Magic has been divided into (1) White Magic, or the evocation of angels and beneficent powers; (2) Black Magic, or the summoning of demons; and (3) Natural Magic, or feats performed by dexterity and mechanical appliances, etc. Although believing implicitly in white magic and black magic, the medicine men, spirit doctors, and hierophants of olden times did not disdain to use natural means also to overawe and surprise their votaries.
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With the passing of so-called genuine magic or sorcery we see the rise of natural magic and conjuring. In the Middle Ages conjurers were mere strolling mountebanks who exhibited their feats at fairs, in barns, and in the castles of the nobility. Things were little better in the fifteenth, the sixteenth, and the seventeenth century; but with the dawn of the eighteenth century we behold magic rising to the dignity of a stage performance, shorn for the most part of charlatanism. Pinetti, Torrini, Breslaw, Fawkes, Comus, Gyngell, Flockton, and Lane were the particular exponents of conjuring during this period. The nineteenth century produced a brilliant array of modern magi; such men, for example, as Bosco, Phillippe, Robert-Houdin, Comte, Robin, Anderson, Frikell, Compars Herrmann, Alexander Herrmann, Döbler, Robert Heller, Buatier de Kolta, J. N. Maskelyne, Cazeneuve, Félicien Trewey, Harry Kellar, David Devant, Howard Thurston, Frederick Eugene Powell, and Harry Houdini, all of whom have passed from the Lesser Mysteries of Life to the Greater Mysteries of Death.