Conjuring the magic in New York's past

New York

ON the third floor of a tenement in Hell's Kitchen, the sorceress awaits. The walls of her lair are ochre, the curtains green crushed velvet. Books of arcane knowledge with titles such as Talking to the Dead line one wall from floor to ceiling.

Customers file in. The sorceress wears a black velvet cape. Her dark hair hangs to her waist. She commands the spirits of the dead and reads cards with uncanny accuracy.

It is, in one sense, just a show. The sorceress is a magician named Belinda Sinclair; her visitors - 10 people make a full house - have paid US$65 or more to watch an intimate performance, A Magicienne Among the Spirits, in a secret location.

But it is also a history seminar on women and magic, and on the mediums and clairvoyants and psychic healers - some scammers, some benevolent - that first flourished in New York more than a century …