Penn Today: The story the bowls tell. “In an ambitious new project, historian Simcha Gross and Harvard’s Rivka Elitzur-Leiman are studying hundreds of ancient incantation bowls housed at the Penn Museum. They hope to better understand the objects and eventually, build a database of all these bowls worldwide.”
McMaster University: Rare texts on magic and the occult unearthed for Archives Alive event. “Leather-bound books with ancient alphabets, pentagrams outlined in red paint on a floor, and hooded figures chanting incantations by candlelight; these are among the depictions commonly conjured in popular culture around magic and the occult. But where do these concepts come from? This month’s must-see Archives Alive event will take audiences back in time to explore rare texts at McMaster University rooted in the very real tradition of magic and philosophy in western Europe.”
I read the announcement about this digital exhibit at a scraper site and spent ten frustrating minutes trying to track down the original. No luck, so I’ll take you straight to Arts Centre Melbourne and tell you to check out Rare flowers and golden butterflies. “Tucked away in the archives of the Australian Performing Arts Collection at the Arts Centre Melbourne are the stories of three women – Esme Levante, Myrtle Roberts and Moi-Yo Miller – who all contributed to the development of magic performance at a time when the art form was predominately seen as a male affair. Each with their own story to tell, they deserve their time in the spotlight.”
Las Vegas Sun: Las Vegas magicians get creative on social media. “The classic ‘Ambitious Card’ trick became extra ambitious, even viral, on March 31. Penn Jillette kicks off a nearly 20-minute video featuring many magicians from around the world — including Vegas performers Mat Franco, Jen Kramer, Matt Donnelly, Xavier Mortimer, Piff the Magic Dragon, Mac King, David Copperfield’s right-hand man Chris Kenner, and of course Teller, plus Penn’s daughter Moxie Jillette — passing along a virtual deck of cards and flashing some sleight-of-hand skills. That video, viewed more than 85,000 times, is just one example of our local illusionist community keeping busy during the Vegas shutdown and sharing the fun online.”
Smithsonian Magazine: Chicago Library Seeks Help Transcribing Magical Manuscripts. “The Newberry Library in Chicago is home to some 80,000 documents pertaining to religion during the early modern period, a time of sweeping social, political, and cultural change spanning the late Middle Ages to the start of the Industrial Revolution. Among the library’s collection of rare Bibles and Christian devotional texts are a series of manuscripts that would have scandalized the religious establishment. These texts deal with magic—from casting charms to conjuring spirits—and the Newberry is asking for help translating and transcribing them.”
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