THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, July 1, 1996 TAG: 9606300320
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MIKE KNEPLER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 55 lines
Joan F. Higbee belongs to three magic associations, but she doesn't want to learn the insiders' tricks.
A scholar in the history of magic, she prefers her place in the audience. not the stage.
For her, magic is in seeing and believing, not knowing how it's done.
``The minute the audience knows, the whole dynamic changes,'' said Higbee, a researcher at the Library of Congress. She delivered a history lecture Sunday to the International Brotherhood of Magicians' convention in Norfolk.
Higbee's sense of awe has taken her on an intellectual journey to the 1400s, when street magicians entertained in Europe. Superstition, fear and persecution ruled the times. Magicians were believed to have ``the terrible power of evil spirits''
Reginold Scot, an English country gentleman, ``was horrified by the torture and execution of elderly women accused and sentenced as witches.'' In 1584, he self-published ``The Discovery of Witchcraft,'' which Higbee characterized as ``a call to reason.''
Scot included 70 pages of magic tricks, the first such descriptions in English. Scot's book also put forth a code of ethics for legitimate magical performers. There are two sides to the magician's responsibility, according to Scot - one to the art, the other to the audience.
``Revelation of secrets may do harm to the mystery of magic and to those who practice it as a profession,'' Higbee said. Yet, ``the conjurer has a responsibility not to abuse the name of God or to pretend to divine powers.''
Modern-style performances, Higbee said, are traced to the magic of Jean-Eugene Robert-Houdin, a Frenchman born in 1805.
Robert-Houdin replaced wizard-like costumes with elegant evening dress. Magic moved from heavily draped parlors and fair booths to open stages.
While many others made major contributions to their craft, ``the most powerful personality to emerge in modern magic was and remains,'' Higbee said, ``Houdini.''
Born Erik Weisz in 1874, Houdini created his stage name in honor of Robert-Houdin.Famous for masterful escapes from seemingly impossible confinements, Houdini also exposed claims of supernatural powers.
Houdini, who died in 1926, willed his collection of books of magic and magical paraphernalia to the Library of Congress.
In 1992, Kenneth Silverman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, went to the Library of Congress to study Houdini's life.
Some of the requested information was missing, and Higbee, a researcher in the rare-books division, was assigned to help find it. She traced a complicated trail, discovering the lost parts of the Houdini collection in a storage warehouse. From there, Higbee's interest in magic grew.
``In an age when so much is happening that's extraordinary - I mean the Internet, man walking on the moon, I mean the most astounding period in history technologically,'' she explained, ``people get something very special out of being baffled by an individual human being using profoundly human skills.'' by CNB