Jugglery

Jugglery is the art of sleight of hand although many will be quick to say it’s the art of juggling. Jugglery is any trickery or deception, and keeping any number of items up in the air all at the same time really isn’t about trickery or deception although one who tricks or deceives others relies heavily on keeping many lies up in the air all at the same time.

The word is hardly used these days, with its popularity peaking in the 1860s before slowly disappearing into relative obscurity.

The word is found the book “Betrayal of Indian Democracy” by former Assistant Commissioner of Police and East Indian author, Madhav Balwant (M.B.) Chande (1921 – 06 August 2017), and published in 1999. The book covers India from 15 August 1947 to the end of the century. The passage where jugglery is mentioned deals with poverty in the mid-1980s.

If former Union Finance Minister Manmohan Singh and former Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Pranab Mukherjee had their way, the poor may have well disappeared by now, conjured away by statistical jugglery.

Right Reverend Monsignor George F. Dillon wrote about cabalistic masonry and masonic spiritualism in his book “Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked as the Secret Power Behind Communism” which was published in 1965. The book was a compilation of lectures delivered in Edinburgh in October 1884, and the book was originally titled, “The War of Antichrist with the Church and Christian Civilization” and was published in 1885 by M.H. Gill and Son Ltd of O’Connell Street in Dublin, Ireland.

In speaking of the wealthy, famous, and wildly mysterious Count Alessandro Cagliostro (1743 – 6 October 1795) — the former Italian alchemist and imposter Giuseppe Balsamo from Palermo, Sicily — who traveled throughout Europe under instructions of Weishaupt, and who was accused, charged, and found guilty of heresy, Monsignor Dillon had this to say.

He was an inveterate sorcerer, and in his peregrinations in the East, picked up from every source the secrets of alchemy, astrology, jugglery, legerdemain, and occult science of every kind about which he could get any information. Like the Masonry to which he became affiliated at an early period, he was an adept at acting and speaking a lie.

In 1887, the “Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University of Pennsylvania to Investigate Modern Spiritualism in According with the Request of the Late Henry Seybert” was published by the J.B. Lippincott Company of Philadelphia. The report was 159 pages in length and included a letter from Joseph Leidy, a member of the Seybert Commission appointed by the University to study the claims made by Spiritualist Mediums, and dated May 1887, covering dates between March 1884 and April 1887.

I have kept a record of my observations of the Spiritualist séances, but it is unnecessary to relate them here. As the result of my experience thus far, I must confess that I have witnessed no extraordinary manifestation, such as we ordinarily hear described as evidence of communication between this and the Spirit world. On the contrary, all the exhibitions I have seen have been complete failures in what was attempted or expected, or they have proved to be deceptions and tricks of jugglery.

IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE 1: Members of the Commission appointed to investigate the subject included William Pepper, Joseph Leidy, George A. Keonig, Robert Ellis Thompson, George S. Fullerton, Horace Howard Furness, Coleman Sellers, James. W. White, Calvin B. Kneer, and S. Weir Mitchell.

Minister of Paisley, Reverend Robert Burns’ published his “Historical Dissertations on the Law and Practice of Great Britain, and Particularly of Scotland, with Regard to the Poor” on May 22, 1819, and used the word prominently in the section titled, “No. III: Abridged View of the Law of Scotland, with regard to Vagabonds and Sturdy Beggars.” The focus of the dissertation was the modes of charity available, and ways to improve life for the lower class based on facts, documents, miscellaneous inquiries, and observation.

Under the denomination vagabond, are comprehended all sorners, or masterful beggars; all idle persons that go about using subtile, crafty, and unlawful play, as jugglery, fast and loose, and the likes; the people calling themselves Egyptians (gypsies) or any other that pretend to foresee future events, and to tell fortunes, or to have skill in magic, or the like; pretended idiots; able bodied persons, alleging that they have been burst out in some distant part of the country, or that they have been banished from some other place for crimes; others having no land nor masters, nor following any lawful trade or occupation, and who can give no good account of themselves how they earn their living; all tale tellers and ballad singers, not properly licensed (i.e. not being in the service of the Lords of Parliament, or great boroughs) all common labourers, able-bodied, refusing to work; all sailors alleging that they have been shipwrecked, unless they have sufficient testimonials of the truth of their story.

Collins Dictionary gives 1760 as the first recorded used of the word jugglery however Idiomation found the word used more than 50 years before that date given.

In the book “The Indians of the Western Great Lakes: 1615 – 1760” by William Vernon Kinietz, published in 1940, quoted from a letter written in 1709. The writer was Frenchman and economic theorist Antoine-Denis Raudot (1679 – 28 July 1737) who was the Co-intendant of Nouvelle-France — along with his father, Jacques Raudot (1638 – 20 February 1728) — as well as the adviser on colonial affairs at the French court at the time. His letters reported on the Huron, Ottawa, Potawatomi, and Chippewa of the area.

There are a few savages who have another sort of jugglery which they use when they wish to know if their people who are hunting or at war will return soon or have made a successful attack … <snip> … These savages are very lucky sometimes with their jugglery, but I am convinced that they are like the casters of horoscopes who would be very unlucky if among several false things which they say, there is not one thing of truth.

IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE 2:  Antoine-Denis Raudot had a low opinion of Canada in general, and vehemently disagreed with Governor Vaudreuil’s policy and relations with the Iroquois Confederacy which had created rifts between various Iroquois tribes.

One might think this must surely be the earliest published version of the word jugglery however the word is found in Maine Legislation of 1602 which speaks of “persons using any subtle craft, jugglery or unlawful games or plays, or for the sake of gain pretending to have knowledge in physiognomy, palmistry, to tell destinies or fortunes, or to discover lost or stolen goods, common pipers, fiddlers, runaways, drunkards, nightwalkers, railuers, brawlers, and pilferers; persons wanton or lascivious in speech or behavior, or neglecting their callings or employments, misspending what they earn.”

Jugglery: Frowned upon since at least 1602!