The Turbaned Superman 33
careful to maintain that no actual magic was involved. Having already engaged
in a longtime feud with the Spiritualists, who claimed metaphysical origins for
their phenomena of levitation and even apparition, the professional illusionists
were eager to show that similarly fantastic acts could be accomplished without
any recourse to supernatural means. Yogi magicians— or more specifically stories
of them— had a particular knack for inspiring a tendency toward credulity in
Western audiences who longed to believe in the wonders of the Orient. This led
to a kind of stage magic one- upmanship, as popular magicians such as John Nevil
Maskelyne, Charles Bertram, and the famous Harry Houdini spent the better half
of the century’s turn debunking tales of Yogi magic by publicizing the techniques
through which such feats could be accomplished. Maskelyne was particularly zeal-
ous on this point and in 1914 founded the Occult Committee, which, rather than
devoting itself to the exploration of the supernatural as its name would suggest,
was instead devoted entirely to disproving the legitimacy of such phenomena. Of
special concern to the committee was proving the impossibility of a particular
“Indian” phenomenon involving a free- floating rope.^30
As Indian magic went, most paradigmatic of all was undoubtedly the Indian
rope trick, which incorporated levitation into a live- action performance and by
the twentieth century had become nearly as reminiscent of the Yogi as his bed of
nails. In the “traditional” version of this trick, the Yogi or fakir would telekineti-
cally raise a rope into the air and a young boy serving as his assistant would climb
it, eventually disappearing from view. The magician would attempt to call back
his assistant and, when the boy did not respond, would become angry and follow
the boy up the rope, wielding a large knife. The magician would likewise disappear
and moments later body parts, presumably belonging to the boy, would tumble
to the ground. The magician would then climb down the rope, place the dismem-
bered parts into a basket, out of which the boy would reappear unharmed. This
illusion became particularly popular in stage magic and many versions— most of
them far less elaborate— would be performed across Europe and America. The
origins of the Indian rope trick would come to be traced by some to no lesser
text than the philosopher Śaṃkara’s ninth- century commentary on the Vedānta
Sūtra.^31 However, historian Peter Lamont has argued that the illusion (which has
never been successfully performed in its full form under open- air conditions)
originated from a wildly popular but ultimately fictional news article that first
appeared in the Chicago Tribune on August 8, 1890.
The article, entitled “It Is Only Hypnotism. How Indian Fakirs Deceive Those
Who Watch Them,” was in fact a spectacular example of Western attempts to
naturalize the Yogi’s powers. As the story went, Fred S. Ellmore, a Yale graduate
with an interest in photography, along with his artist friend George Lessing had
recently returned from India where they had seen a street fakir perform several