Telephone Between Worlds
Los Angeles: DeVorss & Co., ca. 1952.
Second edition, circa 1952, copyright date 1950. Signed by subject Richard Zenor on the front pastedown below an equation in a seemingly different hand. xix, [1], 232 pp. Bound in publisher's blue cloth stamped in gilt; lacking the dust jacket. Near Fine with light wear and soiling to covers, dulling to gilt on spine. A few spots of foxing to textblock edges, light foxing and offsetting from jacket to endpapers. Clipping from jacket laid in.
A signed copy of James Crenshaw's profile of the medium Richard Zenor (1911-1978), who channeled the ancient Egyptian master teacher Agasha and founded the spiritualist group Agasha Temple of Wisdom in Los Angeles in 1943. Per Zenor, Agasha had founded a tolerant theocracy based on the principle of Universal Consciousness: "All great philosophies are but facets or dim views of a single understanding. Where the dogmas now conflict, growth of understanding must ultimately bridge all differences and resolve all disputes."
Zenor began as a "Hollywood Boy Medium," advertising his services on the West Coast as early as 1930, though he claimed to have begun at the age of four. He gave Trance Demonstrations around L.A. and foretold a Golden Age shaped by the combined forces of beauty, order, and harmony. Later he seems to have been able to lecture and exhibit at number of the more mainstream Christian churches. In the late 1960s he got into the prediction racket a la The Amazing Criswell and predicted in 1967: "Men will not be able to land on the moon," "Lots of trouble in Las Vegas," and "Plastic homes will become the common thing."
Price: $1,500