Conjuring

views updated

Conjuring

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.

More From encyclopedia.com