VENTRILOQUIST HISTORY Ventriloquism is almost as old as the world, or at least as old as intelligible spoken language, but just when and where in the dim and misty ages of the past it had its origin will forever re main unknown. Unlike other arts it was not brought to perfection through the slow develop ment and accretion of years. From its very nature it must have sprung into existence full grown, like Venus from the sea. Under various guises its practice may be traced by the student in those venerable chronicles which faintly echo the long-vanished life of antiquity. Although proof positive is wanting of the fact, it is fair to assume that many of the occurrences involving the assistance of an apparently super natural voice, by which many of the old supersti tions were fostered among the early races, were feats of ventriloquism. Such marvels are inex plicable, if they are not pure fiction, except as the work of deception through the aid of ventriloquism. So common indeed at one time was this belief in a " second voice," or " familiar spirit," as it was often called, that it took the form of divination by which the supposed spirit was evoked and con sulted as to the right course of conduct on impor tant occasions; and this divination, which was practiced in a variety of ways among the differ ent semi-barbaric races of the ancient world, can be traced through a long period of time. By the Mosaic Law, which was given about fifteen hundred years before Christ, the Jews were forbidden from consulting those having familiar spirits. So accustomed, however, were the Hebrews, who had evidently become ac quainted with the voice during their captivity in Egypt, with this mode of divination that one of their prophets compares it to the power of sancti fied utterance where he says (Isaiah 29: 4): " And thy voice shall be as one that hath a famil iar spirit out of the ground, and thy speech shall whisper out of the dust." Just where the Egyptians obtained their knowl edge of the art is uncertain, but in the perform ance of the " mysteries " which accompanied their worship of Osiris, the judge of the dead in the lower world, a seemingly unearthly voice, proceeding either from the earth or from overhead, played no unimportant part. Inasmuch as the voices described were such as have always been peculiarly identified with ventriloquism, the prac tice of this art by unscrupulous priests would seem to afford a natural solution of the mystery. This explanation might also be applied to the phenomenon attending the dawning of a new day upon the colossal statue of Memnon, which stood near Thebes in Egypt on the bank of the Nile, and became renowned as the " Vocal Memnon." According to ancient tradition, this statue when first touched by the rays of the rising sun emitted a musical tone, like the snapping of a harp string, which the imaginative Greeks conceived to be the voice of Memnon greeting his mother Eos (the dawn). Although the particular cause and char acter of the sounds have never been satisfactorily explained, the state of expectancy with which the silent and probably awe-struck worshipers awaited the sunrise, and their sublime faith in the reality of the phenomenon, were distinctly favor able to the production of a ventriloquial illusion by an attendant priest. Mention is made in the Acts of the Apostles (16 : 16), of a young1 woman with a familiar spirit meeting the Apostles in the city of Philippi in Macedonia. Such divination is also referred to by St. Chrysostom and other early Christian fathers; and in the East, where it has been practiced for upward of three thousand years, it is still not uncommon. |
