Witgeest, Simon | Entertainments to while away the winter hours

Witgeest, Simon

Het verbeterd en vermeerderd natuurlyk toover-boek, of 't Nieuw speel-toneel der konsten … t'Amstelredam: Jan ten Hoorn, 1701

8vo (152 x 101 mm). Numerous woodcut text illustrations and diagrams (several handcolored); lacks half-title and final blank Ff8, lower right corners of pp. 73–76 torn away with minor losses to text, faint dampstaining in a few quires. Old brown paper boards, cloth spine; upper board detached, lower board gone.

A new and improved edition of the Witgeest's Het nieuwe Toneel der Konsten (The New Theatre of Arts). Some of the recipes such as one to improve memory border on the impossible, while others such as a recipe to lather winter hands with palm oil or chicken fat daily are quite commonsensical. Some appeal to the imagination, and one would be tempted to try them if the ingredients and the possible results were not so dangerous. For example, a recipe prescribing a mixture of vinegar, egg white, and quicksilver to make hands "fire proof" could have led to mercury poisoning. Or a recipe "to write in human skin, which cannot be undone"—i.e, tattoos made with a needle and gunpowder, minium, or smalt.

Subsequent editions appeared in Dutch and German throughout the eighteenth century with the title altered as here to The Improved and Extended Natural Magic Book, or The New Theatre of Arts, in which the sections on glass, drawing, and etching were omitted in favor of more magic tricks, practical jokes, riddles, and entertainment with mathematics and astronomy.

Simon Witgeest is most likely a pseudonym – Witgeest literally means "white spirit" in Dutch, and it probably served to indicate to readers that the recipes were innocent, rather than black magic. In the preface the author stated that the book was intended to shorten winter nights, and certainly with additional magic tricks and other modes of entertainment it did just that.