“Therefore made I a decree to bring in all the wise men of Babylon before me. . . . Then came in the magicians, the astrologers, the Chaldeans, and the soothsayers.”—_Dan. iv._, 6–7. “What, Sir! you dare to make so free, And play your hocus-pocus on us!” —GOETHE: _Faust_, Scene V. I. The art of natural magic dates back to the remotest antiquity. There is an Egyptian papyrus[4] in the British Museum which chronicles a magical seance given by a certain Tchatcha-em-ankh before King Khufu, B. C. 3766. The manuscript says of the wizard: “He knoweth how to bind on a head which hath been cut off; he knoweth how to make a lion follow him as if led by a rope; and he knoweth the number of the stars of the house (constellation) of Thoth.” It will be seen from this that the decapitation trick was in vogue ages ago, while the experiment with the lion, which is unquestionably a hypnotic feat, shows hypnotism to be very ancient indeed. Ennemoser, in his _History of Magic_, devotes considerable space to Egyptian thaumaturgy, especially to the wonders wrought by animal magnetism, which in the hands of the priestly hierarchy must have been miracles indeed to the uninitiated. All that was known of science was in {2} possession of the guardians of the temples, who frequently used their knowledge of natural phenomena to gain ascendancy over the ignorant multitude. [4] Westcar papyrus, XVIII dynasty; about B. C. 1550. In this ancient manuscript are stories which date from the early empire. “They are as old,” says Budge (_Egyptian Magic_, London, 1899), “as the Great Pyramid.” An acquaintance with stage machinery and the science of optics and acoustics was necessary to the production of the many marvelous effects exhibited. Every temple in Egypt and Greece was a veritable storehouse of natural magic. Thanks to ancient writers like Heron of Alexandria, Philo of Byzantium, and the Fathers of the early Christian Church, we are able to fathom some of the secrets of the old thaumaturgists. The magi of the temples were adepts in the art of phantasmagoria. In the ancient temple of Hercules at Tyre, Pliny states that there was a seat of consecrated stone “from which the gods easily rose.” In the temple at Tarsus, Esculapius showed himself to the devout. Damascius says: “In a manifestation, which ought not to be revealed, . . . there appeared on the wall of a temple a mass of light, which at first seemed to be very remote; it transformed itself, in coming nearer, into a face evidently divine and supernatural, of severe aspect, but mixed with gentleness and extremely beautiful. According to the institutions of a mysterious religion the Alexandrians honored it as Osiris and Adonis.”