The newly crowned Herrmann the Great gave a command performance for Czar Alexander III of Russia. The czar enjoyed the thought of being of the same rough coarseness as the majority of his subjects. He basked in his own straightforward, crude manner. This came off sometimes as being too harsh. And his direct, plain way of expressing himself matched well with his rough features and somewhat sluggish movements.

He was also noted for his immense physical strength. He felt that the ruler of Russia should be more powerful than the toughest rough and most burly peasant.

The czar was impressed by Herrmann’s delicate touch. He picked up a deck of cards and walked over to the wizard. He firmly grabbed the deck and tore it in half. He wanted to test Herrmann’s mettle. He handed the torn deck to the magician to see if he could outmatch the czar’s iron grip. Herrmann was always cool under fire. He only hesitated a moment as he proceeded with the challenge presented to him. He placed one half on top of the other and squared them neatly. Then he proceeded to tear both together. Czar Alexander was most impressed. He gave Herrmann a watch with a chain made of heavy twisted strands of gold.

Alexander tells an interesting tale of an incident that took place after the performance. He was playing billiards at the saloon with the attaché of the court when he noticed the Czar was also playing there. Herrmann shot the ball with all of his strength against a plate-glass mirror that extended from the floor to the ceiling. It shattered into fifty pieces. Every person in the room was horrified, none more than Herrmann.

The Czar brushed off Herrmann’s apology and considered the destruction of the mirror trivial. He ordered the game to proceed. With the Czar’s permission, Herrmann examined the mirror to estimate the damage done. He was hoping to have it repaired.

The Czar teased him, saying if he was such a good wizard why didn’t he make the mirror whole? That was the very cue Herrmann was hoping for. He hesitated for an instant, then ordered the mirror to be covered with a cloth concealing it from view. After about ten minutes, he whisked away the cloth and the mirror was completely restored and without a flaw.

Herrmann later told The North American Review that he would leave it to the reader’s imagination how it was done.

From Russia, Herrmann returned to the place of his birth, France. At the Eden Theatre in Paris, his performance was witnessed by the Prince and Princess of Wales (later to become King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra of England, aka Alexandra of Denmark).

Alexander met his brother Carl again in 1885 in Paris. Carl was still miffed at Alexander from his triumph at Egyptian Hall. Carl was planning on retiring again and was grooming their nephew Leon to be his successor. However, he did not intend to retire until he regained his fortune. So an agreement was made between the two brothers to split the world. Compars was to return to Europe and Alexander to the United States.

Alexander left Paris to go back to America, where he became an established institution. Two years later, while in New York, Alexander was shocked to hear the news of the death of his brother Carl, who died on July 8, 1887 in Karlsbad in Germany. Even with the rivalry between them, Alexander could not help but feel that he owed everything to him. “We’ve always had a warm and brotherly feeling towards each other,” he told a newspaper.

Since Alexander was widely known in the States, when news of the death of Professor Herrmann hit the papers, many thought it was Alexander that had died. He was mourned in the papers.

Carl did regain his fortune before he died. Leon took his place and was doing well. Alexander was content to let Leon take over Europe.

Throughout the 1870s and 1880s, Alexander and his wife Adelaide Herrmann performed together in elaborate stage shows. The great American impresario Michael B. Leavitt handled Herrmann’s American and Mexican contracts. Leavitt always paid all transportation costs as well as advertising, salaries, and other expenses. “Whenever I open a new theatre, ” Leavitt once said, “I want to insure of large crowds, I will have Herrmann the Great play the date.” He was always a drawing card wherever he played, receiving fifty percent of the gross receipt and earning $75,000 a year (about $3 million in today’s figures).

He often squandered his money and would ask Leavitt to advance him $5,000 or more. Leavitt never refused his star. He considered it a safe investment. “The name Herrmann the Great on any marquee was a sure sign of a successful run.”

Alexander and Adelaide lugged their show by railcar and kept their travels to the U.S. territories. They presented a full evening program, adapting such tricks as Robert Houdin’s Aerial Suspension routine in an illusion called Trilby. A board would be set on top of two chairs, and Madame Herrmann would be placed on top of the board. Both the board and Madame Herrmann would rise into the air. The two chairs would be removed. After a hoop was passed over, Madame Herrmann would descend back to the two chairs.

The Herrmanns presented this and many other fine illusions of the time. Their only rival was Harry Kellar.

Career

With the departure of Carl, Alexander began his independent career in 1862. Carl returned to play to the capitals of Europe. Alexander brought his own show to London in 1871 and began a three-year stretch at Egyptian Hall, which he called his “one thousand and one nights”. Egyptian Hall was one of the first buildings in England to be influenced by the Egyptian style, inspired by Europe’s new interest in the various temples on the Nile, the Pyramids and the Sphinx. By the end of the 19th century, the Hall was also associated with magic and spiritualism, as a number of performers and lecturers had hired it for shows. So when Alexander began his run there, it was already the hallmark of a professional magician’s career.

As he got older, he came to resemble his brother Carl. Carl wore an imperial beard and handlebar moustache, and his hair was thinning. Alexander had a full set of curly hair, a thick goatee and a moustache with upturned ends. Even though they resembled each other, Alexander developed his own distinct, magnetic personality. Carl’s humor was sly and he presented his magic in a mysterious manner; he was from the old school of magic. Alexander’s performance style, on the other hand, was to interweave comedy with his magic. He was a humorist who aimed to make his performances a joyous occasion.

Herrmann’s philosophy about performing magic was that “the magician depends for the success of his art upon the credulity of the people. Whatever mystifies, excites curiosity; whatever in turn baffles this curiosity, works the marvelous.”

Despite his performances’ humorous elements, Alexander still mystified his audiences. His intense eyes, imposing mustache and goatee gave him a satanic appearance; in person he looked like a magician. According to H. J. Burlingame, Alexander Herrmann’s personality presented “an atmosphere of mystery about the magician.” Burlingame also noted that Herrmann was one of the kindest and gentlest of men.

Rumors emerged that Carl was Alexander’s uncle, or that they were not related. A lawsuit claimed that Alexander’s real name was Nieman. It went on to say that Carl adopted young Nieman and used him as an assistant so he could groom him to become his successor. The suit claimed that Nieman had adopted the name Herrmann. In 1895, Alexander printed a statement to a San Francisco newspaper that contradicted everything in the lawsuit. He told the newspaper that he had been born in France on February 11, 1843, of German parentage. (His date of birth given here contradicts records that show that he was born February 10, 1844, according to Herrmann expert James Hamilton). He stated that his father was a physician in Germany and had moved to Paris before Alexander was born.^[1] Nevertheless, the rumors persisted even after his death; Alexander’s widow had to disprove them many times.

Carl retired during Alexander’s three-year stint at Egyptian Hall. While in America, Alexander had learned the value of making the press; he used that ability during his run in London. While strolling down Regent Street with a friend, he gathered a crowd. He stepped up to two gentlemen and picked a handkerchief from one. He did this clumsily to get the attention of two policemen that were behind him. As the two bobbies came towards him, Alexander deftly poached the watch of the second gentleman.

Alexander’s friend offered to vouch for him. As he was telling the virtues of his friend, the second man discovered that his watch was missing. He insisted that Herrmann took it. Alexander professed his innocence and asked the policemen to search him. They did not find the stolen items. Herrmann suggested that the two policemen should search themselves. The handkerchief was found on one of the cops, the missing pocket watch was on the other. Then one of the policemen noticed his badge missing. They searched one of the gentlemen and found the missing badge. Herrmann smiled and said, “It seems that I am the only honest person here.”

He tried in vain to explain to the police that the entire thing was just a magician’s joke. “We will not be deceived in that way,” the second cop said. So they hauled him off to the police station. There he was recognized and set free. The London papers got hold of the story and made it a sensation. The entire town was laughing at the practical joke Herrmann had played on London’s finest.

Herrmann had an outgoing personality and had no problem making friends. Not only did men find him sociable, but ladies took fancy to him. One in particular was a 22-year-old dancer from London by the name of Adelaide Scarcez (August 11, 1854 – February 19, 1932). Most of his acquaintances were from the theatrical world.

Alexander’s record-breaking run would soon end. He was set to tour Europe after his triumph at Egyptian Hall. Then he returned to the United States and Canada and made several tours. Meanwhile, the financial panic of 1873 wiped out his brother Carl. On May 9, the Vienna Stock Exchange (Wiener Börse) crashed. They no longer were able to bankroll the corrupt mismanagement of the Deutsche Bank. A series of Viennese bank failures resulted. This caused a deflation of the money available for business lending. (See Panic of 1873.)

Carl needed money and the only way to pay his debts was to return to performing.

Wikipedia, Alexander Herrmann, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Herrmann

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The Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, London, commissioned by William Bullock as a museum to house his collection (which included curiosities brought back from the South Seas by Captain Cook), was completed in 1812 at a cost of £16,000. It was the first building in England to be influenced by the Egyptian style, partly inspired by the success of the Egyptian Room in Thomas Hope’s house in Duchess Street, which was open to the public and had been well illustrated in Hope’s Household Furniture and Interior Decoration (London, 1807). But, unlike Bullock’s Egyptian temple in Piccadilly, Hope’sneoclassical façade betrayed no hint of the Egyptianizing decor it contained. Detailed renderings of various temples on the Nile, the Pyramids and the Sphinx had been accumulating for connoisseurs and designers in works such as Bernard de Montfaucon’s, ten-volume L’Antiquité expliquée et representée en figures (1719-1724), which reproduces, methodically grouped, all the ancient monuments, Benoît de Maillet, Description de l’Égypte (1735), Richard Pococke, A Description of the East and Some Other Countries (1743), and Frederic Louis Norden, Voyage d’Egypte et de Nubie (1755); the first volume of the magisterial Description de l’Egypte (1810) had recently appeared in Paris. The plans for the hall were drawn up by architect Peter Frederick Robinson.^[4] Bullock, who had displayed his collection inSheffield and Liverpool before opening in London, used the hall to put on various spectaculars, from which he made money from ticket sales. The museum was variously referred to as the London Museum, the Egyptian Hall or Museum, or Bullock’s Museum.

The Hall was a considerable success, with an exhibition of Napoleonic era relics in 1816 including Napoleon’s carriage taken at Waterloo being seen by about 220,000 visitors; Bullock made £35,000. In 1819, Bullock sold his ethnographical and natural history collection at auction and converted the museum into an exhibition hall. Subsequently the Hall became a major venue for the exhibiting of works of art; it had the advantage of being almost the only London venue able to exhibit really large works. Usually admission was one shilling. In 1820, The Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault was exhibited from June 10 until the end of the year, rather overshadowing Benjamin Robert Haydon’s painting, Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, on show in an adjacent room; Haydon rented rooms to show his work on several occasions. In 1821, exhibitions included Belzoni’s show of the tomb of Seti I in 1821, and James Ward’s gigantic Allegory of Waterloo. In 1822, a family of Laplanders with their reindeer were imported to be displayed in front of a painted backdrop, and give short sleigh-rides to visitors.

The bookseller George Lackington became owner of the Hall in 1825 and went on to use the facilities to show panoramas, art exhibits, and entertainment productions. The Hall became especially associated with watercolours. The Old Water-Colour Society exhibited there in 1821–22 and it was hired by Charles Heath to display the watercolours commissioned by from Joseph Mallord William Turnerforming Picturesque Views in England and Wales. Turner exhibited at the Hall for a number of years and it was also used as a venue for exhibitions by the Society of Painters in Water Colours.

In the “Dudley Gallery” at the Egyptian Hall, the valuable collection of pictures belonging to the Earl of Dudley was deposited during the erection of his own gallery at Dudley House in Park Lane. The room gave its name to the Dudley Gallery Art Society (also known as The Old Dudley Art Society) when they were founded in 1861 and used it for their exhibitions. It was the venue chosen for their first exhibitions by the influential New English Art Club.

By the end of the 19th century, the Hall was also associated with magic and spiritualism as a number of performers and lecturers had hired it for shows. It was also the venue chosen for the showing of some of the first ever films (or animated photographs) to be shown, including those of Albert Smith relating his ascent of Mont Blanc. Later, when the hall came under the control of the Maskelyne family, a more settled policy was adopted and it soon became known as England’s Home of Mystery. Many illusions were staged including the exposition of fraudulent spiritualistic manifestations then being practised by charlatans.

In 1905 the building was demolished to make room for blocks of flats and offices at 170–173 Piccadilly. Muirhead Bone captured its demise in his work The Dissolution of Egyptian Hall. The Maskelynes relocated to the St. George’s Hall in Langharn Place, which became known as Maskelyne’s Theatre.

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The text was clearly written from left to right, with a slightly ragged right margin. Longer sections are broken into paragraphs, sometimes with “bullets” on the left margin. There is no obvious punctuation. The ductus (the speed, care, and cursiveness with which the letters are written) flows smoothly, suggesting that the scribe understood what he was writing when it was written; the manuscript does not give the impression that each character had to be calculated before being inked onto the page.

The text consists of over 170,000 discrete glyphs, usually separated from each other by narrow gaps. Most of the glyphs are written with one or two simple pen strokes. While there is some dispute as to whether certain glyphs are distinct or not, an alphabet with 20–30 glyphs would account for virtually all of the text; the exceptions are a few dozen rarer characters that occur only once or twice each.

Wider gaps divide the text into about 35,000 “words” of varying length. These seem to follow phonetic or orthographic laws of some sort; e.g. certain characters must appear in each word (like the vowels in English), some characters never follow others, some may be doubled but others may not.

Statistical analysis of the text reveals patterns similar to those of natural languages. For instance, the word frequencies follow Zipf’s law, and the word entropy (about 10 bits per word) is similar to that of English or Latin texts. Some words occur only in certain sections, or in only a few pages; others occur throughout the manuscript. There are very few repetitions among the thousand or so “labels” attached to the illustrations. In the herbal section, the first word on each page occurs only on that page, and may be the name of the plant.

On the other hand, the Voynich manuscript’s “language” is quite unlike European languages in several aspects. Firstly, there are practically no words comprising more than ten glyphs, yet there are also few one- or two-letter words. The distribution of letters within the word is also rather peculiar: some characters only occur at the beginning of a word, some only at the end, and some always in the middle section – an arrangement found in Semitic alphabets but not in the Latin or Cyrillic alphabets (with the exception of the Greek letters Beta and Sigma).

The text seems to be more repetitive than typical European languages; there are instances where the same common word appears up to three times in a row. Words that differ only by one letter also repeat with unusual frequency.

There are only a few words in the manuscript written in a seemingly Latin script. In the last page, there are four lines of writing which are written in (rather distorted) Latin letters, except for two words in the main script. The lettering resembles European alphabets of the 15th century, but the words do not seem to make sense in any language. Also, a series of diagrams in the “astronomical” section has the names of ten of the months (from March to December) written in Latin script, with spelling suggestive of the medieval languages of France or the Iberian Peninsula. However, it is not known whether these bits of Latin script were part of the original text, or were added at a later time.

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The usual translation is as follows:

Sator

‘Sower’, ‘planter’

Arepo

Likely an invented proper name; its similarity with arrepo, from ad repo, ‘I creep towards’, is coincidental

Tenet

‘he holds’

Opera

‘works’, ‘(cares)’, ‘efforts’

Rotas

‘wheels’

Two possible translations of the phrase are ‘The sower Arepo holds the wheels with effort’ and ‘The sower Arepo leads with his hand (work) the plough (wheels).’ C. W. Ceram read the square boustrophedon (in alternating directions), with tenet repeated. This produces Sator opera tenet; tenet opera sator, translated: ‘The Great Sower holds in his hand all works; all works the Great Sower holds in his hand.’ (Ceram 1958, p. 30)

The word arepo is enigmatic, appearing nowhere else in Latin literature. Most of those who have studied the Sator Square agree that it is a proper name, either an adaptation of a non-Latin word or most likely a name invented specifically for this sentence. Jerome Carcopino thought that it came from a Celtic, specifically Gaulish, word for plough. David Daube argued that it represented a Hebrew or Aramaic rendition of the Greek Αλφα ω, or “Alpha-Omega” (cf. Revelation 1:8) by early Christians. J. Gwyn Griffiths contended that it came, via Alexandria, from the attested Egyptian name Ḥr-Ḥp, which he took to mean “the face of Apis“.

The oldest known representation of the Sator Square was found in the ruins of Herculaneum. Others were found in excavations at Corinium (modern Cirencester in England) and Dura-Europos (in modern Syria). It should be noted that the Corinium example is actually a Rotas Square; its inscription reads ROTAS OPERA TENET AREPO SATOR.

Other Sator Squares are on the wall of the Duomo of Siena and on a memorial, near the site where composer Anton Webern was shot in 1945.

An example of the Sator Square found in Manchester dating to the 2nd century is considered by some authorities to be one of the earliest pieces of evidence of Christianity in Britain. Like the Corinium square, the Manchester square reads ROTAS OPERA TENET AREPO SATOR.

Other authorities believe the Sator Square was Mithraic in origin.

An example is found inserted in a wall of the old district of Oppede, in France’s Luberon.

There is a Sator Square in the museum at Conimbriga (near Coimbra in Portugal), excavated on the site.

Magical uses

The Sator Square is a four-times palindrome, and some people have attributed magical properties to it, considering it one of the broadest magical formulas in the occident. An article on the square from The Saint Louis Medical and Surgical Journal vol. 76, reports that palindromes were viewed as being immune to tampering by the devil, who would become confused by the repetition of the letters, and hence their popularity in magical use.

The square has reportedly been used in folk magic for various purposes, including putting out fires, removing jinxes and fevers, to protect cattle from witchcraft and against fatigue when traveling. It is sometimes claimed it must be written upon a certain material, or else with a certain type of ink to achieve its magical effect.

Numerology

Using numerology, one can assign the value 1 to the letter A, 2 to the letter B, and so on, up to 26 for the letter Z. Then, adding the values assigned to the letters in the rows and columns of the Sator square yields the following:

       S A T O R  73
       A R E P O  55
       T E N E T  64
       O P E R A  55
       R O T A S  73

Each of these values digit sum to 10 and therefore also to 1, which some numerologists maintain gives the square “extraordinary powers”.

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When Home was young, he moved with his aunt and uncle from Scotland to America, where they lived in Connecticut. After becoming well-known he travelled to England in 1855, and conducted hundreds of séances, which were attended by many of the best-known names of the Victorian period.

Home’s name was originally Daniel Home, but by the time he arrived in Europe he had lengthened it to Daniel Dunglas Home, in reference to the Scottish house of Home, of which his father claimed to be a part. In London Home found a believer in spiritualism, William Cox, who owned a large hotel at 53, 54 and 55 Jermyn Street, London. As Cox was so enamoured of Home’s abilities, he let Home stay at the hotel without payment. Robert Owen, an 83-year-old social reformer, was also staying at the hotel, and introduced Home to many of his friends in London society. At the time Home described as tall and thin, with blue eyes and auburn hair, fastidiously dressed but seriously ill with consumption. Nevertheless, he held sittings for notable people in full daylight, moving objects that were some distance away. Some early guests at Home’s sittings included the scientist Sir David Brewster, the novelists Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton and Thomas Adolphus Trollope, and the Swedenborgian James John Garth Wilkinson. Home converted most sceptics, but Robert Browning, the poet, proved more difficult. After attending a séance of Home’s Browning gave his impression of Home in the unflattering poem, “Sludge the Medium” (1864). His wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, was convinced that the phenomena she witnessed was genuine and their discussions about Home were a constant source of disagreement.

Home’s fame grew, fuelled by his feats of levitation. William Crookes claimed to know of more than 50 occasions in which Home levitated “in good light” (gas light) at least five to seven feet above the floor. Homes’ feats were recorded by Frank Podmore: “We all saw him rise from the ground slowly to a height of about six inches, remain there for about ten seconds, and then slowly descend.” In the following years Home travelled across continental Europe, and always as a guest of wealthy patrons. In Paris, he was summoned to the Tuileries to perform a séance for Napoleon III. Home also performed for Queen Sophia of the Netherlands, who wrote: “I saw him four times…I felt a hand tipping my finger; I saw a heavy golden bell moving alone from one person to another; I saw my handkerchief move alone and return to me with a knot… He himself is a pale, sickly, rather handsome young man but without a look or anything which would either fascinate or frighten you. It is wonderful. I am so glad I have seen it…”

In 1866, Mrs Lyon, a wealthy widow, adopted Home as her son, giving him £60,000 in an attempt to gain introduction into high society. Finding that the adoption did not change her social situation, Lyon changed her mind, and brought a suit for the return of her money from Home on the grounds that it had been obtained by spiritual influence. Under British law, the defendant bears the burden of proof in such a case, and proof was impossible since there was no physical evidence. The case was decided against Home, Mrs Lyon’s money was returned, and the press pilloried Home’s reputation. Home’s high society acquaintances thought that he behaved like a complete gentleman throughout the ordeal, and he did not lose a single important friend.

Home met one of his future closest friends in 1867; the young Lord Adare (later the 4th Earl of Dunraven). Adare was fascinated by Home, and began documenting the seances they held. One of Home’s levitations occurred the following year, and in front of three witnesses (Adare, Captain Wynne, and Lord Lindsay) Home was said to have levitated out of the third storey window of one room, and back in through the window of the adjoining room.

Home married twice. In 1858, he married Alexandria de Kroll, the 17-year-old daughter of a noble Russian family. They had a son, Gregoire, but Alexandria fell ill with tuberculosis, and died in 1862. In October 1871, Home married for the second, and last time, to Julie de Gloumeline, a wealthy Russian, whom he met in St Petersburg. In the process, he converted to the Greek Orthodox faith. At the age of 38, Home retired, as his health was bad – the tuberculosis, from which he had suffered for most of his life, was advancing –and his powers, he claimed, were failing. He died on the 21 June 1886, and was buried in the St. Germain-en-Laye cemetery.

Source: Daniel Dunglas Home. (2008, October 14). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 14:41, November 8, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Daniel_Dunglas_Home&oldid=245236737

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John Dee (13 July 1527 – 1608 or 1609) was a noted English mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, occultist, and consultant to Queen Elizabeth I. He also devoted much of his life to alchemy, divination, and Hermetic philosophy.

Dee straddled the worlds of science and magic just as they were becoming distinguishable. One of the most learned men of his age, he had been invited to lecture on advanced algebra at the University of Paris while still in his early twenties. Dee was an ardent promoter of mathematics, a respected astronomer and a leading expert in navigation, having trained many of those who would conduct England’s voyages of discovery. In one of several tracts which Dee wrote in the 1580s encouraging British exploratory expeditions in search of the Northwest Passage, he appears to have coined the term “British Empire”.

Simultaneously with these efforts, Dee immersed himself in the worlds of magic, astrology and Hermetic philosophy. Indeed, he devoted the last third of his life almost exclusively to attempting to commune with angels in order to learn the universal language of creation. A student of the Renaissance Neo-Platonism of Marsilio Ficino, Dee did not draw distinctions between his mathematical research and his investigations into Hermetic magic and divination, instead considering both ventures to constitute different facets of the same quest: the search for a transcendent understanding of the divine forms which underlie the visible world.

Dee’s status as a respected scholar also allowed him to play a role in Elizabethan politics. He served as an occasional adviser and tutor to Elizabeth I and nurtured relationships with her two leading ministers, Francis Walsingham and William Cecil.

According to scholars Frances Yates and Peter French, in his lifetime Dee amassed the largest library in England and one of the largest in Europe.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dee

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