Holy Men of the Electromagnetic Age: A Forgotten History of the Occult
In Raphael Cormack’s book Holy Men of the Electromagnetic Age: A Forgotten History of the Occult, he tells us that a group of young people asked a Catholic journal, “What do you think about the miracles of Christ, the Prophets and the Saints now?” following the performance of a famous fakir. The journal complained that, “The so-called ‘liberated’ and ‘enlightened’ new generation in Lebanon had gone so wild for this fakir that they had begun to doubt the wonders of the Bible.”
Lebanon between the First and Second World Wars was gripped by the forces of scientific rationalism, enlightenment and new technology, while trying to recover from the devastation of the 1914-18 War, which shattered old truths and certainties there, and, as it did in much of the rest of the world, a spiritual crisis loomed over the Middle East.
In the midst of this crisis, new spiritualist movements sprang up and men who claimed to combine scientific rationalism with mystical understandings, and who were free of the old religious establishments, would hold public performances where they would do the impossible. The fakirs would talk to the dead, read people’s minds, predict the future, stop their own hearts, bury themselves alive and survive and a whole host of other uncanny tricks. In both the East and West, ideas about the occult, parapsychology and theosophy were spreading like wildfire.
Cormack explores the stories of Middle Eastern men who spread the gospel of new age spirituality in the West and the Arab World in the interwar period. His book is a gripping read that takes us from refugees in Athens to Paris, New York, Beirut, Cairo and Jerusalem.
While a number of occultist holy men are chronicled in the book, the author focuses on two figures: Tahra Bey and Dr Dahesh were among the most famous fakirs of their age. Bey, whose real name was Krikor Kalfayan, was among the millions of refugees entering Greece at the end of the First World War. An Istanbul Armenian by birth, he would don an Arab sheikh’s outfit and claim to have spent time in Egypt, where he was steeped in mystical eastern tradition. He took Athens by storm and miracles, uncanny events and strange phenomena attributed to his performances and general presence, along with his claim of ancient esoteric knowledge, attracted widespread media attention. He was so controversial in some quarters that one magazine dubbed him the “Antichrist of Athens”.
In societies broken by war, traumatised and disillusioned with old ideas, Bey became a sensation across Europe and America and was soon a high-profile celebrity. “Doctors and surgeons might be able to save individual patients, but his message could save the whole human race,” writes Cormack. “The fakir was offering a remedy to the poor souls ground down by Western modernity and promised to ‘excise the monstrous cancer gnawing away at humanity’.”
While the West was embracing the likes of Tahra Bey, the Arab world was also eagerly embracing fakirs, in part due to the cultural influence the West, but also due to similar forces and traumas within the region.
Salim Mousa Al-Ashi, was better known as Dr Dahesh or “Dr Astonishing”. When he appeared on the scene, he took the Middle East by storm. Born in Jerusalem to a family of Assyrian origin who converted to Protestantism, he used new techniques in his act from the world of psychology, including hypnosis. But he wanted to be more than just a showman; he wanted to be the leader of a new spiritual movement. In the 1930s, he created the spiritual brothers movements, which attracted members of Palestine’s middle classes to swear oaths of allegiance to him. In Lebanon, Dr Dahesh attempted to create a non-sectarian movement. “As politicians struggled to perform this complex religious balancing act, Daheshism preached a simpler solution: bring all religions together into one movement,” the author explains. This particular fakir’s mission to create a new world made him many friends and many enemies.
Holy Men of the Electromagnetic Age… reads at times like a novel. Going from rags to riches to rags again, with fame and misfortune and a truth that really is stranger than fiction, the fakirs were a response to major catastrophes and advancements that shattered old ideas and modes of belonging at a time when many people felt the need to escape the emerging realities of modernity.
Cormack’s book reminds us of the porous nature of boundaries, whether between science and superstition, religion and disbelief or East and West, in the interwar period. The fakirs were neither men of the past nor a throwback to an earlier time; they were men with their eyes fixed firmly on the future, who understood the power of the new political, economic, social, technological and spiritual moment.
As we grapple with changes taking before our own eyes today, Cormack reminds us, “If the twenty-first century has proved anything, it is that logical argument and technocracy cannot defeat the appeal of wonder. Proving that a myth is false does not kill it. In difficult times, miraculous holy men increase their power as the anxious keep their eyes fixed on a new future. Another world is coming, but whose world will it be?”
The 2020s feel very different to the 1920s, and yet they are much alike, as new leaders emerge and old truths are shattered. This is, I believe, what makes Holy Men of the Electromagnetic Age a fun, accessible and thrilling read.
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