Word: occult
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...Occult Powers. Duvalier began to build a personality cult. The Lord's Prayer was rewritten. "Our Doc," the revised version went, "who art in the National Palace, hallowed be thy name." He boasted that he was a statesman of the same caliber as Charles de Gaulle and demanded homage from his people, who were trucked into Port-au-Prince to sing and dance his praises in front of the palace. To stir up enthusiasm for himself, he would sometimes ride through the capital in his bulletproof Mercedes 600 limousine and stop to scatter money among the crowds...
Electronic Barkeep. Men on the working side of a bar are often reputed to have near-occult talents: only the legendary Harry of the Ritz could make the splendid martini; only Emory of Barbados understood the mysteries of rum punch. Now modern technology has provided a substitute: a device marketed by National Cash Register Co. with the drab name of Electra...
...sign system, dismiss Schmidt's theories as "meaningless." U.S.C. Astronomy Professor Gibson Reaves points out that "astrology is essentially irrational, and to try to give it such a rational, scientific explanation would spoil it for most people, anyway." Buffs like Clark Stillman, salesman at a Greenwich Village occult bookstore, complain that Schmidt doesn't ascribe any "elements" (air, water, fire, etc.) to his new signs or enhance them "for esoteric value" with much mythology. Actually, Schmidt borrows some myths from the Encyclopaedia Britannica, both on Cetus (a monster sent by Neptune to devour Andromeda) and on Ophiuchus (either...
Cassill fails to seduce because cruel gods have ordained that a novelist shall not deal in occult matters in a realistic novel. Realism requires a two-inch sub-flooring, with studding not more than 18 inches apart. Besides, the author is much more adept with the occult...
...author lavishes upon the title figure, Dr. Michael Cobb. Cobb is a pander in the form of a society osteopath. Yet Cassill manages to present him sympathetically as a high-souled practitioner of black magic and sexual adept who trains a young whore to take part in a serious, occult effort to persuade the rocket-rattling minister to make love...