Holy Men of the Electromagnetic Age: A Forgotten History of the Occult

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. Drawing on untapped sources in Arabic in addition to European ones, 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-working mystics in Egypt and Istanbul, these men reflected the desires and anxieties of a troubled age. These forgotten holy men, who embodied the allure of the unexplained in a world of dramatic change, intuitively speak to our unsettling world today.