Book Report: Master Guide to Psychism by Harriet Boswell (c)1969

 Harriet Boswell  was an enthusiastic experimenter in the area of Psychic abilities. She founded the Aquarian Research Center in Florida, a nonprofit center which offered classes and workshops in ESP research. It was dissolved in 1984. This book appears to have been popular enough to have gone through several printings, at least two in hardcover by Parker Publishing, and several in paperback, at least one by Lancer Books, which offered a number of popular titles in inexpensive paperback.

 This, latest addition to my collection of Parker Publishing titles, is another book that might qualify as a first-year textbook at Hogwarts. It touches on a broad range of Psychic phenomena, and includes exercises, tips and anecdotes to help a student along. 

The book follows the usual Parker style, which is very readable, and ends each chapter with a series of useful summary points of what the chapter covered. The authors writing style is very clear and readable, almost conversational. She approaches the psychic topics with stories of personal experiences of herself and some fellow experimenters, as well as some references from other authors, and suggest a great deal of confidence in what she writes about. Her approach is very interesting, too. She describes herself as a non-conformist, and with each exercise she advises the would-be psychic to avoid being too rigid in their practice but also that most of the skills easily improve with regular practice. 

There's a nice consistency in her book. She opens with spiritualistic subjects, seances and so forth, and then goes on to discuss the energetic auras that surround everyone and everything. all her subsequent psychic abilities relate back to either using the energy of one's own aura, or reading the energetic aura of other things or people. 
 

Some of the topics include:

Mediumship & Séances
The Human Aura & Astral Projection
Telepathy & Thought Transference
Premonition & Precognition
Psychokinesis & Telekinesis 
Automatic Writing
Psychometry Powers

Additional subjects covered include reincarnation, spiritualist churches, the use of Ouija boards, and photographic manifestations of the spirit world.