The Legendary Hierophant by Jon Racherbaumer
Reviewed by Jamy Ian Swiss (originally published in Genii May, 1999)
Jon Racherbaumer's The Hierophant ran as a journal from 1969 until 1975 (with an
additional bound volume of material released circa 1981/2), a revolutionary period in
modern close-up card magic, as the underground rose and swelled and spilled into the
overground, and the air was electric with new effects, new techniques, new personalities,
new philosophies. Both revolution and evolution were underway, with battles between
icons and their surrogates, movements and their mentors, and ongoing struggles in the
marketplace of cardicianship ideas and ideals. Mr. Racherbaumer was an unapologetic
agitator and guerilla in those heady days, and an unabashed propagator and promoter of
the Marlovian record. Hierophant was a sometimes controversial and frequently
thought-provoking lightning rod at one of the storm's epicenters, ever advancing both
the record and its own multiple agendas; it served as an important part of the historical
record—accurately or not as the case might be—as it by turn did battle with the old, the
new, and perhaps even the yet-to-be.
I came upon Hierophant somewhere along the midst of its life span, and subsequently
caught up with the closely ensuing reprint editions from Tannen's, who published issue
7 in 1975 and began releasing the reprints shortly thereafter. Hierophant ended up
serving as a dramatic measure of my growth in the world of hardcore sleight of hand.
When I first happened upon it, I could barely make sense of the thick technical jargon—
it was like trying to understand someone who seemed to be speaking what could vaguely
be recognized as English, but with an accent so heavy as to be unintelligible. Here and
there I would spot some familiar reference, or struggle through some entry and reach its
denouement relatively unscathed. But more often than not, the dense pages of
technician-speak and microscopic theoretical explorations left me mystified and
defeated. I shelved the material and went back to struggling with Expert Card
Technique.
In fact, I am reminded of an amusing story that Michael Ammar once told
me, concerning the fact that, by chance, Expert Card Technique was the first magic book
he ever read. As he wryly confessed to me many years later, "I thought it was a work of
fiction." Hierophant's content wasn't only similarly unimaginable to me at first
encounter—it was incomprehensible.
Sometime later—some number of other books and tricks later, perhaps a year, perhaps
more or less—I remember pulling out The Hierophant and attempting to penetrate its
mysteries again. This time, a few more pages began to reveal their secrets and intentions
to me. I came away with not so much a grasp of the thing, as a sense that what was there
was perhaps reachable, if still yet beyond my grasp. The first encounter had seemed like
a mirage; now I saw that there was indeed some reality on the horizon, but it was still a
way's off.
Sometime later still-another year? Six months? Two years? I don't really know. I opened
the pages, and all was made clear. Suddenly all the words made sense, formed complete
sentences, provided a reality that reached form and fruition in my very hands. If
anything, it was easy, obvious even! And I distinctly recall thinking: How could I have
ever had trouble with this? Moments later, I laughed at myself—and at the difficulties,
the joys, the rewards, and the magic of the learning process.
And so, this means that I read The Hierophant many times, at many stages in my
magical life, over and over until I had wrung the meaning out of its pages. It began
painfully, continued as a harsh and difficult challenge, and concluded as pure pleasure
and delight. In addition to an ongoing parade of sleights and techniques, there were
lengthy discourses and seemingly endless variations on Paul Curry's "Open Prediction,"
the "Collectors," sandwich tricks, estimation, mental effects, four-ace routines, deck
stabs, "Triumphs", signed cards in pockets and boxes, "Twisting the Aces," the "Card
Tunnel," and more.
Although the overwhelming majority of the material was attributed
to Marlo, the pages were sprinkled with names like Derek Dingle, Ken Krenzel, Roy
Walton, Robert Walker, Alex Elmsley, Steve Freeman, Simon Aaronson, David Solomon,
Larry Jennings, William P. Miesel, Brother John Hamman ... at the time those very
names were magical, thrilling to read—these were truly names to conjure with! And
there was the "Satiricon," scrawled with pens that dripped with sarcasm and occasional
poison. How we laughed at sessions at the latest lessons in "Cardmanship" from David L
Bendix, and his suggestions for how to answer questions from your fellow cardician:
Q: Is that original?
A: I'd rather not say ... It's so difficult to do, and it would only break your heart."
or
A: A layman showed it to me.
From those pages I would adapt the title of a future set of my lecture notes, proposed by
Bendix as withering commentary following a fellow sessioner's latest demonstration:
"An interesting application of that principle." Whenever I would announce the title at
lectures, I would listen for the occasional guffaw among the sea of blank stares, and
know there was a fellow reader in the midst.
Despite the controversies over charges of mis-creditings, un-creditings, crediting
without permission and every other variation on the theme, despite the revisionism and
reviling that at times characterized its pages, the very immaturity of this organ served a
critical role in my own magical maturation process, and no doubt did similar service for
many others. Hence the magazine, despite its flaws, will always occupy a distinctive
niche in my psyche.
Having said all of this, however, thus far my remarks have substantially concerned the
original journal, and not this messy and disappointing reproduction. This is in fact the
third time Hierophant is seeing print; between its original release and this edition; as
noted, Tannen's reproduced Hierophant 1 through 7 in the mid-to-late 1970s. Those
reprints were seriously flawed: I daresay virtually every copy ever handled and read has
long since fallen apart as the cheap binding fairly disintegrated in the reader's hand, and
some material too strong for the conservative Tannen organizational heart was
unfortunately cut. (Ironically so, in that Tannen's, out of loyalty to its longtime author
Harry Lorayne, had intended to remove a satirical piece that had touched off a Lorayne
nerve; although Hierophant had immediately run a responding satire that Lorayne
dared Racherbaumer to print, Tannen's mistakenly removed the Lorayne response
instead of the original offending piece.) One would have hoped that these shortsighted
and misguided choices would be corrected in this new edition; while all the expurgated material has thankfully been restored, other offenses have now been heaped upon the
course of this journal's woebegone publishing history.
And so, for reasons that I continue to find incomprehensible, Mr. Racherbaumer
continues his penchant—his obsession?—for tampering with the published record. The
Hierophant's greatest strength and source of interest was, is and will forever be its role
and identity as a journal of its time and culture. Yet Mr. Racherbaumer—consistent with
his meddling with the reprinting of the Tilt manuscript, on par with his manipulation of
Marlo's words and intentions in Arcade Dreams and other re-releases—has stripped
this reprint all but bare of any sense of its original identity and distinctive voice as a
journal.
He has pulled the material apart and presented it to us as merely another
compilation of card tricks—merely one among what is now many. There are indeed
many tricks contained in the pages of The Hierophant , but I would submit that these
tricks are far from its raison d'etre, or the assurance of its proper place in the history of
conjuring. One can now only barely detect the faint whisperings of what was once a
shouting voice. It is an unarguably useful addition to provide 91 new footnotes to the
material; but when one reads no less than three full pages of a new accounting of the
evolution and paternity of the modern advancements of the Spread Cull Controls, barely
if at all identified as new material by the slightest alteration of margins and no other
change in font or format, one comes face to face with the inescapable fact that the voice
of the original Hierophant has been irreparably muted if not silenced. Thank goodness
the publisher of the Hugard Magic Monthly reprints has not done the same; imagine
the horror of it! Were Hugard's crammed into the smelter and reduced to its
fundamental elements, the charm would have evaporated in the process, never to be
condensed or recaptured. While there will always be value in studying old tricks,
nevertheless as time goes on, no matter how many of the tricks in these books fade or
are swept aside and replaced with modern improvements, the splendor of the journal's
voice would still be there to savor.
But this editor has taken those years of publication, tossed the calendar pages in the air,
and re-sorted them into quaint categories by trick, by plot, by sleight. Some might say
that this makes the material more readily accessible to the student; some might say that
this transformation maintains the value of those few original copies held by collectors.
But others might say that a categorized index, much like William Broecker provided for
Hugard's Magic Monthly, would render the material fully accessible without tarnishing
the integrity of the original format; others might point out that the material has already
been reprinted in some form, and if print runs are limited, reproductions do little to
dilute the value of original editions.
Still some others might suggest that Mr.Racherbaumer's obsession is in fact for historical revisionism; perhaps he cannot bare to see his blunders and blusterings go out unprotected by hindsight, explanation, defense.
All in all, I would say the result is a tragedy for the historical record. And to make
matters still worse, the categorized table of contents lacks page numbers, the paper is of
inexpensive quality, the index pagination is completely off—all apparently faults of the
publisher, to add to the editor's odd choices. I suppose it is entirely the editor's option to
do with these pages as he will, but I cannot help but be shocked and saddened by his
choices, and by his disrespect for his own past, and his disregard for the interests of the
future.
And so, yes, Lorayne's sophomoric temper tantrum, excluded from the Tannen's
reprints, is included here, as is David Bendix's witty "Cardmanship," as is the notorious
excoriation of Alan Ackerman's first book, as is no less than thirty pages on the "Open
Prediction" effect/problem, and plenty of work with the now extinct Stik-Tack. Previous
readers will certainly be interested in Mr. Racherbaumer's newly minted four-page
defense of Marlo in the still ongoing story of the Marlo-Steranko battle. In what is
certainly the most timeless theoretical entry, students will find Rick Johnsson's original
essay on the Too-Perfect Theory, one of the most important theoretical concepts of 20th
century conjuring. If you lack original editions or the flawed but still largely preferable
Tannen's reprints, then you will have no choice but to purchase this volume in order to
enjoy its riches. It is a shame, however, that their brilliance has been so irrevocably
tarnished.
