COSMIC DEBRIS: The Dick Sutphen Seminar Tour!

Another blast from the past as Dick Sutphen launches a Western tour all the way from Texas to Portland, OR, followed by a Super Seminar in his hometown of Scottsdale, AZ! Sutphen also plugs his books, his tapes, and his self-help magazine. It will change your life ...

From Fate magazine, Volume Volume 32 - Number 2, February 1979. 

YOUR PAST LIFE CAN SET YOU FREE by Brad Steiger

Article in Fate magazine by Steiger on hypnotist and professional past life regressor Dick Sutphen, who aims to help people recover their past life memories. Steiger opens with the cheeky claim recycled from his volume Psychic Travel (written as Christopher Dane) that real life convict and prison reform crusader Edward H. Morrell was astrally projecting during the tortures he endured while incarcerated - of course, Steiger is taking the fictionalized aspects that Jack London added for his novel The Star Rover and pretending London got them straight from Morrell, who he interviewed as part of the background research on prisons for his story!

All this by Steiger is to claim that Sutphen may be a reincarnation of Morrell!

Steiger and his then-wife Francie were living the New Age crystal cowboy life down in Arizona at this time, and he describes attending a seminar by Sutphen and his wife Trenna in Scottsdale. Learning their past lives can, according to Sutphen, help people deal with problems in their current lives such as impotence and alcoholism. People also report Atlantean and extraterrestrial heritage through their regressions, which must have been of interest to Steiger per his Starseed theories, though he's careful to point out that Sutphen personally doesn't ascribe to any one interpretation.

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

Courtesy Fate magazine, Volume 32 - Number 4, April 1979.

STRANGE & MIRACULOUS CURES by Warren Smith

In between churning out his slapdash Strange volumes for Popular Library, Warren Smith took the time to put together this pretty sturdy volume about faith healing and alternative medicine for Ace Books. The difference in quality is clear when compared to, for example, his buddy Brad's Strange Powers of Healing on the same subject from the year before. Smith balances some intermittent skepticism with the usual mystery mongering and "who knows?" copouts, and presents a pretty good overview of historical faith healers, movements like Christian Science, and subjects like the healing waters of Lourdes, with some "gee whiz" super-science medical advancement sprinkled on top. He even includes the AMA's guidelines on recognizing quackery:

Frequent Smith subject Doc Anderson pops up here, and you also might be surprised at his attitude towards faith healing: Doc says that NOBODY has powers of healing except for God himself, and trained doctors! People write Doc asking for healing miracles (or so he claims) and he has to let them down easy saying all he can do is pray to the Lord. It's either very honest or very canny marketing on Anderson's part.

Another intriguing bit is Smith's description of an anonymous Filipino faith healer fraud, and the planeload of North American health tourists who left his Luzon compound feeling used and abused, but not cured. News items from the time point to this healer being the infamous Tony Agpaoa:

Brad Steiger wrote up "Dr. Tony" as a genuine miracle man in 1967's Strange Men and Women, of course. 

Heavy hitters like Edgar Cayce are profiled next to forgotten pioneers/men of letters/weirdos like Phineas Quimby and candidates for sainthood like Teresa Demjanovich aka Sister Miriam Teresa of Bayonne, NJ, and there's just enough of a structure to the text to prevent this from falling into the Strange style of anecdote after anecdote. Smith ends with a short roundup of psychic predictions for medical advances, featuring Doc Anderson again along with John Pendragon, Malva Dee, and Eckankar founder Paul Twitchell. Doc predicts a cure for cancer is coming soon ... 

Psychic housewife Louise Proctor agrees, and also sees the FDA cracking down on bad medicine and quackery. Proctor, as the text informs us, also supposedly saw the Richard Speck murders in a vision, and she's the very same woman mentioned in the facing ad for Smith's Strange Powers of the Mind!

The back page ads are jam packed with paranormal/Fortean goodness, including the big man himself, Charles Fort! Rupert Furneaux, John Macklin, and Hans Holzer also provide titles, alongside The Occult World of John Pendragon, featuring you-know-who and edited by Brad Steiger.

Strange & Miraculous Cures is available to read and download, absolutely free, at archive dot org! This volume is recommended as a surprise highpoint in Smith's canon.

P'raps an alchemical encryption?

Ace Books, 1969

ESP AND YOU by Susy Smith

"An incubus is as good an excuse for hanky-panky as has even been invented."

Macfadden-Bartell's classy cover hides one sexy journey into the unknown from that "girl with the improbable name" (I still haven't figured out what that's supposed to mean) Susy Smith, as she uncovers incubi, succubi, ghost lovers, and mass sexual hysteria from the middle ages to modern day suburbia! That's only a part of her exploration of ESP, but man is it a heady brew to lead with.

Smith covers multiple cases of nuns (and Mohammedan girls too!) succumbing to sexual mania, lest we think the literature doesn't support the existence of incubi. Modern housewives and widows aren't immune either, though sometimes Smith says it's hard to tell whether they're being visited by departed lovers or by demons. This is one reason she advises against Ouija boards, as any old demon can call themselves whatever they want when you're pushing the planchette around. She also questions how many "genuine" cases of possession or visitation it really takes to kick off a fad or mania from otherwise unaffected ladies.

Smith carries on with a racy theme through subjects such as ESP in twins, with showgirls Lou and Lee Gerick explaining their psychic connection: once they even purchased identical all white outfits at the same time, despite the two of them being separated in Idaho and Hollywood!

Twins Lou and Lee ... or is it Lee and Lou?

Picture from a 1964 USO show they did.

Their card!

Smith outlines Freud and Jung's ESP experiences, cites heavily from Aldous Huxley's The Devils of Loudun, and interviews a man developing his ESP through LSD under the pseudonym Melvin Mallory. Poltergeists, witches, and vampires all come in for guest roles as well, with Smith very interested in the interplay between psyche, culture, and forces from beyond - how much of any given phenomenon is culturally expressed, or projected out from one's self, or otherwise influenced in ways we might not appreciate?

After so much steamy research, Smith has to assure us that the psychically gifted aren't just a bunch of perverts, though "still, all in all, Nandor Fodor found a lot of psychics who were weirdos!" And there's always Aleister Crowley, too!

According to Fodor's research, Smith tells us that spirits and demons can change one's sexual orientation through possession, leading to lesbianism and homosexuality in heterosexual mediums! Smith also hedges that perhaps these are cases of repressed feelings. Throughout this text, Smith comes back to the idea that no matter what strange forces may be at work, we are all human after all.

Susy includes a nice bibliography in her usual practice, though her discernment as to the quality of various sources may be a bit lacking at times - she admits as much when repeating somewhat shaky stories such as the fraudulent medium Eusapia Palladino, who Smith believes possessed genuine powers while still resorting to trickery from time to time. Sometimes, Smith says, we just can't be sure as to the true facts of a case and can only take people at their word, and she concludes that many of the stories she's covered are just too subjective to prove something one way or the other.

Smith also cites cases and correspondence from her own previous books including World of the Strange, previously reviewed at this blog.

She ends her saucy psychic tour with some final words from author R. Dewitt Miller:

ESP and You is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Macfadden-Bartell Books, 1972

TIGERLILY by Mama San Ra'ab Rampa

Mrs. Rampa speaks! The world cried out for more Rampa, and Sarah aka Ra'ab aka Mama San obliged with this slim autobiographical volume that details the life and times of the Rampa family, and their special bond with a special cat named TIGERLILY!

Mrs. Rampa sprinkles her text with quotations galore, in a flimsy New Age framing that cites Kahlil Gibran, Winston Churchill, Mark Twain and others on the topics of friendship and happiness. Like her husband, Ra'ab writes in a treacly, maudlin style, and whereas Lobsang's overriding mood was miserable, hers seems melancholy, with sad remembrance of things past. The psychedelic cover art is mismatched with the restrained autobiography, and Ra'ab notes that Lobsang often takes issue with the cover art for their books, remarking that at times he looks like a corpse! Here of course, he's some kind of weirdo cat man.

Ra'ab details her childhood, a lonely one, and her marriage to "Carl" (aka Cyril, aka Lobsang), a good match that nonetheless sees the two loners set against the world. Carl works in advertising while the couple hunker down during the Blitz. Names and faces are often forgotten in Ra'ab's memories, lending a dreamlike quality that only heightens once she finally gets around to the big reveal of Carl's transference to Lobsang. Readers looking for a blow by blow will be disappointed however, as Ra'ab spends far more time on the topic of feline constipation than on specific details of Carl/Lobsang's identity, which she says readers may find in his book As It Was! Mostly she just defends him from the ever present, ever evil Press.

In his defense, Ra'ab strenuously emphasizes that Carl's father was a water engineer, not simply a plumber, and that Carl himself never pursued that trade at all. Like her husband, Ra'ab is a true blue Britisher (despite newly attained Canadian citizenship), also defending the Royals from Press libel and spending some time on the uncertain status of the Commonwealth. Lobsang's changeover from Carl/Cyril is just another one of life's bumps in the road, to be dealt with as the Blitz or bad health.

As with her husband, Ra'ab seems happiest writing about their cats, with Siamese cats being the Rolls-Royce or Cadillac of the cat world! Like Lobsang, Ra'ab talks telepathically with Miss Cleo and Miss Taddy, their current cats, who provide much commentary on the writing of this book.

The Rampa's life together before the change is notated as PR (Pre-Rampa), by the by. Ra'ab ends her book with a plug for Lobsang's latest, Three Lives. 

Like all of T. Lobsang Rampa's works, Tigerlily by Mama San is available to read and download at the official T. Lobsang Rampa website.

Corgi Books, 1978 (original pub. 1976)

THE THIRTEENTH CANDLE by T. Lobsang Rampa

The RAMPATHON rolls on, as we dig into Rampa's big thirteenth book, answering more reader questions and airing more dirty laundry on the astral plane. Hold on tight, as we light THE THIRTEENTH CANDLE!

In this Author's opinion the Press is the most evil force which has ever existed on this world; in this Author's opinion unless the Press be checked and controlled and censored the Press will eventually control the world and lead to Communism.

One thing you can say about Rampa, he doesn't mince words - even if it does sometimes seem like he's mashed his prose flat with a meat mallet! Ya also get the feeling he'd have been happier writing "straight" fiction, as this thirteenth volume is filled with "comical" vignettes of people debating the truth of Rampa's writing. It starts off with a couple of stupid housewives who bicker about a news account of a near death experience, until they go next door to their wise neighbor who's got a whole shelf of Rampa to set them straight. She doesn't lend books though, because that's unfair to the author! Here Rampa details more of his magic accounting that sees him getting something less than 1% of 1% of a book's asking price, damning him to a life of poverty.

Nobody's suffered more in this life or the next.

"Oh, woe is me."

The housewives are named Martha MacGoohoogly and Maud O'Haggis, to give you an idea of Rampa's sense of humor, and things continue in this vein with the next scene of butch dyke Lotta Bull and her femme charge Rosie Hipps, who ditch a sleazy London bar to make out on the couch and debate Rampa's views on homosexuality.

Rampa alternates scenes of disgusting, pig-ignorant Westerners arguing over his books with a throughline of a young lama's training in Tibet. These scenes are more naturalistic and much less venomous. Rampa comes off as a genuine misanthrope when writing about people, and only softens up when on the subject of cats or fantasy caricature Tibetans who can serve as mouthpieces for his cracked New Age melange. This time around it's breathing exercises, more astral travel, and more about that enigmatic Overself of which we are all simply avatars. We also get a silly section on Shakespeare, where Rampa innovates the anti-Stratford conspiracy with the reveal that the stupid peasant boy William was actually possessed by an enlightened astral presence, which is the only reason he could write so good!

Rampa really lets it rip in the last couple chapters, as he takes aim at Women's Libbers:

This particular Author has a screw loose about certain things. One is about the moronic press, and another is about the so-called Women's Liberation Movement. This particular Author firmly believes that women have a very important job in life, raising the future population. If women would only stop aping men—and they do definitely try to ape men and try to wear the pants, forgetting that they don't have the figure for it—then the world would be a better place. This Author believes that women are responsible for most of the troubles of the world through wanting to get out and be ‘free’, as they wrongly term it, instead of accepting their responsibilities as mothers. Women say they want to be equal, but are they not equal? Which is most important, a dog or a horse? They are different creatures. Men and women are different creatures, a man has never given birth without the assistance of a female, let us say, but a female can give birth without the assistance of a male by parthenogenesis. So if the Women's Lib Movement wants a boost, why not boast about that?

What greater proof of equality or even superiority can there be than that women have the task of providing and bringing up the future race? The male co-operation in the matter only takes a few minutes, but a woman— well, she should bring up children until they are able to get on by themselves, and how she brings them up, the example that she sets them, that is how the future race will be. But now women want to beetle off to the factory where they can talk scandal, they want to be a hash-slinger, or anything except to accept the responsibility for which she is so well qualified by Nature. Women's Liberation? I think the sponsors of the Women's Liberation Movement should be slapped across the backside—hard!

The question goes on to ask why women never aspire to the highest Lamahood. Because women are irrational, that is why, because women cannot think clearly, that is why. Because women let their emotions run away with reason, that is why. If women would only stop being such asses and face up to their responsibilities, then the whole world, the whole Universe, would be a better place.

As one reads through this enlightened lama's works, one can't help but notice how unhappy Rampa was. The bulk of his writing is taken up with a deep, abiding misery over his poor health, the state of the world, other people in general, the youth and the press and women in particular, along with Catholics and immigrants and Hottentots for good measure. No one is safe when Rampa's cheesed off, excepting the Royal Family who have suffered nearly as much as Rampa at the hands of an unfair press.

Perhaps the greatest proof of Rampa's fraudulent identity is this deeply ingrained British pessimism, a small minded provincialism that sees the entire world laid before you in all its wonder and complexity and says, "aw, none of that for me, guv!"

One of the only other topics that seems to cheer him is modern technology: ships and planes and industry, which account for much of his scene settings. The Buddhist writer David Michie noted the same emphasis when he received some personal photos from Rampa's estate:

The slides were mostly of travels in the latter years of his life – Europe, South America, USA, Canada and even Australia. I was disappointed to find that almost all were of landscapes, buildings, ships and aircraft – he clearly had an enthusiasm for mechanical innovation and technology. I had hoped to discover that he had been photographed with other people known in the worlds of psychic studies, psychology or spirituality more broadly.

Overall, the materials were more striking for what they didn’t contain as what they did. There is nothing in any of them to suggest that, through all his extensive travels, Lobsang Rampa ever visited a Tibetan Buddhist centre, met practitioners from any lineage, let alone the more prominent Tibetan Buddhists who had begun to visit Western countries. No passing references to interesting books he’d read or conversations he’d had with fellow authors or kindred spirits. These may have happened, but if you didn’t know the occupation of person who’d sent the items in that old cardboard box, from the vast majority of them you would probably conclude that he was some kind of engineer.

This volume also contains a useful index of topics, compiled by one Mrs. Maria Pien for all of Rampa's books thus far. An updated version covering his entire body of work is available at the official T. Lobsang Rampa website.

Like all of Rampa's book, The Thirteenth Candle is available to read and download at the official T. Lobsang Rampa website.

Corgi Books, 1973 (original pub. 1972)