[1] Hirsch was educated in public schools in Nashville and attended Joseph W. Allen College in Carthage, Tennessee.
[3] However, his half-sister Rose "Goldie" Hirsch married James Marshall Frank, a Professor of English at Vanderbilt University.
[1][4] While in the Far East, he took up boxing and studied many forms of mysticism and esoterism, including Kabbalah (where his middle name came from Metatron), rosicrucianism, numerology, astrology and etymology.
[4] Hirsch returned to Nashville but soon moved to Paris, France, where he became a model for the sculptor Auguste Rodin.
[4] He was introduced to Gertrude Stein and George William Russell, who encouraged him to look at the double meanings of words in literary texts.
[1] In April 1912, Hirsch visited Nashville briefly to give a lecture on the Trinity in art at the chapel of the Ward Seminary (now Belmont University).
[3][4] A nude sculpture of Hirsch, designed by African-American sculptor William Edmondson, is in the collection of the Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art.