(Re)incarnations
Simplicissimus 22. April 1912
Simplicissimus was a satirical magazine famous for its excellent illustrators, published in Munich 1896-1944. All the issues are available for browsing in an online archive at the Klassik-Stiftung Weimar. Yet another reason to love the internet!
Browsing the pre-WW1 issues (without a doubt the ‘golden age’ of Simpl, while the brief Weimar era could be called the ‘silver age’), I started collecting the advertisement pages for my own nefarious scrapbooking purposes and came upon this “Black Prophet” – Nyarlathotep in a turban?!
THE BLACK PROPHET!
Man of mystery! A reliable guide, learned in all secret sciences of Ancient Egyptian wisdom! Does not ask for money, nor fame! [etc…]
Interestingly, the ad claims that the prophet is a “Hindoo seer”, born in an unnamed “faraway land of mysteries”, mixing two Western stereotypes of contemporary India and ancient Egypt.
Boris Karloff as Ardeth Bey, or Imhotep
While Professor Zazra claims to work for good and noble purposes, with no desire for personal gain, the same cannot be said for the gentleman to the left, another incarnation of the demonic wisdom personified in Nyarlathotep. Written well after the discovery of Tutankhamon’s tomb in 1922, the story of The Mummy (1932 – watch it on YouTube) picks up some much older themes of pseudo-Egyptian magic in Western pop culture: immortality, reincarnation (borrowed from Hinduism?), hypnotism, mind-control (frequent in Western sci-fi since Romanticism). But Imhotep, no matter how unnaturally aged, is a mere human being. His desires are just human desires as impossibly preserved and prolonged as his lifespan. His burning gaze, drawing his long-lost lover to him, inspires fear but also pity.
Prof. Zazra, on the other hand, seems like a much more suspicious character. I quote his ‘own’ words: This is the moment when I can enter your life. Do not hesitate to capture this opportunity. Whatever can be done to help you, I will do it. Let me do it now, for I shall not walk down this path again. Rub some soot or ink on both of your thumbs, make therewith prints on white paper, send it to me with information of your birthdate (on the hour, if known) and enclose an envelope with your address. You may enclose stamps for any country to the value of 50 Pfennig for postage expenses.
Now, what kind of scam is this?…
Yeah, they seem to be talented scam-artists! I wonder how much of the supernatural Indian-Egyptian “misch-masch” has its roots from nineteenth-century Theosophy à la Helena Blavatsky!? I wonder also if there is a connection between these “seers” and the Eastern esoterica of the 1960s and 70s (with its “gurus”) and the (post)modern-day self-appointed New Age-teachers of today?
I’m sure you’re right in tracing it all back to Theosophy. It also makes me think about medieval legends about Prester John or Alexander the Great, confusing Asia and Africa and placing both mythical savagery (giants, dwarfs, cynocephals) and mythical civilization (Shambhala, descendants of Atlantis, king Solomon’s mines) in either, or both. From the narrow European point of view, the Orient is everywhere else…
It’s interesting that you bring up the 60’s… It really seems like many things that only got started in the 1920’s were picked up again in the 60’s and developed in new directions. I heard somebody say recently (either on TV or my Mum!) that the 20’s and 60’s were similar in so many ways – women’s liberation, experimental art and music, scientific development (maybe not as much in the 20’s, but many things that were discovered in the 60’s had been predicted in the 20’s)… Political radicalism… It’s really rather striking.