eminent Hebrew authority," one Reuven Shomroni, with the ancient system to beat all ancient secrets, Chinese or otherwise: ANCIENT ASTROLOGICAL SECRETS OF THE JEWS REVEALED!

Shomroni leads with an uncomfortable philosemitic argument which takes Exodus as read for historical fact and writes off non-Kabalistic astrology as built on the blundering failures of dirt eating medieval Christians:

The cultural gloss may be unique, but Shomroni's attitude is par for the course for any vintage astrology text: simply disclaim your competition as a bunch of morons! Unlike those other useless, simpering astrologists, Shomroni claims that Hebrew astrology is a rock solid science of unseen influences and forces, a truly intellectual tradition that offers amazingly accurate insight into our modern lives!

And just how does Hebrew astrology reach these dizzying heights of accuracy? Simple, according to Shomroni: it starts with an adherence to the older five planet system of astrology, which our author tells us is superior to the modernized eight planet system. Furthermore, each traditional sign is granted a "governing intelligence" named for one of Jacob's twelve sons, and each planet is granted a "guiding intelligence" or sephiroth, named after archangels and bestowing additional qualities! Finally, every sign is given a Kabalistic number. Thus, a sign's profile would look as such:

As we've seen already, and in common with other pop astrology writers, Shomroni makes a lot of hay out of the failings of rival systems, and in his chapter on Scorpio he claims that other astrologists almost never deal with Scorpio's darker side. We know this just isn't true - Scorpio's dark side is half the fun! Sexy and scary, passionate and obsessed Scorpio is, for me, the highlight of any pop astrology guide, and Shomroni's "ancient" Hebrew style sounds identical to every other midcentury guide (no matter how "elevated" the authors claim to be) in warning, ever so titillatingly, of the dangers of mixing it up with these powerful personalities.

The text could have benefited from some Kabalistic charts or ancient illustrations, but the good folks at Lancer are too cheap for that.

The backpage ads feature a plug for the psychic self help text How to Use ESP by Dorothy Spence Lauer and Brad Steiger.

A wooly man without a face, and a beast without a name! This vintage title goes for far too much money online, so in the interest of information, Reuven Shomroni's guide is available to read and download at archive dot org, absolutely free of charge!

Lancer Books, 1970

COSMIC DEBRIS: Signs of the Times

Two midcentury touchstones: cheap dinner wine and superpowered cold medicine! Lancers and Contac are both still around today - however, Contac has changed their formula over the years, straying from their original phenylpropanolamine concoction and microcapsules gimmick.

From A Time For Astrology, by Jess Stearns. Courtesy Signet Books, 1972.

GHOSTS, GHOULS, AND OTHER PECULIAR PEOPLE by Brad Steiger

Here's a treat: one of Brad Steiger's very first Fortean collections, before he settled into his STRANGE series for Popular Library. Dig that Fred, he'll never leave you! Dig too that blurb from bullshit artist Ivan T. Sanderson acclaiming Steiger's attention to facts ... ha! 

What follows is the classic Steiger stew of recycled Forteana, though Merit Books at least graces us with an author's foreword and a gushing back cover letter from editor Tony Licata. Interestingly enough, Licata groups this title with Steiger's two previous books on movie monsters as examples of the "far out," indicating that Steiger hadn't quite staked out the boundaries of his turf yet. 

There's lots of words from both Licata and Steiger about Brad's bold status as an explorer of the unknown, and Steiger quotes Francis Bacon, Herbert Spencer, and Harold Schjelderup to poopoo "skeptics" and anyone who doesn't buy his paper-thin stories as proof of things beyond our ken. In the very first chapter after his author's foreword, Steiger describes how he "rose quickly to the scent of the Unknown" when his friend Jannes Lumbantobing tells him of an Indonesian love curse. This chapter should have been a natural for recycling in Steiger's The Occult in the Orient, but nothing doing.

Some Fortean frequent fliers include the Ourang Medan, the moving coffins of Barbados, Captain Cringle's 1893 sea serpent sighting - with his usual attention to detail, Steiger spells the ship's name Umfli instead of Umfuli - and Count Saint-Germain. His chapter on people who disappear bundles in Flight 19 along with Charles Ashmore, David Lang, and Ambrose Bierce - Steiger would drag these guys out years later for his Strange Disappearances of 1972. Spontaneous human combustion and pyrokinesis also feature.

Steiger finishes up with three chapters of werewolves: the hoaxed feral "wolf girls" Amala and Kamala, a short slip of a chapter with young Marie Bidel attacked by werewolf Perrenette Gandillon, and a longer piece on French werewolves which covers Giles Garnier, Jean Grenier, and others, but doesn't mention the famous Beast of Gevaudan! Steiger ends with a very midcentury note:

Since earliest times, men going into battle have either dressed in the skins of fierce animals or identified themselves with beasts of gore. The Nazi werewolf troops of World War II, the Lion men of Tanganyika and the Simbas of the Congo bear bloody witness to the power of sadistic suggestion on the minds of primitive and propagandized men.

Warren Smith would reuse the two-hearted Italian strongman Agostino Colli for Into the Strange in 1968. His version is shorter but better, lacking Steiger's silly padding of an invented scene of Colli thwarting bullies as a child. Steiger loved his melodramatic "recreations" and cheesy dialogue, turning even otherwise staid and documented events into manipulative maybe-fiction.

Smith's Into the Strange would also reuse the Umfuli sighting (keeping Steiger's Umfli misspelling) and Dr. Robert Menzies' monster fishing, some details from Steiger's chapter on "America's Lost Race," and wholesale copies his ahistorical chapter on the Thuggee with minor tweaks to wording.

Steiger's Thuggee chapter begins:

No organized group of criminals has ever killed as many people as the Thuggee. In the 1830's this Indian murder cult strangled upwards of 30,000 natives and travelers as a sacrifice to their goddess Kali.

While Smith's chapter starts:

No known group of organized criminals has ever killed as viciously and as frequently as the cold-blooded murderers who belonged to the dreaded Thuggee Sect of India. These cutthroat cultists strangled over 30,000 persons during a deadly reign of terror in India during the 1830s. The very mention of their name cause courageous men to cringe with alarm. The victims of each Thuggee massacre were dedicated to their goddess, Kali.

The rest of Smith's chapter continues identical to Steiger's, with rearranged sentences and wording like a 7th grader trying to avoid getting caught for plagiarism.

Merit Books credits Health Knowledge Inc. for three reprinted chapters, "Houses That Harbor Hatred," "People Who Disappear," and "How Many People Are You?" Steiger would recycle that last chapter in 1969's Other Lives, co-authored with Loring G. Williams.

Just like Popular Library, Merit is too cheap to give us a table of contents, so here it is typed out:

1. Author's Foreword (5)

2. The Hex of the Horrible Cupid (8)

3. True Monster Madness (12)

4. Instant Cremation (20)

5. Phantom Ships (23)

6. A Friendly Ghost (26)

7. The Legend of the Vampire (28)

8. The Restless Coffins (32)

9. Genius Idiots (35)

10. Witchcraft - 1965 (38)

11. Cult of Killers (43)

12. 2000 Year Old Man (46)

13. The Witchdoctor's Curse (49)

14. Psychic Cops (54)

15. Surmounting Space and Time (57)

16. Phantom Army (60)

17. People Who Disappear (62)

18. Tracking the Abominable Snowman (72)

19. Black Magic For Sale (75)

20. Hercules With Two Hearts (77)

21. How Many People Are You? (80)

22. America's Lost Race (88)

23. The Mischievious Spook (90)

24. Human Flame-Throwers (95)

25. House That Harbor Hatred (98)

26. Who Was Jack the Ripper? (111)

27. Astrology - Guaranteed? (115)

28. The Wolf Girls (118)

29. Werewolf! (122)

30. France's Epidemic of Werewolves (125)

Merit Books, 1965

COVER UPDATES: SIGNS OF LOVE

An updated edition of this astrology love guide from Love Boat lady Jeraldine Saunders. Courtesy Pinnacle Books, 1980 (original pub. 1977).

PREDICTIONS FOR 1974 compiled and edited by Warren Smith

Here's a real load of midcentury occult meatloaf that must have been waiting to spring off the grocery store spinner rack, as working writer Warren Smith assembles 33 psychics of varying pedigree for predictions on the upcoming year of 1974! We get some big names like "PK Man" and all around self promoter Ted Owens, the Countess Amaya (last seen in The Strange Ones by Smith, from 1972), Malva Dee and Beaverton's own Tenny Hale, as well as also-rans and unknowns like "Aquarius" the anonymous college student, the "Black Psychic" Dr. Ernesto Montgomery (who seems ill-served by this reductive label), fake fakir Komar, and a host of others who are lost to the ages, with nary a wikipedia page or archived news article to commemorate them. Regardless of their purported status, we get the expected spread of generic, oddball, infuriating, and just plain wrong predictions about what to expect in '74 ...

Cancer will be cured, as will schizophrenia. Nixon will resign, be impeached, or be totally vindicated. Stuff will get more expensive. Young people will either accept their lot, or raise hell! China, the USSR, or some terrorist group will start a nuclear war ... or bring about world peace! Liza Minelli will divorce, get remarried, and divorce again. On and on it goes, a numbing litany of "predictions" that soon blend together between psychics, to the point where it would be hard to remember who to credit with any actual hits. Regardless, Smith and Award Books are sure to place a disclaimer front and center that NONE of the predictions within are to serve as the basis for any financial decisions!

One of the standout chapters features Leo Martello, a legendary gay rights and wiccan activist and author of an excellent witchcraft primer featured on the blog back in 2020. Martello's predictions seem less ethereally inspired than simply savvy, with a mix of accuracy. Near misses include predicting impeachment for Nixon post-Watergate and farm strikes which were still a decade off in actuality. Dead on predictions include the the implication of the CIA in SE Asian drug trafficking. Silly stuff from Martello includes massacres by psychotic Vietnam vets and "a dubious witch killed in a car crash," (now who exactly was he throwing shade at?) along with the usual celebrity divorces everybody else comments on throughout this volume. Martello is the rare left-wing celebrity psychic, and even predicts that reactionary race baiter Jeane Dixon will face public backlash for her stances.

Martello looking tres sinistre ...

... and a little more approachable!

In line with Martello, Tenny Hale ("looking chic like a model instead of a psychic") predicts that fundamentalists will take over Christianity in America. Again, this is less of an astral vision and more straight observation, though it's better than the piffle some of these other psychics dredge up to fill pages. India/Pakistan and Palestine/Israel are two big geopolitical topics that crop up again and again, with varying pessimism and perspectives. Another hot topic of the time is the status of the American Indian: some psychics are bullish on America's first people gaining full rights and reparations, while others feel the issue will fade from the headlines.

Tenny Hale

Our final chapter is from Ruth Zimmerman, the Illinois housewife who tunes in. True to the era and focus of this volume, she says Jack Paar may suffer a head injury and that Dean Martin should be careful of his nose! The backpage ads are solid gold, with Brad Steiger, Brinsley le Poer Trench, and some titans of SF represented.

Predictions For 1974 is available to read and download at archive dot org.

This book was owned by Earle L. Blanton, Jr.

Award Books, 1973