When Miguel de Cervantes met Harry Houdini

It may be that Miguel de Cervantes had a lot of free time while he waited to embark on the galley

that was to take him to the battle of Lepanto, or that this idleness occurred during the five years after his captivity in Algiers.

Long periods of inactivity that he would have occupied with chatter, games, and other pastimes to make his tedium tolerable.

There he would have met tricksters like the ones he would later portray in the twenty-seventh chapter of the second part of

.

In it he talks about a certain Ginés de Pasamonte who has a monkey with divinatory abilities of the past and the present.

The animal's abilities are clarified by Cervantes, upon discovering Ginés' method, which is none other than learning about the life and miracles of its inhabitants upon arrival in the town.

Once on stage, he puts that knowledge into play with winks and imperceptible signals to his monkey, in response to questions from the tavern patrons.

Clues similar to those that Wilhelm von Osten would use with his horse Clever Hans, to demonstrate his ability to perform mathematical operations.

In the case of Harry Houdini, his encounter with the art of haunting originated in childhood, searching for a way to survive.

He learned fast and it didn't take long for him to become a great artist.

After a visit to England, when his international fame was already established, he met Theodore Roosevelt Jr. in 1914 on his trip to New York aboard the

, weeks before the First World War.

Any excuse was good to distract the passengers on these long journeys.

And having a fortune teller was an ideal option to forget about boredom or dizziness.

In a session given by Houdini, Roosevelt asked about the itinerary of his recent scientific expedition to Brazil.

Something few people knew about.

The magician was able to get a detailed map from the summoned "spirits", to the astonishment of the president, little given to believing in extrasensory communications.

The explanation, which it seems Roosevelt did not get to know, was fortuitous when Houdini bought his ticket and the ticket agent told him that there were other personalities on board, specifically, the former president of the United States.

Knowing that

He was going to publish a scoop on his trip to Brazil, he got advance information thanks to his contacts, assuming that it could be useful to him, and that he used as if it were the Ginés de Pasamonte of the 20th century.

Between the two, between Cervantes and Houdini, more of the same, which is legion.

Like the parents of the writer Jack London, she —Florence Wellman—, fond of spiritualism, and he —William Chaney—, earning a living as a fake astrologer.

Houdini lived on magic without mystifying all his life and Cervantes invented a special one for others.

And we?

How much illusion of the fictitious do we assume as an element of truth?

Will we do like Nancy Reagan, wife of the fortieth American president, or the Princess of Wales, mother of the heirs to the English crown, who having direct access to the most advanced knowledge of her time by consulting the

or the

, They consulted with some astrologers from walking around the house?

Nothing exceptional if we take into account that alleged prophecies by Nostradamus are published annually, the main consequence of which is to confirm that quackery has not disappeared.

It could be said that little of this is important, because who is going to use an astrological prediction as an indication of guilt for a man accused of murder, and for that matter, an interpretation of the dreams of a potential witness.

But our society is still immersed in all kinds of magic,

and visionaries, of which a meager sample are the Esoteric Fairs that are held in Madrid.

Something not so remote from the

from economically less developed countries in Africa who were consulted by political leaders such as Jean Bedel Bokassa or Mobutu Sese Seko.

Let us be wary of magic used by casters that connect to other worlds.

When magical thinking is allowed into our heads, in any of its forms, whether fantastical, religious, or expert, the mechanisms of how the world works become opaque and our decisions become arbitrary and sometimes fatal.

It is known that many of the events that seem improbable to us have a rational explanation and occur with some regularity.

In the words of statistician Persi Diaconis: “the really special day would be the one in which nothing unusual happened.”

Cervantes and Houdini help us think about natural causes before accepting that the extraordinary in this world comes from someone else.

And let's not forget, as Jorge Luis Borges reminds us, that true magic is not in dreams or in other worlds, but in the wakefulness that we all share, if possible, as awake as possible.

Azucena López Márquez

is a journalist in the communication department of the National Museum of Natural Sciences and

is a researcher at the same center.

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