h 2 1 • "I will speak of a man . . . that went about in King James's time and long since . . . who called himself 'The King's Majesty's most excellent Hocus Pocus,' and was so called because at the playing of every trick he used to say: 'Hocus-pocus, tontus talontus, vade celeriter, jubeo,' a dark composure of words, to blinde the eyes of the beholders, to make his Trick pass the more currently without discovery, because when the eye and the ear of the beholder are both earnestly busied, the Trick is not so easily discovered, nor the Imposture discerned." -- Thomas Ady, A Candle in the Dark (1655) • "Kay took off Merlyn's hat and put it on Sir Ector, and Sir Ector said, 'Well, bless my soul, now I am a nigromancer. Hocus-Pocus." -- T.H White, The Once and Future King (19 9) • From Moliere, Tartuffe (1669), translated by Richard Wilbur (1961): Are you so dazed by this man's hocus-pocus That all the world, save him, is out of focus? • From Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, Faust (1908), translated by Walter Kaufmann (1961): You have the brazen impudence To do your hocus-pocus here? Figure 24. Doctor Johannes Faust and Mephistopheles from Christopher Marlowe, Tragic Historie of D. Faust (16 1).