Seven Minutes in Eternity with the Aftermath

by William Dudley Pelley

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88 pages, Paperback

First published May 26, 1929

About the author

William Dudley Pelley (March 12, 1890 – June 30, 1965) was an American writer, occultist, spiritualist and fascist political activist.

As a journalist Dudley Pelley wrote for multiple publications and won 2 O.Henry awards for short stories. After the first world war he travelled europe as an foreign correspondent. Dudley Pelley also worked as a screenwriter for Hollywood.

Dudley Pelley founded the organisation Silver Legion of America on 1933 and ran for president in 1936 on the ticket of the Christian Party.

In 1941 his organisation was forced to disband and Dudley Pelley was jailed for attacking the president in his publication "Roll Call" He was paroled in 1950.

After his release, he returned to Noblesville and began publishing metaphysical magazines and books avoiding political topics. He spent his time developing Liberation doctrine into a full-blown religion known as Soulcraft, based on his belief in UFOs and extraterrestrials.

Reviews

[Ingmar Weyland · Rating 2 out of 5]

No, I don't liked it and don't found it interesting. It is all the same (despite understandable Pelley desire to distance himself from such matters as far as possible) chewing over spiritualism. Strange that this article gained so much interest upon it publication in 1929, at the end of the nation-wide popularity of such ideas, I feel that I probably missing some important context. It would be very improving if the article was preceded or concluded by explanations from a expert on the topic of the history of spiritualism, journalism of the 1920s, or an expert in Pelley's biography, instead of his own lengthy bragging and self-promotion in so Americanish and quite unpleasant manner:

WEEK on week, month on month, I am taking down and transcribing volume after volume of scientific and theological knowledge derived from the same sources that were responsible for my California experience, and from time to time I shall edit and publish them. I have between 2,ooo and 3,000 pages of these typed to date, material which squares perfectly with scientific information being gathered and released by such great physicists as Dr. Robt. A. Millikan, Prof. A. S. Eddington, and others of equal prestige, I have been able to help hundreds of persons privately with their problems brought about by the loss of those they love, or who are troubled in their souls by doubts as to the Continuity of Existence. There are a score of pastors, theologians and spiritual leaders, whom I am counselling week by week.

I shall be twenty years writing and publishing this constantly increasing mass of material. None of it is trivial. Lecture after lecture which I am taking down with a stenographer's aid, appertains to subject matter so far beyond my personal knowledge that I should already be the wisest man in the earth if I could be credited with fabricating this material from my own subconscious mind!

Hard to distinguish what exactly attracted Panzram's attention in all this, probably this next passage? (I forgot to mention at the beginning, that nevertheless that I came to Pelley independently, through my another branch of study—right wing politics, this reading was inspired by mentioning this article in his book.)

In the years between fourteen and twenty-two I became a smouldering little Bolshevik against every kind of authority-particularly against religious authority which had apparently sanctioned these injustices against me-and picking up the rudiments of a denied education by permiscuous reading, I went far afield from accredited Christianity.

No need to clutter up this article with the books I read, but at twenty-two, in a little town in northern New York I was publishing a brochure magazine of heretical tendencies. Not exactly atheistic but holding few illusions about the Scribes and Pharisees who wail loudly in public praying places and who take good care that their alms are seen of men. I had discovered myself possessed of a certain facility with iconoclastic language, no censor, and the courage of my ignorance. Fresh from a wry, lonely, misunderstood childhood, cluttered up psychologically with the worst sort of New England inhibitions, revengeful that I had been denied social and academic advantages for which my hunger was instinctive, I proceeded to play a lone hand and Make Things Hot for several goodly people whose only indictment was that they represented Authority as aforesaid-and especially spiritual. I know I made existence rather annoying for a number of representative ministers of the faith who saw life as through a glass darkly along with myself but weren't blatting about it as I was.

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really makes you think...