In the middle ages Christian priests would recite “hoc est corpus”, meaning “this is the body”, during mass when turning bread into the body of Christ. Since nobody spoke or understood Latin, this chant was garbled into “hocus pocus”, which we still use when performing magic tricks today.
Hocus-pocus What’s the origin of the phrase ‘Hocus-pocus’? From the early 17th century onwards ‘hocus pocus’ (now more often spelled as a single hyphenated word) has been used as an incantation by conjurers when performing tricks. Conjurers didn’t limit themselves to the phrase hocus pocus in their stage patter. The first [feature that juggling consists …
