An inscribed copy of this extremely rare guide to metaphysics and chirology (palm reading) by one of Mexico City’s most controversial clairvoyants in the early-twentieth century.
Zulema Moraima Gelo, née Maria Ciriaca Rosaura Reséndis, was born in Huichapan, Hidalgo, in 1885. Not much is known about her early life, but the first advertisement for the fortune teller “Zulema Moraima” (Zulema taken from the 1902 opera of the same name, with Moraima added to sound exotic) appeared in The Mexican Herald on July 21, 1915. She offered to solve clients’ “doubts and difficulties with love”—without a fee unless results were achieved. Unfortunately, Mexico was becoming more hostile to Zulema’s trade as it recovered from the throes of the Revolution. While not formally outlawed, private fortune-telling stores were seen by the authorities as fraudulent at best and as fronts for prostitution at worst. Zulema’s application for a license for 1919-1920 was summarily denied: she was told her profession was “prohibited,” and it became the policy of the city to revoke all existing licenses and deny future applications without appeal.
Nonetheless, Zulema continued to offer her services without a license, and became a feature in Mexico City’s artistic circles. She gained some public renown after foretelling the assassination of Venustiano Carranza in 1920, as well as the sudden death by asphyxiation of poet Lopez Velarde, and claimed to have predicted both World War I and the Spanish Flu. She was apparently doing well enough in 1923 to take her show on the road, with performances in Cuba as the “Arabian Clairvoyant.” She advertised herself as “The only psychic in Mexico who isn’t a charlatan,” as well as “The Queen of the Occult Sciences” and “The only psychic of Arabian birth.” Her name would periodically appear in the city’s papers, such as when an angry rival (“Zaida Celinda,” i.e. Esperanza Fernandez) outed her true identity and the lie of her Moorish descent, and she was later hit with a number of suits for fraudulent practices (including selling lockets full of coffee grounds as “dirt from the holy land”). She also made the front page of El Nacional in the early 1930s after a public altercation with her lover, Yucatan actor Pedro García Rejón, who forced her to withdraw her complaint by threatening to reveal her secrets to the press. When the government crackdown on palmistry and divination intensified, she rebranded as a “Spirit Doctor” working in “experimental psychology” and hypnotism, though she was still raided and forced to change offices several times in the 1930s.
This book, published relatively late in her career in 1929, outlines the clairvoyant’s personal views on metaphysics, the nature of the universe, the history of mankind, and myriad other topics, as well as providing instructions for palm reading and divination. The section on palmistry is illuminated by two full-page photo illustrations, and a smiling portrait of Zulema herself follows the titlepage. This copy is inscribed by Zulema and her problematic partner Pedro across from the portrait. Dated July 29, 1930, the inscription reads “Alberto Garcia - conserva este de tus hermanos, Pedro y Zulema.” Alberto Garcia Dominguez was a comic actor who was active in Mexico City at the same time as Zulema, including an advertisement for a performance parodying Don Juan in The Mexican Herald the same month as the author’s first classified. An exceedingly scarce and interesting piece of Mexican occultism. As possibly hinted at by the description, perhaps due to the potential of legal danger, it is unlikely that many copies of this work were ever produced, or that they were ever offered for general sale. We locate evidence of only one other extant copy, at the Biblioteca Nacional de Mexico.
OCLC locates just a single copy at the National Library of Mexico.
Mayra Mendoza Avilés, “La suerte está echada. Clarividentes, adivinadoras, palmistas y cartomancianas” in Alquimia, num. 61 (2017), pp. 18-27.
