Book Description
Magical tricks employed by strolling jugglers and fakirs. There does not exist a professional wizard, either of the North, South, or West, who can compete with anything approaching success, with the untutored, naked sons of the East. The basis of magic is the life-principle, a blind force obeying a controlling influence All magical operations consist in freeing one’s self from the coils of the Ancient Serpent. When a man, through the complete subjugation of matter, has attained that state of purification at which the spirit becomes nearly freed from its prison, he has become a creative force on earth, and can command the elements and powers of nature. Purified from the contact with matter, the powerful will and spirit of the fakir condenses the essence of plant life into its germ, and forces it to maturity ahead of its time. For will in motion is force, and force produces matter. The spirit of man is like that of his Creator, omniscient in its essence. Strolling Indian jugglers are neither pure in their modes of living, nor holy. They are generally feared and despised by the natives, for they are practitioners of the black art. Psychological versus conjuring tricks. The only explanation given by the Society for Psychical Research for these phenomena is it does not understand, and is incapable of understanding, what is going on. Fakir is a Mussulman devotee whose whole time is taken up by acts of holiness such as standing for days on one leg, or on the top of his head. But the saintly Hindu Yogi does not take “collections” after the exhibition of his psychic powers. The man Ellmore and Lessing saw was a public juggler, known in India as Jadoowalla or sorcerer. Public jugglers are not sleight of hand conjurers, they are mesmerisers endowed with phenomenal powers. Between hypnotism and Mesmerism lies an impassable chasm. Glamour and fascination are entirely different from hypnotism. Occultism does not admit claims of bodily disintegration, for a living creature, whether man or mosquito, cannot be “disintegrated” and live.
