{"id":3567,"date":"2011-08-18T06:00:34","date_gmt":"2011-08-18T13:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/?p=3567"},"modified":"2015-01-27T11:19:19","modified_gmt":"2015-01-27T18:19:19","slug":"hocus-pocus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/2011\/08\/18\/hocus-pocus\/","title":{"rendered":"Hocus Pocus"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This was an interesting little tidbit I heard the other day…<\/p>\n

Have you ever wondered about the origin of “hocus pocus”,\u00a0the phrase commonly uttered by magicians?<\/p>\n

Well, the story I recently heard was that it came from a corruption of the words of the Latin Mass:<\/p>\n

“hoc<\/strong>\u00a0(enim)\u00a0est<\/strong> corpus<\/strong> meum”<\/em>
\n“This is my body”<\/em><\/p>\n

It sounded reasonable, but I went and did a little bit of digging…<\/p>\n

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) says that this explanation was the conjecture of John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury. It can be found in his rather nasty sermon in 1694:<\/p>\n

“In all probability those common juggling words of ‘hocus pocus’ are nothing else but a corruption of ‘hoc est corpus’, by way of ridiculous imitation of the priests of the Church of Rome in their trick of Transubstantiation.”<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

It’s\u00a0possible that the Archbishop is right here, but it’s clear that he isn’t exactly the most impartial judge!<\/p>\n

It has been suggested instead that the phrase is simply “faux Latin”, a collection of nonsense words conjured up out of thin air \ud83d\ude09 to aid the magician in his stagecraft. \u00a0I’ve found references to a performer of the 1620s\u00a0who called himself “Hocus Pocus” and who used the following incantation in his act:<\/p>\n

\u00a0“Hocus pocus, tontus talontus, vade celeriter jubeo.”<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, there’s a lack of definitive evidence to confirm with any real certainty the origin of this phrase – there really are quite a wide range of possibilities. Still, speculation is fun \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was an interesting little tidbit I heard the other day… Have you ever wondered about the origin of “hocus pocus”,\u00a0the phrase commonly uttered by magicians? Well, the story I recently heard was that it came from a corruption of the words of the Latin Mass: “hoc\u00a0(enim)\u00a0est corpus meum” “This is my body” It sounded reasonable, but I went and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[339,2969,338,337],"class_list":["post-3567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","tag-etymology","tag-featured","tag-latin-mass","tag-magic"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3567"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54620,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3567\/revisions\/54620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}