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.
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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.
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