Lung-Fat-Loki – A Familiar Looking Face

I have had this throw-out card in my collection for a long time.  If the dealer who sold it to me knew what I know now, he might have kept it.  The name was not familiar to me at all.  When I attempted to do any research on this magician, I came up empty.  Absolutely nothing. The face did look like someone I had seen however.

Around the time of the “Columbus Magi-Fest” for 2017, I had the honor of hosting Gabe Fajuri of Potter and Potter Auctions at my home.  While going through my throw-out card albums, Gabe saw this card, pointed to it and told me, “That’s Okito”.  I was amazed, as I had no idea that it was Okito since he was using a name I had never heard before.   But, if there is anyone out there who is knowledgeable about the identity of magicians of the past, it is Mr. Fajuri.   Thank you, Gabe, for alerting me to this fact.

I then set about again to research Lung-Fat-Loki  from the angle of Theo Bamberg, Okito’s real name. While I have not been able to find any mention of Bamberg ever using this name, what I have discovered is thought provoking none the less.

The magician’s magazine “The Sphinx” for August, 1909 writes that when Okito was on a tour of China, he felt the need to change his name to “Lung Tchang Yuen” as Okito sounded too much like a Japanese name.  Looking through the “Linking Ring” for April of 1949, shows us that he even had a poster created using this name with the caption, “The Builder of a Chinese House of Mystery”.  Now the Lung-Fat-Loki card uses the caption “The Builder of a Chinese House of Mirth”.  A coincidence?

Comparing the image on the Loki throw-out card with the image on the poster of Lung Tchang Yuen seals the deal for me that what we are looking at here is another alias for Theo Bamberg.  Since I can find no other references to Lung-Fat-Loki  anywhere in my available resources, I can only assume that maybe he tried out this new name just long enough to have this interesting throw-out card made.

There is as much mystery in these little cards, as there is in magic itself!