The Old and the New Magic

E^2 CORNELL UNIVERSITY gilBRARY . GIFT OF THE AUTHOR Digitized by Microsoft® T^^irt m4:£±z^ mM^^ 315J2A. j^^/; ii'./jvf:( -UPHF ^§?i=£=^ PB1NTEDINU.S.A. Library Cornell University GV1547 .E92 Old and the new maj 743 3 1924 029 935 olin Digitized by Microsoft® This book was digitized by Microsoft Corporation in cooperation witli Cornell University Libraries, 2007. You may use and print this copy in limited quantity for your personal purposes, but may not distribute or provide access to it (or modified or partial versions of it) for revenue-generating or other commercial purposes. Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® ROBERT-KCUIUT Digitized by Microsoft® THE OLDUI^DIMEJ^ MAGIC BY HENRY RIDGELY EVANS INTRODUCTION E1^ k -io^s-ji, Copyright 1906 BY The Open Court Publishing Co. Chicago -J' Digitized by Microsoft® \\\ ' SKETCH OF HENRY RIDGELY EVAXS. "Elenry Ridgely Evans, journalist, author and librarian, was born in Baltimore, ^Md., Xovember 7, 1861. He is the son 01 Henry Cotheal and Alary (Garrettson) Evans. Through his mother he is descended from the old colonial families of Ridgely, Dorsey, AA'orthington and Greenberry, which played such a prominent part in the annals of early Maryland. \h. Evans was educated at the preparatory department of Georgetown ( D. C.) College and at Columbian College, Washington, D. C He studied law at the University of Maryland, and began its practice in Baltimore City ; but abandoned the legal profession for the more congenial a\'ocation <jf journalism. He served for a number of }ears as special reporter and dramatic critic on the 'Baltimore N'ews,' and subsequently became connected with the U. S. Bureau of Education, as one of the assistant librarians. In 1891 he was married to Florence, daughter of Alexander Kirkpatrick, of Philadelphia."— X'ational Cyclopedia of Ameri- can Biography. ]\Ir. Evans is an ardent student of folk-lore, masonic antiquities, psychical research, and occultism. Many of his writings have been contributed to the Monist and Open Court. He is the author of a <vork on psychical research, entitled "Hours with the Ghosts," published in 1897, and many brochures on magic and mysticism, etc. Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction by Dr. Paul Carus ix History of Natural Magic and Prestidigitation ..... 1 The Chevalier Pinetti 23 Cagliostro : A Study in Charlatanism 42 Ghost-making Extraordinary 87 The Romance of Automata 107 Robert-Houdin : Conjurer, Author and Ambassador .... 123 Some Old-time Conjurers 160 The Secrets of Second Sight 188 The Confessions of an Amateur Conjurer 201 A Day with Alexander the Great 215 A Twentieth Century Thaumaturgist 237 A Gentleman of Thibet 254 Magicians I Have Met 271 The Riddle of the Sphinx ........... 318 Treweyism ............... 331 Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® THE OLD AND THE NEW MAGIC INTRODUCTION. BY DR. PAUL CARUS. The very word magic has an alhiring sound, and its practice as an art will probably never lose its attractiveness for people's minds. But we must remember that there is a difference between the old magic and the new, and that both are separated by a deep chasm, which is a kind of color line, for though the latter develops from the former in a gradual and natural course of evolution, they are radically different in principle, and the new magic is irredeemably opposed to the assumptions upon which the old magic rests. Magic originally meant priestcraft. It is probable that the word is very old, being handed down to us from the Greeks and Romans, who had received it from the Persians. But they in their turn owe it to the Babylonians, and the Babylonians to the Assyrians, and the Assyrians to the Sumero-Akkadians. Iiiiga in Akkad meant priest, and the Assyrians changed the word to niaga, calling their high-priest Rab-mag; and con- sidering the fact that the main business of priests in ancient times consisted in exorcising, fortune-telling, miracle-working, and giving out oracles, it seems justifiable to believe that the Persian term, which in its Latin version is magus, is derived from the Chaldasan and is practically the same ; for the connota- tion of a wise man endowed with supernatural powers has always been connected with the word magus, and even to-day magician means wizard, sorcerer, or miracle-worker. Digitized by Microsoft® X THE OLD AND THE NEW MAGIC entirely While the behef in, and practice of, magic are not absent in the civihzation of Israel, we find that the leaders of orthodox thought had set their faces against it, at least as it appeared in its crudest form, and went so far as to persecute sorcerers with fire and sword. We read in the Bible that when the Lord "multiplied his signs" in Egypt, he sent Moses and Aaron to Pharaoh to turn Saul and the Witch of Endor. (After Schnorr von Carolsfeld.) their rods into serpents, that the Egyptian magicians vied with them in the performance, but that Aaron's rod swallowed up their rods, demonstrating thus Aaron's superiority. It is an interesting fact that the snake charmers of Egypt perform to-day a similar feat, which consists in paralyzing a snake so as to it motionless. then render The snake looks like a stick but is not rigid. Digitized by Microsoft® Jesus Casting Out Devils (After Schnorr von Carolsfeld.) Symbolizing Christ's power even over demons, according to the view of early Christianity. li^-.-S — : Xll THE OLD AND THE NEW MAGIC be magic, How tenacious the idea is that rehgion is and must of it. appears from the fact that even Christianity shows traces recruited In fact, the early Christians (who, we must remember, their ranks from the lowly in life) looked upon Christ as a kind of magician, and all his older pictures show him with a magician's wand in his hand. The resurrection of Lazarus, the change of water into wine, the miracle of the loaves and fishes, the healing of diseases by casting out devils, and kindred mir- acles, according to the notions of those centuries, are performed after the fashion of sorcerers. The adjoined illustration, one of the oldest representations of Christ, has been reproduced from Rossi's Roma Sottcrranca (II, Table 14). It is a fresco of the catacombs, discovered in the St. Callisto Chapel, and is dated by Franz Xaver Kraus (Geschichte der christlichcn Kiinst, I, p. 153) at the beginning of the third century. Jesus holds in his left hand the scrip- tures, while his right hand grasps the wand with which he performs the miracle. Lazarus is represented as a mummy, while one of his sisters kneels at the Saviour's feet. Goethe introduces the belief in magic into the very plot of Faust. In his despair at never finding the key to the world- problem in science, which, as he thinks, does not offer what we need, but useless truisms only, Faust hopes to find the royal road to knowledge by supernatural methods. He says "Therefore, from Magic I seek assistance. That many, a secret perchance I reach Through spirit-power and spirit-speech, And thus the bitter task forego Of saying the things I do not know, That I may detect the inmost force Which binds the world, and guides its course; Its germs, productive powers explore. !" And rummage in empty words no more Digitized by Microsoft® Moses and Aaron Performing the Miracle of the Serpents before Pharaoh (After Schnorr von Carolsfeld.) The Egyptian Snake Naja Haje Made Motionless by Pressure Upon the Neck (Reproduced from Verworn after Photographs.) Digitized by Microsoft® : : : xiv THE OLD AND THE NEW MAGIC Faust follows the will o' the wisp of pseudo-science, and so finds his efforts to gain useful knowledge balked. He turns agnostic and declares that we cannot know anything worth know- ing. He exclaims "That which we do not know is dearly needed; And what we need we do not know." And in another place "I see that nothing can be known." But, ha\ing accjuired a rich store of experience, Faust, at the end of his career, found out that the study of nature is not a useless rummage in empty words, and became converted to science. His ideal is a genuinely scientific view of nature. He says: "Not yet have I my liberty made good So long as I can't banish magic's fell creations And totally unlearn the incantations. Stood I, O Nature, as a man in thee, Then were it worth one's while a man to be. And such was I ere I with the occult conversed, And ere so wickedly the world I cursed." To be a man in nature and to fight one's way to liberty is a much more dignified position than to go lobbying to the courts of the celestials and to beg of them, favors. Progress does not pursue a straight line, but moves in spirals or epicycles. Periods of daylight are followed by nights of superstition. So it hap- pened that in the first and second decades of the nineteenth century the rationalism of the eighteenth century waned, not to make room for a higher rationalism, but to suffer the old bug- bears of ghosts and hobgoblins to reappear in a reactionary move- ment. Faust (expressing here Goethe's own ideas) continues: "Now fills the air so many a haunting shape, That no one knows how best he may escape. What though the day with rational splendor beams, The night entangles us in webs of dreams.

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