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.

SIGNS OF LOVE by Jeraldine Saunders

The signs of love are haunting me

Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh oh

I've always been a coward

And I don't know what's good for me

Don't know your ass from an Ares? Celebrity astrologer Jeraldine Saunders wants to help out, in this self help volume that offers "unlimited love power" teaching your SIGNS OF LOVE!

We're deep in midcentury cheese now, as Saunders also wrote a memoir/astrology primer (!) that was adapted into the schmaltz smash hit The Loooooooooove Boat! Wild! Even wilder, today's title features a foreword by super-celebrity astrologer Sydney Omarr, who was married to Saunders for a hot minute back in 1966! What a tangled web the planets weave ...

Really, the bones of it are your basic self help spiel available in dozens of quickie books from the era, but it is attractively packaged anyways, with some neat illustrations to boot. Its main value today is as a time capsule of the polyester party people decade.

Pinnacle Books, 1977

COSMIC DEBRIS: Zodiac and Palmistry '77

At last! A wooden Ouija board! Though the Touch Palmistry Game looks far more interesting:

And Kreskin too!

The podcast Lunatics Radio Hour have episodes covering the game and its creator Maxine Fiel, one of those personalities who was a fixture of 70s pop culture but has the barest digital footprint nowadays. She passed away in April 2020 according to her obituary, at the incredible age of 96. 

From Fate, Volume 23 - Number 12, December 1977.

 

COSMIC DEBRIS: Reflexology Hand Chart

 

Pocket sized palmistry. Printed in Canada by the Pacific Institute of Reflexology.

THE SENSE AND NONSENSE OF PROPHECY by Eileen J. Garrett

An eminently readable guide to spiritualists, mediums, fortune tellers, and other purveyors of would-be prophecy! Garrett was a titan of the field herself, an interesting woman who "attributed her mediumship not to spirits but to the activity of a 'magnetic field'" or some other scientifically measurable influence. Chapter Three is an especially enjoyable rundown on psychic fakery featuring a composite "Madame Zola" with whom Garrett skillfully (and not without sympathy) illustrates both the mechanical aspects of fortune telling as well as the often ignored mental/emotional state of the fortune tellers, who often believe in their own "gifts" even as they deliberately defraud their marks. Garrett's writing is warm without being sappy or credulous, with following chapters delivering the same scoop on crystal balls, tarot, palmistry, and so on.

It's worth noting that Garrett was always researching and developing her theories on ESP and mediumship and evolved her positions over time:

Garrett wrote "In all my years' professional mediumship I have had no "sign", "test" or slightest evidence to make me believe I have contacted another world." She considered that her trance controls were personalities from her subconscious and admitted to the parapsychologist Peter Underwood, "I do not believe in individual survival after death".

Almost a decade after her death John G. Fuller wrote a book on her supposed contact with deceased airman Herbert Carmichael Irwin back in 1930. Despite statements against an afterlife (such as quoted above) this story seems to be her most lasting influence some 50 years after her passing, which does little justice to her complex personality.

The Sense and Nonsense of Prophecy is available to read and download at archive dot org.

A Berkley Medallion Book, 1968 (original pub. 1950)

THE COMPLETE BOOK OF PALMISTRY by Joyce Wilson

A very practical guide to palm reading, in the 70s style of self improvement texts. Thorough and fully illustrated, even offers two sample hands at the end of the book to test your knowledge.

Available to read and download at archive dot org.

Bantam Books, 1982 (original pub. 1971)