Slight of Hand in a World of Wonders
Mar. 2nd, 2007 12:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mishalakI have been thinking and wondering what it means for stage magicians if magic were real and commonly known to be real. Would there be stage magicians or would they be mostly replaced by real magicians using real magic upon the stage? Would language more clearly articulate a difference between legerdemain/stage craft and using real magic? Ultimately I have to go with what makes for a interesting and believable setting without going into deep detail, this after all is a fun question that I probably won't actually use in a story. All of this is just background to know if having a character refer to David Copperfield makes sense or not.
Stage magic seems bound up with the enlightenment and final acceptance that such things are not real, but a want to be amazed none the less. Plus the increasing number of theaters with seats in need of filling. Undoubtedly there were con-artists and slight of hand earlier, but it seems not to be as developed and organized as later. The high age for magicians was the Victorian Age into the Edwardian. Industrial change allowed more elaborate tricks and there was not yet any film with its competing illusions.
When I imagine a world with magic I think that Ages of Enlightenment and Reason will still come about. After all I put magic next to other physical laws as an unreliable addition. The majority of the time science totally works and unlike magic does so much more reliably and consistently. And if there is evidence of magic that doesn't require faith or the intervention of a god or gods it gives as good a reason to not believe in divine intervention as science. After all the priests could be just doing magic rituals rather than actually being in communication with a higher power. Not to mention the inaccurate descriptions of the physical world in holy texts and all the other myriad reasons found by enlightened individuals in the real world.
I imagine part of the enlightenment will be wider understanding of the limits of the sorcerers and mages. No doubt great minds will have been prying into the wonders of the paranormal since the time of Newton. But in the enlightenment people start to wonder if all priests are doing is doing a magic ritual. If the crosses repel evil not because god has come down from the heavens to intervene in the normal course of events, but because a spell, the blessing upon the cross, works. This also would mean that when it does not work it was not because a person's faith was weak, but because something went wrong.
Magic will have been used to impress before, but it doesn't always work. A mage (I think I'll use that term, most people won't know that it is a relatively recent addition to English) would need a good patter and a back up to impress when something goes wrong. Also real magic takes real power. The mage can't just stand there on stage and do it, the more impressive the trick the bigger the sacrifice needed to make it work. And polite people won't want to see that. So the blood sacrifices, the burning spices, and all the other things would have to be hidden away. And maybe that is where the trick is.
People start to know more about what real mages can and cannot do. Enter the stage magician. Perhaps he has a little knowledge, perhaps he does not. Perhaps he's even one of those people who has just a touch of magic in his own blood. But mostly he's still going to use the tricks that anyone without a spell to his name would use. Misdirection. It isn't the guy on stage with power, it is the stage assistant who can levitate things doing the blood sacrifice under the stage. Mirrors that they'll swear up and down are not already enchanted, switched for one that is. And the smoke and mirrors that work much more reliably after a few small bits of magic to make it seem like something big and dangerous has happened on stage.
Though with real magic running about I also expect that many will come right out and say that what they do are tricks, even if they aren't. I think that some more conservative locals might even ban stage magic on the basis of religious prohibition. It would be a less popular profession in its golden age. Though Houdini might be joined by a real mage helping to denounce fakers using real magic to produce fake contact with 'the other side'. Since no one will have ever returned from death. No ghost can say what lies beyond, not a single one of them has ever reported anything beyond death.
I might have to make up a Sherlock Holmes story set in such a world or at least a title. Holmes pastiches where he knows that magic is real and publicly says nothing, strictly adhering to science in public annoy me. Holmes in a world of magic would talk of it, just not in mystical terms. But he would be just a story, in my story. After all it would not do to have every out of copyright character wandering around inside my own stories. If they can't speak of someone as evil as Moriarty my world would be sadder for it. Though maybe, I'll have one to hint at something strange. But who?
So David Cooperfield is real. Why not. But he's got not a lick of magic to him, though he's good with the misdirecting. Houdini was just as impressive as he was in real life and just as active at rooting out fake spiritualists. Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin... people guessed he used magic but used tricks to cover for it when he did. And I'll need to make up some names I suppose.
Stage magic seems bound up with the enlightenment and final acceptance that such things are not real, but a want to be amazed none the less. Plus the increasing number of theaters with seats in need of filling. Undoubtedly there were con-artists and slight of hand earlier, but it seems not to be as developed and organized as later. The high age for magicians was the Victorian Age into the Edwardian. Industrial change allowed more elaborate tricks and there was not yet any film with its competing illusions.
When I imagine a world with magic I think that Ages of Enlightenment and Reason will still come about. After all I put magic next to other physical laws as an unreliable addition. The majority of the time science totally works and unlike magic does so much more reliably and consistently. And if there is evidence of magic that doesn't require faith or the intervention of a god or gods it gives as good a reason to not believe in divine intervention as science. After all the priests could be just doing magic rituals rather than actually being in communication with a higher power. Not to mention the inaccurate descriptions of the physical world in holy texts and all the other myriad reasons found by enlightened individuals in the real world.
I imagine part of the enlightenment will be wider understanding of the limits of the sorcerers and mages. No doubt great minds will have been prying into the wonders of the paranormal since the time of Newton. But in the enlightenment people start to wonder if all priests are doing is doing a magic ritual. If the crosses repel evil not because god has come down from the heavens to intervene in the normal course of events, but because a spell, the blessing upon the cross, works. This also would mean that when it does not work it was not because a person's faith was weak, but because something went wrong.
Magic will have been used to impress before, but it doesn't always work. A mage (I think I'll use that term, most people won't know that it is a relatively recent addition to English) would need a good patter and a back up to impress when something goes wrong. Also real magic takes real power. The mage can't just stand there on stage and do it, the more impressive the trick the bigger the sacrifice needed to make it work. And polite people won't want to see that. So the blood sacrifices, the burning spices, and all the other things would have to be hidden away. And maybe that is where the trick is.
People start to know more about what real mages can and cannot do. Enter the stage magician. Perhaps he has a little knowledge, perhaps he does not. Perhaps he's even one of those people who has just a touch of magic in his own blood. But mostly he's still going to use the tricks that anyone without a spell to his name would use. Misdirection. It isn't the guy on stage with power, it is the stage assistant who can levitate things doing the blood sacrifice under the stage. Mirrors that they'll swear up and down are not already enchanted, switched for one that is. And the smoke and mirrors that work much more reliably after a few small bits of magic to make it seem like something big and dangerous has happened on stage.
Though with real magic running about I also expect that many will come right out and say that what they do are tricks, even if they aren't. I think that some more conservative locals might even ban stage magic on the basis of religious prohibition. It would be a less popular profession in its golden age. Though Houdini might be joined by a real mage helping to denounce fakers using real magic to produce fake contact with 'the other side'. Since no one will have ever returned from death. No ghost can say what lies beyond, not a single one of them has ever reported anything beyond death.
I might have to make up a Sherlock Holmes story set in such a world or at least a title. Holmes pastiches where he knows that magic is real and publicly says nothing, strictly adhering to science in public annoy me. Holmes in a world of magic would talk of it, just not in mystical terms. But he would be just a story, in my story. After all it would not do to have every out of copyright character wandering around inside my own stories. If they can't speak of someone as evil as Moriarty my world would be sadder for it. Though maybe, I'll have one to hint at something strange. But who?
So David Cooperfield is real. Why not. But he's got not a lick of magic to him, though he's good with the misdirecting. Houdini was just as impressive as he was in real life and just as active at rooting out fake spiritualists. Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin... people guessed he used magic but used tricks to cover for it when he did. And I'll need to make up some names I suppose.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-03 01:16 am (UTC)*well, popularly believed. perhaps with encouragement from certain quarters...
(no subject)
Date: 2007-03-03 02:35 am (UTC)And also the things they most fear. One little spell could make you gay! Communist! A vampire! Deathly Ill!
The classic cutting a woman in half or making things disappear and reappear might still be popular though.