The Middle Ages are thought to be an age of wizards and magic. Medieval stories are filled with men like Merlin or saints who could perform incredible deeds. However, even medieval people liked the simpler magical tricks – how to make an apple roll around by itself; a dead fish to jump out of the frying pan; turn a white rose into a red one; or have a candle where the flame could not be blown out.

http://www.medievalists.net/2014/03/23/medieval-magic-tricks/

Article if full of 'how to' intructions for magic tricks, if one is into that sort of thing. I'm not usually, but I found this fascinating. How to free hands tied behind the back, to make a burning mirror, to say that towers may appear in a urinal flask   , on the disappearance of a coin or dish and many more.

I hadn't realised that the history of magic tricks stretched back quite so far.

I suppose they are illusionists rather than purveyors of magic.  I tend to think that mediums (ones that make money from it anyway) are charlatans.  I do remember reading that one (now deceased) medium used to plant stooges in the queues before her shows (allegedly) to find out information about  members of the public coming to see her.  There is a "magic" shop in my home town.  I haven't been in and probably won't go so I don't know whether it sells "tricks" or whether it sells mumbo-jumbo.  In my youth the books of the late Dennis Wheatley were popular.  Some of his books were about black magic but I don't think he wrote from personal experience.  I didn't read any of his black magic books thought I did read a couple of his "histories" - well I'm sure I'm not the only person who read something at 14 or 15 that I wouldn't read now.

Islanddawn wrote:

I hadn't realised that the history of magic tricks stretched back quite so far.

On the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Dresden and the accompanying human and cultural destruction which that entailed, one might also note the less well known bombing of the Neues Museum in Berlin which occurred that same month. The building had already been hit in a bombing raid fifteen months earlier and that had resulted in the loss of priceless artefacts despite much of the contents having been moved underground or even to other locations for safe-keeping. Among those items which were, however, fortunately saved for posterity was the exquisite Egyptian collection including such treasures as the bust of Nefertiti and the Westcar papyrus. That latter document mentions a story whereby, in the 26th Century BC, the pharaoh Cheops hears of a magician called Djedi and summons him to the royal palace for a command performance. Djedi duly complies and performs his trade-mark trick of re-attaching the severed head of a duck. He also does some soothsaying and predicts that Cheops will be the father but not the grandfather of pharaohs. For this Cheops rewards Djedi with a generous pension, an act which is seemingly at odds with Herodotus’ later characterization of Cheops as being a tyrannical megalomaniac. You can read more stories from the Westcar papyrus here:

Stories from the Westcar Papyrus

Note, however, that there is no mention in the story of Djedi performing the ‘cups and balls trick’ which is a canard believed to have originated in the 1970s and which has, nevertheless, been regularly brought back to life ever since.

My badge as a DACFD features the slogan "Nunc id vides, nunc ne vides".

Green George wrote:

My badge as a DACFD features the slogan "Nunc id vides, nunc ne vides".

Gil, I knew it, I knew it. And the worst is that you know me, perhaps, better than myself...I remember your poem about a tree and a woodsman (or was it a song?) and even about a slight turn in the road to the church where you lived (forgotten the name, LiR will remember it)

The badge of the invisible university...
It is even on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Academia-Invisus/157866984268276
And if you read the "diploma"...

And DAFCD...even on E-Bay
https://www.ebay.com/usr/dafcd

Or is it a DAFC diploma...
https://www.dafc.co.uk/

Kind regards from Paul, still appreciating the timeless Gilgamesh of Uruk.

Well, all I can say is, ook!  

Meles meles wrote:

Well, all I can say is, ook!  

Doubt these would survive an encounter wiyh Dr Horace Worblehat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IHdbONWkko

Gil, just entered again...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Pratchett
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unseen_University

You and MM will not believe it, but perhaps there is such a difference between for instance France and Britain at the other side of the Channel.
I am nearly sure that on the French forum Passion Histoire no one will ever have heard about a Terry Pratchett...

If I hear sometimes conversation between you and MM...it is as if you are speaking in a code unknown to me, as I don't know that much about British "culture". Even a nordmann residing in Norway, but with Irish roots close to the British "culture" speaks sometimes in riddles for me. All what I know from "British "culture" is stuff we saw overhere on our local TV from the British TV as the famous "on the busses" and all that. Perhaps the "two Ronneys" although they were perhaps too much pointed to local British circumstances.

It is perhaps my fault that I am completely out of track in that specific stuff. I saw for instance titles as the "Wizard of Oz" and never interested, had nevertheless to seek for the translation of Wizard...and btw in Disney it was the "sorcerer's apprentice"...

And other btw: the partner says that I am hopeless old fashioned and rigid in both music and "fantastic" stuff. Still remaining in the time of English stuff of the novel and film of the invasion of the trees...

Kind regards to both from Paul.

As a matter of fact, Paul, "On the Buses" was filmed at Eastern National Omnibus Co Wood Green depot. When filming, they used our canteen, and Reg Varney usually bought tea for anyone there. He was allowed to drive a bus on a car licence, because a PSV (Public Service Vejicle) licence was only neede when carrying paying passengers. Wood Green and Tilbury Ferry were rare cases in those days of an outsider bus co running over London Transport territory. At that time I was a conductor at Chelmsford depot, and we ran in to Wood Green on the 351 service.
We usually had our break there, and a round trip was most of a day's work. It was an interesting area. Most of the shops there were registered Jewish businesses, so were closed on Saturday but open on Sunday. Great salt beef rolls for lunch!

Gil, yes "On the Buses" and "Are you being served", "To the manor born" and all those others...

Some series, we had on CD (with Dutch subtitles) and we took them with us on vacation Spain, Turkey and in the evenings the partner and I many times watched them in bed, instead of the mostly "stupid" for my partner incomprehensible international channels...

And what a story Gil about the filming of the series.

I know you now for 8 years, more closely than on the former BBC historyboard, and so I learned a lot from your "stories"...what a life...I was in several professions too, but in comparison...weren't you on the boats too?...and not postman also sometime?...

Kind regards from Paul and with esteem for your varied career...