Holy Men of the Electromagnetic Age
A Forgotten History of the Occult
Exploring death, religion, science and social crisis, a startling history of the occult between the world wars, when Spiritualism was truly an international obsession.
Description
The interwar period was a golden age of the uncanny. Clairvoyants, fakirs, Theosophists, mind-readers, miracle-workers and jinn-summoners—all assured the masses that, just like the newly discovered invisible forces of electricity, radiation and magnetism, unseen spiritual powers commanded a realm of hidden human potential. This was a transnational movement of eccentrics, gurus and prophets, with East and West interacting in unexpected ways.
Drawing on untapped sources in Arabic as well as European records, Raphael Cormack follows two of the most unusual and charismatic figures of this age: Tahra Bey, who took 1920s Paris by storm as an ‘Oriental’ missionary; and Dr Dahesh, who harnessed Western science to create a pan-religious faith in Lebanon. Travelling between Cairo, New York and Jerusalem, Paris, Istanbul and Rio de Janeiro, the two mystics reflected the desires and anxieties of a troubled age. These forgotten holy men, who embodied the allure of the unexplained at a time of dramatic change, speak to our own unstable world today.
Reviews
‘Extraordinary. A delightfully engaging and highly original chronicle of our willingness to believe six impossible things before breakfast.’ — Alberto Manguel, author of A History of Reading
‘Raphael Cormack is a brilliant archival sleuth and a riveting storyteller. In lives full of violent glamour, mystical illusions, and often hilarious twists, set against the inhumanity of the two world wars, Cormack’s madcap prophets reveal how modern politics and the occult are in fact propelled by the same question: do we dare to imagine another world?’ — Anna Della Subin, author of Accidental Gods: On Men Unwittingly Turned Divine
‘From Athens and Cairo to Montmartre and Manhattan, Raphael Cormack reconstructs the careers of four occult impresarios through interlinked circles of artists, immigrants, politicians, and theatergoers. Rarely is cultural history presented with such mesmerizing legerdemain.’ — Nile Green, author of Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah
Author(s)
Raphael Cormack is an award-winning editor, translator and writer. The author of the widely acclaimed Midnight in Cairo, he is Assistant Professor of Modern Languages at Durham University.