THE SYMPATHETIC EXECUTION;
or, The Paracelsus Trick. The name of Theophilus Paracelsus is given to
this trick, because it is pretended that a man so killed his brother by
stabbing his picture with a dagger. The anecdote, which undoubtedly is
not related by contemporary historians, nor by eye-witnesses, should be
considered without doubt as apocryphal, though founded on a belief
widely current in the age of romance.
A puppet is shown to the audience, and they are allowed to handle
it, to see that the wax neck is perfectly solid. A ribbon is tied in
the middle around the doll's neck, and each end of the ribbon is
fastened to a pillar, two of these standing parallel on your magic
table. The stage and room are then darkened, and a lamp, with a
reflector placed behind the pendent pnppet, casts its shadow upon the
stage at a distance from it. Drawing a sword, the performer recites
some lines, treating of the doctrine of sympathetic action by which
injury done to a representative of a living person in wax or on canvas
was felt by the original himself, drawing freely on the annals of
witchcraft for a telling story. Then flourish your sword, and say that
the modern conjurer has progressed far beyond the necromancers of yore,
as by action on the mere shadow of an object, that object will
suffer the like fate. So saying, draw your sword across the neck of the
shadow, when simultaneously the head of the puppet will be severed and
fall on the table.
Explanation.—The head, shoulders, and neck of the doll
are indeed of solid wax. The ribbon contains a watchspring with
sharpened edges, and in tying the band around the neck, the steel is
set "edge on" into the wax. One end of the ribbon is made fast to one
of the columns, which is solid; but the other column is hollow. The
other end of the ribbon is fastened to a wire running up the second
column, which is hollow, though it appears to be wound round the column
just like the first end. The wire is carried down into the magic table,
and thence to your confederate's hand, under the stage or elsewhere out
of sight. When you make the cut, you stamp your foot or speak some
agreed-upon signal, and the assistant's jerk to the wire severs the
puppet's head.
Contents
|
