The Fight Of The Honest Magician

Dear James,

With me and magic tricks it is a bit like with me and mountains – no matter where I stroll, my path will lead me somehow back to it. Perhaps you are surprised now, because you never saw me perform a magic trick, perhaps you are even perplex, that I like this form of entertainment. Maybe you think that this is a bit off brand for me as well. It will less surprise you, that I have a lot of opinions about it and it will certainly not surprise you, that I put a high moral standard on stage magicians. So I adore some magician’s performances with passion and I despise some magician’s attitude with an even higher amount of passion. Yeah, now you smile, right? Because that on the other hand is very on brand for me.

I would like to tell you now about the terribly thin line between an honest magician and an unmoral one, because it always fascinated me. I want to point at the impressive skills some magicians teach themselves with great persistence. I would like to talk about the boldness of stating: I will trick you!, before doing exactly that and of course, I would like to fan girl about beautiful tricks, that are visually enchanting and tell great stories. But there is a chance that you are not really into magic tricks, so I will start with something a bit more morbid. Let’s start with the famous Harry Houdini. Not with his tricks and escapades, no let’s start with the death of this legend.

Harry Houdini died of a pancreatitis caused by a very bad appendicitis. That doesn’t sound as sensational as you had hoped for, I guess, so let me go on. He was in a bad condition for days, but did not look out for medical care yet. Even after the diagnosis he insisted on doing a last performance with high fever and passing out in between. Way too late, he let the surgeons operate, where they would find out that the appendix had already burst and that the infection had already spread. He died a few days later – on Halloween. There is some probability that this outcome would also have occurred without the incident, but there was an incident, so let’s talk about that. Houdini was already in a lot of pain– although still performing his shows - from a broken ankle and the yet unknown appendicitis, when he lied down on a couch to get his portrait done. It didn’t become better, when a guy stormed in to hit him in the stomach three times. Houdini’s family claimed that that man was responsible for his death – which might be true or not – and got the insurance money doubled. But why did a man storm into the room and start punching Houdini, you might ask? Well, there is an interesting answer to it. Houdini had started performing a “trick”, where he claimed that he can absorb every hit to the stomach without getting injured. So he invited people to have a go at his belly. He wasn’t prepared for the hits he received lying on that couch though. It must have evoked unbelievable pain.

So why did I put quotation marks around the word “trick”? To get hit in the stomach seems to be a kind of show performance that strong, muscular men do sometimes. I am sure that a lot of dads and young lads have a lot of fun punching someone for some reason. I never had muscles like these, so I have to admit, that I don’t know for sure, if that really works. I can imagine it though. I can imagine that a strong bellied man can get hit in the stomach with force without showing signs of pain. But I can also imagine that a lot of hits will still do some damage to some degree. That is not very mystical. But Houdini was a magician - an illusionist - and he had a thing going on with those fakir-style tricks. For example, he tried to expose a famous fakir, who had himself buried alive without enough air and had claimed that he had survived through his supernatural powers. Houdini successfully broke that fakir’s time record and stated that he had neither used supernatural powers nor any other kind of trickery and had just used controlled breathing. But then again, Houdini was a magician, he had some nice tricks up his sleeve. So Houdini staying in a coffin for a long time is probably a magic trick. I wouldn’t doubt that it is hard to do so, but I would expect some trickery being involved. And the same goes for the stomach hitting. I would expect Houdini to have some trickery involved that helped him, but maybe not whilst he is lying on a couch with a broken ankle whilst having an undetected appendicitis.

This scenario got me thinking. On Houdini’s German Wikipedia entry there is a sentence a bit like this: “Houdini had a rivalry against fakirs, who showed extraordinary body control and resisted life-threatening dangers.” This sentence makes it sound, as if the author of it actually believes that fakirs have some kind of super power – like Houdini plays trick, but fakirs have magical powers….

Now it would surprise me, if you would be surprised by this, but as a matter of fact, I don’t think so. I would even go as far as stating that I don’t believe that any human being has supernatural powers – yes, I am referring to the whole world and to past and present. Other people believing into superpowers of someone else based on a narrative surrounded by religious and esoteric beliefs, is something I am familiar with on the other hand. And there, for a moment, I got struck by a terrible thought: Did Houdini fall for a show-fakir’s trick? Did he believe, that it is “just” body control, achieved by discipline and willpower? Did he not know, that the show of a fakir is actually a show of a stage magician like himself? What a terrible thought! Being all that famous and then feel taunted by dishonest magicians, frauds and scammers and by fans of them coming up to you saying: “But he can do it with real magic powers! Because he lets himself get beaten in the stomach.” A terrible reason to die!

Good thing, that I have the ability to google. It is not difficult to find the book, Houdini wrote about his days in the circus and sideshows called: Miracle mongers and their methods – a complete exposé of the modus operandi of fire eaters, heat resisters, poison eaters, venomous reptile defiers, sword swallowers, human ostriches, strong men, ect.. So, I guess Houdini knew what he was up against. (Human ostriches by the way, are show acts, who pretend to swallow razor blades and other dangerous objects and not people who can run really fast, as I first believed 😉.) And not to forget, that Houdini felt probably challenged through the fakirs lie of having supernatural powers, instead of speaking up about being a stage magician.

In my world the main difference between a magician and someone with supernatural powers is that the magician is an honest liar, who tells the audience that it is about to perform a trick, whilst all others are the misleading, scamming and unmoral kind of liars. That is true for fake fakirs as it is with psychics of all kind, mystical healers and people who market marketing techniques 😉. I put the word fake in there, because there must be that kind of fakir, who is just out and about for himself, without doing magic tricks and claiming them as an evidence for their superior skills. But in the world of show business? No way! And the world of show business is the world Houdini lived in since childhood (when he was a trapeze artist for example). So Houdini and I seem to share this certain perspective: Magicians, who do not present themselves as such, are scammers. And secret magicians, who claim to have magical supernatural powers are just the worst. You know, how low I think about people who use religions of all sort to get themselves in a position of power - people, who take advantage of other people’s wish for magic to exist to manipulate them, putting cruel rules upon them, drain them of courage, shower them with shame and guilt and all these shenanigans, that I despise so much. You sure can imagine, how I feel about them using magic tricks and selling them as real magic in order to gain that power.

There is another story about Houdini and you might understand quite quickly, why I have interest in that. Houdini was friends with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, yes, the author of Sherlock Holmes. I read all Sherlock Holmes stories and one thing I like about them is, that they never ever have a supernatural solution. In Sherlock’s world - much like in ours – there exists no magic, no ghosts, no super natural wonders. What in his world exist, are human murderers and bad people of all sorts, science, logic and doctors, who use Brandy as a medicine for every symptom. Conan Doyle even plays with that a lot – if you have never read a Sherlock story, I can highly recommend “The Hound of Baskerville”, where Sherlock really has to pull himself together to stay cool minded and you as a reader as well. So, I learned to trust Conan Doyle, that his stories are always solved with things that exist in our world as well. It was irritating to learn, that he fell victim to spiritists and even quite famously fell for the prank of two young sisters, who made photographs of fairies, if I remember correctly.

Houdini’s and Doyle’s friendship broke over that and I can so much feel for Houdini in this case. Doyle did not only believe in spiritists, he also claimed that Houdini had magical powers and is just in denial or something. Oh boy, I would be mad as a wild boar with hemorrhoids, if someone claimed that my stories were just dictated by a dead poet or bullshit like that. Houdini got so upset, that he started some kind of war against spiritists and he blew their covers up left and right quite successfully. I don’t know, why no one ever made a crime TV show out of Houdini’s passion. Every week, new scammers that need to be uncovered. A magic tricks based crime show. And crimes they are. After the first World War spiritists grew out of the floor like mushrooms in a forest, luring people who lost loved ones into a trap by pretending to be able to speak to them. I feel nothing but contempt for those horrible scammers.

The fight against those criminals is something I can get behind easily – especially with having friends like Prue, who once told me that she is saving her money to see a miracle healer on his tour. Yes, on a stage. I only could stop her, because I let her think through the following scenario: Prue, let’s imagine that you discover to have real magical powers – you can heal people now! Amazing! What would you do with your talent?

Of course Prue started with wanting to help sick people like every normal person would do. And then I asked her at what point she would start touring from convention center to convention center, letting people pay 400 Euros for a place to watch her for one or two hours. She could not find an answer that wouldn’t let her look like a total scumbag, so she dismissed the idea.

And now, I want to talk about, why I think, I get fascinated by the world of magic tricks. Let’s start with the history, the secret’s, sometimes danger, the mixture of science and entertainment, the cool designs of the late 19th century… The writer in me wants to dive into this atmosphere. If I would feel more comfortable in this scene, I would for sure write crime or other stories there.

Then I need to tell a thing that might be a bit weird. For some reason, as I grew up, I thought it was a bad thing to think about how the trick could be done. Why I did that? Well, that would need some research involving a deep dive in my unpleasant childhood - lets just leave it as it is. Then, I watched an Episode of C.S.I. and playing in Las Vegas there was of course a murder in one of the big stage magic shows there. And Grissom, a character I respect, said something along the line of: “It is so much fun to think about, how the trick might work.” This really helped me turn things around. Instead of something boring, magic shows became a playground – although I have to confess that visually beautiful tricks delight me so much, that I usually do not think of how they work. I started by learning some magic tricks by myself and it is quite nice actually. People were indeed delighted by my small performances. But what was more interesting for me, was to have a look behind the curtain – to see how tricks are done. In me there grew a curiosity and when a magician from the UK showed up at a meetup, I took the chance to see him live perform the next evening. And so for the first time ever, I volunteered for some of the tricks. And it was a blast! I had so much fun. And what I learned from that experience is, that I – and I guess most people will feel the same – had a great desire to let those tricks work out. Suddenly, I was on the team and I would have lied on stage without hesitation, if it would have been necessary for the trick. This urge was really strong.

So, thinking about how tricks work is fun. Coming up with new tricks is probably even more fun. I talked with Chris (the magician) about that and he was very passionate about it.

But I have the feeling that, what draws me mostly to that world is something a bit more deep – yeah, I am so deep, bro… Of course I mean by that something that is deeper routed in my inner world of trauma, Weltschmerz and disappointment. I once saw a documentary about The Amazing Randi, a famous magician and a great warrior in the fight against pseudo-science. With his knowledge he tricked American para-scientists into believing every bullshit, he wanted. But when he disclosed that he tricked them, they got only upset and didn’t learn anything. I really loved his work. Nowadays, we see so disheartening clearly what great damage pseudo-science does – yes, we all knew, me, you and the Amazing Randi. We could all see what disastrous danger lurked behind the shadow of as science masked bullshit. Washing away science’s integrity, whilst giving utter bullshit a taste of legitimation. Why do shitheaded scammers talk about quantum, when they try to sell water, stones, angel essences? – Because they want to sound like scientists. Why do they actively talk against medicine, vaccines and technological progress? Because they want to play down the significance of the voice of science, when it unmasks them as the scammers they are.

James Randi fought against bullshit, wherever he could. For example, against this spoon bending guy, who infiltrated periodically every big Saturday evening show, when I grew up, actually trying to tell an audience of millions that he bends spoons with his mind! With his mind! He was very obviously a stage magicians claiming to have magical powers. I felt insulted. And then a friend of mine really believed this nonsense. That guy was probably the first of this dishonest magicians I saw, and being that young, I wasn’t sure if telepathy and telekinesis existed or not. Well, I am not in doubt anymore. And why people get in awe by the power of a spoon bender is another topic. I guess, some people really seem to overestimate the power of bent spoons in the fight for a better world. Or am I the blind one here? Can we somehow fight injustice by bending our spoons by thought?

The problematic thing about that documentary was, that I could see something in James Randi’s eyes that lies in my heart, letting it rot in bitterness. He had fought hard in his life, he had success in uncovering scammers, but way too much people just shrug their shoulders and go back staring into the fraud’s light as if they choose consciously to stay blinded. I saw the same pain in his eyes, as I feel, when it comes to the world of horse owners, where everyone really wants the best for the horses, but consciously closes the eyes to reality, sometimes fighting with knives to defend their choices, because they deep down know, that they are not doing the best for their horses, not at all. This familiar bitterness touched me and I talk about it, because it leads to a naïve thought that I think could really stand behind my fascination. A naïve logic that goes like this: Magicians know how to trick people, so they will look through the methods of scammers of all sorts. So magicians live in a world a bit similar to mine. They see through bullshit, probably even better than I do. Maybe I could find friends in the world of magicians…. And even further: Maybe magicians have a social net, that keeps them sane. They can not talk about tricks to outsiders, but they can talk between themselves. Maybe it brings some sort of liberation, when you can talk freely about frauds and don’t need to fight first to be trusted…

It is the old topic again. This uninspirational fight of having to convince someone first, before I can talk about the world I see. But there are some magicians, that don’t look that nice to me and as said, this world is full of scammers who claim to have real magic powers. It is the old “the best dressage riders of the world are competing in Olympia” all over again! Oh, I feel for the fight of the honest magician….

Thanks for reading till the end, it was a long one, I know. But you did great 😉 I hope, my little piece distracted you from your work efficiently - a little walk into my mind without using telepathy….

Have a great day with this kind of magic✨,

Your friend in a cozy blanket