The Middle Ages are thought to be an age of wizards and magic. Medieval stories are filled with men like Merlin or saints who could perform incredible deeds. However, even medieval people liked the simpler magical tricks – how to make an apple roll around by itself; a dead fish to jump out of the frying pan; turn a white rose into a red one; or have a candle where the flame could not be blown out.
A few books from the Middle Ages can tell us more about these magic tricks, such as the Secretum philosophorum, which was written by anonymous author at the beginning of the fourteenth-century. At the beginning it explains “there are contained in it certain secrets which, by vulgar opinion, are impossible, but which philosophers consider to be necessary and secrets. Now, contained in this book are the secrets of all the arts.”
While the Secretum philosophorum might sound to be very mysterious, a modern reader might find it to be more a medieval version of The Dangerous Book for Boys – it contains all sorts of fun stuff, like how to make different colours of ink, riddles, and creating scientific experiments like how to make a soap bubble. The anonymous author even creates simple simple cyphers for to disguise a few words, so that his reader will have to figure it out.