APPENDIX C
JANE AND ROB MEET A SKEPTICAL PSYCHOLOGIST AND HIS MAGIC. JANE’S POEM: “MAGIC IS PUBLIC AS THE AIR …”

Gramacy was a psychologist and a magician, and he came to our house because he was a scientist looking for some real magic. He was a compact, dark-skinned and dark-haired person with soft brown large eyes that were kept half closed when he was being a psychologist, and turned larger, commanding and yet inviting when he was being a magician. Both his eyes and his hands were really too expressive for a scientist’s, and he tried to be a scientist even when he was being a magician — perhaps then most of all.

“Uh,” Gramacy said. Rob laughed. And in a twinkling I’d changed into Seth. “Look” I said, “no strings, no cards hidden within cards, no bag of tricks beside me on the floor.” Smiling, hearty, Seth talked about magic and cause and effect, but at the same time he demonstrated a magic that is beyond the clever manipulation of appearances. Another personality from whatever realm had joined the party.

It’s really unfortunate and quite unusual that we didn’t record the session. Seth came through before I thought to remind Gramacy that he could record Seth, if Seth came through. But somehow in my mind at least, not recording that session added to it’s magical quality … the spontaneous psychological or psychic transformation came and went … We were sitting at the living-room table with the lamplight clear on my face; Gramacy could follow Seth’s psychological passage; see my features change, taking on ever so subtly those other contours. And Seth’s voice was jovial, booming, you didn’t have to strain to hear those words. There was no prepared message either. We hadn’t known that Gramacy was a scientist until he told us that night, and it was as a magician rather than as a scientist that Seth addressed him, telling him to trust his dramatic and imaginative flair.

Magic is public
as the air,
so obvious
and clear that it appears
invisible.
And we look through it
at the world,
which rises up about us
everywhere.

Of Master Magicians
whose conjurings
feature the amazing tricks
of space and time,
produced so skillfully
and fast
that we’re dazzled with
the effects,
and miss the magical
slights of hand
beneath
the flashy gestures
of the days and nights.

Producing
from it’s magical bag
of tricks,
one marvelous form
of life after another,
fish,
bird,
monkey,
man
(not just one dove
or rabbit)
with a skill and swiftness
so astute
that our wise men think
one turns into the other!

Now that’s A Magic Show!