Magic, Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, Including Trick Photography
INTRODUCTION.
547 words | Chapter 35
THE MYSTERIES OF MODERN MAGIC.
BY HENRY RIDGELY EVANS.
I.
Far back into the shadowy past, before the building of the pyramids,
magic was a reputed art in Egypt, for Egypt was the “cradle of magic.”
The magicians of Egypt, according to the Bible chronicle, contended
against Aaron, at the court of Pharaoh. The Hebrew prophet “cast down
his rod before Pharaoh and before his servants, and it became a serpent.
Then Pharaoh also called the wise men and the sorcerers: now the
magicians of Egypt, they also did in like manner with their
enchantments. For they cast down every man his rod and they became
serpents: but Aaron’s rod swallowed up their rods.” [Exodus vii. 10, 11,
12.]
The late Robert Heller, prestidigitateur, traveler in the Orient, and
skeptic, once told me that he had seen this feat performed in Cairo many
times by the Dervishes. The rods actually were serpents and hypnotized
to such an extent as to become perfectly stiff and rigid. When thrown
upon the earth and recalled to life by sundry mystic passes and strokes,
they crawled away alive and hideous as ever. Said Heller: “It was in the
open air that I saw this strange feat performed. Transferred to the
gloomy audience chamber of some old palace, where the high roof is
supported by ponderous stone columns painted with hieroglyphics, where
rows of black marble sphinxes stare at you with unfathomable eyes, where
the _mise en scène_ is awe-inspiring--this trick of the rods turning
into serpents becomes doubly impressive, and indeed to the uninitiated a
miracle.”
In the British Museum is an Egyptian papyrus, which contains an account
of a magical séance given by a certain Tchatcha-em-ankh before King
Khufu, B.C. 3766. In this manuscript it is stated of the magician: “He
knoweth how to bind on a head which hath been cut off, he knoweth how to
make a lion follow him as if led by a rope, and he knoweth the number of
the stars of the house (constellation) of Thoth.” The decapitation
trick is thus no new thing, while the experiment performed with the
lion, undoubtedly a hypnotic feat, shows hypnotism to be old.
The art of natural magic, then, dates back to the remotest periods of
antiquity. It was an art cultivated by the Egyptian, Chaldean, Jewish,
Roman, and Grecian priesthoods, being used by them to dupe the ignorant
masses. Weeping and bleeding statues, temple doors that flew open with
thunderous sound and apparently by supernatural means, and perpetual
lamps that flamed forever in the tombs of holy men, were some of the
thaumaturgic feats of the Pagan priests. Heron, a Greek mechanician and
mathematician, who lived in the second century before Christ, wrote
several interesting treatises on automata and magical appliances, used
in the ancient temples. Colonel A. De Rochas, in an interesting work,
_Les Origines de la Science_, has given in detail Heron’s accounts of
these wonderful automata and experiments in natural magic. St.
Hippolytus, one of the Fathers of the early Christian Church, also
described and exposed in his works many of these wonders.
Magic is divided, according to old writers on the occult, into: _White
magic_, _Black magic_, and _Necromancy_. Modern magic, or conjuring, is
divided by Robert-Houdin into five classes, as follows:
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