INDIAN MAGIC

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 68, 20 March 1936, Page 10

INDIAN MAGIC

MASS HYPNOTISM?

WHAT PHOTOGRAPH REVEALED

The perennially fascinating rope trick was one of the subjects dealt with by Major G. H. Rooke, in a lecture on "Indian Occultism" before the East India Association in Caxton Hall, London, recently, states the "Daily Telegraph." Among the accounts he gave of the performance were those contained in letters to the editor which appeared in the •Telegraph" during May, 1934.

One of these was an eye-witness's-story of a demonstration, before an audience of 200 boys on the playingfield at Victoria School, Kurseong, near Darjeeling. "We saw the performer throw up the rope," this correspondent stated, "and it remained vertical in the air, apparently reaching into infinity. A native boy then climbed the rope, and disappeared into space. The demonstrator cut the rope near the ground, and the boy fell at his feet. The headmaster of the school described the performance as "a wonderful exhibition of mass hypnotism and ventriloquism.' "

Another correspondent mentioned a case in which an exhibition was given on the lawn of an Indian staff officer's house. The officer, stationed at an overlooking window, took photographs. The developed films revealed no sign of the rope or of the boy climbing it. They showed the audience in a semi-circle (lacing the fakir and his boy squatting side by side in front of them), all gazing upwards. The last picture showed the boy stealing quietly away, to reappear, presumably, from another direction. Commenting on this latter case, Major Rooke said, ''If this is an accurate account of the incident, it seems to furnish conclusive evidence as to the essentially psychological character of the trick." CAMERA'S "BLIND SPOT." However, he added, the camera can sometimes be defeated..A friend of his in the Indian Political Service once wanted to photograph a group of natives. One man, though objecting to being photographed, consented to stand in the group. But he said, "You cannot photograph me, sahib." When the group was developed there was a blank space where the objector had stood. Giving an account of the basket trick, Major Booke explained that a small boy was put into a basket. The magician then drove a sword through the basket, to the accompaniment of shrieks, with blood flowing from the portions pierced. "On the only occasion when I witnessed the trick, the magician refused to allow me to drive my own sword through the basket, and was obviously embarrassed by the suggestion." There was a recorded case iir which a medical man caught on his sandkerchief some of the blood spurting out of the basket. But when the magician had departed no trace of bloodstains remained on the handkerchief. "Such a circumstance," commented the lecturer, "certainly seems to confirm the psychological explanation."