Dear Friends:
As springtime approaches, many celebrate with symbols of renewal – none more universal than the humble egg. But beyond its seasonal significance, the egg has played a remarkable, albeit mythical, role in history, espionage, and magic. Stories of secret messages hidden within eggs have captivated magicians, scientists, and even government agencies. Yet, as Judge Gary Brown cracks open this tale, we find a lesson not just in deception, but in the pursuit of the impossible.
As our thoughts turn to Spring, some celebrate holidays that use eggs to symbolize reawakening. Most celebrants remain blissfully unaware that this humble icon bears a fabled secret used to thwart medieval Inquisitors, colonial-era troops and modern spies. The secret, and its denouement, caused a scandal in the U.S., leading a federal Government agency to resort to near-delusional falsehoods to justify its actions. Meanwhile, magicians, scientists, poultry farmers, witches and evangelists have pursued and shared this method with extraordinary vigor.
“Secret Egg Writing” was documented in Giambattista della Porta’s Natural Magic (1558), in which the Italian polymath, known as the “professor of secrets” describes how the technique was utilized to smuggle messages to prisoners of the Inquisition. Della Porta’s explication proves remarkable–employing a combination of chemicals, messages may be invisibly inscribed upon the shell of a hardboiled egg. Cracking and peeling the seemingly innocent egg, the reader will find the message clearly etched in black on the hardened albumen. Similar descriptions of enciphered eggs frequently appear in popular histories of espionage.
For magicians, secret egg writing offers an incomparably powerful tool. Consider this–during a performance, the performer hands a participant an apparently ordinary hard-boiled egg, then presides over a seemingly random event (in its least imaginative but most common iteration, the selection of a playing card.) The volunteer then cracks and peels the egg, reading the words or symbols impossibly appearing in black on its shiny white interior. It’s a match! Volunteer flabbergasted! Cue the wild applause!
Reflecting on this miracle, one can readily imagine why magicians have endeavored to perfect this method. Houdini’s personal scrapbooks contain several descriptions of the technique. Countless magic books and magazines have offered instructions and applications, including, somewhat ironically, Dunninger’s 100 Houdini Tricks You Can Do.
Before you join the pursuit, be advised that perfecting the method is not without cost. The techniques for egg writing can be difficult, requiring vast amounts of time and experimentation. Instructions include time-consuming treatments using obscure ingredients such as alum, powdered oak galls, vitriol solution, wine, and an archaic red dye made from Brazilwood. In the May 1939 issue of The Linking Ring, Joe Berg, having long sought the workings of “Spirit Writing on Boiled Egg,” published a method, but noted “I am too lazy to try it. I will let you find out if it works.”
Well, Joe, it doesn’t. Secret egg writing has never worked. Not once. Not for anybody. Researchers have cataloged the many failed efforts of scientists, magicians and even della Porta himself to obtain results. (See, e.g., Coughlin, “The Egg and the Inquisition,” www.logbuch-wissensgeschichte.de). So, it wasn’t used by those resisting the Papal Inquisition, British colonialism or German counterespionage agents, though each of these claims has been repeatedly documented.
Assuming he tried, Houdini never got it to work (and Dunninger’s book might well be retitled 99 Houdini Tricks You Can Do.) And the besieged federal agency mentioned earlier wasn’t the NSA or the CIA, but rather the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which in the 1960s published an egg writing method to encourage children to eat more eggs, but later disavowed its own advice, stating that while its staffers had childhood recollections of the phenomenon, it no longer worked on modern eggs.
Secret egg writing constitutes an unusual, though far from unique, instance in which the one deceived by a method is the aspiring performer rather than its ostensible audience. The technique occupies an inglorious place among the scores of magic tricks and consumer miracles that, through inadequate testing, thoughtlessness or poor design, are destined for failure. Consider Adams’s “Mystic Smoke from Fingertips,” a sticky, chemical goo that (at least for me) worked exactly once, and would have been more appropriately titled “Rubbery Cobwebs from Fingertips” on a good day. “The Wonder Mouse,” which has never, as promised in ad copy, “run all over the magician,” does very little other than modestly enrich polished pitchmen. In some senses, such hustles bear comparison to confidence games in which a purported confederate or profiteer becomes the victim, as sale of the method is the deception. And yet conjurers, as voracious consumers of the enigmatic, have much to learn from the paradigmatic failure of undetectable ovum etching.
First, there are the lessons that follow from any unsuccessful magic endeavor. As magicians, we will necessarily encounter such moments, and must learn from them. Elsewhere, I have explored how we can learn more from our worst shows than from our best (see The Inventive Magician’s Handbook with Props at 185-87). Failure drives us to develop coping mechanisms, like outs, fireproofing and lifeboat effects that constitute necessary skills for any performer. Relatedly, in the face of misfires, we must continually devise improvements which, though famously unsuccessful in the case of “secret egg writing,” usually yields better results.
Second, it is worth reflecting on the reason that magicians have been so very determined to perfect and disseminate this method. As described, the encrypted egg represents a true miracle – the sheer impossibility of producing something from inside an organic, living object. Egg writing can be viewed as conceptually similar to Malini’s production of a banknote from inside a lemon, a powerful magic effect. (That the spectator reveals the egg message could render it even more impactful.) The same can be said for other “duds” in the magic world: “Mystic Smoke,” drawing from the conceit of a barehanded wizard producing smoke and flames, has been effectively replicated in recent years by Shin Lim and others using high-tech gizmos. “The Wonder Mouse” highlights both the desirability and the difficulty of animation effects – as one might witness with Teller’s incomparable “Red Ball.” Thus, as a source of inspiration, egg writing has something to offer, as it gives us reason to dream.
Finally, the scrambled debacle of clandestine egg inscription reminds us that secrets gleaned from the vast, untidy literature of magic may prove unworkable or may be ill-suited to certain contexts, performances, venues or spectators. By extension, digital age magicians deluged with endless offers for the newest, slickest, most perfect miracle must remain dubious – especially when promised effect is so good that you want it to be true. Always remember that advertising claims may be exaggerated, and secrets you acquire or discover simply may not work. This recognition may help avoid abject failure, embarrassment, or even worse.
In his wonderful book, Making Magic, master magician Martin Lewis recounts an adventure with Harry Anderson. After discovering techniques by which a barehanded performer could trigger an animal trap barehanded while escaping harm, the pair spent a day traveling to hardware stores, acquiring several devices. Over lunch – and drinks – they repeatedly set one of the traps, triggering it with various objects. The steel jaws shattered several plastic cocktail stirrers and a waitress’s pencil. They set the trap again while Harry contemplated trying the technique he had unearthed. Martin objected:
I pointed out that there are tricks in print that just don’t work. For example: writing on a hard-boiled egg with a solution of alum is supposed to look invisible from the outside but visible on the actual egg, but it doesn’t work. Someone wrote it up without actually trying it and then others republished it, but it never worked to start with. I had the same feeling about the trap.
It was time to go. Harry stood up and said “Ah, screw it,” and plunged his hand into the trap. The deadly steel jaws snapped shut and Harry issued a blood curdling scream. Pause. He looked up at everybody, then raised his trapped hand and said, “I guess I’ll have to gnaw my hand off now.” We exited hastily.
Anderson eventually incorporated the stunt into his stage act, a messy, distressing affair involving a comedy ending using a fake, severed hand. According to Mike Caveney’s Wise Guy, the ending served to prove that Anderson “was all right. Crazy, but all right.”
Though the ad copy for Wise Guy promised to tip “Skunk Trap,” certain details, such as the precise trap needed to attempt this feat, have been omitted, a wise editorial decision. After all, if “Secret Egg Writing” has taught us anything, it’s this–when it comes to magic methodology, you shouldn’t believe everything you read.
Judge Gary Brown, a long-time friend of the Magic & Mystery School, has grown oddly fascinated with published magical methods and commercial releases that seem unlikely to deceive, unimaginably impractical or are otherwise ill-suited for their intended purposes. He would love to hear from those magicians who have encountered such phenomena and would like to share them. You can reach him through his website: https://judgebrownmagic.com.