Talk:Hocus Pocus (magic)

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[edit] Move?

Shouldn't it be Hocus pocus (magic)? The article doesn't usually capitalize Pocus, so I'm not sure why it's capitalized in the title. NickelShoe 01:00, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Romans

"Another phrase from the Bible, possibly misunderstood by Romans who thought of Christians as an incestuous, cannibalistic cult (as described by Tacitus), might be from the holy ritual: hoc est poculum ("this is the cup"), a phrase from the Last Supper, used in Roman Catholic rituals."

This is rather entertaining idea that actual ROMANS could have misunderstood such a simple phrase as "hoc est poculum" pronounced in their own language, and distort it to the "hocus pocus". Another problem with this is that such a phrase distorted in antiquity is unlikely to contain 'h', as 'h' was completely silent in spoken Latin of the Christian period in antiquity, so it could not have been transferred to script and/or modern languages.

The presence of the 'h' in hocuspocus, and popularity of the word in European languages, make the derivation from Church Latin "hoc est corpus" plausible. 82.210.159.30 14:46, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wasn't Hocus Pocus the name of a real magician?

For example I find online at http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19991007 the following -

Hocus pocus is only slightly less of a mystery. It first appears as a the name of a juggler and conjurer in the seventeenth century. The term was common in juggling and other performances at the turn of the eighteenth century when the cleric Tillotson wrote, "In all probability these 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."

I have always been told by magicians that Hocus Pocus is the most famous magician of them all, because everybody knows his name.