Introduction

Jim Hagy's journey in magic began like many others - with a childhood encounter with a performer and a magic set for the holidays. But unlike most young enthusiasts, Jim's path took a remarkable turn when he began publishing "Mystics Quarterly" at age 11, launching what would become a distinguished six-decade career as one of magic's most respected historians.

As a member of the Inner Magic Circle with Gold Star and recipient of the 2023 Milbourne Christopher Foundation Literary Award, Jim has authored acclaimed works including "Early English Conjuring Collectors: James Savren and Henry Evanion," "Fair Tricks: The Magicians of the Columbian Exposition Chicago, 1893," and most recently, his groundbreaking two-volume work "Animal Wizards." His unique approach to magic history - focusing on the social context and audience relationships rather than methods - has established him as a singular voice in preserving and interpreting magic's past.

During our conversation on The Magic Book Podcast, Jim shared insights from his remarkable career, his latest research on animals in magic, and his ongoing mission to bridge magic history with broader cultural understanding.

The Precocious Publisher

Jim's entry into magic publishing began with what he now characterizes as "probably poor judgment." At age 11, he launched "Mystics Quarterly," which quickly gained international attention:

"My mother was an author and I was always from an early age interested in writing... because the magic community is so welcoming, pretty quickly had subscribers around the US and eventually in 11 foreign countries and advertisers from the large magic shops in the US and the UK and beyond."

The publication ran monthly for over six years during his elementary and secondary education, attracting contributions from magic's leading figures. Jim's approach was refreshingly honest about his strategy:

"A number of years ago, the Magic Collectors Association ran out of people to honor, I think, and so they picked Richard Kaufman and me... my premise then I think still stands, which is that being pathetic works. And I was as pathetic as possible. And it attracted lots of support from kind people."

Building Relationships with Magic's Legends

Jim's early connections with prominent figures like Milbourne Christopher came through a combination of direct correspondence and in-person encounters at venues like New York's Magician's Roundtable. His meeting with Christopher illustrates the magic community's remarkable accessibility:

"I called directory assistance... asked for Milbourne Christopher's number. I was provided that number and I called Milbourne Christopher and introduced myself as a 12-year-old interested in magic history and asked if I could meet him for five minutes. And he bettered that by saying that I should come to his house for the afternoon and see his library and chat."

This relationship, formed when Jim was just 12, continued for the rest of Christopher's life and exemplifies the mentorship culture that has sustained magic's historical community.

From Performer to Historian

While Jim performed semi-professionally through university, funding his education through magic, he ultimately chose a different path. His decision to stop performing professionally was driven by practical considerations:

"I suppose as passionate as I've been about magic, it's a really tough way to make a living. I mean, for every David Copperfield, there are hundreds if not thousands of aspiring professionals... who enjoyed magic and enjoyed audiences but never really thrived economically. So I was risk-averse."

His successful career as a global lawyer afforded extensive international travel, which became crucial to his historical research. Later, his transition to academic life teaching law provided even more opportunities to explore archives and collections worldwide.

A Unique Historical Approach

Jim's methodology sets him apart from other magic historians. Rather than focusing on methods or biographical details, he emphasizes social history and audience relationships:

"I'm more interested in the sort of social history of the magician in the context of their times and their successes and struggles, but also how audiences view magic... my own focus of my modest library, for example, is on books, 19th century, mostly books aimed at the public."

This approach leads him to examine how magic reflects broader cultural attitudes. He cites the example of the Rabbit Wringer effect to illustrate how audience sensibilities change over time:

"When I talk to students I teach an animal law and policy course, I describe to them what the Rabbit Wringer is... you have to think about from a mid-20th century perspective, and then from a 2025 perspective. I guess it's intended to be funny, and maybe it was... But why is it so funny? And does that endure today to the idea of squashing a live animal for the amusement of an audience."

Discovering Hidden Stories

Jim's books often emerge from unexpected discoveries. His work on Henry Evans Evanion began with a misfiled collection at the University of Texas:

"I was going through a file that was labeled Henry Ridgely Evans, who is an early 20th century magic author, and because I guess I'd misspent my youth, recognized that this was not Henry Ridgely Evans' handwriting... it was actually Evanion's writing. And it was a misfiled set of all the correspondence between Houdini and Evanion."

Similarly, "Fair Tricks" began with his spouse's interest in Chicago World's Fair ephemera, leading to discoveries about magicians from diverse backgrounds performing at the 1893 exposition. Jim found parallels between historical and contemporary issues:

"It really read from what could be today's newspapers. It was about curiosity about 'the other' if you will, about people from other places and immigrant sentiment and anti-immigrant sentiment and visa challenges."

The Art of Communication

Jim's book "Secrets Magicians Could Tell: The Art of Presenting ... You!" emerged from his teaching experiences and observations about how magic training enhances communication skills:

"I realized that really is from the fantastic but probably cruel beginning of starting as a magician... you have to get up in front of the audience and hopefully be heard audibly and make eye contact. But also the magic has to work... all these things are going on, which is a very complicated way to have a first experience appearing before an audience. So after that, if you get invited somewhere and all you have to do is talk, it seems simpler."

The Square Format Philosophy

Jim's distinctive square book format represents a deliberate publishing philosophy. Rather than pursuing traditional publishers, he maintains creative control:

"We could do what I've done over the many years, which is to publish privately, both for the magic audience and a little bit for the non-magic audience. Shorter cycle times, better control of the content, can design it the way we want... something that didn't look like it was in the normal shape, normal format."

Perennial Mystics Squared

His current periodical continues the tradition of encouraging diverse voices in magic history:

"The idea of 'Perennial Mystic Squared' was to celebrate those people and to encourage them to write something small and from a 2025 graphics format... have it be professionally designed, have it be in color, have it be on archival paper, have images each time and have it be spiffy from a physical production perspective."

The publication has attracted contributions from established and emerging writers, creating what Jim originally planned as one or two issues annually but has expanded to 14 numbers with seven parts each.

Animal Wizards: A Groundbreaking Study

Jim's latest and perhaps most significant work emerged from the intersection of his three primary interests:

"I'd been interested in magic and magic's history for 60-plus years now, had a career as a lawyer and then as an academic. I teach an animal law and policy course every semester to law students, and I'm passionate about animals and animal rights and animal welfare. So those three things collided."

The project challenged him to maintain objectivity while exploring sensitive territory:

"After 60-plus years at the fringes of the magic community, I learned something every single day in the three years of this project about the intersection between human magicians and what I call 'animal wizards,' non-human magicians in the 19th and early 20th centuries."

The Vanishing Birdcage Controversy

Jim's examination of controversial effects like The Vanishing Birdcage reveals how audience attitudes toward animal welfare evolved alongside magic:

"It was first performed by Buatier de Kolta in the 1870s and was an immediate hit... within a very short time, within a couple of years, de Kolta would begin to advertise on his broadsides that he was going to perform that popular, famous trick using an artificial bird. So it indicates that the audiences evidently were already sensitive to the experience that the bird was having."

His research into the 1921-22 British parliamentary investigations provides historical context for modern animal welfare discussions in entertainment.

Balancing Perspectives

Jim deliberately structured his animal books to avoid predetermined conclusions:

"I am hopeful in the main book that I've left the judgments to the individual reader... when I talk to non-magic audiences, to animal rights audiences, they read the book as my having an enormous bias toward animal rights... And when I talk to magic audiences, they think that I'm supportive of the magic community and am reserving judgment with respect to the experience of animals."

He contextualizes historical practices within their time periods:

"When you talk about the streets of London and livestock and abattoirs and whatnot, in the context of its time producing a rabbit from a hat that then goes home with you each night, hopefully, happy is pretty low impact compared to the 10,000 animals being trudged through the streets of London and ending up on somebody's food table."

The Rabbit and Hat Mystery

Even the most iconic image in magic - pulling a rabbit from a hat - remains historically unclear:

"I'm not sure that I've uncovered the solution. Jim Steinmeyer, for example, suggests that rabbits were obvious to come from hats because hats used to have fur linings... Eddie Dawes tries also, I think unsuccessfully, to get to the bottom of the genesis of rabbits in hats... many of the best magic scholars, magic historians, suggest that the rabbit and hat, while it was iconic, wasn't performed very often. And I stumbled on it being performed a lot."

Sleightly Astonishing: Connecting with Muggles

Jim's bimonthly column for Genii magazine aims to help magicians become better ambassadors for their art:

"I try to convince the reader, is that if we were interested in visual art and painting, we wouldn't assume that, you know, Ai Weiwei was going to sit down with us and jam with us... But the magic community, while we have lots of prominent people, if you go to magic events, they're present, they're accessible, they're generally very friendly."

The column encourages magicians to recognize their unique position as cultural interpreters while celebrating figures who made significant contributions despite magic not being their primary profession.

Looking Forward

Despite his extensive contributions, Jim maintains an ambitious agenda:

"I was asked by a student recently whether I'm done now in the sense that I've addressed each of the topics that I had in mind and I don't. I've got a long list... I want to die with a list of things I still want to do, right. I want to be engaged until the last minute."

His current projects include a biography of William Everhart, a hoop-rolling juggler who was his ancestor, and exploring "the business of magic, if you will, in the 19th century."

Connect with Jim Hagy

To connect with Jim or learn more about his work and "Perennial Mystics Squared," contact him at: reginaldscotbooks@comcast.net


Books and Publications Mentioned

Jim Hagy's Works:

  • "Early English Conjuring Collectors: James Savren and Henry Evanion" (1985)

  • (Expanded/revised ed., 2020)

  • "The One Young: William Henry Young and His Times" (1986)

  • "Magic for Free, 1887–1945" (1995)

  • "Fair Tricks: The Magicians of the Columbian Exposition Chicago, 1893" (2019)

  • "Secrets Magicians Could Tell: The Art of Presenting ... You!" (2021)

  • "The Instant Illusionist and the Cleveland Bunch: Dreams of a Vaudeville Life" (2023)

  • "Animal Wizards: A Critical History of Magicians' Most Trusting Assistants" (2025)

  • "Animal Wizards: An Insider's Guide" (2025)

  • "Perennial Mystics Squared" (2022 - ongoing periodical)


Books:

  • "The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin" by Harry Houdini (1908)

  • "The Discoverie of Witchcraft" by Reginald Scot (1584)


Magic Publications Referenced:

  • Mystics Quarterly (Jim's first publication, 1966-1972)

  • The Midget Magician (England)

  • Magic Cauldron (US)

  • Gibecière magazine

  • Genii magazine


Resources

Organizations and Events:


Libraries and Collections:


Timestamps

02:06: Jim's earliest experiences with magic 

02:49: Starting "Mystics Quarterly" at age 11 

04:06: Early publishing influencing his later career 

05:20: Writing to magic luminaries and building relationships 

05:29: Meeting Milbourne Christopher as a 12-year-old 

07:11: University education funded through magic and decision to stop performing 

08:53: International travel through law career and teaching 

10:26: Writing "Early English Conjuring Collectors" and the Evanion discovery 

13:46: Research approach focusing on social history and audiences 

16:11: Discovery leading to "Fair Tricks" about the 1893 World's Fair 

19:12: Origins of "Secrets Magicians Could Tell" 

22:22: Philosophy behind the square book format 

24:24: "Perennial Mystics Squared" aims and contributors 

26:02: Editorial standards and encouraging new voices 

27:57: Rejecting submissions - editorial philosophy 

29:56: Inspiration for "Animal Wizards" project 

33:16: The Vanishing Birdcage controversy and audience attitudes 

38:48: The mystery of rabbits and hats 

40:01: Balancing perspectives in animal welfare discussions 

44:01: "Sleightly Astonishing" column for Genii magazine 

47:46: Collecting philosophy and cherished books 

49:42: Which book he's proudest of 

50:54: Future projects and staying engaged

52:48: Contact information and connecting with readers