Holy Men of the Electromagnetic Age
A Forgotten History of the Occult
Exploring death, religion, science and metaphysics, this is a startling history of Spiritualism in the interwar years, when the uncanny was truly an international obsession.
Description
The interwar period was a golden age for the occult. Spiritualists, clairvoyants, fakirs, Theosophists, mind-readers and Jinn summoners all set out to assure the masses that, just as newly discovered invisible forces of electricity and magnetism determined the world of science, so unseen powers commanded an unknown realm of human potential. This was an international 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 in the role of a missionary from the mystical East; and Dr Dahesh, who transformed Western science to create a pan-religious faith of his own in Lebanon. Travelling between Paris, New York and Beirut, while claiming esoteric apprenticeships among miracle-workers in Egypt and Istanbul, 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, intuitively speak to our own unsettling 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.