Do you believe in magic?

Turns out all that hocus pocus is serious stuff

The world of magic both predates and outlives all the scientific discoveries of Man, as practiced by the wizard Gandalf, the escaptist Houdini, modern day's Penn & Teller and the past exhibitionism of illusionists such as The Great Thurston

Do you believe in magic? What kind? How about witches’ spells, the supernatural or exorcisms? Maybe you’re a romantic and believe in the magic “in a young boy’s heart.” Or those once-in-a-lifetime “magical moments” which spark the imagination or stir secret emotions. Is déja-vu a form of magic? What about luck or a bad jinx?

Lots of people think about card tricks when you mention magic or they think of a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat or a professional illusionist who can saw a woman in a box into two halves and put her back together again.

Everybody believes in magic, either the paranormal realm of ghosts, angels and spirits or the professional art of sleight of hand and showmanship. Of course there are skeptics of magic, but there also tricks that no one can explain, not even TV’s Penn & Teller. Three-card Monte, anyone?

Lots of what we can now explain with science was once attributed to magic by long ago civilizations. Whole religions like Voodoo, some Celtic lore and many others were based on magic or the otherwise unexplainable. Magic could be found at the center of many pagan ceremonies and practices of the occult, including healings, love spells and a shaman’s curse.

What we now indulge in for entertainment like listening to stories of Merlin, King Arthur’s sorcerer, or read in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Hobbit tales about the wizard Gandalf, were once avowed as metaphysical facts. In the first century B.C., Pliny the Elder used the Latin word for magic, “magus” to convince hordes of his fellow Romans about the existence of invisible forces and the sources of power of many of the ruling gods. Around the same time, the Egyptians of 5^th century B.C. followed the “Book of the Dead” and practiced many magic rituals.

Although there are many passages in both the Old and New testaments of The Bible that warned against magic, there were many other religions where the most holiest of the priests and clerics claimed to communicate with the Spirits, foretell fortunes, read the night skies and stars and use symbols like crosses, amulets and old animal bones to both protect and curse other people.

It’s difficult to “square” The Bible’s teachings against magic while its authors also claim their savior once turned water into wine and used his sleight of hands to multiply a basket of small fish and a loaf of bread into enough food to feed a multitude of thousands. At the same time, Christians thought that magic was derived from demons and henchmen of Satan. Belief in these rituals and myths were considered heresy, although the powers of the chosen Christian God were sometimes ascribed to “magia naturalis.”

Black magic and white magic

Most everyone has heard of Black Magic as a form of evil and bad juju. But there is also White Magic that is less familiar and is basically the opposite of Black Magic. During the Renaissance, High Roman Priests practiced forms of White Magic in sharing blessings and sacraments devoted to health and longevity or sometimes the partial cleansing of souls. (You had to die first to get a total cleansing, just like now.)

Just to thoroughly confuse things, some historians and scholars also believe there is Gray Magic that is neither evil nor good, but neutral. One recent practitioner of Gray Magic, a self-proclaimed “neopagan witch” said he practiced Gray Magic as a technique of baffling, bewildering, and mystifying everyone he met to gain power over them. It seems with a lot less effort this fellow could learn a few different tricks and make a good living in Las Vegas.

Illusionists vs. magicians

The modern era of magic and magicians had very little to do with all the myths, rituals and beliefs about all the pre-science phenomena and heavy religious meanings from the times of yore.

While Shakespeare had his jesters and traveling minstrel shows had their fortunetellers and costumed fools, the era of modern magic and professional performances is credited to the establishment of the Magic Theater of Paris in 1845. The “father” of modern entertainment magic is considered to be Jean Eugéne Robert-Houdin. A contemporary of Robert-Houdin’s was Alexander Herrmann who originated the classic look of a magician with wavy hair, a top hat, white gloves, a goatee and a tailcoat.

Perhaps the best-known modern magician, Harry Houdini (1874-1926), took his stage name from Robert-Houdin. Houdini was born in Budapest, Hungary as Erik Weisz but came to America to perform in vaudeville shows. His specialty acts were all about escaping from impossible locks, containers, tangles of ropes and from underwater tanks.

Houdini had a “rock star” career in the early 20^th century and was even in a few silent movies. He served as president of the Society of American Magicians and worked diligently to uphold the professional standards of the modern magician and illusionist profession. He singled out “fake” spiritualists and he crusaded against “fraudulent” imitators of his escapist stunts.

Actor Tony Curtis starred in the 1953 movie “Houdini,” that has a very false ending with Houdini dying during a failed attempt to escape from a “water torture” trick. In real life, Houdini died from complications of appendicitis at age 52, not much of a Hollywood ending, woouldn’t you say?

Other familiar names among modern magicians and illusionists include Harry Blackstone Sr. and Harry Blackstone Jr., David Copperfield, Doug Henning, Siegfried & Roy, Lance Burton, Las Vegas’ David Blane and Shin Lim, a recent winner of TV’s America’s Got Talent.

There is also The Great Kreskin and Uri Geller who are considered mentalists and not strictly magicians. Some of the magicians listed above sometimes incorporated mentalist tricks in their stage shows.

Perhaps the most favorite magician act these days is the duo of Penn & Teller, who have been performing in Las Vegas at The Rio for more than 20 years and continuing. Penn & Teller are serious students of the history of magic shows and illusionists and have written books on the subject. The two men often share the hidden secrets of how they perform their illusions and then proceed to add a new layer of mystifying deceptions on top of them.

Penn & Teller are active supporters of the Conjuring Arts Research Center (

https://conjuringarts.org

) which is a great resource of magic history, magician profiles and a lending library of magic instructions and supplies.

As a quick personal aside, I first saw Penn & Teller in 1977 as they were just beginning their career. At the time, they were touring parts of the country at regional renaissance fairs. From the beginning, all the familiar elements of their Las Vegas and TV performances were part of their act. Teller (Raymond Edward Teller) was the mute who never spoke and Penn (Penn Jillette) was the mouthy and loud comedian.

At their renaissance fair appearance in Columbia, Maryland, I met the duo “back stage” before their performance where we shared a couple of marijuana joints with a few other fair participants. I was amazed at their performance which included lots of challenging juggling and tossing around sharp objects, knowing how stoned they must have been.

At the beginning of their performance on a small outdoor stage, Penn encouraged all the parents to have their children come closer to the stage. “You should especially coax your children that might be only your second favorite,” Penn quizzically said. “For our first trick we’re going to juggle two very sharp hatchets and a set of knives. Sometimes we miss.”

I remember Teller chewing and swallowing a whole apple. Then he swallowed a handful of straight pins and then a length of string. Next he opened his mouth wide to show it was empty and the apple had been ingested. Then he reached into his mouth with a finger and pulled out the string with all the pins attached to it in a long necklace-like arrangement. Magic.

An anonymous magician from somewhere back in history is quoted as saying, “For those who believe, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not believe, no explanation will suffice.”

That sounds like good advice to follow for all the non-magical parts of our lives as well, don’t you think?

— Rollie Atkinson

7-1-2025