The Door to Revelation: An Intimate Biography Pelley, William Dudley Biography,Occult,Politics

First edition. Signed by William Dudley Pelley at frontis, inscribed to the former owner (a Pennsylvania-based high school chemistry teacher and Freemason), "To Russel O. Shadel. Best wishes, [signed] Pelley." [xiv], 312 pp, all but front matter printed on rectos only. Bound in publisher's black pebble cloth stamped in gilt. Very Good with small tear at head, bumped corners, light tidemarks to top corner of textblock and rear paste down, former owner's name and a few notes written on prelims, light foxing. The scarce first printing of an autobiography by author, occultist, and would-be Fuhrer of the USA, William Dudley Pelley (1890-1965). He believed that Hitler's rise to power in 1933 was the fulfillment of a prophecy revealed to him from the spirit world in 1929. A former novelist and Hollywood screenwriter, he applied his showmanship to rabble-rousing with a fascist paramilitary group called the Silver Legion of America or the Silvershirts-- modeled after both Nazi brown shirts and (with a uniquely American twist) fictional character The Lone Ranger with his cry of "Hi Yo Silver!" They sported snappy gray-and-blue uniforms with crimson "L"s embroidered over their hearts. The group grew rapidly during the Great Depression despite a dizzying dogma that incorporated New Age thought, Christianity, Georgism, universal basic income, British Israelism, racism, hearty helpings of anti-semitism, and more than a few of Pelley's own inventions, such as FDR being possessed by the spirit of Genghis Khan. After his imprisonment during WWII for sedition, he emerged as the head of an ostensibly nonpolitical group called Soulcraft that bridged from the New Age movement of the early 20th century to the UFO contactee wave of the 1950s. The Door to Revelation is a key work in Pelley's ouevre, published at the height of his infamy as a fascist leader. While little-known today, Pelley's life story is wild-- proof that truth really is stranger than fiction.