From the January 5th article "Real Magic" by Lauren Collee in The Baffler:
As a magician, Henning was loved and admired throughout his career for leading magic “away from the tuxedo approach” and reinjecting the craft with a sense of mischief and wonder. Having initially studied psychology (with an emphasis on hypnosis), he abandoned medical school to train with magic greats like Dai Vernon (“The Professor”) and Tony Slydini. By the late 1970s, Henning’s star was rising. His magic-musical theatre show Spellbound had been a Broadway hit. He performed Harry Houdini’s water-torture escape trick live on NBC for the first time since Houdini himself pulled it off, and made a live elephant disappear and then reappear onstage. He did magic for the Reagans, and designed illusions for Michael Jackson and Earth, Wind and Fire concerts.
But those who worked with Henning directly were growing frustrated with the magician’s increasingly obsessive interest in Transcendental Meditation. While preparations for his new stage show were underway, Henning would frequently pause all activity so that he could mediate for hours on end. Often he would instruct everyone else to pause and meditate too, so that the collective energy they generated together might allow him to successfully levitate in the air; a feat he hoped to perform as part of the show. Exasperated, his long-time technical director Glenn Priest walked out mid-rehearsal in 1983. Three years later, to the chagrin of his fans, Henning himself sold his illusions to David Copperfield and other magicians, and permanently quit the world of fake magic to devote himself, full-time, to the real magic of Transcendental Meditation.
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