Hocus Pocus
Mar. 12th, 2010 06:58 pmAll I wanted was to download one of Plinius' books from the Naturalis Historia. Why Google gave me this link instead, I'm still wondering.
"The Discovery of Witchcraft"
A Modern English Rendering of Those Portions of the 16th Century English Text Dealing with Legerdemain
It's part of an interesting text from 1584 but I was mislead by the main title. Later I was very amused thinking about Aziraphale and his penchant for magic tricks XD I'm quite sure he must have had a first edition of this book somewhere in his shop~
Even so, the text have some wonderful passages that had me laughing. The best one was "how to get someone to do a striptease under the guise of performing magic", aka:
TO MAKE ONE DANSE NAKED.
Use a young boy as a confederate and, after charms and the like spoken by you, have him undress himself while shaking, stamping, and crying, till completely naked. Or, if you can't persuade a confederate to completely disrobe, as he begins to stamp, shake, and unclothe you can release him from the spell, citing "respect for the modesty of the audience" as the reason for not allowing him to go on.
Uh, yeah, ok... Predictably I can't help but imagine Crowley trying to tempt Aziraphale to perform this particular trick.
A Modern English Rendering of Those Portions of the 16th Century English Text Dealing with Legerdemain
It's part of an interesting text from 1584 but I was mislead by the main title. Later I was very amused thinking about Aziraphale and his penchant for magic tricks XD I'm quite sure he must have had a first edition of this book somewhere in his shop~
Even so, the text have some wonderful passages that had me laughing. The best one was "how to get someone to do a striptease under the guise of performing magic", aka:
TO MAKE ONE DANSE NAKED.
Use a young boy as a confederate and, after charms and the like spoken by you, have him undress himself while shaking, stamping, and crying, till completely naked. Or, if you can't persuade a confederate to completely disrobe, as he begins to stamp, shake, and unclothe you can release him from the spell, citing "respect for the modesty of the audience" as the reason for not allowing him to go on.
Uh, yeah, ok... Predictably I can't help but imagine Crowley trying to tempt Aziraphale to perform this particular trick.