Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IX.djvu/727

 JUGGLER 707 the tax was abolished and an annual donation from the public treasury given to the priests. In consequence of the scandal created by the spectacle of a Christian government contribu- ting to support the most obscene rites of heathen worship, this donation was suspended about 1855, and the temple now depends on a pilgrim tax collected by the native authorities. JUGGLER, one who practises or exhibits tricks by sleight of hand, or who makes sport by tricks of extraordinary and deceptive dex- terity. The further we go back in history, the more do we find the juggler assuming the char- acter of the thaumaturgist or worker of serious marvels; and in the 16th century men were burned alive in Spain and Italy for perform- ances which now excite but little wonder. In the earliest times, when knowledge and science were devoted to strengthening heathen religion, juggling was a real power, and formed the most efficient means of sustaining the dignity of the priesthood. The hierarchy of India and Egypt carried thaumaturgy to an incredible ex- tent, and it is by no means impossible that a great proportion of the marvels ascribed by legend to magicians were actually or apparent- ly performed. The investigations of Salverte have shown in what manner most of these could have been done, and with what effect, especially in the depths of temples, before witnesses filled with awe and devoid of doubt. Thus lamblichns (De Jtlysteriis, cap. 29) and Porphyry speak of those who showed the ap- paritions of gods in the air ; a trick explained by Robertson ("Memoirs," vol. i., p. 354) to be of easy performance. The wonder-worker Maximus probably used a similar secret when, on burning incense before a statue of Hecate, the goddess was seen to laugh so plainly as to fill all present with horror. Ordinary jugglers at the present day show the face of another person to those looking in a mirror ; a trick also used by fortune tellers to exhibit future husbands to superstitious girls. This, which is done by a very simple optical contrivance sold in many shops, perfectly explains the manner in which the Agrippas and Fausts of the middle ages, as well as the earlier magicians, showed those who were supposed to be absent, or the forms of the departed, as Cleonice ap- peared to Pausanias. Juggling, properly regard- ed, is a science, the principal of whose divisions is that of sleight of hand or substitution. The commonest tricks performed by these means have been known to all cultivated races. The tosser of knives and balls, the marvellous bal- ancer, the producer of unexpected objects from strange receptacles, occur in Saxon manuscripts and on the walls of Egyptian and Etruscan tombs; they amazed the Norseman and the Roman ; and when the troubadour degenerated to a vagabond, he became a jongleur (Lat. joculator), whence the word juggler. The ty- ing and untying of intricate knots, which has even in these days been attributed to super- natural agency, yet which is shown by every juggler, leads us back to the Scottish warlock whom no bonds could hold, and to the sym- bolic mazes of Runic and Gordian ties. Not many years ago London was amazed at a man who could tell one person in secret what card it was that another thought of. Lord Bacon (Sylva Sylvarum, cent, ix., 946) tells of one that " did first whisper the Man in the Eare, that such a Man shoulde think such a Card." Those who have seen glasses or chains broken, and handkerchiefs apparently torn to pieces, and then restored to the owners, may be amused to know that a learned writer of the 16th century, Fromann (Tractatus de Fascinatione, p. 583), really believed that this was done by magic, though he tells us in the same book that in his time many common jugglers (conculatores aut saccularii) were often mistaken for magi- cians. Modern wizards simply amuse by show- ing us eggs or other objects which dance and follow the motion of the hand, an invisible silk thread or hair being the medium used; but of old the king of Babylon stood at the parting of the ways and used divination with arrows which leaped up and pointed the way he was to go, as they did in after times for the Arabs (Koran, v. 99) ; and for the Tartar Genghis Khan the same trick was used. Regi- nald Scot, in his " Discoverie of "Witchcraft," explains how the head of a man may come through a table, upon a plate, and being duly whitened like a corpse may astonish the world by talking; an account which throws much light on the talking heads of Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Norse, and mediseval fable. Down to the present century ventriloquism was regarded as a physiological mystery, and of old it seem- ed awful when the river Nessus saluted Py- thagoras, when a tree spoke before Apollonius, and when a new-born infant, or animals, or statues talked. Every modern juggler allows himself to be shot at ; the first European, Laing, who went among the Sulimas, near the source of the Joliba, saw a native chief perform the same trick on a grand scale and in a curious manner, the muskets always flashing in the pan when aimed at him, but shooting well when turned, however unexpectedly, to other objects. In all ages, and especially in the East, wizards have stuck arrows and swords through their own limbs, and driven nails through their hands ; but when in 1859 a so-called " India-rubber man " attempted to astonish by similar feats, his secret was quickly exposed in the newspapers. Ancient jugglers performed extraordinary feats by mechanism, which is defined by Cassiodo- rus ( Varia lib. i., c. 45) as " the science of constructing machines whose effects shall seem to reverse the order of nature." In those days the floors of temples heaved like waves, doors widened of themselves to admit portly visitors, tripods advanced to salute them, statues wept, nodded, and bled ; all which marvels are imi- tated by modern jugglers. In the 17th century, by acoustics, invisible sprites called trararmes rapped audibly on any object indicated ; in the