'A spectacular treasury of treats. Page after page of utter joy: I
can't tear my eyes away' - Derren Brown In The Spectacle of
Illusion, professional magician-turned experimental psychologist
Dr. Matthew L. Tompkins investigates the arts of deception as
practised and popularised by mesmerists, magicians and psychics
since the early 18th century. Organised thematically within a
broadly chronological trajectory, this compelling book explores how
illusions perpetuated by magicians and fraudulent mystics can not
only deceive our senses but also teach us about the inner workings
of our minds. Indeed, modern scientists are increasingly turning to
magic tricks to develop new techniques to examine human perception,
memory and belief. Beginning by discussing mesmerism and
spiritualism, the book moves on to consider how professional
magicians such as John Nevil Maskelyne and Harry Houdini engaged
with these movements - particularly how they set out to challenge
and debunk paranormal claims. It also relates the interactions
between magicians, mystics and scientists over the past 200 years,
and reveals how the researchers who attempted to investigate
magical and paranormal phenomena were themselves deceived, and what
this can teach us about deception. Highly illustrated throughout
with entertaining and bizarre drawings, double-exposure spirit
photographs and photographs of spoon-bending from hitherto
inaccessible and un-mined archives, including the Wellcome
Collection, the Harry Price Library, the Society for Physical
Research, and last but not least, the Magic Circle's closely
guarded collection, the book also features newly commissioned
photography of planchettes, rapping boards, tilting tables,
ectoplasm, automata and illusion boxes. Concluding with a
modern-day analysis of the science of magic and illusion, analysing
surprisingly weird phenomena such as ideomotor action, sleep
paralysis, choice blindness and the psychology of misdirection,
this unnerving volume highlights how unreliable our minds can be,
and how complicit they can be in the perpetuation of illusions.
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