The seance of black magic

The seance of black magic, staged at the Variety Theatre in Moscow, is the central public event through which Woland and his retinue execute a devastating satire of Soviet society. It is a performance that, in its formal originality and audacity, breathes an air of artistic and spiritual freedom, combining laughter, caricature, and buffoonery with the most unguarded vulnerability. The seance is not merely a conjuring act but a deliberate inversion of official reality, a carnivalesque assault on the imposed normality of Soviet life.

The Performance and Its Spectacle

The seance begins with Woland, dressed in a marvellously cut tailcoat and a black half-mask, seated in an armchair that appears on stage from nowhere. His retinue includes the long, checkered Fagott (Koroviev) with a cracked pince-nez, and a fat black cat named Behemoth who walks on his hind legs and nonchalantly drinks water from a carafe. The master of ceremonies, Georges Bengalsky, introduces the act with clichéd patter about technique and exposure, but Woland and Fagott immediately undercut him, declaring that he has lied. The first trick involves a deck of cards that Fagott swallows and then reveals to be in the pocket of a spectator, Parchevsky, along with a summons for alimony. This is followed by a rain of money: Fagott fires a pistol, and white banknotes with genuine watermarks fall from the ceiling, causing the audience to scramble and grab. The smell of freshly printed money fills the theatre, and the crowd is seized with merriment and amazement. Bengalsky attempts to dismiss the money as mass hypnosis, but Fagott exposes him as a liar, and the cat Behemoth, at Fagott's command, tears off Bengalsky's head. Blood spurts from the neck, and the head cries for a doctor. The audience, after initial horror, begs for forgiveness, and Woland orders the head replaced. The cat puts it back without a scar, and Bengalsky is sent off with a packet of money, though he later suffers a breakdown.

The Ladies' Shop and the Exposure of Hypocrisy

After Bengalsky's removal, Fagott opens a "ladies' shop" on stage: Persian carpets, mirrors, display windows with Parisian dresses, hats, shoes, and perfume appear. A red-headed girl with a scar on her neck assists. Women from the audience exchange their old clothes for new ones, and the stage becomes a frenzy of consumption. A man even asks for something for his sick wife. The shop closes after a minute, and the stage returns to bareness. Then Arkady Apollonovich Sempleyarov, chairman of the Acoustics Commission, demands an exposure of the tricks. Fagott instead exposes Sempleyarov's own hypocrisy, revealing that he spent the previous evening with an actress, Militsa Andreevna Pokobatko, rather than at a meeting. Sempleyarov's young relation strikes him with an umbrella, and his wife shouts for the police. The cat Behemoth then barks for a march, and the orchestra plays an incredible, brash tune. The seance ends in chaos, with the police running to Sempleyarov's box and the stage suddenly empty as Fagott, Behemoth, and Woland vanish into air.

Carnivalesque Subversion and Social Critique

The seance is a pure example of the carnivalesque tradition that Bulgakov draws upon, as described by Mikhail Bakhtin in his study of Rabelais. It uses popular-festive comic images to express criticism, deep distrust of official truth, and the highest hopes and aspirations. The laughter liberates the gay truth of the world from the veils of gloomy lies spun by the seriousness of fear, suffering, and violence. The seance's reversals—the tearing off and replacing of heads, the transformation of money into mere paper, the exposure of a public figure's private lies—dethrone worldly absolutes and relativize the imposed reality of Soviet life. The settling of scores with the custodians of official literature and reality is part of this tradition. The seance is not just entertainment; it is a challenge to the rule of terror in literature and a demonstration that the normality of the world is imposed terror, which can be made visible and mocked.

Consequences and Aftermath

The seance has immediate and far-reaching consequences. The master of ceremonies Bengalsky is taken to a psychiatric hospital. The theatre's administration—director Styopa Likhodeev, findirector Rimsky, and administrator Varenukha—all vanish or flee. The next day, the theatre is besieged by a queue of thousands, and the investigation finds no trace of the magician or the contract. The bookkeeper Vassily Stepanovich Lastochkin, trying to deposit the box-office receipts, finds that the money has turned into foreign currency, leading to his arrest. The seance's magic money also causes chaos in the city: cab drivers find that ten-rouble bills turn into seltzer-bottle labels or bees. The seance thus becomes a catalyst for a broader unraveling of the social order, exposing the greed, corruption, and fragility of the system. It is a moment when the "other" world intrudes into the "normal" one, and the consequences are both comic and terrifying.