What Ancient Magic Teaches Us By Maskelyne
We are imitators
—In the days of ancient Egypt—
Magicians of Greece and Rome—Indian fakirs
—Witch-doctors — Fraudulent spirit-mediums —
Some wonderful tricks and how they were done—
Thevalue of research.
How old is magic?
There is no doubt that it is one of the oldest arts in the world, and it can be traced right back to the days of ancient Egypt, and even beyond that. If you become a capable magician and cause people to look astonished at your tricks and illusions with boxes, rings, cards, handkerchiefs, and so forth, you will merely be copying men who lived thousands of years ago.
In the days of the Pharaohs magic was used by the priests to impress the simple minds of the people. For example, they used to blow trumpets by means of compressed air, and make doors fly open upon approach by mechanical means. In those days conjuring-tricks were what are now mechanical contrivances. It is a fact that one of the pieces of apparatus by which people could obtain Holy Water upon the insertion of a coin resembled the penny-in-the-slot machine of modern times.
At the present time I am performing an illusion that can be traced back to the days of ancient Egypt, and indeed I shall produce the illusion to-day, shortly after finishing this chapter. The story of the trick can be seen in manuscript-form at the British Museum in London, and it concerns a certain Princess who declared that she would never die—that she simply could not die. In order to prove the truth of her astounding statement, she caused herself to be placed in her sarcophagus (coffin). The lid was then placed on the sarcophagus, and the princess’s guards were told to thrust their swords through and through it until it would appear that she must have been pierced again and again by the sharp weapons. After the guards were withdrawn, the princess would step out alive and well, to the amazement of her superstitious people.
The working of this trick is not explained in the story, but doubtless it was the same as that used by the Indian fakirs of to-day, who still perform the ancient ‘basket’ trick, during the performance of which the same kind of thing occurs. I am performing the self same illusion, as I mentioned before, but I am using a narrow cabinet in place of the sarcophagus, and it is raised above the ground. It is all trickery, of course, and one of these days you may be advanced enough in magic to discover how to make such a cabinet yourselves and thus imitate a princess of ancient Egypt who was worshipped as an immortal thousands of years ago.
Certain historians have not hesitated to declare that Moses himself made use of magic for the performance of some of his miracles, and it is an unquestionable fact that the magicians of Egypt were able to imitate certain of the miracles of Moses “by their enchantments.” You will find this statement mentioned in the Book of Exodus.
Again, it is known that the magicians of ancient Greece and Rome astonished their dupes with optical illusions—an important branch of the art—the principal one being the throwing of spectral images upon the smoke of burning incense by means of concave metal mirrors. The same effects were also produced in a much simpler manner by causing the dupe to look into an underground chamber through a basin of water with a glass bottom. This basin stood under a sky-blue ceiling and thus allowed the superstitious people to ‘see’ their gods for themselves.
I have referred elsewhere to the part played by the Chinese in the development of magic, but I must add that the Romans were in the habit of giving conjuring exhibitions, the most popular feat being that of the ‘Cup and Balls,’ the performers being called acetabularii and the cups acetabula.
There is no lack of proof to show that this magic business was well known to the ancients and used by them for many reasons—even to the point of forcing the masses of the people to believe that the priests or the rulers were gods and not mortals. It always paid to be thought a god with supernatural powers in the bad old days!
We have already seen how the Indian rope-trick has become a legend, not only in India, but in every part of the world ; but the fakirs of India are not famed for this mythical trick alone. Visitors have often been impressed by magicians who seem to have miraculous control over poisonous serpents—the snake-charmers —but you should know that most of the fakirs who handle such dangerous snakes as the cobra remove the fangs from the reptiles before giving their shows, and thus run no risks. Occasionally a skilled snake-charmer handles vicious reptiles which retain their poison-filled glands, and seems to have perfect control over the dangerous creatures. In the main, however, I have no hesitation in saying that the so-called snake-charmers are tricksters—and not very clever tricksters at that. I must mention at this point that it is the showmanship that brings the fakir his success, the showmanship that I have stressed so strongly in other chapters and which I must stress continually throughout this book. Believe me when I say that you can almost put even a vocal show over if you master the art and craft of showmanship!
Another Indian illusion, the fame of which has spread all over the world, is the baffling ‘mango’ trick. It consists in planting a mango-seed and in a few minutes growing either a plant or a miniature tree. This is a very old and a very childish trick that does not make us think any better of these supposedly wonderful magicians of India; indeed, if you watch very carefully as the fakir keeps covering the plant with his cloth, you can see him producing the other plants in succession from his person and inserting them under cover of the sheet. Any conjurer could do it out in the open, on a stage, or in a room. It is one of the oldest and also one of the clumsiest tricks in the world. Another and more efficient method of performing this mango-trick is to dig a hole shaped like a cone in the ground before the observers arrive. In the bottom of the hole the performer places a float of wood or cork, and on top, planted in a few grains of earth, a little plant that is destined to appear so miraculously. With the greatest care the top of the hole is bridged over with earth so as to leave no trace on the surface. The rest is simple. The seed is dropped on to the ground over the hole, the light cloth follows, and then the performer pats with his hands above the cloth. This breaks away the little roof of earth that covers the hole, enough water is poured in to fill the hole and cause that float of cork or wood bearing the plant to rise to the surface—and the trick is done! Is it not easy when you know how to do it? Yet we must thank these Indians and their ancestors for many of the tricks we white magicians perform so successfully to-day in Europe and America. By the way, you will notice that I have raised you all to the dignity of magician, and I hope you will appreciate this and practise all you can to be a success.
Africa has had its magicians since earliest times in the persons of its witch-doctors. These horrid fellows hold great sway over their black followers, but there is little they can do that most white magicians cannot equal and excel. When I was in Africa once I wanted to show some natives that their particular witch-doctor was not so clever as a white witch-doctor. I arranged to hold a competition with him. He was to do one trick, and I was to do another—and so on. At the end of the whole performance I was to allow him to use my apparatus with which to do all my tricks. This competition was never held, because a few minutes before it was due to commence, a message arrived from the compound to the effect that the witch-doctor had been taken ill and could not appear!
Nevertheless, there is much that the young magician can learn from reading books dealing with these dusky gentlemen. It will be found, however, that their method of presentation is their greatest help. Many of the tricks consist of sleight-of-hand, prepared boxes and baskets, and specially tied knots.
Fraudulent spirit-mediums have mostly drawn upon old magic in order to try to make people believe that they were able to communicate with those who have ‘passed over.' I say quite seriously that I can do anything that fake mediums have ever done. Naturally, I do not include all mediums in this statement, because dozens of them have not yet been tested. My grandfather, the first Maskelyne, was a great antagonist of spiritualism in any form, and indeed it was through his attendance at a seance and the fact that he detected the way the ‘miracles’ were performed that he was induced to take up magic and found the House of Maskelyne. In days gone by my grandfather was often used by the famous writer W. T. Stead to test mediums, and many a man or woman who claimed to be able to obtain messages from those who had been dead for many years was exposed as a faker by John Nevil Maskelyne. He eventually perfected a test for mediums, and offered £1,000 to any charity if a spiritualist could succeed in doing what was to the magicians impossible. His test was as follows: he screwed two slates together and soldered them up in a tin after writing the words, “Do spirits wear clothes” on the inside of one of the slates.
“Now,” said my grandfather, “if any medium can put the answer on the other inside face of the slate, I will hand over one thousand pounds to any charity named.”
Although this challenge was given a great deal of publicity at the time, no medium ever asked for the slates so that he might take up the challenge, and I have them to this day. The challenge still remains open! I mention all this in order to prove my point that although there may be genuine mediums alive to-day, and although spiritualism may be perfectly genuine, there have been many fake mediums who have employed the ancient art of magic to gull the public, just as the priests did in the days of ancient Egypt, Rome, and Greece. I think that you who are interested in magic, and wish to become conjurers and illusionists, should know about these things.
Now let us go back to some of the ancient tricks I have just touched upon in this chapter. For instance, take the cup-and-ball trick performed by Roman conjurers two thousand or more years ago. This consists of making a ball move from one cup to another in a very mysterious manner. Incidentally, it is the original of the ‘walnut and pea’ trick performed for many years on race-courses and at fairs. The mysterious vanishing or appearing of a person under a large extinguisher upon the top of a table, and without the use of mirrors, also arose out of the Roman trick and was first performed by Comus, a French conjurer, who was expert at the cup-and-ball trick. He appeared in London in the year 1789 (nearly 150 years ago, remember) and announced that he would convey his wife under a cup in the same manner that he would balls. The feat was actually accomplished by means of a box-table and a trap, but it caused a great sensation at the time.
Early in the next century a Swiss conjurer named Chalons transformed a bird into a young lady on the same principle, and in 1836 a magician called Sutton varied the feat by causing the vanished person to reappear under the crust of a great pie. Note, by the way, the novelty and showmanship of this trick; the pie, being something new, was bound to excite the interest of audiences used to ordinary boxes and baskets and cups—and it did!
JASPER MASKELYNE
Before Magic Edition
PDF | 301 Pages
Jasper Maskelyne, the famous illusionist, presents a practical book that enables the curious to become expert entertainers in the art of magic. A guide filled magic effects you can perform with cards, coins, handkerchiefs, pieces of paper, rope and other common objects are described in detail. Chapters are also provided on stage management, thought-reading, disappearing tricks, apparatus, chemical tricks, entertaining in dress-clothes, jugglery and ventriloquism, and the art of make-up.
Coming from the famous Maskelyne family of magicians, Jasper also shares some excellent advice on rehearsing, structuring, writing, and booking a magical performance.
Then the great Houdin (from whom, you will remember, Houdini borrowed his stage-name) ‘vanished’ a person standing upon a table-top which was shown to be only a few inches thick. There were, however, certain things that made this trick very simple. The table had a false top which was let down like the side of a bellows, this being hidden by a table-cloth hanging sufficiently low for the purpose. The person entered the table through a trapdoor opening upward when covered by the extinguisher. Finally Robin added to the marvel of this ancient cup-and-ball trick when, in the year 1851, he vanished two persons in succession without any chance of either escaping from the table. In Robin’s version of the trick, the two persons really packed themselves into a space which, without clever arrangement and practice, could not easily have held more than one.
If you wish to know more about the history of the art of magic, you should read books like Goethe’s Grand Cophta and Alexander Dumas’ Memoirs of a Physician. In addition, Carlyle’s immortal essay Count Cagliostro will give you a good deal of information about magic through the ages—magic that is very closely connected with the kind of magic I have explained in this book.
Again, a visit to the British Museum in London brings light upon the subject. There, for example, in addition to the story of the princess who could not die, you will find an Egyptian papyrus which contains an account of a magical seance given at the court of King Khufu in the year 3766 B.C., or nearly 6,000 years ago. Just think of it—we are still performing the tricks that people did all those thousands of years ago! And we are doing them with as much success as ever.
Speeding through the centuries, we come to a most interesting account of a trick played by a famous organist of the seventeenth century upon no less a personage than Louis XIV of France. The organist, one M. Raisin, took a harpsichord to the French Court and demonstrated how it would play tunes as directed by the audience. Upon opening the instrument, however, the King discovered a youthful player inside. History does not record what happened to the unfortunate M. Raisin, but I think we can say with safety that never again did he attempt such a clumsy trick before royalty.
You will find magic linked up with history and politics, and in this connexion I will record the words of a famous French conjurer who was sentenced to death by the Committee of Public Safety in the days of the French Revolution. When the warrant for his execution by the guillotine was being read to him, he turned sadly to those beside him and observed, “This is the first paper I cannot conjure away!” He spoke no less than the truth and proved once more that there is nothing supernatural about magic. And so he lost his head on the guillotine just like thousands of others during that tragic period in the history of France.
Over seventy years ago a man named Professor Pepper, who was manager of the London Polytechnic Institute, invented a device for projecting the images of living persons in the air. It was based on a very simple optical effect, and I record it here to show all young magicians that they must keep their eyes open for new magical shows. You will have noticed as you travel in a lighted railway-carriage at night and gaze through the clear sheet of the window that you can see your ‘double’ travelling along with you. That was the basis of the Professor’s wonderful illusion of a full lifetime ago and, incidentally, the basis of many an illusion since.
Finally I must mention an exhibition of ‘black magic’ that was presented in 1886 by my grandfather and a certain M. Bautier de Kolta. It was presented at the famous Egyptian Hall in London, and while doubtless based on a very old principle, it was demonstrated upon novel and then up-to-date lines.
