Our Gods Wear Spandex (9 page)

The superhuman characters that populate comic books may have their roots deep in mythology, but their more immediate antecedents can be found in the thoughts and actions of a group of personalities that appeared on the world stage at a crucial point in the development of Western occultism. Larger than life figures like Friedrich Nietzsche, Aleister Crowley, Edgar Cayce, and Harry Houdini all helped set the stage for superheroes to capture the popular imagination.

In his legendary work,
Thus Spake Zarathustra
, Friedrich Nietzsche spoke of the
übermensch
, a new post-Christian “overman” who would restore the old values of
the Classical world. Übermensch translates into English as “superman.” It is here that Jerry Siegel most probably encountered the term.

Nietzsche was born in 1844 in Prussia. After his clergyman father died, he was raised by a grandmother and aunts whose overbearing pomposity appears to have innoculated him against German religiosity, nationalism, and middle-class respectability. Nietzsche became a close friend of the myth-obsessed composer Richard Wagner (1813–1883), whose resurrected heroic myths greatly influenced his writing—although he eventually rejected Wagner's anti-Semitism and affinity for German nationalism.

Nietzsche wrote philosophical tracts against conventional morality, among them his three seminal works
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, The Gay Science
, and
Beyond Good and Evil
. He dismisses the Christian ideal, saying, “there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross.”
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He rejects the Platonic Ideal as an illusion and proclaims that man must elevate himself toward his destiny as the
übermensch
. He argues against absolute morality and advises men to choose their own morals. He prophesies the Superman more as a super-individual than as a super-race, preparing the way for a new kind of savior turned super-hero. “The Superman,” he proclaims, “is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The Superman shall be the meaning of the earth!”
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Nietzsche had a significant influence on esoteric groups and on the development of the modern superhero. Aleister Crowley's prophesies of the “Age of Horus” were greatly influenced by him, and some believe the work of Carl Jung was simply an attempt to systematize Nietzsche's philosophy.
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It is one of the tragic ironies of history that some of Nietzsche's ideas were appropriated by the National Socialists to promote their Master Race, something Neitzsche himself would surely have deplored.
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One of the most notorious members of the Victorian occult elite was Edward Alexander Crowley, a.k.a. Aleister Crowley, a.k.a. “the Wickedest Man in the World.” Not only did Crowley have an enormous influence on the occult, he prepared the way for our modern celebrity-driven culture with his maxim, “Every man and woman is a star,”
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and his firm belief that there is no such thing as bad publicity.

Crowley was born in 1875 in England. His parents belonged to the Plymouth Brethren, a repressive Christian sect that declared all worldly pleasure (except wealth, of course) to be the tools of the devil. Colin Wilson claims that “[Crowley] spent the rest of his life violently reacting against this view, and preaching—and practicing—the gospel of total sexual freedom.”
⁴⁰
Crowley was a sexual adventurer who eventually turned to the occult, declaring himself the reincarnation of Éliphas Lévi.

In 1898, Crowley was initiated into the Golden Dawn and became a celebrity on the London occult scene. By that time, however, the Order was collapsing and Crowley left it following a series of “magical” battles with McGregor Mathers. He later fictionalized his struggles with Mathers in his seminal occult novel,
Moon-child
. Crowley made a failed attempt to form his own rival order, the
Argentium Astrum
(Silver Star). It was during this time that he devised his famous motto, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law,” which became the basis of an overarching religious philosophy he called
Thelema
, from the Greek word meaning “true will.”

In 1912, Crowley was recruited by Theodor Reuss, head of the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), to join the failing quasi-Masonic fraternity. He took the magical name Baphomet (of Templar fame), and became the master of the OTO's British branch. Crowley soon remade the OTO in his own image, developing an elaborate set of sex-magic ceremonies that culminated in a ritual between two male initiates. In the 1920s, he established the infamous Thelemic Abbey in Cefalu, Sicily, from which he was expelled by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. He later spent time in America, where he attempted to establish the OTO as a legitimate Masonic organization.

In the end, Crowley's aberrant behavior and notoriety brought him down. Addicted to heroin and booze, perpetually broke and—unkindest of all— sexually impotent, he spent his last days in a boarding house where he died in 1947. The OTO nearly collapsed after his death, but enjoyed a resurgence in the 1960s, finally reestablishing itself in 1971 under the leadership of an avid science-fiction fan named Grady McMurtry.
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Crowley claimed to have contacted the original superhero, Horus, while he and his wife, Rose, were living in Cairo in 1904. Reportedly, Rose suddenly went into a trance and began uttering cryptic nonsequiturs like “It's about the Child” and “They are waiting for you.” Crowley questioned her about this child and concluded she spoke of Horus. Claiming possession by a spirit named Aiwass, Crowley wrote the
Liber Al
, or
The Book of the Law
, in which he prophesies that the Age of Osiris—the age of kings and churches—is passing and that the Age of Horus will be born in fire and blood. In it, a new race of self-willed supermen will emerge to purge the world of the weak and weak-minded. “Compassion is the vice of kings: stamp down the wretched & the weak,” Crowley wrote, “this is the law of the strong: this is our law and the joy of the world.”
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Although Crowley's prophecy had more to do with his reading of Nietzschean philosophy than with any real understanding of Egyptian theology, it's hard to argue with his insights. Ten years after the
Book of the Law
appeared, the Western world was plunged into a war whose savagery and misery would only be surpassed twenty-five years later when Hitler invaded Poland. At the same time, a new breed of self-willed supermen would enter the popular culture through the pages of
Action Comics, Whiz Comics
, and
Detective Comics
. Crowley lived just long enough to see his Horus usher in the New Age, wearing many different masks and fighting under many different names. Unfortunately, Crowley died twelve years before the invention of Spandex.

Ehrich Weisz, better known as Harry Houdini (1874–1926), was a stage magician who became a real-life superhero. Modeling himself after the legendary French magician Robert Houdin, Houdini began his career at the young age of 17, performing at amusement parks and on the Vaudeville circuit. He soon took his act to Europe, where he became a superstar. Houdini was not only brilliant at prestidigitation; he was also incredibly strong and used his physical prowess in elaborate escape routines in which he broke out of handcuffs, chains, and straitjackets. He was held in such high regard that he was named president of the Society of American Magicians and founded a similar society in London. In
The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America's First Superhero
, William Kalush and Larry Sloman reveal that Houdini was also an agent for the British Secret Service.
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He also became a film star in the 1920 serial
The Master of Mystery
.

Soon after this triumph, however, Houdini suffered the loss of his beloved mother, Cecilia. Distraught over her death, he turned to Spiritualism for comfort. This brought him into contact with Arthur Conan Doyle (of Sherlock Holmes fame), who was dazzled by Houdini's feats, believing them to be the result of supernatural abilities. Houdini denied this, but Doyle would not be dissuaded and later publicized his theories in his 1930 book,
The Edge of the Unknown
. Their friendship ended in acrimony as Doyle continued to champion Spiritualism and Houdini set out to debunk it.

Initially, Houdini was genuinely excited by the possibilities of Spiritualism, but soon recognized the tricks of his own trade being employed by self-professed mediums and psychics—indeed, his wife, Bess, once had a “medium” act. Houdini was enraged by the deception and began a one-man crusade against Spiritualism. He gave lectures exposing the methods employed by phony psychics, at one point offering $10,000 to anyone who could prove genuine psychic phenomena. In 1924, he wrote a landmark exposé against fraudulent mediums entitled
A Magician Among the Spirits
. He even testified before Congress on the subject, calling it “a fraud from start to finish.”
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Houdini returned to performing in 1926, but had lost his edge. He died, aptly, on
Halloween in 1926, but not before promising his wife that he would escape the bonds of death and return to her.

Edgar Cayce (1877–1945), known as “The Sleeping Prophet,” was one of America's foremost occult celebrities. He was renowned for his prophecies, medical diagnoses, and religious and philosophic ruminations, which were dictated to an assistant while Cayce was allegedly sleeping or in a trance state. Cayce claimed that the unconscious mind had means of perception that the conscious mind did not. His followers argued that a poorly educated farmboy couldn't possibly have the knowledge of ancient cultures and medicine and philosophy that he displayed, but skeptics countered that Cayce had previously worked in bookstores, and read extensively on the occult and science.
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Cayce achieved notoriety for his predictions that Atlantis would rise again in 1968 (it didn't) and that the Atlantean Hall of Records was located beneath the Great Sphinx in Giza (it may be). He also claimed that Atlantis was home to a scientifically advanced society and that, after its destruction, its people fled to Egypt and South America.
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The Association for Research and Enlightenment (ARE), created in 1931 to preserve and disseminate Cayce's prophecies and psychic readings, had a major influence on the emerging New Age movement, popularizing occult phenomena like ESP, alternative medicine, meditation, psychic healing, and reincarnation. The ARE is more than a playground for spiritual tourists, however. Two of the world's two most important and influential Egyptologists, American Mark Lehner and Egyptian Antiquities Minister Zahi Hawass, are closely associated with it. Given the eccentric views Cayce held on Ancient Egypt, these associations seem curious until seen in the context of all the esoteric intrigue that, even today, centers in and around Egypt.