Читать книгу The Old and the New Magic - Henry Ridgely Evans - Страница 9
II.
ОглавлениеIn the Middle Ages the art of magic was ardently cultivated, in spite of the denunciations of the Church. Many pretenders to necromancy made use of the secrets of optics and acoustics, and gained thereby a wonderful reputation as genuine sorcerers. Benvenuto Cellini, sculptor, goldsmith and man-at-arms, in that greatest of autobiographies,5 records a magical seance which reads like a chapter from the Arabian Nights.
5 Memoirs of Cellini, Book I, Chapter LXIV.
He says: “It happened through a variety of singular accidents that I became intimate with a Sicilian priest, who was a man of very elevated genius and well instructed in both Latin and Greek letters. In the course of conversation one day, we were led to talk about the art of necromancy, à propos of which I said: ‘Throughout my whole life I have had the most intense desire to see or learn something of this art.’ Thereto the priest replied: ‘A stout soul and a steadfast must the man have who sets himself to such an enterprise.’ I answered that of strength and steadfastness of soul I should have enough and to spare, provided I found the opportunity. Then the priest said: ‘If you have the heart to dare it, I will amply satisfy your curiosity.’ Accordingly we agreed upon attempting the adventure.
“The priest one evening made his preparations, and bade me find a comrade, or not more than two. I invited Vincenzio Romoli, a very dear friend of mine, and the priest took with him a native of Pistoja, who also cultivated the black art. We went together to the Colosseum; and there the priest, having arrayed himself in necromancers’ robes, began to describe circles on the earth with the finest ceremonies that can be imagined. I must say that he had made us bring precious perfumes and fire, and also drugs of fetid odor. When the preliminaries were completed, he made the entrance into the circle; and taking us by the hand, introduced us one by one inside of it. Then he assigned our several functions; to the necromancer, his comrade, he gave the pentacle to hold; the other two of us had to look after the fire and the perfumes; and then he began his incantations. This {14} lasted more than an hour and a half, when several legions appeared and the Colosseum was all full of devils. I was occupied with the precious perfumes, and when the priest perceived in what numbers they were present, he turned to me and said: ‘Benvenuto, ask them something.’ I called on them to reunite me with my Sicilian Angelica.”
It seems the spirits did not respond. The magic spells were found inoperative, whereupon the priest dismissed the demons, observing that the presence of a pure boy was requisite to the successful accomplishment of the séance.
Another night Cellini and the sorcerer repaired to the ruins of the Colosseum. The artist was accompanied by a boy of twelve years of age, who was in his employ, and by two friends, Agnolino Gaddi and the before-mentioned Romoli. The necromancer, after describing the usual magic circle and building a fire, “began to utter those awful invocations, calling by name on multitudes of demons who are captains of their legions … ; insomuch that in a short space of time the whole Colosseum was full of a hundredfold as many as had appeared upon the first occasion.” At the advice of the wizard, Cellini again asked to be reunited with his mistress. The sorcerer turned to him and said: “Hear you what they have replied; that in the space of one month you will be where she is.” The company within the magic circle were now confronted by a great company of demons. The boy declared that he saw four armed giants of immense stature who were endeavoring to get within the circle. They trembled with fear. The necromancer, to calm the fright of the boy, assured him that what they beheld was but smoke and shadows, and that the spirits were under his power. As the smoke died out, the demons faded away, and Cellini and his friends left the place fully satisfied of the reality of the conjurations. As they left the Colosseum, the boy declared that he saw two of the demons leaping and skipping before them, and often upon the roofs of the houses. The priest paid no attention to them, but endeavored to persuade the goldsmith to renew the attempt on some future occasion, in order to discover the secret treasures of the earth. But Cellini did not care to meddle more in the black art. {15}
What are we to believe about this magic invocation? Was Cellini romancing? Though a vainglorious, egotistical man, he was truthful, and his memoirs may be relied on.
John Addington Symonds, one of the translators of Cellini’s autobiography, remarks: “Imagination and the awe-inspiring influences of the place, even if we eliminate a possible magic lantern among the conjurer’s appurtenances, are enough to account for what Cellini saw. He was credulous; he was superstitious.”
Sir David Brewster, who quotes Cellini’s narrative in his Natural Magic, explains that the demons seen in the Colosseum “were not produced by any influence upon the imaginations of the spectators, but were actual optical phantasms, or the images of pictures or objects produced by one or more concave mirrors or lenses. A fire is lighted and perfumes and incense are burnt, in order to create a ground for the images, and the beholders are rigidly confined within the pale of the magic circle. The concave mirror and the objects presented to it having been so placed that the persons within the circle could not see the aerial image of the objects by the rays directly reflected from the mirror, the work of deception was ready to begin. The attendance of the magician upon his mirror was by no means necessary. He took his place along with the spectators within the magic circle. The images of the devils were all distinctly formed in the air immediately above the fire, but none of them could be seen by those within the circle.
“The moment, however, the perfumes were thrown into the fire to produce smoke, the first wreath of smoke that rose through the place of one or more of the images would reflect them to the eyes of the spectators, and they would again disappear if the wreath was not followed by another. More and more images would be rendered visible as new wreaths of smoke arose, and the whole group would appear at once when the smoke was uniformly diffused over the place occupied by the images.”
Again, the magician may have been aided by a confederate amid the ruins, who manipulated a magic lantern, or some device of the kind. The magician himself may have been provided with a box fitted up with a concave mirror, the lights and figures of {16} the demons. The assertion of the boy that he saw demons skipping in front of him, etc., would be accounted for by the magic box being carried with them.
Says the Encyclopaedia Britannica, in speaking of Cellini’s adventure: “The existence of a camera at this latter date (middle of sixteenth century) is a fact, for the instrument is described by Baptista Porta, the Neapolitan philosopher, in the Magia Naturalis (1558). And the doubt how magic lantern effects could have been produced in the fourteenth century, when the lantern itself is alleged to have been invented by Athanasius Kircher in the middle of the seventeenth century, is set at rest by the fact that glass lenses were constructed at the earlier of these dates—Roger Bacon, in his Discovery of the Miracles of Art, Nature and Magic (about 1260), writing of glass lenses and perspectives so well made as to give good telescopic and microscopic effects, and to be useful to old men and those who have weak eyes.”
Chaucer, in the House of Fame, Book III, speaks of “appearances such as the subtil tregetours perform at feasts”—images of hunting, falconry and knights jousting, with the persons and objects instantaneously disappearing.
Later on Nostradamus conjured up a vision of the future king of France in a magic mirror, for the benefit of Marie de Medeci. This illusion was effected by mirrors adroitly concealed amid hanging draperies.
In the sixteenth century conjurers wandered from place to place, exhibiting their tricks at fairs, in barns, and at the castles of noblemen. They were little more than strolling gypsies or vagabonds. Reginald Scott, in his Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584), enumerates some of the stock feats of these mountebanks. The list includes, “swallowing a knife; burning a card and reproducing it from the pocket of a spectator; passing a coin from one pocket to another; converting money into counters, or counters into money; conveying money into the hand of another person; making a coin pass through a table or vanish from a handkerchief; tying a knot and undoing it ‘by the power of words’; taking beads from a string, the ends of which are held fast by another person; making a coin to pass from one box to another; turning wheat into flour ‘by the power of {17} words’; burning a thread and making it whole again; pulling ribbons from the mouth; thrusting a knife into the head of a man; putting a ring through the cheek, and cutting off a person’s head and restoring it to its former position.”
Conjuring with cups and balls belongs to this list.
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY CONJURER PERFORMING THE CUP-AND-BALL TRICK.
(From an Old Print, Ellison Collection.)
The conjurer of the sixteenth century, and even of later date, wore about his waist a sort of bag, called gibécière, from its resemblance to a game bag, ostensibly to hold his paraphernalia. While delving into this bag for various articles to be used in his tricks, the magician succeeded in making substitutions and secretly getting possession of eggs, coins, balls, etc. It was a very clumsy device, but indispensable for an open-air {18} performer, who usually stood encircled by the spectators. Finally, the suspicious-looking gibécière was abandoned by all save strolling mountebanks, and a table with a long cloth substituted. This table concealed an assistant, who made the necessary transformations required in the act, by means of traps and other devices. Comus, the elder, in the eighteenth century, abandoned the long table covers and the concealed assistant for the servante. But his immediate competitors still adhered to the draped tables, and a whole generation of later conjurers, among whom may be mentioned Comte, Bosco and Phillippe, followed their example. Robert-Houdin struck the keynote of reform in 1844. He sarcastically called the suspiciously draped table a boite à compère (wooden confederate).
Conjurers in the seventeenth century were frequently known as Hocus Pocus. These curious words first occur in a pamphlet printed in 1641, in which the author, speaking of the sights of Bartholomew fair, mentions “Hocus Pocus, with three yards of tape or ribbon in his hand, showing his art of legerdemain.” The seventeenth century is the age of the strolling mountebank, who performed wherever he could get an audience—in the stable, barnyard, street or fair. From him to the prestidigitateur of the theatre is a long step, but no longer than from the barnstorming actor to the artist of the well-appointed playhouse. There is evolution in everything. It was not until the eighteenth century that conjuring became a legitimate profession. This was largely owing to the fact that men of gentle birth, well versed in the science of the age, took up the magic wand, and gave the art dignity and respectability.
It was not until the eighteenth century that natural magic was shorn of charlatanism, but even then the great Pinetti pretended to the occult in his exhibition of so-called “second sight.” He always avoided the Papal States, taking warning from the fate of Cagliostro. Magic and spiritism were in bad odor in the dominions of the Pope. Towards the middle of the century we hear of Jonas, Carlotti, Katerfelto, Androletti, Philadelphia, Rollin, Comus I and II. Comus II was famous for coining hard words. He advertised in London, “various uncommon experiments with his Enchanted Horologium, Pyxidees Literarum, {19} and many curious operations in Rhabdology, Steganography and Phylacteria, with many wonderful performances on the grand Dodecahedron, also Chartomantic Deceptions and Kharamatic Operations. To conclude with the performance of the Teretopaest Figure and Magical House; the like never seen in this kingdom before; and will astonish every beholder.” These magical experiments were doubtless very simple. What puzzled the spectators must have been the names of the tricks.
Rollin, a Frenchman, after accumulating a fortune, purchased the chateau of Fontenoy-aux-Roses, in the department of the Seine. He was denounced under the Red Terror, and suffered death by the guillotine, in 1793. When the warrant for his execution was read to him, he remarked, with a smile, “That is the first paper I cannot conjure away.”
