32 Biography of a Yogiaudience for whom the Orient was still alive with the kind of mystery that was no
longer possible in the post- Enlightenment West.
Although early accounts ran a good chance of being met with fear of magic
and witchcraft, Victorians came to pride themselves on their rationality and lack
of superstition while simultaneously being fascinated with the possibility of the
era’s evolving metaphysical assumptions. For instance, in 1832 stories of Sheshal,
a Madras brahmin better known as the “man that sat in the air,” caused a flurry
in the British press and were hailed as “some wonderful discovery in magnetism”
before being debunked by the discovery of a steel support that held up the appar-
ently levitating man.^26 Levitation, riding high on the vapors of Spiritualism, was
always a popular phenomenon. Other time- proven staples included the mango
trick— a version of which is described in Bernier’s account— which usually
involved a mango seed flourishing into a tree and even bearing fruit before the
eyes of the observer. Snake- charming and live burial were also strong favorites.
Unlike the Yogi ascetics, who for most Westerners appeared only as distant
“natives” accessible via narrative or, at best, photographic media, Yogi magicians
brought the Orient alive on Western stages.^27 Though often billed as “fakirs,” they
frequently appeared dressed in elaborate robes and turbans, bedecked with jew-
els and feathers to play up the allure of Oriental luxe. Generally speaking, most
of these men were actually Westerners who donned what they believed to be
Oriental garb for effect. For instance, one Fakir of Ava, whose legal identity was
Isaiah Harris Hughes from Essex, billed himself as “Chief of Staff of Conjurers
to His Sublime Greatness the Nanka of Aristophae” and promised to “appear
in his native costume, and will perform the most Astonishing Miracles of the
East!” After a brief and unsuccessful stint in the American West during the mid-
nineteenth century, the Fakir of Ava traded his robes for European formal wear
and set off to thus perform in Australia.^28 Even the famous Charles Dickens once
appeared as The Unparallelled Necromancer Rhia Rhama Rhoos at a charity
event in 1849. It should be noted that both of these men wore exotic robes and
brownface but performed tricks that were not in any particular way “Indian.”^29
In this sense, the persona of an Oriental Yogi could be used to add a bit of spice
to an otherwise lackluster stage performance. There were, of course, some actual
South Asians, Middle Easterners, and Northern Africans (the Orient and its
people were both rather ambiguous categories, after all) who made the best of
their racial nonconformity by taking on such performative personae. However,
they were arguably not only in the minority but were inserting themselves into a
co- opted aesthetic that had initially been developed by their white counterparts
at their expense.
Moreover, while Euro- American stage magicians were only all too glad to
make use of Oriental costuming and even “Indian- inspired” illusions, they were