Now You See Me, Now You Don't

Now you see me,

Now you don't.

Well erm.. Not really.

Good day everyone. Today we'll be discussing one of the most often used phrase in magic. Let's begin.

The phrase "Now you see me," oftentimes followed by "Now you don't" is used by magicians whenever they are doing a vanishing trick of sorts, them being the subject of the vanishing act themselves. Variations of the phrase replaces "me" with either "him", "her", "them", or "it" is used whenever the subject of the vanishing trick is an assistant, an audience, a group, or an object instead. The phrase has already been widely used by magicians dating back to at least the 1940s as magic performances were prevalent during those times. Moreover, the phrase has again been popularized by the hit 2013 movie Now You See Me, top-billed by Jesse Eisenberg and company, which (you guessed it) involves lots of magic and vanishing tricks. But aside from these, are there more than the phrase in history that meets the eye? Let's try to find out.

Unlike the word "Abracadabra", which is another phrase used in magic and has more than enough history that we can trace (we'll discuss this some other time), there aren't many connections that can be linked with the phrase "Now you see me". Interestingly however, there exists a passage in the bible that somehow mentions the same line. Reading the new revised standard version (NRSV) of John 16:16, we read the following:

"A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me."

If we are to check the bible further for passages before and after that line, it is implied Jesus was the one who spoke that line. Moreover, it is noteworthy to know that Jesus has been called many description, Thaumaturge being one of them. Thaumaturge means worker of wonders and performer of miracles. The same word which linguists tagged as synonymous to the word magician.

Unfortunately, as similar as the bible passage above is to the magic phrase in question, there isn't enough evidence linking that the two are one and the same. As we conclude the discussion, a question comes to mind. Does the phrase "Now you see me, now you don't" have a deeper history that warrants further study? Or it is just what it is, just a simple phrase magicians speak as they vanish all of a sudden.

As always, keep shufflin'.