Friends,
This is the fourth episode* in a series called The Spirit-Era and Its Aftermaths in which I look at the way spiritual, technological, and occult flourishings at the turn of the 19th into 20th century are still with us today, and in fact, being echoed by our own time.
This time, we’re moving closer and closer to our present age, away from the Spirit-Era and into its aftermaths, tracking the ways that paranormal investigations, and paranormal phenomena themselves, changed as they emerged from that era.
And I look into all of the with my guest, journalist ⁠BEN MACHELL⁠, author of the compulsively readable and also illuminating book ⁠Chasing the Dark: A 140-Year Investigation of Paranormal Activity⁠.
One thing I’ve noticed again and again in researching and recording this series of episodes is that the so-called esoteric, the miraculous, the paranormal are all common.
Whether it’s a haunting, someone who is able to accomplish a feat of endurance, or the ways in which the world is simply very strange if we just look at it without taking it for granted: these are not aberrant occurrences. We have all experienced them, or heard about someone who has, or have shared stories about them, or have found some evidence for them or theorized about them.
So when we tell stories about the paranormal, we are really just telling stories about the normal world.
In Ben’s book, he takes a long and thoughtful journey following the life and work of paranormal investigator Tony Cornell, a member of the Society for Psychical Research who appeared on TV, wrote books, and even was featured in a computer magazine for building a device to try to detect paranormal phenomenon. But unlike the performative ghost conjurers of the late 19th century or the fakirs in the early 20th, Tony (1924 - 2010) wasn’t trying to create spectacular performance, and wasn’t motivated purely by egotistical posturing as a debunker either. Rather he sought to understand what was really happening in people’s lives.
Through following Tony, Ben depicts a fascinating alternate history of the everyday: people simply living their lives, but then experiencing something they don’t understand and can't explain, something that feels out of place to reality itself. Sometimes the unexplainable isn’t the phenomena, but a feeling, a need to cry for help.
So a picture begins to emerge - the paranormal as the presence of motivators - whether in our own behavior or in furniture and dishes flying through the air that we can’t grasp, that we need help with.
What a change from where the Spirit-Era started, with the frightening glamour of the table rapping spirits and the ectoplasmic bonds of spiritualist gatherings. And what a difference, also, from the spiritual thinkers who sought to create coherent theories. Here, the theories fell away in the face of spontaneous phenomena for which there were no experts. But if there were an expert, Tony Cornell would be the best of them; and his approach was to live with the uncertain, the unknown.
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This is the third episode in a series called The Spirit-Era & Its Aftermaths in which I look at the way spiritual, technological, and occult flourishings at the turn of the 19th into 20th century are still with us today, and in fact, being echoed by our own time.

The Spirit-Era is marked by occultists, paranormal investigators, and magicians... But it is also marked by performances of all kinds: stage magic, but also actual magic. Stage magic passing as real magic, real magic posing as trickery. There were the performance of spiritualism, of charismatic theologians, and of feats of incredible endurance.

As in our own time, People had difficulty parsing out what was real and what was illusion. And there was no shortage of advice on how to attain magical aptitude and ability, or promises of unlimited health and vitality.

Beyond this difficulty distinguishing truth from fantasy, there was a thrilling draw to the ambiguity, and whatever power might be there, in the spot in between what was and what might be. This negative space, this open area of reality, affected people all over the world, including the middle east.

These tensions - between genuine and the spectacular, strengthening and the seducing, are the themes of this installment in the series - on Fakirs & Fakers with DR. RAPHAEL CORMACK, Assistant Professor in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at Durham University, and author of the highly readable, eye-opening, and excellent book Holy Men of the Electromagnetic Age: A Forgotten History of the Occult

Raphael’s book, and our discussion connects us to two figures who were emblematic of their time:
The performer-fakir, Tahra Bey, an Armenian performer who achieved fame in the 1920s as a man of incredible talents; not only to drive sharp objects through his skin, to be buried alive and survive, or to lie down on a bed of nails; but also to beguile huge audiences. Tahra Bey, who fooled the world into thinking he possessed both heritage and secrets from Egypt, and that he could teach anyone to do what he did.

The other figure is Dr. Dahesh, Palestinian-born mystic and teacher, founder of the spiritual current known as Daheshism, which still has adherents today. Dr. Dahesh was said to be able to take off his own head, to spring back to life after execution, and to understand the workings of the cosmos. He was also an art collector, for whom a museum in New York is named. He remains a well-known figure in Lebanon where he was both celebrated and persecuted, but eventually moved to Connecticut, where he died in at the age of 74 in 1984.

As Raphael says in this episode, “Writing a history of the occult is writing a history of something that doesn’t quite fit into the box of history, even on its on terms.”

So how do we interpret the performance from the truth? And what does it mean to desire not just the miracle because it astounds us, but the lack of miracles because it allows us to be complacent?

I’m so excited to share this episode with you.

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This is the second episode in a series called THE SPIRIT-ERA & ITS AFTERMATHS in which I look at the way spiritual, technological, and occult flourishings at the turn of the 19th into 20th century are still with us today.

In the second installment in the series, I talk with ALLAN JOHNSON Professor of English Literature at University of Surrey, meditation coach, and author of the excellent book, The Sacred Life of Modernist Literature: Immanence, Occultism, and the Making of the Modern World

In that book, Allan states: “The occult has always walked the perilous line between desiring a textual form while resisting the possibility that this form can ever be completely achieved.”

One of my big frustrations with spiritual influencers is that most of them don’t seem to have a good grasp of art, but particularly literature. They do something like this: they read literature that has magical CONTENT and create metaphors and analogies that - all-too conveniently - mirror the lessons of their own esoteric view. And they generally reach for the usual suspects: Tolkien, Le Guin, Coehlo, etc.

But the location of esoteric strength in literature is less in the content and much more in its FORMS and STYLES. These forms were brought to us most prominently in modernist fiction - in James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Franz Kafka, and more. But also by poets like TS Elliot, Ezra Pound, and WB Yeats.

In the works of modernist writers, the reader’s involvement is demanded to complete the text. These are writers who initiate us as we read their works.

This conversation with Allan offered the chance to explore ideas I'd been longing to talk about for years, I'm so excited to share them with you here.

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