Magic and religion

I was recently reminded of that excellent film, based on a short story by Rudyard Kipling, The Man Who Would Be King. Sean Connery and Michael Caine knocking about the Hindu Kush suddenly find themselves hailed as gods by the local people and manoeuvre themselves into living the life of Riley. They aren't magicians - the misapprehension occurs by accident - but there is a lot of scope for unscrupulous conjurors to give the impression of having supernatural powers.

This was exploited by the French colonials in Algeria, who persuaded the legendary Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin to pass off his phenomenal conjuring as real magic. Conversely, during the Second World War, Jasper Maskelyne was responsible for exposing an Egyptian spiritual leader with so-called special powers as a plain old conjuror, not quite as good as he was himself (or so I read in a book called The War Magician).

In our culture these days, it's generally only mentalists who get the opportunity to pretend to be genuinely magic - and fortunately these charlatans seem to be getting rarer.

Welcome!

Hello everybody and welcome to my blog. I've been thinking of setting one up for some time, as a space to write my thoughts about magic, the magic books I've read, the magic conventions I've been to, the magicians I've seen/met... and also about how conjuring fits into the great big scheme of things. I'm interested in what magic is, to what extent real magic exists, to what extent conjuring should be presented as if it were real magic and issues of this sort. I've talked to several magicians about these questions but it occurred to me that, if I write some thoughts in a blog, people might comment and that we could sometimes get some discussions going.

Anyway, what prompted me actually to get this blog off the to-do list and into cyberspace was the arrival this week of my niece Jemima. I've never been an aunt before and it's absolutely wonderful! Magicians tend to use the word 'miracle' quite loosely but childbirth: now, there's a real miracle. Because it's been happening every day since the beginning of time, it's easy to take it for granted but those of you who've been close to it will know what I mean.

Jemima

John van der Put said something similar in my interview with him (click on the link to read it). It's interesting what people consider to be magic and what they take for granted. Automatic doors, mobile phones and palm-top computers are (at least, in our culture) accepted as standard. Occasionally, we may say, "It's clever what they can do these days, isn't it?" but it doesn't feel like magic. And yet, as John says, when he takes a signed four of diamonds out of his wallet, everyone goes wild because it's 'impossible'.

One man's instrument of magic is another man's everyday gadget - but what makes it amazing is not just not knowing how it's done (how does a mobile phone work?) but unfamiliarity with the whole concept. My cousin's wife, Cassie, wrote a fascinating book about the Congo, where they lived and worked for a few years, before moving to Bangladesh. (My cousin, Mark Dummett, is a BBC journalist and I've put a link to his website in the Links section.) Cassie's book is called Brazzaville Charms: Magic and Rebellion in the Republic of Congo and it describes several instances where things happen - and people die - for reasons that make no sense to a Western mind.

So there we are. A few thoughts for the first day. What do you think?