CONJURING, the production of effects apparently miraculous by natural means. The earlier professors of the art claimed bona fide supernatural powers; and in ages when the most elementary principles of physical science were unknown beyond a very limited circle, it was not difficult to gain credence for such a pretension. The modern conjurer makes no such claim, but tells the public frankly that his marvels are illusory. Of the conjurers of re mote antiquity we have few reliable records; though it is a tolerably safe conjecture that the prestige of the ancient mysteries rested in no small degree upon effects of natural magic. Perhaps the earliest really trustworthy author ity is Reginald Scot, who in his 'Discoverie of Witchcraft' (1584) has enumerated the stock feats of the conjurers of his day.
The conjurers of Scot's time, and those of even much later date, were accustomed, in order to facilitate the substitutions on which a great part of their tricks depended, to wear an apron with pockets, known (from its resem blance to a game-bag) as the gibeciere. A later school suppressed this tell-tale article of cos tume, and used instead a table, with cover reaching nearly or quite to the ground. This table concealed an assistant, who worked most of the required transformations, etc., either
handing the needful articles to the conjurer as he passed behind the table, or pushing them up through traps in the table-top. Conus the elder, a French conjurer who flourished at the close of the 18th century, made a further improve ment by discarding the concealed assistant, and using an undraped table with a secret shelf (now known as the servante) behind it, on which his substitutions were made. His im mediate competitors did not follow his example, a whole generation of later conjurers, includ ing Comte, Bosco and Philippe, retaining the suggestive draped table. Its death-blow, how ever, was struck by Robert Houdin (1805-71), with whom about 1844 a new era began. The most modern school of conjurers, following the lead of Wiljalba Frikell, etc., represented by Hartz, Herrmann, Buatier de Kolta, Verbeck, Lynn, Bertram, etc., generally aim at producing their magical results with the minimum of visible apparatus.
The word "conjuring" also still bears all the meanings of conjuration; the sense in which the ancient conjurer always used it; and in which medicine men of savage tribes invariably use it to-day.