This is my third blog post in my blog experiment of writing short reflections on Edye in service of book drafting.
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Edythe is a celebrity in my world. But in the 1940s, she was also a popular voice in science fiction (or as they called it back then, SF) magazines like Voice of the Imagi-nation, along with prints of her minutes from the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society shared in Shangri-L’Affaires (for an incredibly in depth review of Tigrina’s role in SF, including scans of her cartoons with her character “Witch Hazel” as well as excerpts from her writing and mention of her in fanzines, check out Rob Hansen’s piece in his FAN STUFF site).
Eyde writes in a 1942 issue of Voice of the Imagi-nation that she is interested in satanism and black magic, and she receives responses from multiple male fans critiquing her, calling her silly, and pulling what feels a bit like a “well, actually…” about what satanism and black magic truly mean. Rob Hansen provides an excellence play-by-play of the conversation in his piece on Tigrina, so instead of replicating his work, I’ll zoom in to one section of Tigrina’s letter and one response: First, let’s look at what Tigrina says on page 13 of the 1942 issue of VOM:
I am interested in Devil worship and Black Magic purely for revenge, power, love of mystery and just ‘pure devilishness’, but no further than that. I know also that my interest in the Black Arts is, to a certain extent, a rebellion from the exceedingly ‘straight and narrow’ path that I have sometimes been forced to tread.
One respondent writes in the same issue of VOM (editor’s additions are with double parenthesis; my additions are with brackets),
This Tigrina creature annoys me. Frankly, I don’t believe she is 13 yet. Maybe her mental development has been held up. This sort of childishness–her fatuous nonsense about witchcraft and so on–seems out of place in this world; and I’m no Wollheim [a British philosopher] or Youd [I assume this is a philosopher or psychologist, but cannot locate the name]. Then, again, the wench cannot have got far in the study of music if she perpetrates such rubbish as that so-called song ((Hymn to Satan)) with its absurd words. Sarcastic articles like that famous one in ‘Time’ are justifiable when fandom includes such adolescent idiots. It looks as though I don’t like the lady.
Tigrina responds to the men in a later issue of VOM, in a way that feels true to her personality and satisfying as she wittily confirm her conviction,
to disillusion of some of the opinions concerning me. Some have evidently been under the impression that I believe implicitly in the existence of ghosts, vampires, etc. Let me say once and for all I am definitely not a spiritualist and I am not superstitious. I try to keep an open mind and try never to scoff at anyone’s beliefs and theories, yet I do not accept everything I read about the Occult as true facts. It is true that occasionally I dabble in the Black Arts (what person does not who is interested in that sort of thing?) but only as an experiment or as a harmless (?) manner to give vent to my injured feelings. And I so not limit myself to experimenting with evil spells against those whom I dislike! But if there are truly such opposite beings as god and Satan, if such opposite beings do exist, I think that you know which deity that I would accept as Master!
In a future blog, I’d love to do a deeper reading of the way Eyde/Tigrina was talked about in VOM, because as a small celebrity, who was frequently celebrated in print by Forrest Ackerman, we read how pretty and dashing and funny she was…but as we can see in these responses to her interest in the black arts, male SF fans were ready to hurl sexist critiques of her intelligence and commitment to SF fandom.
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