HOLY MEN OF THE ELECTROMAGNETIC AGE

The occult world of charismatic, miracle-working holy men.

Cormack, a professor of modern languages and culture at the U.K.’s Durham University, investigates numerous enterprising men, or con men, who came to the fore preaching new kinds of occult religions after World War I during a turbulent time of crisis and rebirth. Tahra Bey, the “Egyptian fakir” from Istanbul, set up shop in poor, ravaged Athens. The Armenian—Cormack is good at describing the Armenian people’s plight—astounded people with his Houdini-like physical and mental “powers,” including being buried alive for long periods of time and enduring swords and knives. The gruesome show went to Italy in 1924, where he added to his act, supposedly hypnotizing rabbits and chickens. In France, where spiritualism and magic were booming, his shows were hugely popular and profitable. A curious Marie Curie attended one. Bey’s success spawned a Rahman Bey in London in 1926. Others turned up to ride the occult wagon, like the eccentric Dr. Hereward Carrington, while Harry Houdini fought their charlatanry. Fakirism was on the wane in the late ’20s when an American named Hamid Bey, more performer than prophet, became popular on the vaudeville circuit preaching “applied life vibration.” The next fakir Cormack profiles is Dr. Dahesh Bey from Beirut, a prolific author, conjurer, and renowned hypnotist who read the minds of others and “communicated directly with the souls of the dead,” all while spiritualism was spreading throughout the West. Dahesh “was creating a successful mystical persona for this modern age.” In the 1940s, he was at the peak of his popularity with his new religious message of Daheshism. The news that he passed in 1984 in Connecticut went largely unnoticed.

A fascinating, detail-laden history of a time when occultism ran rampant.