Lore - Lore 317: Smoke and Mirrors

Episode Date: October 19, 2026

Stage magic as we know it today is very different from how it began. The consequences of those early days, though, are all around us. Narrated and produced by Aaron Mahnke, with writing by GennaRose Nethercott, research by Cassandra de Alba, and music by Chad Lawson. ————————— BUY EXHUMED TODAY: aaronmahnke.com/exhumed ————————— Lore Resources:  Get Ad-Free Lore: lorepodcast.com/support Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music  Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources  Official Lore Merchandise: lorepodcast.com/shop ————————— Sponsors: BetterHelp: Lore is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at BetterHelp.com/LORE, and get on your way to being your best self. Rocket Money: Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at RocketMoney.com/LORE. Squarespace: Head to Squarespace.com/lore to save 50% off your first purchase of a website or domain using the code LORE. SimpliSafe: Secure your home with 24/7 professional monitoring. Sign up today at SimpliSafe.com/Lore to get 60% off a new SimpliSafe system. ————————— To report a concern regarding a radio-style, non-Aaron ad in this episode, reach out to ads @ lorepodcast.com with the name of the company or organization so we can look into it. To advertise on this podcast please email: [e-mail]. Or go to: https://advertising.libsyn.com/lore ————————— ©2026 Aaron Mahnke. All rights reserved.

Halloween is right around the corner, and for most people, that means a re-watch of all the cozy seasonal favorites. Practical magic, over-the-garden wall, beetle juice, and, of course, maybe the most quintessential Halloween nostalgia flick of all, hocus pocus. Of course, the term hocus pocus far predates the Sanderson sisters and their 1993 release, like abracadabra and open sesame, hocus pocus falls under the category of magic words that all of us just somehow seem to know. But have you ever wondered where those magic words come from? Well, as it turns out, stage magicians have been saying hocus pocus for more than 400 years, and before it was a common spell, it may just have been a person. Apparently, one of the most popular magicians of the early

1600s was an Englishman named William Vincent. He'd do car tricks, swallow swords, make objects disappear, that sort of thing. As part of his act, though, he would utter nonsense, fake Latin phrases over the tricks to make them seem more mystical and spooky. Fake Latin like Hocus Pocus. Before long, he wasn't going by William Vincent anymore, but by his stage name, the King's most excellent Hocus Pocus. He was famous enough that Hocus Pocus became a household name, and thus the magic word spread far and wide. In 1635, the first known magic trick manual in the English language was published under the title Hocus Pocus Jr., the anatomy of Ledger Domain. Ledger Domain, by the way, was the 17th century word

for sleight of hand. Did the magician Hocus Pocus write this book? Did he come up with a phrase himself, or did he borrow it from a competitor? Unfortunately, those details are lost to time. But one thing is for sure. Sometimes magic and history intersect in ways that you would never expect. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is lore. It's a trope that's found in countless fantasy stories,

that of the king's magical advisor. The most famous, of course, is King Arthur's Merlin, but the list hardly stops there. There's Jafar from Aladdin, the Red Witch, Melisandra from Game of Thrones, and of course, Hotep and Hoy from DreamWorks' 1998 film The Prince of Egypt, who, fun fact, were based on Sigfried and Roy.

Heck, even Gandalf picked up some government sidework here and there. But here's the thing. Court magicians, they aren't limited to fiction. In fact, throughout history, magical chancellors were all too real, and so was their political power. Back in ancient Mesopotamia, Assyrian kings would employ whole posse of magicians, each with their own supernatural specialty.

One, for example, might be a pro at currying favor from the gods, another an expert in exdispicy, which is reading the future from a sheep's liver. According to the book of Daniel, the king Nebuchadnezzar, had four flavors of sorcerer on staff, exorcists, astrologer priests, dream interpreters, and scribes trained to interpret cuneiform books of omens. Meanwhile, over in Egypt, the pharaohs were bankrolling magicians of their own. Now, while most Egyptians of the time were illiterate, these elite individuals were able to read ancient spellbooks, giving them access to secret god-given knowledge. Using these texts, they would perform magical rituals to protect the pharaoh and defeat his enemies. Then again,

the pharaohs weren't exactly helpless on their own. It turns out they were often considered powerful magicians in their own right. As divine figures, every inch of a pharaoh's body was said to contain a special power called Hecca, the same godly magic used to create the world. And this stuff was potent, so potent in fact that whenever the Pharaoh received, say, a haircut or had his nails clipped, the excess had to be carefully disposed of, lest the hecca-filled ingredients fall into the wrong hands. And speaking of magic in the wrong hands, an ancient romewold.

Rome, magic was nothing less than a tool for political propaganda. You see, astrology was super big in ancient Rome, and astrologer's words were believed to be absolute truth. So, for example, if an astrologer were paid to claim that an emperor's right to rule was written in the stars, well, then who were we the people to argue? This was such an effective bit of propaganda that some emperors even outlawed anyone but their own magicians from practicing astrology. After all, a bad prediction could straight up lose them the throne. Now, political sorcerers didn't die out with the ancients, though. The most recent Roman magician was actually operating in the 13th century,

serving as the court astrologer to the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. And this guy's name was, and I swear to God, Michael Scott. Seriously, in the words of a very different Michael Scott, the politicians of the Middle Ages may not have been superstitious, but they were a little stitious. Now, reading horoscopes was sort of a side hobby for Scott. His real talents were as a mathematician and a scientific translator. Still, everyone was so into this idea of him as a mysterious sorcerer

that after his death, writers made up all sorts of tall tales about him. They claimed that he literally made it rain, and that he enchanted a barrel to produce endless wine. By the time a century had passed, he was so associated with magic that Dante, himself placed him with other sorcerers in the eighth circle of hell. Credit to Scott, where it's due, though, he did tend to make accurate predictions, like the location of the emperor's death, which wasn't always the case with royal astrologers.

And to understand why, I need to introduce you to a rather overconfident fellow named William Perrin. Perrin, you see, was employed to make predictions for England's King Henry the 7th, and sure he got a few rights, but the ones that he missed, while he bungled. those big time. Like, for example, he told Henry the 7th that his heir would have a happy marriage that produced many sons, which was famously not what happened with King Henry the 8th. And then there was the prediction that Henry the 7th's wife, Elizabeth of York, would live to the ripe old age of 80 or even 90. Unfortunately, things got pretty awkward for Perrin when she died less than two months after this prediction was made at the age of 37. The poor guy was so embarrassed, he fled the court and disappeared

entirely from the historical record. By the mid-1600s, court magic was on the decline. Folks like Perrin sure didn't help, and astrologers on both sides of the English Civil War predicted victory, which was not a great look. Before long, royal astrologers were viewed as little more than conmen. And yet, people sure do love to believe in something. And while court astrologers may have fallen out of fashion,

they sure wouldn't be the last magicians in politics. In fact, far from it. The magician on stage borrows a handkerchief from an audience volunteer. He tucks the handkerchief into an egg shell, and then the egg into a lemon. Then the lemon into an orange. You can think the turducken of magic tricks here. Back on stage, he muddles this orange with some wine to create a magic potion, which he proceeds to set on fire.

And finally, the flaming potion is placed beside a three-foot-tall orange. tree. The witch is when the impossible begins. You see, as smoke rises from the goblet into the branches above, the orange tree begins to sprout. Yes, little white blossoms are popping open on every bow, but that's not all. The tree then produces entire oranges. That's right, full-size fruit swelling in front of your eyes. The magician plucks a few and throws them into the crowd, and yes, they're real oranges. At last, only one orange remains on the tree. As the audience watches in awe, it slowly ticks open like a strange clockwork box.

And from inside, two butterflies appear, fluttering clockwork wings, and lifted between them, why it's none other than the handkerchief. Congratulations, you have just witnessed a trick by the most famous magician in France, Jean-Jouzain-Roubert Hudan, also known as the father of modern stage magic. Born in 1805 in Blois, France, young Jean-Eugène was the son of a watchmaker, and he was going to be a watchmaker, too. That was the plan, anyway, but it only took one tiny snafu to change the course of his life. One evening, a young Jean-Eugène went to a bookstore and requested a book on clockmaking. The bookseller shuffled around the shop, pulling down a book,

and shoving it into the boy's hands before getting distractedly back to his work. It wasn't until later that Jean Eugène realized that the bookseller had made a mistake. Instead of a book on clockmaking, he'd been sold an instructional book of magic tricks. And the rest is history. From then on, the boy spent every free moment practicing slights of hand. His coat pockets were constantly full of cards, coins, and corks. He'd eat his dinner one-handed so he could shuffle with the other. Yeah, this kid was obsessed. Eventually, he grew up, and he made a little bit of. He made a little bit of a married a woman who was also the child of a watchmaker. The couple moved to Paris, and Robert Hudun went to work for his wife's father.

On clocks, yes, but also on automaton's. First, just by studying them, and then repairing them, and finally building his own. Automatons like an acrobatic clown, a writer draftsman, oh, and an orange tree with the ability to produce oranges. You see, he may have grown up, but he sure hadn't grown out of his love of magic. and with the help of his automaton friends, he soon made his theatrical stage debut. Now, Robert Hudan had watched the art of magic from afar for a long, long time,

and he developed some rather strong opinions on how he thought a show should go. He was sick of stage magic being associated with low-brow occultism. No, he wanted to launch magic into the same echelon as, say, the opera, high-brow, skill-based theater. And so in his shows, he wore evening wear instead of the cheesy, costumey robes of his predecessors. That archetype of the magician in the black and white suit, backed by lush red velvet curtains, that was all Robert Hudan's doing. He also did away with floor-length tablecloths and tended to conceal trickery, allowing his audience to see every little thing that happened on stage.

Or so they thought. Oh, and there was one more hard rule that Robert Hudon insisted upon. absolutely no puns. Sorry, buddy, but this podcast might not be for you. In 1845, he leased his own Parisian theater where he performed tricks with names like

Perot in the Egg and The Fascinating Owl, as well as, of course, the marvelous orange tree. He even had a trick involving a tiny automaton pastry chef, who, with the turn of a crank, could bake any pastry the audience requested. And suffice to say, he was a major hit.

The city's elite flocked to his shows and even performed for the king. Unfortunately, though, trouble was on the horizon. After only three years of performance, civil unrest hit in the form of the French Revolution of 1848, forcing Robert Hudon to abandon his theater and flee

to the United Kingdom. But lucky for him, people in England liked magic just as much as people in France did. His fame only continued to skyrocket. Eventually, he was able to return to France, and by then, why he was hands-down the most famous magician in the country. After a few more years of touring, Robert Hudun officially stepped back from the stage in 1854, and boy, was he ready for retirement. The guy was exhausted. He had done his hard years on the road, and he was ready for a quiet life,

back in his little hometown of Blois, where he intended to happily tinker away at his automaton experiments for the rest of, of his days. And I have to agree that that would have been a sweet, quiet life. Would have been the key words here. Because, you see, he had barely had time to kick off his shoes before the French army came knocking on his door. When the French invaded Algeria in 1830, they thought that it was going to be a piece of cake, an easy morale boost of a victory in a time when things were a little rocky, politically speaking back home. Sure, no Arab country had been colonized since the days of the Crusades, but it couldn't be that hard, right? Well, jump forward a quarter of a century, and it turns out

France couldn't have been more wrong. They had destroyed the Algerian infrastructure. They had taken the city of Algiers. They'd murdered anywhere from 500,000 to a million citizens of the country, while flooding the country with over 200,000 Europeans. And still, Algerian resistance fighters refused to back down. By 1854, the director of France's Bureau of Arab Affairs was getting a tinsy bit worried about the whole resistance situation. His name was Army Colonel Francois-Edouard de Neva. And above all, there was one aspect of the Algerian resistance that troubled him more than anything else. It was a group of men known as Mariboutes, and they just so happened to be magic. At least the people of Algeria thought they were.

Maributes, you see, were Muslim holy men who, according to French intelligence, would use classic stage magic to feign supernatural powers. They would perform tricks like eating glass or walking on red-hot surfaces, and in doing so, gained massive religious influence, influence that they proceeded to wield against the French. To Denevue, it was clear. Something had to be done about the Mariboutes. And so he reached out to the one man that he knew could out conjure,

The Conjurers, our old friend Jean-Eugène Robert Hudun. The plan he explained to the retired magician was this. All Robert Hudun had to do was come to Algeria and do what he did best, put on a magic show. If the locals could see a European perform the same feats as the Marabouts, it would show that they weren't miracles at all but mere parlor tricks. The Maribout's power would collapse and the resistance along with it. It took some back and forth, but finally in 1856,

Donavu convinced a very tired, rather grumpy Robert Hudon to leave his comfy retirement and set sail for Algeria. And that fall, his performances began. The magician performed for civilians and local leaders alike, resurrecting the same old tricks he had once used to dazzle European audiences, except this time, the show was a bit different. You see, while the actual tricks remained the same, same, the narrative framing around them was different.

Take this one trick called the light and heavy chest. Here, Robert Hudan would place a box on stage and ask an audience member to lift it. Sometimes the box would be easy to lift, other times it would be impossibly heavy, all thanks to a hidden electromagnet being flipped on and off under the stage. Now, for European audiences, he claimed to be changing the weight of the box itself, but in Algeria, the box wasn't being altered, but the audience volunteer, the Algerian volunteer, mind you. He would insist to the crowd that he could, and I quote, deprive the most powerful man of his strength and restore it at will. And at first he would let the volunteer lift the box without a problem,

and then with a wave of his hand he would announce, behold, you are weaker than a woman, now try to lift the box. And what do you know? The volunteer was sudden. powerless. The message to his colonized audience was crystal clear. We can destroy you with nothing more than a flick of the wrist. You think that your marabouts are powerful? Well, guess what, folks? So, are we? When it comes down to it, politics is all about illusion, about manipulating an audience into swallowing a very particular story, whether that story is true or not. These days, watching a presidential debate feels a little like watching the prestige, two warring magicians claiming to be capable of bigger and bigger miracles. It's not about what's real. It's about what the

performer can convince you to believe. Now, you might be wondering whether France's collaboration with Robert Hudan actually succeeded in demoralizing the Algerian resistance movement. Well, according to official French reports and the magician's own memoirs, absolutely. The Algerians were so shocked by the shows, Robert Hudun wrote that they fled the theaters, calling out to Allah, and murmuring about demons. It was so effective that the French were soon able to subdue the Algerian rebellion. But then again, remember what I said about politics being an illusion? History, as they say, is written by the victors. And if you look at any reports not written by the French themselves, you'll find absolutely no documented evidence that Robert Hood's performances had any

influence on the rebellion or belief in the marabouts whatsoever. In fact, Algerians would continue to struggle against their colonizers until the country gained its own independence in 1962. That's right. As it turns out, Robert Hudun's victorious reputation may just have been his greatest illusion of all. And speaking of reputation, despite being wildly popular in his day, Robert Hudun wasn't without his skeptics. In fact, another well-known, magician, wrote an entire book called The Unmasking of Robert Hudan, which accused him of stealing most of his tricks, even calling him the Prince of Pilferers, which is even more brutal, given that this writer started out as a major Robert Hudon fanboy.

Heck, he even borrowed part of Robert Hudon's name as his own magician stage name in his honor before becoming, well, disillusioned. So much for that no puns rule, right? So, who was this writer magician? Why I'm referring, of course, to Harry Houdini. I hope you enjoy today's tour through some of history's strangest political sleight of hand. As if our governments weren't keeping enough secrets from us, now we have to worry about wizards as well. Move over Roswell. We've got bigger fish to fry. So my team here likes to joke that working for the show has made them unbearable at parties. Maybe you've experienced this too as a listener of lore. Instead of making regular small talk like, how do you know the host, or how about this weather?

They can't help but jump right into info dumping about medicinal cannibalism and the worst hot air balloon disasters in French history. But hey, if you two prefer cursed facts over pleasantries, I've got good news for you. For at least one man, paranormal party talk led to him becoming one of the most powerful men in England. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. The year was 1940, and Louis DeWal had found his way onto the guest list of a rather fancy shindig at the Spanish embassy in London. Now, Louis was no high society fellow, but over the past few years before, he had spun enough tall tales to make everyone think that he was. Backstories

like telling folks he was a Hungarian nobleman or related to London's mayor. In reality, DeWal was a German-born Jew, and having seen the writing on the wall back home, he had fled Germany for England a few years prior. It started as a writer, but recently had gotten deep into astrology. And when I say deep, I mean that he had a habit of charging wealthy clients up to $1,000 a pop to read their horoscopes. But back to the party. DeWall was flitting around the embassy, chit-chatting with the Spanish Duke when he got to talking about one of his favorite topics, Hitler's horoscope. As it so happened, in earshot of this conversation was none other than the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax.

And let's just say that Halifax found the topic very interesting. What if, Halifax wondered, astrology could be used as a tool of war? Within weeks, Duval had been hired by the British government. So what exactly would an astrologer do for the war effort? Well, on one front, DeWal would basically be a spy. That is, when important people came to ask for astrological predictions, he would report back on who they were and what they had asked. But his role very much did not end there.

You see, there were rumors spreading, perhaps spread by DeWal himself, granted, that Hitler was relying heavily on astrologers of his own in order to make his battle plans. But guess what? The same stars that hung over Germany also hung over England, which meant that DeWall could replicate the advice Hitler was receiving from his advisors, thus providing insights into the dictator's decision

making. De Wall's most important job for the British government, though, the stuff that they paid him the big bucks for, was as a propaganda machine. Yes, just like the Roman emperors of old, the Brits realized that if people believed in horoscopes, and you wrote those horoscopes, well, then you can make a person believe whatever the heck you wanted. And so they started with the Germans themselves. First, they revived a defunct German astrology magazine, its new secret editor, Why, that would be DeWal, of course. Inside its pages, DeWall published ominous predictions about German leaders intended essentially to freak them out.

He also authored a bunch of fake Nostradamus predictions to the same effect. Next, the British and their pet astrologer turned their eyes to the good old U.S. of A. It was the summer of 1941, and America had yet to join in the war effort, much to England's chagrin. And so they sent Louis DeWal on a U.S. tour. He performed across the country. warning his audiences that Hitler's astrologers would be advising him to invade the Americas, and I quote, sometime after the following spring, once Saturn and Uranus, the two Malific planets, had entered Gemini.

But he told them, don't worry, this could all be avoided if the United States declared war on Germany in the next eight months, which, if you know your history, is exactly what happened. Though, to be fair, that probably had a lot more to do with Pearl Harbor than DeWall's obvious propaganda. Now, it's worth mentioning that during his time in the military, DeWall had settled into quite a swanky lifestyle. He inhabited a lavish, decorated hotel room,

which served as his astrology office. There, he held court in a silk dressing gown while smoking a cigar. And sure, he might have been working on covert military operations, but the covert part wasn't exactly in his wheelhouse. As in, he was constantly bragging to anyone who would listen that he worked as an astrologer for the... the government. He was also apparently very, very annoying. He spent so much time pestering the army to make him an officer that they actually held an elaborate fake commissioning ceremony

and told him, congrats, you're a captain now, but don't tell anyone, just to shut him up. Not only did he very much not keep this a secret, but he somehow got his hands on a captain's uniform and started to wear it in public. Oh, and that wasn't the only thing that he wore in public. DeWal also loved to cross-dress. In short, British intelligence had a bit of a liability on their hands. They considered various methods of dealing with him, so to speak, eventually settling on putting the guy under permanent surveillance to keep his flamboyantly loose lips from sinking too many ships. At last, the war ended, and with it, DeWal's military days. He rather surprisingly converted to Catholicism after that, married a woman, and spent the rest of his life writing books about the

lives of saints, as well as his own rather big fish-esque memoir. He called this book The Stars of War. Louis DeWall died in 1961 at the age of 58, which was also a surprise. Why? Well, because by his own astrological predictions, he should have lived to the age of 61. This episode of lore was produced by me, Aaron Manke, with writing by Jenner-Rose Nethercott, research by Cassandra DeAlba, and music by Chad Lawson. My brand new history book Exhumed is out now in hardcover e-book and audiobook, which is narrated by me, of course.

In case you missed it, though, Exhumed explores the strange and twisted roots of the New England vampire panic, and it's star player, Mercy Brown. Grab your copy today over at Aaron Mankey.com slash Exhumed. And if you don't like ads on lore, there's a paid version of the show that's available on Apple Podcasts and Patreon, and it is 100% ad-free. subscribers also get weekly mini bonus episodes we call lore bites and Patreon members specifically get discounts on lore merch and access to my inbox. Learn more over at lorepodcast.com slash support. Follow the show on YouTube, threads, Blue Sky, and Instagram. Just search for lore podcast, all one word, and click that follow button.

And when you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening.