Los misterios desvelados [sic]; tratados de quirognomia; el árbol del ocultismo [...]

Zulema Moraima Gelo, 1929

Moraima Gelo, Zulema. Los misterios desvelados [sic]; tratados de quirognomia; el árbol del ocultismo; la luz en el sendero. Mexico, D.F.: np, 1929. 18.5 cm, 92 pp.; frontispiece portrait and 3 b/w pls., minor area of faded color pencil underlining on p. 34; in contemporary half calf, spine with gilt lettering, heavily rubbed, lacking orig. wrapper? Manuscript signature and dedication on verso of half-title by the author to Arthur Garcia (with his ex-libris stamp).

Zulema Moraima Gelo, born Maria Ciriaca Resendis, was a glamorous fortune teller and chirologist in Mexico City in the 1920s and 1930s. She claimed to be of “African Moorish” descent; her exoticized stage name, taken from a contemporary opera, reflects the popularity of Orientalism in literature and art of the period. Although divination and cartomancy would have been a common aspect of certain theatrical and public performances in Mexico in the 19th century, fortune tellers with fixed addresses and private rooms emerged only slowly in the early 20th. Initially they requested municipal authorization for their businesses, but by 1919, when Zulema applied for permission, the Mexico City had turned against fortune telling and created a policy not only to refuse new licenses, but to withdraw those which had been granted, and to prosecute fortune tellers and cartomancers as frauds.

Zulema therefore moved her studio frequently, and circulated in sympathetic artistic and intellectual circles where spiritualism was admired (she was praised by the poet Jose Emilio Pacheco as “our maximal visionary”). Unfortunately today she is mostly remembered for a series of public scandals involving her romantic life and deceptive business practices.

The present volume appeared during the height of her fame, when she toured to Havana as an “Arab clairvoyant” and correctly predicted political and global events (the Spanish Flu, the death of a local politician). It offers personal interpretation and instruction on familiar conventions of palmistry and divination. Seemingly issued in very limited numbers, OCLC identifying only one copy, at the Biblioteca Nacional de México.

$450

See: Avilés, M. M. (2017). La suerte está echada. Clarividentes, adivinadoras, palmistas y cartomancianas. Alquimia 61.