Conjuring
To conjure originally meant to call up spirits or practice
magic arts, but in the course of time a secondary meaning of
sleight of hand displaced the earlier meaning, and the term
now indicates trickery or deception (usually for entertainment).
In the United States, the term magic is usually used for conjuring,
although this too originally had an occult meaning. The
blurring of the occult and stage magic occurred in the late nineteenth
century when so many mediums passed off stage illusions
as genuine Spiritualist phenomena.
Sources
Evans, Henry Ridgeley. The Old and New Magic. Chicago
Open Court Publishing, 1909.
