191: MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR
( FT- ers of a certain age will join me in dedicating this column to the memory of David Nixon)
“There isn’t anything that can’t be, even though also it is not clear how anything can be” – Fort, Books, p897
An Egyptian papyrus (in the British Museum) dating to the Early Dynasty raves thus over the conjuror Tchatcha-em-ankh: “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.”
His first trick prefigures that modern illusionist’s standby of sawing the girl assistant in half; the second – reading between the lions – implies early hypnotism.
A later Pharaoh could have done with him in the competition between local illusionists and their Hebrew challenger: “Aaron cast down his rod and it became a serpent. The magicians of Egypt also in like manner cast down their rods and they became serpents, but Aaron’s rod swallowed up theirs” (Exodus 7. 10-12)
The mysterious Robert Heller (of various aliases, c. 1826-1878), himself a stage magician, claimed to have seen this trick performed in the open air at Cairo by Dervishes. His explanation: the rods were actually serpents hypnotised into rigidity; when thrown down, they recovered and crawled away – worthy competition for Indian snake-charmers...
Another Egyptian element may be the mural (c. 2500 BC) showing two men bending over four inverted bowls, taken by some (not all) Egyptologists to be a forerunner of Roman conjurors’ star turn, the Acetabula et Calculi, or Cup-and-Balls. In the basic version, the performer contrives the balls to go through the cups’ solid bottoms, jump from cup to cup, disappear and re-appear elsewhere, metamorphosed by way of finale into fruits, vegetables, or baby chicks.
Harry Houdini himself pronounced that nobody could properly call themselves a magician until they’d mastered this trick. It is also widely regarded as ancient ancestor of that villainous variant The Shell Game (aka Thimblerig or The Old Army Game) – Find The Lady, Anyone..? (cf. A ‘Professor’ Hoffman, Modern Magic, 1878; Tim Osbourne, Cup and Balls Magic, 1937)
Seneca ( Letters to Lucilius, no45) alludes to this routine, admitting: “It is the very trickery that pleases me,” with the postscript: “But show me how the trick is done, and I have lost my interest therein.”
Many would agree. Not so Lucian, a century later, when exposing the frauds of Alexander of Abonoteichus, who was captivating top Roman officials and much of the populace (except Epicureans and Christians – strange bedfellows); cf. Steve Moore’s excellent article, FT276:46-51. Lucian ( Alexander the False Prophet, chs19-21) explains at length how the rascal contrived to answer questions sent up to him in sealed envelopes. Three ways to pull off this stunt, described in too-long-to-quote detail for his addressee Celsus, himself author of a treatise against magicians. The First (“a well-known method”) involves inserting a heated needle to melt the sub-seal wax, read the message, and re-seal. The second utilises plaster to harden the scroll, making it easy to open. The third, involving a mix of marbledust and glue, produces the same result.
Lucian adds: “There are many other devices for doing this.” Opening sealed letters is one of the many tricks fulminated against by Christian theologian Hippolytus (170-235) in his Refutation of All the Heresies (bk4 chs28-42, perhaps drawn from Celsus himself – English translation online). Again, immense detail precludes quotation. A series of diatribes in classic televangelist style excoriates (e.g.) tricks with eggs, fiery apparitions, ghostly messages emanating from cauldrons, inscribed livers, and speaking skulls. Hippolytus’s detail and passion imply their wide popularity and numbers thus duped.
Byzantine polymath Michael Psellus (11thcentury) itemises ( Philosophica Minora, bk1 ch32 paras65-90) 16 “respectable” conjuring tricks. They include simulating a black audience member, bisecting and turning an egg purple, changing water into wine (obviously tailored to Christian audiences, perhaps blasphemous to some), smashing iron, and detecting whether or not girls were virgins – presumably Not In Front Of Your Wife Or Servants....
“Cleggerdemain: A conjuring act in which the performer appears to be sitting on a non-existent fence” – Brian Allgar, New Statesman Competition winner, 14-20 Dec 2012, p56.