CLAIRVOYANCE IN WOMEN by Robert Tralins

"A new casebook of psychic phenomena?" Sign us up! Unfortunately, author Robert Tralins gives the game away in his preface: he says he's randomly chosen 50 examples of womanly ESP out of the staggering 3,668 case histories and reports in his files, all never before published, all deliberately written down in a casual style for ease of the reader, and all stripped of any confusing jargon or scientific distractions. Hmmm ...

This is, in fact, another story collection a la Steiger and Smith, with zero evidentiary or archival value. Since these are all "never before published," we don't even get any reused stories from Fate or the Society for Psychical Research! Note Tralins' cheeky admission that he's changed some of the names in a few of the cases ... more like, he's made it all up whole cloth! The clumsy and obvious stories that follow the preface make it obvious that Tralins is pulling our chain. 

His prose is sub-Steiger. Consider the very first story about the "death bobbins" - not content to give Mrs. Chun a vision of a miniaturized grim reaper cutting yarn, Tralins also throws in that, oh yeah, her mother told her about this very phenomenon as a child, but somehow Chun "can't say how [she] knew" what the vision meant! Make it make sense, Bob!

Author Robert Tralins (1926-2010)

Tralins was a prolific working writer who put out a handful of paranormal titles, so we can't judge him too hard for phoning in this one. It must have sold decently enough, because Lancer Books reprinted it a few years later:

Lancer Books, 1973 edition

The rest of the stories follow a type: people rush home just in time, or pick up the phone at just the right moment, or follow some sign to a date with destiny. The just-so sameness drags on, as does Tralins' seeming lack of care. Consider the chapter about a white tiger. Judith Satterlee has a vision of the beast while on safari ... in Africa. Now, maybe spectral felines aren't exactly bound by time and space, but it seems to me that Tralins didn't do his homework, as tigers aren't native to Africa! The actual ESP portion of this chapter is lackluster as well, with Mrs. Satterlee knowing her father has died because she dreamed of the tiger eating him.

"A tiger? In Africa?"

Just about the only chapter with any real verve to it is "Mrs. Henry's Dead Dog," a predictable but well done short about a sick woman's dead dog visiting her in hospital. This chapter works well enough to be on par with John Macklin, even! 

Meanwhile, a chapter on "Armagh Armageddon" shares Macklin's train fixation but falls flat, as Mrs. Lucy McHugh warns her uncle and brother not to take the train. They don't listen to Lucy, and so it's bye bye uncle and brother as they ride straight into the Armagh rail disaster of 1889! A list of the dead doesn't feature any McHughs, and this would be an odd one for Tralins to have changed names of real people for (if for the sake of humor we take him at his word), so here Tralins is making up fake victims of a real life tragedy. He also seems to have picked the Armagh disaster at random, because there's no details about the actual crash in his chapter and nothing about it is especially relevant to the story he came up with. A large number of the real life victims were schoolchildren on an excursion, which feels like it may have made for a more dramatic chapter, but as Tralins has written it, a couple guys took the train, it crashed, and they died. No moral!

That's sort of the problem with the whole text, really. After the preface, Tralins never actually engages with the idea of clairvoyance in women and what it could all mean. It's just story after story, until the very last chapter, and then: the end.

 

Lancer gives us just three measly ads in the back for more paranormal thrills, including another Tralins title and our pal Steiger promoting psychic Dorothy Spence Lauer.

After all is said and done, Tralins' Clairvoyance in Women sits alongside Steiger's Possession as a maybe-fiction meatloaf and shelf filler. This title is available to read and download at archive dot org ... if you dare.

Lancer Books, 1970

ARCHIVAL UPDATES: THE U.F.O. REPORT & WHY ARE THEY WATCHING US?

Two vintage UFO texts from 1967 by Irving A. Greenfield are now available to read and download: The U.F.O. Report and Why Are They Watching Us? (as Allen Louis Erskine) from Lancer Books and Tower Books, respectively. In both texts Greenfield is hot for the Northeast Blackout of '65 being down to UFO shenanigans.

Original reviews are here and here.

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 back page 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

CRASH GO THE CHARIOTS by Clifford Wilson, M.A., B.D., Ph.D.

Zip, bang, boom, and CRASH GO THE CHARIOTS! Lancer Books releases another anti-Chariots reader the same year as Popular Library's anthology Some Trust in Chariots, and like that volume you'd be hard pressed to guess the critical content given the packaging which promises more and greater revelations in the wake of von Daniken's ancient astronauts. But author Clifford Wilson isn't going to take any of von Daniken's nonsense lying down, and he's got mainstream and Biblical archaeology on his side - Wilson was a young earth creationist and proponent of Biblical truth who takes extreme issue with von Daniken's warping of basic historical facts as well as Biblical interpretations.

Wilson is especially incensed at von Daniken's slurring of archaeologists as a bunch of close minded, hidebound "experts" and describes his own experiences in the field working alongside both secular and religious minded researchers who were all professional enough to go where the facts lead ... Wilson just happens to thinks they lead to an inerrant Biblical truth and a geologically young earth!

Author Clifford Wilson (1923-2012)

These old school creationists can be quite logical in their own way, and Wilson's background allows him to neatly filet von Daniken's crimes against the Bible, including old standbys like Ezekiel's wheel, the atomic destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the electrified, positized, nuclearized Ark of the Covenant.

During his fact checking episodes Wilson also lays out how von Daniken structures his own shaky arguments: railing at those nasty "experts," leaving out established answers to his many "mysteries," and always ending things with a giant question mark - meaning that von Daniken never has to stand behind any of his arguments and can always retreat to claiming to be "just asking questions."

I've already remarked how Lancer packaged their anti-Chariots books without any critical clues on the covers, as if they were worried readers wouldn't seek out a skeptical perspective. It seems like nowadays we don't even really have this soft pedaled "mainstream" counter to von Daniken, as the various Ancient Aliens shows churn on for year after year and alternate perspectives are limited to specific "skeptic" outfits like CSI (formerly CSICOP) and authors like Jason Colavito. Even Wilson's evenhanded religiosity is a thing of the past, as Creationism has long since been subsumed into the larger partisan right wing evangelical culture. This work is a snapshot of a time gone by, just as it describes ancient history and dusty archives.

Brad Steiger pops up in the back page ads with his book on Paul Twitchell and Eckankar, alongside Twitchell's own work, Aleister Crowley, and some other occult and astrology guides that Wilson surely wouldn't approve. Some big name science fiction and a couple of Exorcist cash-ins fill out the ads.

If footmen tire you, what will horses do? Crash Go the Chariots is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Lancer Books, 1972

HOW TO USE ESP: THE HIDDEN POWER OF YOUR MIND by Dorothy Spence Lauer with Brad Steiger

We're getting a late start this month and rolling out SELF HELP SEPTEMBER! Yes, all entries this month will be part and parcel of that slippery category of paranormal/occultic self help literature, and what better way to launch this theme than with one of Brad Steiger's patented promotional numbers, cowritten with a (semi)famous psychic celebrity? We're learning HOW TO USE ESP with Dorothy Spence Lauer!

Dorothy Spence Lauer (1909-1990)

Lauer was a midlist seer with a regular column in Ray Palmer's Mystic magazine (later renamed Search) where she dispensed the usual vague affirmations and warnings. Select issues of Mystic/Search featuring Lauer's column can be downloaded at the Luminist archives. Says Palmer at the start of a column:

Editor's Note: Dorothy Spence Lauer is a Psychometrist, specializing in precognition. Ordinarily she needs but an object belonging to, or handled by, the subject, or the presence of the subject, to become aware of the psychic influences from which she draws her information. However, for the sake of expediency in providing her with a sufficiently strong personal psychic impression, the editors of this magazine hit upon the playing card method. By laying out the cards, while concentrating, as described in the instructions given at the end of this article, and by writing them down on the chart, we hope that a sufficiently powerful psychic impression will be made to enable the medium to receive the information
she seeks. We have made this service available to our readers purely in an experimentative atmosphere, in an attempt, first, to determine whether or not this ability is of a nature both real and valuable; and second, to provide you with an interesting bit of entertainment. Naturally we cannot publish all the requests for readings we receive, but we will forward all charts to Mrs. Lauer, asking her to select several which give her the strongest and most interesting impression, for publication entirely free in this department of MYSTIC Magazine. We assume no further responsibility for the charts.

If you wish to correspond personally with Mrs. Lauer, we will be glad to forward your letters.

Steiger starts off his book with some flashier fish, quoting Palmer in a 1964 issue of Mystic on Lauer's incredible prediction of JFK's assassination! Between Lauer, Joseph Goodavage, and Jeane Dixon, it's a wonder Jack didn't just call off that trip to Dallas ... Lauer doesn't usually concern herself with big shot predictions like this though, seeming to prefer personal matters. Steiger assures us she's a warm, wonderful, humble, Godly lady who just wants the best for her clients. She's so humble and honest that she doesn't even have a spectacular psychic origin story like most of the famous seers, Steiger claims ... and then immediately tells us of Lauer's spectacular psychic origin story as a premature birth! Oh Brad, you cad.

One of Lauer's big ideas for ESP self improvement is the GOLDEN MAGIC CIRCLE, a protective area you should envision around yourself that hones your ESP powers while also protecting you from negative energy. She doesn't feel that ESP is "supernatural" per se, as it comes directly from God. Lauer quotes an article from the August 1961 issue of Exploring the Unknown by a Baptist minister named Vance L. Milligan that defends her from Christian criticism using a Biblical perspective, including St. Paul in 1st Corinthians 12: 4-11 and John 14:12. Milligan concludes that "God approves of people like Mrs. Lauer. She is a modern prophetess."

Her other tools for training your ESP are the usual mystic self help guff: positive thinking, the law of attraction, visualization, but Lauer is engaging enough, even when she's telling us that cancer comes from negative thought waves. These are either being directed at you by a foe or boomeranging back onto you from your own poor attitude towards someone. Lauer emphasizes that your burgeoning ESP powers should NOT be used to harm others, as the forces you send out can easily bounce back to you. On the other hand, if you wish others good fortune, those positive waves may just benefit you as well! If enough people start using ESP in a self-reinforcing cycle of good vibes, Lauer says the day may come soon when we tell each other, "Pardon me, your ESP is showing!"

True to midcentury aesthetics, Lauer also tells us to visualize a control panel (of "rich mahogany," even!) with red buttons, each labeled something like "money," "friends," "love," etc. If we can visualize strongly enough as we press one of these buttons, that thing will come to us! The same push button control can be used to heal a marriage where two people have grown apart, or reignite passion in the bedroom.

This title must have sold well, because Lancer reprinted it at an unknown date:

And it even got reprinted in 1998, with cover art updated in that era's cheesy New Age style:

Lancer Books, 1969