Collecting novels of the fantastic as I do, I eventually and inevitably came across those of
Dion Fortune, and bought a few. To this day, they remain untracked by my eyes. Nonetheless, I was sensitized to her name, and could spot her non-fiction selection
Psychic Self-Defence readily on the shelf of a used-book store and snatch it up. A bargain at $5.00, I'm sure!
I haven't read it yet, but I'm much looking forward to learning how to protect myself against various types of intrusive mind assaults. Sample a few pages yourselves below.
And thanks to Google Books, you can read the whole thing online
here.
Here's another strange book I purchased but have not yet read. The real author is Joseph K. Heydon, using the pen-name of Hal Trevarthen. Time has swallowed up all details related to Heydon and his book, leaving us only with the text itself.
Here's the description from the amazingly ugly dustjacket.
Here's the title page, followed by a sample of the actual bafflegab inside.
Posted By: Paul -
Thu Sep 11, 2008 -
Category:
Aliens,
Eccentrics,
Government,
Inventions,
Literature,
Books,
Science Fiction,
Writers,
Nature,
New Age,
Paranormal,
Pop Culture,
Science,
Psychology,
Self-help Schemes,
Foreign Customs,
1930s,
Yesterday’s Tomorrows
Do you have a spare $2000.00 lying around the house? Why not send it to
this untested fiction writer and receive a share of his entirely hypothetical profits?
In fact,
I'm a relatively penniless writer too!
Thanks to good pal Sandy Pearlman for discovering this one!
Old self-improvement schemes never die. Recently, I spotted this antique advertisement from 1954 that alerted me to the existence of Pelmanism, the brainchild of
William Joseph Ennever.
The Pelman Institutes of England and America apparently once claimed over half a million followers. But now they're long gone. Yet that has not stopped at least two folks from trying to resurrect the copyright-abandoned mind-strengthening course and claim and market it as their own. You can see their pages
here and
here.
Oddly enough, the last vestige of Pelmanism most people know, without realizing its true origin, is the
card game we call Concentration or Memory or Pairs.