hocus-pocus

A phrase used (by a stage magician, etc.) as a magical incantation to bring about some change: abracadabra, hey presto.

Some ineffectual action or speech, especially if intended to divert attention; nonsense.

Religious or supernatural phenomena one holds to be nonsense or mere trickery; superstitious mumbo-jumbo.

How was it possible that I, a rational man, not unacquainted with the leading scientific facts of our history, and hitherto an absolute and utter disbeliever in all the hocus-pocus which in Europe goes by the name of the supernatural, could believe that I had within the last few minutes been engaged in conversation with a woman two thousand and odd years old?

The ego thinks that his local time and space is all there is to reality, and that the busy affairs of state and trade are more important than a lot of obscurantist hocus-pocus.

Some action carried out to bring about change as if by magic; a trick; sleight of hand, trickery.

A conjurer.

A conjurer's trick.

To play tricks or practise sleight of hand (on someone); (by extension) to cheat, to deceive.

[T]hat which we call Good Humour, is in Truth but a ſort of Slight of Hand in Diſcourſe, or a Faculty of making Truths look like Appearances, or Appearances like Truths. Now this Gift of Hocus Pocuſing, and of Diſguiſing Matters, is ſo Surpriſing and Agreeable on the one hand, that it muſt of Neceſſity be a very ſtrong Temptation to the Quitting of the Beaten Road on the other.

But it was possible to say something about Cahirciveen—that it has a nunnery, a market-house, a reading-room.^([sic]) and a Fever Hospital, and, being just two miles from the Valentia slate-quarry, that its houses are slated; but it was impossible to say a single word in defence of Derrynane Beg;—so the two, though seventeen miles apart, were “hocussed-pocussed” together, and it all went down as gospel in Conciliation Hall, that because the houses of Cahirciveen were slated from the quarry close by, ergo, my description of the wretched hovels of Derrynane Beg with their rotten potato-stalk thatches, was monstrously incorrect.