2009-01 Dennis' Deliberations

Inferno The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
(XXVII, 61-66):
S`io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocchè giammai di questo fondo
Non tornò vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,
Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.

A trip through Hell?
It has been a theme in many magic illusion shows such as David Bamberg’s “Fu Manchu” and Bill Neff’s “Madhouse of Mystery”. Dante, not the magician but the Italian Poet, wrote the quote above in 1300 C.E (I will translate it later). He created a satirical trip through hell and put all those in it that he disliked. His main purpose was political, His poem had him taking a trip through hell with Virgil, the great Roman Epic poet who wrote The Aeneid.

The Italians are experts on the subject of hell…I am sure you know that if you have ever visited Italy, especially Southern Italy with its active volcanoes. I am sure that you know that we get most of our ideas about hell not from the Bible but from John Milton (Paradise Lost) and from Dante Alighieri, the Medieval poet. He described an architectonic structure of hell with deeper and deeper levels and greater degrees of punishment as you descended into the pits.

Hum…Dante and Virgil! That reminds me of magic!

Imagine that you and I go on a trip through a “hell” where they send bad magicians.

The main entrance had “Abandon Hope all you who enter here”, sort of like the sign that should be over the door at the registration to a lousy magic convention. In fact, I think my wife Cindy put a sign like that over the spare room in our house where I keep many of my small props and videos.

Each lower level of hell had a sign over the entrance to that particular level. Think about those signs on easels outside the room where a boring magic lecture is taking place. There was one such long 90 minute lecture by a big name pro titled: “100 ways to get the most out of your Hank-Pull”. Folks, it is just a black plastic egg with a piece of elastic. Of course the big-name, dealer-lecturer was selling 100 different versions of a hank-pull and $15 lecture notes or a DVD combo for $40. Just like sinners in Dante’s Hell, those who paid the simony, for magic powers, never really understood the truth about the sins of their own ignorance.

“Bad Amateur Magicians” were up near the top which was just below Limbo and they suffered from only minor punishment. They are really operating out of ignorance and lack of experience so you can’t be that harsh on them. One layer down, the first level of hell is for those addicted to saying, “Pick a card, any card!” Right below them are those that believe that the older the gag the funnier the bit. “Give me your hand. No, the clean one”, “Do you want to change your mind? Oh you are happy with the one you have!”, “Pick a card. Sometime today, please”, “stand here on the trap door”.

Magic hoarders are next on our descending journey. Does anyone really need 4 sets of Linking Rings and 23 thumb tips? At some point on the moral scale, legitimate magic collecting can degenerate into gluttonous hoarding and selfish greed. Kleptomania is excused but not a house and garage filled with junk that you can not live without.

A little lower there is the place for blasphemers (anyone who says anything bad about Jeff McBride or Franz Harary). Then we move down to the boasters.
Did they really get a standing ovation by their version of Professors Nightmare?

Hey, there is Rocco who has been condemned for eternity to search for plastic thumb tips and LED lights for the sin of selling his tacky D’Lite’s to everyone in every flea-market across the land. Penn and Teller are buck naked. It is not a pretty sight. They are condemned for their exposure and senseless ridicule of other magicians.

“Act copy cats” and “crooked magic dealers” and cheap “knock off artists” are a little lower. One of the 10 commandments is “Thou shall not steal”. They spent their whole lives redefining “stealing”. This bunch never gave credit for who they stole their ideas from. This crowd of sinners are so lacking in originality, they ask every visitor if they can have a Xerox of the escape routes from hell. All the visitors show them that the wallpaper around them contains a blueprint of the entire structure but they are too lazy
to create their own route.

Even lower is David Blaine. He is in for his camera tricks, selective editing and asking 5,000 people on video to think of a card and then discarding every recording but the one he got one right. His biggest sin is portraying himself as some kind of Messiah in making dead flies come alive and dead pigeons resurrect themselves. He ended up here after his last failed TV special. He is condemned to spend eternity frozen in a block of ice that is submerged in a fishbowl while sitting on the tip of a 50 foot pedestal.

Near the bottom is Criss Angel. He is in for having pretended that he has any talent and relentlessly using the same crane-mounted Foy flying rig over and over again with a different set of paid stooges. The cost of keeping him in hell is being subsidized by Cirque du Soleil where they no longer “Believe” and are thrilled to get rid of him.

Val Valentino, the Masked Magician is trapped at the bottom. Maybe he is Satan? At least he looks the part.

For some reason Dante called his exploration of hell, “The Divine Comedy”. (Every heard the Emcee jokes at a magic convention?)

Here is a translation of the epigraph that is at the beginning of this article. It is over Dante’s 8th level of hell.

If I thought my answer were given
to anyone who would ever return to the world,
this flame would stand still without moving any further.
But since never from this abyss
has anyone ever returned alive, if what I hear is true,
it is without fear of infamy I answer you.

So next time you see a less than worthy magic performance, meet a less than virtuous magician or attend a lousy magic convention, this thought should make you feel better while you are enduring the torture. You will live to tell others about it. Perhaps with a virtuous magical career, YOU can escape the fate of those condemned.

Dennis