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Art of entertaining by giving the illusion of performing impossible feats. The conjurer is an actor who combines psychology, manual dexterity, and mechanical aids to effect the desired illusion. The form was established by the medieval era, when traveling conjurers performed at fairs and in the homes of the nobility. In the 19th – 20th centuries, conjuring was performed on stage by magicians such as Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, Harry Houdini, and Harry Blackstone. In the late 20th century magicians such as Doug Henning and David Copperfield performed colourful spectacles on television, while the postmodern team Penn and Teller offered a quieter brand of magic that emphasized irony and illusion.

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To conjure originally meant to call up spirits or practice magic arts, but in the course of time a secondary meaning of sleight of hand displaced the earlier meaning, and the term now indicates trickery or deception (usually for entertainment). In the United States, the term magic is usually used for conjuring, although this too originally had an occult meaning. The blurring of the occult and stage magic occurred in the late nineteenth century when so many mediums passed off stage illusions as genuine Spiritualist phenomena.

Sources:

Evans, Henry Ridgeley. The Old and New Magic. Chicago: Open Court Publishing, 1909.

 
 

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Copyrights:

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Occultism & Parapsychology Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology. Copyright © 2001 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more

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