Fifty years ago tonight, Beatrice Houdini, grieving widow of the legendary magician, called it quits.
She gave up hope that her late husband would communicate with her from beyond the grave, after 10 highly publicized Halloween seances failed to detect any message from Harry Houdini, who died at 52 of a ruptured appendix on Oct. 31, 1926.
”Since the failure of the 10-year-test,” Beatrice declared, ”it is my opinion that all concerned have struck a mighty worldwide blow at
superstition.”
Blow or no, in magic circles much pestering of old Houdini`s ghost still goes on, especially at Halloween. But Max Maven, the modern-day master of the magical seance, eschewed such an attempt recently when he ventured from Hollywood to a suburban Chicago motel to sit down at a round table with 12 people at midnight.
”We`re going to leave Houdini alone tonight,” he said. ”I have someone much more evil in mind.”
And there, in the spooky darkness of Elk Grove Village, Max Maven made a few calls.
Maven was a star guest at an extraordinary annual convention–the
”Invocational: Of Mages, Seers, Wizards & Workers of Weird Wonders”–a gathering of merry conjurers who profess allegiance to the strange cult called ”Bizarrism.”
Bizarrists are extremely good-natured magicians who specialize in terror and the occult. ”Our principles go back to Merlin,” explained convention host Tony Andruzzi, a Chicago-based bizarrist and famous creator of illusions for professionals, who, like Maven, is regarded around the world as a magician`s magician.
”Our goal is to entertain you by scaring your pants off,” said Andruzzi, his presence and voice strongly reminiscent of Orson Welles. ”We mean no harm by it; we`re not trying to make believers. We`re fakes, but we`re not frauds.
”I think,” he said with a wicked grin, ”that we`re trying to bring to magic a maturity comparable to slasher movies.”
Admission to ”Invocational”–a sort of Black Magic Invitational–was limited to 100 magicians, pros and amateurs. They ranged from mind-readers
(mentalists) and psychic entertainers to scary storytellers and stage illusionists. They came from as far away as Japan and New Zealand for three days of conviviality, the sharing of secrets, and attempts to gross each other out.
For Max Maven to conduct a seance before this company was a daring venture. A charismatic performer who speaks with the resonant tones of a Shakespearean, Maven is a short, well-built man with coal black hair, flashing black eyes, and a penchant for black clothing. He asked that the proceedings not be taped nor any notes taken; in fact, he would be pleased if the participants didn`t even remember much of what transpired. The magicians promised they wouldn`t copy.
And thus, as the table guests joined hands, and scores of other wizards sat and stood around respectfully, Maven went to work invoking the shade of the infamous Aleister Crowley.
It was a wonderfully esoteric choice. Crowley, also known as the Great Beast, was a flamboyant demonologist, conjurer and prolific author still popular in witchcraft circles but denounced in the 1930s as ”The Wickedest Man in the World.”
Unspeakable sexual debaucheries and obscene rites were said to occur in the notorious Abbey of Thelema that he established at Cefalu in Sicily. Crowley`s disciples engaged in scandalous behavior; some committed suicide and others presumably had to be restrained from Manson-like excesses. Crowley was such a dangerous character that Mussolini threw him out of Italy. He died peacefully in his bed in England on Dec. 1, 1947, unrepentant and unbowed. He was cremated and his ashes sent to acolytes in the United States.
”Enflame thyself in praying!” Crowley used to urge fellow sorcerers when invoking the spirits, but virtuoso Max Maven believes less is more. He used only the simplest of props–some candles on the table, a set of playing cards (a beautiful antique deck of Steamboats formerly owned by Houdini), a handbell, a magic pendulum, a few slates for spirit writing.
”We also have this small piece of wood from Crowley`s house,” Maven noted. And then he presented a small glass vial of ashes, placing it in the center of the table: ”And, of course, we have Crowley.”
By flickering candlelight, the audience soon fell under the spell of Maven`s mesmerizing voice as he cleverly melded card tricks and slate-writing into his dramatic recounting of Crowley`s weird life.
The pendulum swung predictably, the handbell mysteriously rang; but when
–with a clunk!–that plain piece of wood abruptly fell off the vial of Crowley`s ashes, interrupting Maven in mid-sentence, a knowing shudder raced through the observers.
Maven paused, shook his head, and went on with the story.
Suddenly the candles blew out, plunging the room into darkness. Maven locked hands with the people on either side of him. Everyone present, at his urging to breathe deeply and regularly, set about hyperventilating
–”rhythmic breathing,” it`s called in the trade. Magicians and spiritualist mediums have long known that if you sit in the dark long enough, you`ll find things for yourself.
Maven`s voice was hushed, hopeful, nervous:
”Are you there, Crowley?”
Maven lived to regret having bothered the dead witch.
Soon, in the inky blackness, Maven was viciously attacked. He was rocked by slaps, smacks, and thuds. His head banged on the table. He strangled. He retched. He growled, swore. He spoke in tongues. He groaned in agony.
Finally, he could take no more.
”Lights!” he screamed. ”Lights! NOW!”
As the lights flashed on, it appeared that Crowley had departed from Elk Grove Village. But Maven, his hands still clasped by others, had collapsed, exhausted, his head on the table. Blood streamed down his face. Crowley, it seemed, had gone for an eye.
The audience murmured approval as Maven, clutching his face, dashed out. Moments later, he cheerfully rejoined everyone for libations, a fresh bandage covering the ”wound.”
”That was for fun,” Andruzzi noted. ”But can you imagine the effect Max would have in front of a gullible audience? That`s why bizarrists are constantly concerned about responsibility. We`re magicians–we always emphasize that to audiences. But we`re playing with primordial fears.
”Atmosphere is crucial to the bizarrist. He works in candlelight, with subdued music behind him, with incense burning. People are not going to see a magic show. They`re going to see something . . . to be frightened . . . to be entertained.
”The way you cloak the hoax is everything. You can attach a hidden thread to a candle and during a ghost story, make the candle move across the table. Watchers will gasp, even though if they thought about it, they know that candles can`t move by themselves.”
Because of slickness and commercialism, the true meaning of magic has been lost, Andruzzi believes.
”Restoring it is my crusade. When I was 16, I had the greatest thrill of my life. I did a performance with a guillotine. The bloody head plunked into the basket–floop! A woman in the audience stood up, yelled, `My God!` and fainted dead away. I saw right there I could affect emotions. I could create something that is so real, yet so fake.
”Many people take exception to me and say I`m doing black magic and things they can`t do at church. But I`m doing magic that started their church.”
If Maven`s seances are at one end of the bizarrist spectrum, Andruzzi`s neo-paganism occupies the other. He adopts the Von Helsing (of Dracula)
persona–the lecturer who dabbles in the arcane. Whatever tale he tells is crucial.
At the convention, he presented an archeologist`s tray of sand believed to hold a hoofprint of Satan. Unfortunately, during transportation the print was destroyed. But by performing a ritual, Andruzzi hoped to determine if this damned–or hallowed–ground did indeed hold the cloven hoofprint of Beelzebub. He intoned an incantation, and lo and behold, out of the tray of sand there arose an incredible, wiggling, disgusting, many-tentacled wormlike thing, accompanied by smoke, flame, and sulfur.
Instantly, for the protection of all, Andruzzi destroyed it, banishing the thing back to the pit of hell and ash from whence it came.
He was a smash. ”As a group, we`re very weird,” Andruzzi admits.
”Invocational,” in many ways, resembled a medical convention, only instead of discussing surgical techniques, experts gave lectures on dowsing, cold reading (palmistry), the magic pendulum, and the latest debunkings of purported psychics. Bizarrists cast the evil eye on con artists who turn magic into a racket.
”The emphasis in ordinary magic is deception and trickery,” explained Marcello Truzzi, a sociologist at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti who studies maverick and deviant science. ”The people involved in bizarre magic and mentalism don`t emphasize those aspects. They may use tricks, but they`re really moodspinners, storytellers, actors, philosophers.”
”Most mentalists do hold some belief in the paranormal,” said Truzzi.
”People are known to develop special acuities, heightened senses. Specialized knowledge has grown up in almost every profession or trade. A jade dealer knows your pupilary reflex will change when you`re interested in a certain gem. Psychologists didn`t realize this until around 1950. They learned about it from jade dealers, not psychology.
”Mentalists have learned these things, too. They`re sensitive to the subtlest of cues from a subject. Yet, when something goes awry during a performance, many mentalists still come up with the correct answer. When I ask them how, they say: `I went with my gut and I seemed to be right.` If you believe in ESP, that`s the explanation. If, like me, you don`t, you say it must be some interesting cueing that we need to know more about.”
Bizarrists as a society harken back to such mock-occult groups as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, formed in London in 1887, which claimed descent from the Rosicrucians of the Middle Ages. Famous pranksters have belonged to this order, including W. B. Yeats, Algernon Blackwood, and, of course, old Aleister Crowley.
Unlike other magicians, bizarrists seek no applause.
”If people do, I say: `Please, no interruption!”` Andruzzi emphasizes in his sternest Wellesian fashion. ”Fellow magicians don`t understand that I feed on the quiet as they feed on the third encore. But if I`ve terrified someone, they have been entertained.”
Still, as Andruzzi readily admits, bizarrists are not universally loved.
”I remember one time the audience came in and sat down. The place was stinking with incense. Candlelight. Gregorian chant was heard. It kept building. Suddenly, I walked down the aisle.
”`Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,` I said. `Tonight, we`re going to do something that is beyond the ken of most. For centuries, people have tried to prove or disprove the psychic. I`m not going to do anything so mundane.
”I`m going to take you back to ancient rites of mysticism that existed before our epistomologists dismissed them out of ignorance and fear . . . ”
At that point a woman in the audience turned to her husband.
”Let`s go, Irving,” she declared. ”And I mean now!”
”And they left!” Andruzzi chortled. ”By God, it was wonderful! Don`t ever give me a standing ovation. Merely faint!”
