
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
An international history of the uncanny in the 1920s and 1930s.
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, 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 panreligious faith of his own in Lebanon. Traveling between Paris, New York, and Beirut while guiding esoteric apprenticeships among miracle-working mystics in Egypt and Istanbul, these men reflected the desires and anxieties of a troubled age. As Cormack demonstrates, these forgotten holy men, who embodied the allure of the unexplained in a world of dramatic change, intuitively speak to our unsettling world today
Raphael Cormack is an award-winning editor, translator, and writer. The author of Midnight in Cairo, Cormack is assistant professor of modern languages and cultures at Durham University in the United Kingdom.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion
4.3
2727 ratings
An international history of the uncanny in the 1920s and 1930s.
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, 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 panreligious faith of his own in Lebanon. Traveling between Paris, New York, and Beirut while guiding esoteric apprenticeships among miracle-working mystics in Egypt and Istanbul, these men reflected the desires and anxieties of a troubled age. As Cormack demonstrates, these forgotten holy men, who embodied the allure of the unexplained in a world of dramatic change, intuitively speak to our unsettling world today
Raphael Cormack is an award-winning editor, translator, and writer. The author of Midnight in Cairo, Cormack is assistant professor of modern languages and cultures at Durham University in the United Kingdom.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion
1,027 Listeners
5,453 Listeners
43,946 Listeners
210 Listeners
190 Listeners
162 Listeners
165 Listeners
50 Listeners
17 Listeners
64 Listeners
23 Listeners
110 Listeners
104 Listeners
293 Listeners
149 Listeners
61 Listeners
15,191 Listeners
127 Listeners
301 Listeners
128 Listeners
577 Listeners
178 Listeners
196 Listeners
641 Listeners
318 Listeners