Rollins - The divine magician : the disappearance of religion and the discovery of faith

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Praise for Peter Rollinss Previous Works

What Pete does in this book is take you to the edge of a cliff where you can see how high you are and how far you would fall if you lost your footing. And just when most writers would kindly pull you back from the edge, he pushes you off, and you find yourself without any solid footing, disoriented, and in a bit of a panic... until you realize that your fall is in fact, a form of flying. And its thrilling.

Rob Bell, author of Love Wins and Velvet Elvis

While others labor to save the Church as they know it, Peter Rollins takes an ax to the roots of the tree. Those who have enjoyed its shade will want to stop him, but his strokes are so clean and true that his motive soon becomes clear: this man trusts the way of death and resurrection so much that he has become fearless of religion.

Barbara Brown Taylor, author of Leaving Church and An Altar in the World

Rollins writes and thinks like a new Bonhoeffer, crucifying the trappings of religion in order to lay bare a radical, religionless and insurrectional Christianity. A brilliant new voicean activist, a storyteller and a theologian all in oneand not a moment too soon.

John D. Caputo, Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion Emeritus, Syracuse University

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Copyright 2015 by Peter Rollins

Scripture quotations taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica US, Inc. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the King James Version of the Bible, which is public domain.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Howard Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Howard Books trade paperback edition January 2015

HOWARD and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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Interior design by Kyoko Watanabe

Cover design by Bruce Gore

Cover images by Shutterstock and iStock

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rollins, Peter

The divine magician / Peter Rollins

pages cm

1. Christian life. 2. Lords Supper. 3. MagicReligious aspectsChristianity. I. Title.

BV4509.5.R659 2015

248.4dc23

2014020102

ISBN 978-1-4516-0904-2

ISBN 978-1-4516-0905-9 (ebook)

Eleven, You are eternal in me.

The Sanctuary was empty and the Holy of Holies untenanted.

BOOK V OF THE HISTORIES BY TACITUS, COMMENTING ON THE DISCOVERY OF GNAEUS POMPEIUS MAGNUS UPON ENTERING THE HOLY OF HOLIES IN 63 BCE

Y ears ago I was taught how to perform a simple vanishing trick. Taking a quarter from a friend, Id hold it in both hands and rub it firmly on a tabletop. After this, Id take the quarter in my right hand, place my left elbow on the surface of a table, lean in close, and rub the coin against my bare forearm. Id repeat this act of rubbing the coin on the table and then against my forearm four or five times until the coin would finally seem to dissolve into my arm. Then, when my friend asked where the coin had gone, Id lift a nearby pint to reveal how it had been transported magically across the table only to reappear under the glass.

Like most magic tricks, the whole illusion rested on some pretty simple sleight of hand and a little misdirection. The sleight of hand involved getting my audience used to the idea that I always lifted the quarter with my right hand after rubbing it on the table. Once this had been established, I would switch and lift it with my left hand. With some carefully placed misdirection, people would be momentarily distracted at the point of the switch and so continue to assume that the quarter was in my right hand.

Manufacturing the disappearance was now a simple matter of rubbing my empty right hand against my elbow, as if the coin were still there, before slowly revealing that it was actually gone.

There was, of course, still the issue of getting rid of the coin that was hidden in my left hand. After all, this would be one of the first places people would look once they realized it wasnt where they expected it to be. This was not, however, difficult to do, for when my left elbow touched the table, my left hand naturally rested at the same level as the back of my neck. While everyone was distracted, I simply hid the coin there.

When the quarter was shown to have disappeared, Id quickly present both of my hands for observation, thus directing their attention away from where the coin actually was.

In contrast to the disappearance, the return was easya few minutes before announcing the trick, Id clandestinely place a different quarter under a glass on the table. As people were checking my arm and hands, Id lift the glass to reveal the coin that Id hidden before the trick even began.

This little illusion contains the three basic elements of a classical vanishing act:

1. An object is presented to the audience

2. This object is made to disappear

3. The object then miraculously reappears

In the film The Prestige , directed by Christopher Nolan (adapted from Christopher Priests book of the same name), these three stages are called:

1. The Pledge

2. The Turn

3. The Prestige

In the coin trick above, we see each of these stages clearly at work. The Pledge represented the part of the illusion where I would ask for a quarter and let everyone examine it. The Turn took place when I made the quarter look as if it had dissolved into my arm. Finally, the Prestige was the point when I lifted my glass to reveal the return of the lost quarter.

In addition to these three basic elementsPledge, Turn, Prestigea good vanishing act also involves two other components: a little patter (the magicians distracting talk) and the use of some esoteric incantation uttered at the key moment of the Turn.

Both of these elements have some interesting connections with the Christian world.

The term patter is most likely derived from paternoster , a word that refers to the repetitive, mesmerizing prayers used by nuns and monks in religious orders. For the medieval magician, their own distracting talk had a similar trancelike result as the repetitive prayers of the monks, helping to make the audience less aware of what was going on around them.