Description: Rare, Historic Vintage cdv image of May Heller, Second Sight Seer, by the Star Photograph Gallery between the yrs 1882 and 1887 - by photographer C.L.Weed - Detroit,MI. Heller, May. Carte de visite of May Heller, “Second Sight Seer.” Detroit, Star Photograph Gallery, ca. 1884. Likely a souvenir portrait of this mind reader, of whom little is known. Her name and title stamped on the mount. Very good. Was she the daughter or relative of Robert Heller the famous magician. This image of May Heller was taken apx. 6-8yrs after his death. Or did she just change her name to capitalize on his name? Much more information on the History of magic and second-sight-seer below: Robert Heller, original name William Henry Palmer, (born c. 1830, England—died Nov. 28, 1878, Philadelphia), British-born magician who popularized conjuring in the United States. Trained as a musician, Heller turned to magic after he saw a performance by the French magician Robert-Houdin in 1848.Heller settled in the United States, where he found success as a magician in the 1860s. At first an imitator of his more famous contemporaries, Heller eventually emerged as an entertaining and witty performer whose most famous act was a second-sight (mind-reading) presentation..-britannica.com/biography/Robert-Heller On November 26th, 1878, Heller along with assistant Haidee Heller (who he advertised as his step-sister, but most historians believe they were not related) About 1868 Mr . Heller returned to England and gave a series of exhibitions in what Is now known las the Folly Theatre , London . His half-sister , whom he had left a child , had now developed Into a handsome woman , and It was decided that she should assist him in that portion of his performances known as second sight . After performing for some time In London thoy started on a tour around the world . They went direct to Australia , where they met with success and returned by the way of Java and India , performing on the route overland to their home .-New York Clipper,7 december 1878 Magicians, Sorcerers, and SeersPerformers of the impossible. "One of the features of Robert Heller's act was his presentation of Second Sight. He claimed to have invented the illusion, though that is not exactly correct. Robert-Houdin had been performing it long before Heller, in fact the first time Robert Heller had seen it was when Houdin came to London to perform. And Chevalier Pinnetti was performing Second Sight long before Robert-Houdin. So Heller's claim to have invented the effect was more bragging for promotional purposes than truth. The above poster shows Heller performing Second Sight with his assistant, the image is in the top center section of the poster. Robert Heller did contribute to the act in a significant way however. His assistant Haidee Heller, sat upon a sofa while Heller held up hidden objects and Haidee correctly divined what they were. Most of the performers of the time who presented this type of act used a similar method. Newspapers often printed exposures claiming an elaborate code words were used. But it was when there was no dialog that audiences and magicians alike were dumbfounded. Even though, they did not speak a word, still Haidee Heller knew the answers to various questions or revealed hidden objects and so forth"=themagicdetective.com "Second Sight, or Two Person Mental Act is an act of two partners who seemingly are able to know one another's thoughts. Typically, one of the partners is Blindfolded while the other one goes out into the audience getting items for the blindfolded partner to identify. The item is either handed to the person or something is whispered. This is often referred to as clairvoyance or telepathy by psychics. A method was reported in Reginald Scot in his classic treatise, The Discoverie of Witchcraft and was performed in 1831 by the "Double-sighted Phenomenon," an eight-year-old Scottish boy named Louis Gordon M'Kean. While blindfolded and facing away from the audience, he could identify objects and repeat what others had spoken with a whispered at a distance of a hundred yards. The first use of the term "second sight" was by John Henry Anderson around 1838 for his magic act that featured his blindfolded daughter that he billed as "the Second-Sighted Sybil." Anderson would go into the audience to get objects for his daughter to reveal. English female magician Georgiana Elizabeth Eagle performed her second sight act as "The Mysterious Lady" and "Gilliland Card" from 1841 to 1886. Robert-Houdin's was also doing a second sight act with his son around 1846 in Paris.-geniimagazine.com/ "SECOND SIGHT, a term denoting the opposite of its apparent significance, meaning in reality the seeing, in vision, of events beforethey occur. “Foresight” expresses the meaning of second sight, which perhaps was originally so called because normal vision was regarded as coming first, while supernormal vision is a secondary thing, confined to certain individuals. Though we hear most of the “second sight” among the Celts of the Scottish Highlands (it is much less familiar to the Celts of Ireland), this species of involuntary prophetic vision, whether direct or symbolical, is peculiar to no people. Perhaps our earliest notice of symbolical second sight is found in the Odyssey, where Theoclymenus sees a shroud of mist about the bodies of the doomed Wooers, and drops of blood distilling from the walls of the hall of Odysseus. The Pythia at Delphi saw the blood on the walls during the Persian War; and, in the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius, blood and fire appear to Circe in her chamber on the night before the arrival of the fratricidal Jason and Medea. Similar examples of symbolical visions occur in the Icelandic sagas, especially in Njala, before the burning of Njal and his family. In the Highlands, and in Wales, the chief symbols beheld are the shroud, and the corpse candle or other spectral illumination. The Rev. Dr Stewart, of Nether Lochaber, informed the present writer that one of his parishioners, a woman, called him to his door, and pointed out to him a rock by the sea, which shone in a kind of phosphorescent brilliance. The doctor attributed the phenomenon to decaying sea-weed, but the woman said, “No, a corpse will be laid there to-morrow.” This, in fact, occurred; a dead body was brought in a boat for burial, and was laid at the foot of the rock, where, as Dr Stewart found, there was no decaying vegetable matter. Second sight flourished among the Lapps and the Red Indians, the Zulus and Maoris, to the surprise of travellers, who have recorded the puzzling facts. But in these cases the visions were usually “induced,” not “spontaneous,” and should be considered as “clairvoyance” (q.v.). Ranulf Higdon's Polychronicon (14th century) describes Scottish second sight, adding that strangers “setten their feet upon the feet of the men of that londe for to see such syghtes as the men of that londe doon.” This method of communicating the vision is still practised, with success, according to the late Dr Stewart. The present writer once had the opportunity to make an experiment, but to him the vision was not imparted. (For the method see Kirk's Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies, 1691, 1815, 1893.) It is, by some, believed that if a person tells what he has seen before the event occurs he will lose the faculty, and recently a second-sighted man, for this reason, did not warn his brother against taking part in a regatta, though he had foreseen the accident by which his brother was drowned. Where this opinion prevails it is, of course, impossible to prove that the vision ever occurred. There are many seers, as Lord Tarbat wrote to Robert Boyle, to whom the faculty is a trouble, “and they would be rid of it at any rate, if they could.” Perhaps the visions most frequently reported are those of funerals, which later occur in accordance with “the sight,” of corpses, and of “arrivals” of persons, remote at the moment, who later do arrive, with some distinctive mark of dress or equipment which the seer could not normally expect, but observed in the vision. Good examples in their own experience have been given to the present writer by well-educated persons. Some of the anecdotes are too surprising to be published without the names of the seers. A fair example of second sight is the following from Balachulish. An aged man of the last generation was troubled by visions of armed men in uniform, drilling in a particular field near the sea. The uniform was not “England's cruel red,” and he foresaw an invasion. “It must be of Americans,” he decided, “for the soldiers do not look like foreigners.” The Volunteer movement later came into being, and the men drilled on the ground where the seer had seen them. Another case was that of a man who happened to be sitting with a boy on the edge of a path in the quarry. Suddenly he caught the boy and leaped aside with him. He had seen a runaway trolly, with men in it, dash down the path; but there were no traces of them below. “The spirits of the living are powerful to-day,” said the percipient in Gaelic, and next day the fatal accident occurred at the spot. These are examples of what is, at present, alleged in the matter of second sight. “The sight” may, or may not, be preceded or accompanied by epileptic symptoms, but this appears now to be unusual. A learned minister lately made a few inquiries on this point in his parish, at the request of the present writer. His beadle had “the sight” in rich measure: “it was always preceded by a sense of discomfort and anxiety,” but was not attended by convulsions. Out of seven or eight seers in the parish, only one was not perfectly healthy and temperate. A well-known seer, now dead, whom the writer consulted, was weak of body, the result of an accident, but seemed candid, and ready to confess that his visions were occasionally failures. He said that “the sight” first came on him in the village street when he was a boy. He saw a dead woman walk down the street and enter the house that had been hers. He gave a few examples of his foresight of events, and one of his failure to discover the corpse of a man drowned in the loch. The phenomena, as described, may be classed under “clairvoyance,” “premonition,” and “telepathy” (q.v.), with a residuum of symbolical visions. In these, “corpse candles” and spectral lights play a great part, but, in the region best known to the writer, the “lights” are visible to all, even to English tourists, and are not hallucinatory. The conduct of the lights is brilliantly eccentric, but, as they have not been studied by scientific specialists, their natural causes remain unascertained. It is plain that there is nothing peculiar to the Celts in second sight; but the Gaelic words for it and the prevailing opinion indicate telepathy, the action of “the spirits of the living” as the main agents. Yet, in cases of premonition, this explanation is difficult. Conceivably an engineer, in 1881, was thinking out a line of railway from Oban to Balachulish, at the moment when four or five witnesses were alarmed by the whizz and thunder of a passing train on what was then the road, but was later (1903) usurped by the railway track. (For this amazing anecdote the writer has the first-hand evidence of a highly educated percipient.) If the speculation of the engineer was “wired on,” telepathically, to the witnesses, then telepathy may account for the premonition, which, in any case, is a good example of collective second sight. That second sight has died out, under the influence of education and newspapers, is an averment of popular superstition in the south."-wiki/1911_Encyclopædia_Britannica/Second_Sight Image meas. apx. 2 1/2" x 4 1/8". Judge condition of images from scan but please ask any and all questions before bidding as I want you to bid with confidence. These are historical images documenting a bygone era ... Shipping includes insurance and signature confirmation On multiple purchases please wait for invoice before paying as I combine items to save you money on shipping. Feedback will always be left once it is received. Note - International buyers: I use the Global Shipping program because ebay requires that I have a tracking # on all sales to protect both buyer and seller. Please consider the cost of shipping before bidding on an item. Thank you. Thanks for looking and please check out my other auctions and eBay Store. New images are listed often so come back soon.
Price: 450 USD
Location: Royal Oak, Michigan
End Time: 2025-01-10T22:20:54.000Z
Shipping Cost: N/A USD
Product Images
Item Specifics
Restocking Fee: No
Return shipping will be paid by: Buyer
All returns accepted: Returns Accepted
Item must be returned within: 30 Days
Refund will be given as: Money Back
Region of Origin: US
Framing: Matted
Country/Region of Manufacture: United States
Size Type/Largest Dimension: Small (Up to 7")
Listed By: Dealer or Reseller
Date of Creation: 1880-1889
Color: Sepia
Photo Type: CDV
Subject: magic
Time Period Manufactured: Vintage & Antique (Pre-1940)
Original/Reprint: Original Print
Type: Photograph
Format: Carte de Visite (CDV)