Mentat Training 101

[ecosophia]

During the most recent Magic Monday open post, one of my readers asked about a forgotten system of mind training called Pelmanism, which was extremely popular during the first half or so of the last century. I'd looked into it some years before, and at that time I was unable to find a complete set of the twelve lessons online. I decided to take another look, with very welcome results: it's all available now, for free download.

Pelmanism was named after a psychologist, Christopher Pelman, who came up with the first draft of it, but it was developed into a complete system by William Ennever. It was taught by correspondence lessons. Its goal was to teach students to use the full capacities of their brains by exercises that developed attention, memory, and mental clarity.

Mentat stuff? Well, the first steps in that direction, certainly. I've experimented with the exercises and found them useful enough that I plan on working through the course. I field enough requests for training along these lines, though, that I figure the links are worth posting here.

Pelmanism Lessons 1-6

Pelmanism Lesson 7

Pelmanism Lesson 8

Pelmanism Lesson 9

Pelmanism Lesson 10

Pelmanism Lesson 11

Pelmanism Lesson 12

If any of my readers has the spare time to clean these up and convert them to other formats, btw, that might be very helpful. Given the embarassingly low quality of thinking that's become commonplace these days, anything that helps people learn how to use their minds is worth getting back into circulation!

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

How did Christopher Pelman and William Ennever come up with these ideas? What's their lineage, so to speak?

[ecosophia]

A fascinating question to which I don't know the answer. It might make an intriguing research project, though.

lessons 1-6?

[(Anonymous)]

Unless it is me being particularly dense, there does not appear to be a download from google there. Does one have to sign up with them or have I missed the obvious?
Thanks
[earthworm]

Re: lessons 1-6?

[ecosophia]

When I click on the link, it takes me to a page with:

Pelmanism
Parts 1-6
By Pelman institute of America · 1923

Just below that is a button labeled "Read Free of Charge," and immediately to the right of that is another button labeled "Download PDF."

It's possible that for some reason it's taking you to the old Google Books page. In that case, if you put your cursor over the red button on the left that says "Read Ebook," but don't click on it, a popup appears. Toward the bottom of it is "PDF" -- click on that, and that'll get you the PDF copy.

Re: lessons 1-6?

[(Anonymous)]

The read free of charge seems also geo-restricted. I couldn't see it from here (NZ), had to VPN into the US

Re: lessons 1-6?

[k_a_nitz]

One of the oddities of US copyright law is the result of a compromise done in 2000 when as part of GATT they tried to harmonise US copyright law with the rest of the world. By that old works enter the public domain after 95 years. Whereas in most other Western countries they enter the public domain 70 years (sometimes less, sometimes more) after the death of the author. So to know whether it is in the public domain in NZ, you would need to know when the author(s) died.

Re: lessons 1-6?

[(Anonymous)]

Only a link to abebooks and no big red button offering ebook.

Have often thought that internet could become worthless as algorithms start delivering personalised narratives.... dig dig...

spare time to clean these up

[(Anonymous)]

I can take a crack at it.
what formats would people like?

~Wolf

Re: spare time to clean these up

[ecosophia]

Thank you! I'd like a nice clean MOBI file of all 12 lessons without the covers and waste pages, and I suspect others would like a nice clean EPUB file, ditto.

Re: spare time to clean these up

[(Anonymous)]

we'll see what i can do.
the first six are a pdf scan of images not words (non OCR) so that may be "fun." the 7-12 appear to be in a searchable text format so should just require some reformatting.
long way of saying 7-12 first then 1-6.

~Wolf

Re: spare time to clean these up

[(Anonymous)]

PDF please. -JPM

[(Anonymous)]

Duly downloaded the first six lessons. This stuff is interesting. Thanks for putting it all in one place. I'd like to go through the Hamner lessons again... I did a keyword search in the library catalog and came up with one book that has it listed as one of the "250 milestones in psychology" interesting with regards to the dream discussion over on the other blog. These look like they could be very useful indeed.

Justin Patrick Moore

[ecosophia]

The Hamner course is well worth repeating -- I'll be doing it again, probably sometime next year, when I've worked through my recent experiences a little more and am ready to hit the ground running.

Those who don't know what course we're talking about can find the whole blessed thing here:

http://iapsop.com/archive/materials/wing_lessons/order_of_the_essenes_florida/

[diletpoly]

Google has been kind enough to do most of the work on converting. If you click "Read free of charge", then in the top left next to the book title there's a vertical ellipses (...) and under there are Download links for both PDF and EPUB.

It could still use some cleaning up, as I, for one, don't need the giant picture of the covers, inside and out, which mostly consist of the title and some reference to the University library where it was kept. And I'm sure there will be other cleanup in there. I may work on that, but having it at all is half the battle, as G.I.Joe used to say, so it's low priority for me.

[ecosophia]

Hmm! I didn't know that trick. Thank you.

[jbucks]

Thanks for these links! I can't download the first link (lessons 1-6), that takes me to a Google Books link which doesn't provide a download link, at least from here in Canada. Is there somewhere specific to click that I am missing?

[jbucks]

Ah, I see the comments from others now with the same issue. Looks like this might be only available in certain countries.

[ecosophia]

Is there a red button on the left that says "Read Ebook"? Put your cursor over that without clicking, and a popup screen should come up; click where it says PDF, and you should get it.

[jbucks]

Unfortunately not, not in the new or the old Google books.

[milkyway1]

It seems to be a matter of location/country - downloading from the US works fine, although I see a blue button instead of a red one, don't see any elliptic dots or hover popups, and can't seem to download an epub, but instead have a straight download button for the pdf.

Sometimes life is weird... :D

For people outside the US: You might consider using a proxy to access the download site for the first six chapters, simply for privacy and security reasons. There are free proxies available in a variety of countries, e.g. the US. I recommend using one to ensure your privacy. ;-)

Milkyway

[(Anonymous)]

I can't access it from Germany either. If someone could put a copy on archive.org or post something here, I would appreciate it very much.

Mike

[(Anonymous)]

I just did a little more digging and found what appears to be a cleaned up copy of the whole thing here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20140717163606/http://www.sector51.com/

Found it here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20140714141839/http://www.ennever.com/histories/history386p.php

Mike

[ecosophia]

Excellent! Yes, this is identical in text to the ones I found.

Readers outside the US, can you download this?

[jbucks]

Yes, this worked! Thank you, Mike!

And thanks, JMG, for drawing our attention to these lessons.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, I could download this one (but _not_ the Google one). You have to click the download link at the bottom of the first linked page to get the PDF. I didn't see an EPUB, though, but maybe I missed it.

[(Anonymous)]

well shoot. that "fixes" my 1-6 issue. i will see about converting this to other formats.

~Wolf

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, as a European reader I had no download link at Google, but I successfully downloaded the PDF from the first archive link here. Thanks for sharing this!

all there

[kallianeira]

Yes, all 12 lessons are there in one pdf at this link.
(I went in via a VPN in Japan)

- iridescent scintillating elver

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, thank you so much.

[(Anonymous)]

Beautiful file, downloaded with no problem.

(Used the link at the bottom of the 'sector51' archive page.)

- Cicada Grove

[(Anonymous)]

Brilliant! Thank you Mike :)
[earthworm]

Internet Archive

[(Anonymous)]

The Internet Archive has the individual lessons - https://archive.org/search?query=pelmanism. It also has W.J. Ennever's "Brain-Building For Success".

Both are can be downloaded in either PDF or epub.

(Hope the links work. If not, the search link on the main page will take you there. (Not the Wayback Machine.))

[charlieobert]

I don't know if this comment belongs here, or in Magic Monday, or for that matter over in the Covid group.

It strikes me here that any course of occult training has to include:

- learning to think straight

- becoming aware of, and disconnecting from, Hive Mind

and that without those two aspects it is worse than useless.

[open_space]

I would say more than useless, its dangerous.

[ecosophia]

This seems like a very good bit of advice, and I'll keep it in mind while drafting further programs of occult study.

If you cannot see from google books...

[homeopathic_meditations]

... you may want to check these links:

https://archive.org/details/pelmanism04pelm/mode/2up
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uva.x001768347&seq=45

There is also another interesting book, also from the Pelman Institute of America

https://archive.org/details/mindmemorypelman00pelm/mode/2up

[jruss]

Maybe I’m doing something wrong but when I click on lessons 1-6 all it’ll show me is lesson two.

[ecosophia]

Did you try downloading the file, and see if you get all six lessons that way? If not, Mike's link above will give you a clean copy of the whole thing.

[jruss]

There we go was able to get it.

[(Anonymous)]

A bit late to the party here, but I did find scanned versions of the Pelmanism lessons on archive,here

https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22Pelman+institute+of+America%22

They are not titled according to their specific lesson, so check to ensure you aren't repeatedly downloading the same one.

I'm from Canada, so these downloads should work for others outside the U.S