BLACK MAGIC

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 219, 10 May 1932, Page 2

BLACK MAGIC

SEEN IN LONDON EXPLAINING TRICKS OF AFRICAN WITCH DOCTORS. POWER OF HYPNOTISM. Black margic as practised by native witch doctors was described and even demonstrated in London recently to a reporter investigating its eerie possibilities. The terrible d;scoveries of mutilated bodies in Finland have been ascribed by some. to tbis Black Magic, and nervous people are asking ' "Does Biack Magic really exist, or are its strange, uncanny claims simply based on elaborate conjuririg tricks? " One answer is that they are based very largely on hypnotism — either o? the magician or of his audience. Mr. Will Goldston, the illusionist, and founder of the Magicians' Club, who has made a life-long study of every form of magic and mesmerisro, said: "Black Magic positively exists. I have studied it for many years and it is a terrible problem. Ilt is practised by Indians, by many negro witch doctors on the West Coast of Africa, and in Australia. "A negfo witch' doctor of enormous influence in his tribe came to see me here in Ltrndon and astonished me. i took a heavy hook and hammered about 20 pins into his thigh. He brought them out and th^.- e was not a sign of hlood on any of them. T ■ learned the secret of that and now I can do it too." Mr. Goldston casually stuck a fiercelooking pin into his leg and withdrew it unstained with blood. "I hypnotise my leg," he explained. Natural Magic. "Black magic is deep magic because it is natural magic. This witch doctor made his heart stop beating and his pulse cease to throb. Now I an do the same- He said he would hypnotise me and make me feel a cold stream of air on the back of my hand — and he did. Give me your hand a moment." Mr. Goldston grasped the hand by the fingertips," made a few mysterious hypnotice passes, and sure enough a cool hreeze-like feeling as if a window had been opened was feTt on the back of the hand. "That is Black Magic in one of its not very black aspects," he said. "The witch doctor volunteered to cut a hole in himself with a carving knife and then heal it up again, but he was not allowed to do that. "It is extraordinary what hypnotism can do. If the Ind'an rope trick — in itself impossible, but I knew a photographer who declared he had taken a picture of the man elimbing up the unsuspended rope — and rvhen the negative was developed it proved absolutely blank, thus showing that the photographer ,was hypnotised. "Another favourite Black Magic trick is for the fakir to be buried alive and then dug up after a long period and found to be quite well, though any normal person w u .l v ve been suffocated. I'll tell you .tc. . .:c eet of that. The fakir is always buried in a field near a large tree. This tree, unknown to the spectato^., is hollowed out to about six fc d below the earth. When he is bun. J the fakir crawls into the tree truid: and stars until the t;me is up. 1h n he gcos back to his coffin and is -dug up alive — to the amazement of tlie uninitiated. "Walking on nails is another simple thing — when you know how to do it. The witch doctor who calied on me could swallow an ivory ball. make u go right down into his stoma.ch and

eome up again at will. We should do all these and far more baffling things by sleight of hand."