Is magic only a matter of trickery or can spirits really be "summoned from the vasty deep?" Conjuror Harry Houdini developed to its fullest the performance potential of magic tricks, but he also exposed the fraudulent methods of mediums who claimed to communicate with "the beyond." Houdini emphasized that magic is a purely human skill:I have spent a goodly part of my life in study and research. During the last thirty years I have read every single piece of literature on the subject of Spiritualism that I could. I have accumulated one of the largest libraries in the world on psychic phenomena, Spiritualism, magic, witchcraft, demonology, evil spirits, etc., some of the material going back as far as 1489, and I doubt if anyone in the world has so complete a library on modern Spiritualism, but nothing I ever read concerning the so-called Spiritualistic phenomena has impressed me as being genuine.
Harry Houdini, A Magician Among the Spirits, 1924.
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