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   Peran Sihir Dalam Perang 

 (Magic Goes To War)

Oleh: Gordon Rutter
 
 Bagian Kedua
ForteanTimes 185
  Juli 2004

 

As Robert-Houdin's fame spread and the hoped-for rebellion seemed less likely to take place, Sheikh Bou Allem ben Shenfa Bash Aga of the Djendel tribe invited this foreign celebrity to stay with him. The sheikh himself was known to be friendly to the French but the same could not be said for his Marabout who poured derision on every one of Robert-Houdin's reported feats. 
 
 Robert-Houdin performed some small-scale conjuring of the sort that a table-hopping magician in a restaurant today might produce. He made the Sheikh's rosary disappear and then reappear in a slipper next to the door of the room, a shoe which was subsequently found to be full of coins… and talking of coins, many a five-franc piece was produced from the nose of a spectator that evening. The Marabout announced he could not be deceived, and that he believed in neither the power nor the skill of the Frenchman. The words were spoken from the opposite end of the room. Robert-Houdin commanded the Marabout to close his hand and hold it in front of him. He then feigned the throwing of a coin across the room. When the Marabout opened his hand to find it empty he laughed, believing his opponent had failed. The magician apologised for throwing the coin too hard – in fact, he had thrown it so hard he thought it would be found in the Marabout's sash – which it was. He apologised once more, saying he had been afraid of damaging the Marabout's watch with the coin. To be on the safe side, he had called it to him. Opening his hand, Robert-Houdin displayed the poor fellows watch – which he had secretly removed from the Marabout at the start of the evening. 
 
 The Marabout, angry at being made to look foolish, then challenged Robert-Houdin to a duel and, using impeccable logic, he demanded the right to fire first – after all, didn't the infidel claim to be invincible? Sheikh Bou Allem was furious that a guest of his should be treated in such a manner, but Robert-Houdin accepted the challenge. This was not a development that he had prepared for, but the former clockmaker was able to think on his feet, and convinced the Marabout that the time of the duel should be put back to eight o'clock the following morning – he claimed he needed to pray and meditate to ready his powers for the challenge (and he had left his magic talisman in Algiers). 
 
 The following morning Robert-Houdin went to the town square, to be greeted by the entire population of the village. The guns were powdered by the Marabout, and Robert-Houdin was given a choice of bullets. Two were chosen and loaded along with the paper wadding used for flintlock pistols. As they stood 15 paces apart, the Marabout fired first – and was amazed to see his foe still standing. Even worse, he was smiling. 
 
 As Robert-Houdin's grin broadened it could be seen that he had caught the lead bullet between his teeth! At this point the Marabout was surely fearful for his life. Imagine his surprise when the Frenchman took careful aim and, instead of shooting the man, deliberately fired into a nearby wall, from which blood began to drip! (a fact attested to by those who rushed to the wall and even tasted the blood). This was the final nail in the coffin of the uprising. The rebels were by now firmly convinced that the French possessed far greater magicians and wizards than they did, and that any attempt to fight them would surely be doomed to failure. 
 
 The scroll Robert-Houdin received in recognition of his services is still on display in the American Museum of Magic in Marshall, Missouri. He wrote this and many other tales into his memoirs, The king of the conjurers (1859). The book became required reading for many aspiring magicians, and for one of them its effect was profound. 
 
 Young magician Erich Weiss, who was born in Hungary but whose parents moved to Wisconsin when he was four, was so impressed by the French conjurer's feats that Robert-Houdin at once became his hero, to the point where he even based his stage name on the French master – and thus was Harry Houdini born. Robert-Houdin died in 1871, but he has been truthfully referred to as the father of modern magic. 
 
 So, that's how one retired magician averted a war in Algeria in 1856 – a case of brilliant conjuring versus supposedly real magic. But some of you are probably feeling cheated – what about the real thing? 
 
 Let's zoom forward to another conflict, the Second World War, and to events which would provide the basis (loosely speaking) for the Walt Disney film Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1968). The film starred Angela Lansbury, but one of the lead characters in this little drama is as far removed from the actress who subsequently played super-sleuth Jessica Fletcher as can be imagined. We are talking of none other than the Great Beast himself – Aleister Crowley.  
 
 But before we turn to Crowley, I feel an appetiser is called for, and for this we can turn to one of Crowley's friends and fellow magicians, Gerald Gardner. Gardner led a ritual which took place in the summer of 1940 in the New Forest, near the Rufus Stone, and involved a group whose advancing years had left them few opportunities for participating actively in the war with Hitler. This Wiccan Dad's Army planned to invoke a cone of power – a spell reputedly used successfully on previous occasions against the Spanish Armada (sinking half of the Spanish ships) and Napoleon (halting a proposed invasion of England).

 There was talk of a sacrifice being needed for the spell to work properly. Traditionally, this would have been the oldest and feeblest member of the group, but gentler ways prevailed in the witchcraft of the 20th century – so no victims on altars to be sacrificed by masked agents were required. Instead, the victim would perform the ritual skyclad, while the rest of the group would be covered in grease to keep themselves warm. By the end of the ritual it was hoped that the skyclad witch would catch a cold and die – hardly the stuff of a Dennis Wheatley novel. 
 
 Apparently, two of the older witches did die shortly after the ritual, so it must have been powerful magic indeed. The cone of power was directed toward the mind of Adolf Hitler to stop Operation Sealion from taking place – and, let's be honest, there was no German invasion of England, so it must have worked, mustn't it? 
 
 Returning to Crowley, we move on a year to Ashdown Forest in Sussex, which in 1941 was the site of another ritual, this time performed by the Great Beast himself. 
 
 There is an obvious problem with stories about Crowley: namely, much of the information we have about him comes from the man himself, and as such is slightly suspect. He may not have been the wickedest man in the world, he may not have been the greatest magician who ever lived, but he was certainly a damn good self-publicist. The following tale is taken from Crowley's own recollections, as well as those of his self-proclaimed illegitimate son, Amado Crowley. 
 
 In 1940, Crowley was approached by three men, apparently fond of using lots of Boy's Own-style code names, who took him to several mysterious meetings in London. One of the men he instantly recognised as Louis de Wohl, a prominent Hungarian astrologer of the time who had been using his astrological skills to cast charts for Hitler. It was well known that Hitler had his own astrologers, whom he relied upon heavily for advice, and it was hoped that, by using de Wohl, the Allies would be able to second-guess the Führer's important decisions. Crowley, before signing the Official Secrets Act (after a £2,000 inducement), chose his own code name and took it from the only pantomime he had ever seen – thus was born Special Agent Old Mother Clutterbuck of Operation Mistletoe. 
 
 It was believed in some quarters that the Nazis had only one real war aim – the bringing about, quite literally, of Armageddon. Those who shared this belief hoped that, by employing magic themselves, they would be able to bring about the defeat of Hitler's dark forces. 
 
 Crowley had initial problems in some meetings due to a number of pro-Nazi articles he had written in the USA. He claimed he had written these in conjunction with the British Government, and this was apparently accepted. Crowley claims he was introduced to various people, including Churchill and, significantly, Karl Haushoffer and Joseph Retinger. On another occasion he met Bishop Angelo Roncalli, who was there to find out about the Allies' use of magic and the occult arts. One of Crowley's handlers stated that, officially, His Majesty's Government did not believe in the powers being used, but, as certain high-ranking Nazis did, it could therefore be used against them. Bishop Roncalli accepts this argument with a wry smile and then passes from this story – although he would re-enter the world stage when he subsequently became Pope John XXIII. 
 
Crowley's ritual in Ashdown Forest had two concentric circles of initiates processing in opposite directions with a dummy in Nazi uniform seated on a throne in the centre. All were dressed in robes covered in runes; periodic stops would spell out magical words. At the climax of the ceremony, wings were attached to the dummy and it was raised to the top of a local church and set afire. The flaming mannequin was then launched on a wire in the direction of Berlin. And, with that, the ritual was over. 
 
 On 11 May 1941, Crowley received a phone call from one of the three men who recruited him: “The sea is calm. The bird has flown. Balder is back from Hell”. Rudolf Hess had arrived in Britain just after 11pm the previous evening. Haushoffer and Retinger were personal friends and advisers of Hess and have been implicated in various aspects of the Deputy Führer's still unexplained flight from Berlin to Scotland. Some reports claim that Hess said he had received spirit messages telling him that he was the chosen one and had a mission to undertake. After Hess's flight, Hitler purged his advisers of astrologers and seers. 
 
 So, was Crowley responsible for one of the most baffling mysteries of WWII? Was it really he who forced Hitler's staunchest supporter and deputy to leave Germany at the height of the Nazis' power, or did Crowley just appropriate an historic event and weave himself into the story for whatever reasons? 
 
 Crowley, though, was not the only mage working for the British war effort. Occultist and author Dion Fortune was also hard at work during the Second World War, particularly in the period 1939 – 1942. Fortune utilised the members of her Society of the Inner Light, sending out letters each week instructing them to meditate every Sunday on a given subject. Rather than being destructive in nature, these missives were intended to heal the psyche of the beleaguered nation and boost national morale during the darkest years of the war. 
 
 Some magicians were pressed to service in other ways. The conjurer Jasper Maskelyne – a celebrated magician from a family of magicians – was asked to employ his skills in a most unexpected way, in a battle of wits with the Desert Fox, Irwin Rommel himself. Maskelyne turned his considerable powers of illusion to the fields of camouflage and military deception, going so far as to make the Suez Canal invisible to enemy aircraft! [see FT149: 22]. 
 
 The strange relationship of magic and warfare didn't end with WWII. During the Cold War in the 1950s, John Mullholland trained American intelligence operatives in sleight-of-hand. Was this so they could pose as wandering conjurers to throw enemy spooks off the scent? No, it was to allow them to pass messages clandestinely from agent to agent. And even in the recent Iraq conflict, the ideas of Dion Fortune were brought into play once more, with regular meditation sessions, this time conducted with the aid of mysteriously named Psychotronic Generators. 
 
 Oh go on, then – you want to know how Robert-Houdin survived being shot in that duel don't you? The two bullets fired had been specially prepared by Robert-Houdin the previous night (when he claimed he needed the time for meditation); both were made of wax and lamp-black, and both were hollow. The first bullet was very thin walled, and the act of loading the flintlock pistol destroyed it, so Robert-Houdin was in no real danger. The second had thicker walls and was filled with blood. Simple really, although I wouldn't recommend you try it at home. 
 
 A film based on the events of Robert-Houdin's visit to Algeria has long been in the offing. Smoke and Mirrors was most recently to have starred Michael Douglas as Robert-Houdin and Kirk Douglas as Bou Allem, but since its inception in 1993 (when it was to have starred Sean Connery) it has remained in development hell. It seems as if not even the magic of Robert-Houdin can get this project off the ground. And the same goes for Maskelyne – attempts to turn his story into a major motion picture go back to 1966 and are still ongoing – it looks as if this one might take off in 2005, with a certain Tom Cruise as the debonair Jasper.  

 End 
 
Visit La Maison de la Magie - Robert-Houdin at 1 Place du Château, 41000, Blois, France.
http://www.maisondelamagie.fr/
 
Gordon Rutter is a freelance writer and lecturer based in Edinburgh. He is a regular FT contributor and organises the Edinburgh Fortean Society.
 
original source: http://www.forteantimes.com/

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