The Anatomy of Magic

Favourite Woodcuts: Hocus Pocus Junior (1634)

What’s going on here? Looks like magic!

That’s right, this is supposedly a picture of a real seventeenth century magician.

‘By the evertue...’ sorry, what does it say in the speech bubble?

“By the virtue of Hocus Pocus, ha pas.” It’s his magic words. His stage name was ‘Hocus Pocus,’ a phrase thought to come from a mishearing of ‘hoc est corpus meum’ from the Catholic mass: ‘this is my body.’

So where is this woodcut from exactly? A book of magic?

A how-to guide for sleight of hand. It’s got one of those long seventeenth century titles, are you ready?

Am I ever!

Okay: ‘Hocus pocus junior the anatomie of legerdemain· or, the art of jugling set forth in his proper colours, fully, plainely, and exactly, so that an ignorant person may thereby learne the full perfection of the same, after a little practise. Unto each tricke is added the figure, where it is needfull for instruction.’

That’s the sort of title you write when you’re not quite at the minimum word count for an essay.

Titles have definitely diminished in size since the seventeenth century.

They’re not what they used to be. So it’s also about juggling?

No, not in a modern sense. ‘Juggling’ used to be a catch-all word to describe tricks you performed with your hands using practice and dexterity. Card tricks would count as ‘juggling,’ for example.

And it’s illustrated?

Yes! That’s why I love it so much, it’s got these great step-by-step explanations that you can still follow today. This sort of thing:

Looks easy enough. Have you tried any?

I am terrible at sleight of hand, I’m too clumsy. It’s why I’ve had to write about magic from an academic perspective, to compensate for my lack of talent.

Commiserations. You said this was a real person? He wasn’t baptised ‘Hocus Pocus’.

It is thought that ‘Hocus Pocus’ was William Vincent who in 1619 received royal permission for his troop to travel and “exercise and practize the Arte of legerdemain” as well as various acrobatic feats. In 1656 Thomas Ady remembered his performance style:

And so was he called, because that at the playing of every Trick, he used to say, Hocus pocus, tontus tabantus, vade celeriter jubeo, a dark composure of words, to blinde the eyes of the beholders, to make his trick pass the more currently without discovery, because when the eye and the ear of the beholder are both earnestly busied, the Trick is not so easily discovered, nor the imposture discerned.

Did you copy and paste that from your thesis?

Yes.

Can I read it?

My thesis? Yes you can! Look here it is all shiny: https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.109036

I meant the Hocus Pocus book.

Oh. Well. Yeah, fine I guess. It’s on Early English Books Online. Here if you have access via a library: https://ezp.lib.cam.ac.uk/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/eebo/books/hocus-pocus-iunior-anatomie-legerdemain-art/docview/2240921181/sem-2?accountid=9851

Hey Presto!

And Alakazam.