Magic Words & Symbols Spotted in the Wild

The Profoundest Magic in a Classic Sitcom

Did you know that the classic sitcom Bewitched's biggest feat of magic was turning its entire audience into practitioners of modern witchcraft?  We explain the phenomenon here:

http://oneletterwords.com/weblog/?id=8754

Meanwhile, "We’re quicksilver.  A fleeting shadow, a distant sound.  Our home has no boundaries beyond which we cannot pass.  We live in music, in a flash of color.  We live on the wind and the sparkle of a star."

An Inadvertent Hanged Man

This upside down page appears as-is in Google's scan of Virginia of the Air Lanes by Herbert Quick, 1909.  The inverted caption reads, "Like a stone he fell, lost in the mists."

Why It is Discreet to Have No Definite Opinion

If only our skeptic friends could understand this:

"If a wise man studies the science of the occult, his duty is not to laugh at everything, but to seek patiently, slowly, perseveringly, the truth that may be concealed in the night of these illusions." —William Somerset Maugham, The Magician

On Backing Zero

"You should be aware that science, dealing only with the general, leaves out of consideration the individual cases that contradict the enormous majority. Occasionally the heart is on the right side of the body, but you would not on that account ever put your stethoscope in any other than the usual spot. It is possible that under certain conditions the law of gravity does not apply, yet you will conduct your life under the conviction that it does so invariably. Now, there are some of us who choose to deal only with these exceptions to the common run. The dull man who plays at Monte Carlo puts his money on the colours, and generally black or red turns up; but now and then zero appears, and he loses. But we, who have backed zero all the time, win many times our stake. Here and there you will find men whose imagination raises them above the humdrum of mankind. They are willing to lose their all if only they have chance of a great prize. Is it nothing not only to know the future, as did the prophets of old, but by making it to force the very gates of the unknown?" —William Somerset Maugham, The Magician

(Photo courtesy of Sadler.)

Hocus, Pocus, and Conjure

When the digits of Pi are converted into letters and arrayed, the words hocus, pocus, and conjure are all connected.  So are the words alpha, omega, and god.  (See Futility Closet's piece about Mike Keith's research.)

Impossible

"He that uses the word impossible outside of pure mathematics is lacking in prudence." —William Somerset Maugham, The Magician

A Concise Definition of Magic

"Magic is no more than the art of employing consciously invisible means to produce visible effects.  Will, love, and imagination are magic powers that everyone possesses; and whoever knows how to develop them to their fullest extent is a magician.  Magic has but one dogma, namely, that the seen is the measure of the unseen." —William Somerset Maugham, The Magician

A Knight of Swords

From The Message of the Soldiers by E. E. Holmes, 1917.  Illustration by Lilian J. Pocock.

Take Your Choice

 

Father Time conjures a mad March Hare, a lion, and a lamb from the World's tophat.  The Metropolitan Magazine, 1904.