Blog Post: Literature Review #5

1: Visuals

2. Citation:

3. Summary:

Buescher talks about Stage Magicians and Spirit Mediums. Both want to mystify their audience with acts beyond human comprehension: magic or mediumship. The key difference between the two is that the stage magician will admit the trick behind the act while the mediums will not. In the article, he also shows different examples of magicians and mediums and what they do.

4. Author:

John Benedict Buescher has a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of Virginia centered around Buddhism and Christianity. At the University of North Carolina in Wilmington, he was the assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion. He has written important books and articles regarding nineteenth-century American Transcendentalists and Spiritualism. This piece of information is important because Spiritualism is considered a spiritual movement and a religion in its own right.

5. Key Terms:

1. ‘Mundus vult decipi;decipiatur,’ refers to the magicians and mediums who know the truth and are the few who can deceive the world.

2. Buescher mentions that if the magician kills the ‘magic’ or the mystery behind the trick, they cannot make any more profit from the same trick. Mediums, on the other hand, can reuse the same methods and make more profits than magicians.

6. Three Quotes:

“One basic rule of stage magic is that you don’t warn your audience that you’re about to play a trick on them” (214). “‘

“The same fundamental desire stimulates both the medium and the magician. Both feel the urge to mystify the public. Both have held to the same theory: ‘Mundus vult decipi; decipiatur,’ and they enjoy the privilege of belonging to the chosen few who can deceive the world.’’ In other words, magicians and mediums were doing the same things except that the magicians admitted what they were doing, whereas the mediums did not” (215).

“And if magicians succeeded only in exposure, in killing real magic, as they declared, what audience would remain after they’d emptied their audiences’ pockets on succeeding days?” (220).

7. Value:

This source helped me realize the implications behind the scammers’ and mediums’ practices and why they would refuse to tell others that they are fake. I was able to apply the key concepts to my paper with the support of a peer-reviewed source and expert on this subject. It also explained the reason why magicians and mediums perform their demonstrations.