Death and Legacy
Henning died aged 52 in February 2000 at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles five months after being diagnosed with liver cancer. His ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean off Redondo Beach, California.
James Randi, a fellow magician and prominent skeptic, was critical of Henning's involvement with Transcendental Meditation (TM). In 2008, Randi asserted in his blog, SWIFT, that TM founder Maharishi Mahesh Yogi had "caused the death of my friend Doug Henning". He claimed that Henning had immersed himself so thoroughly in TM that he "abandoned regular medical treatment for liver cancer, continued to pursue his diet of nuts and berries, and died of the disease."
In a strange turn of events, in 2005 a handwritten letter, from Doug Henning to James Randi, was placed for auction on eBay, unbeknownst to Randi. When Randi learned of it, he announced on his blog that the letter had been "stolen" from his files. A week later, Randi wrote that he "managed to have the sale stopped", and that the letter was back in his possession, but did not elaborate on further details of the controversy.
On June 8, 2010, it was announced that he would receive a star on Canada's Walk of Fame. His "Zig Zag Girl" illusion is housed at the American Museum of Magic.
Read more about this topic: Doug Henning
Famous quotes containing the words death and, death and/or legacy:
“But the life of Spirit is not the life that shrinks from death and keeps itself untouched by devastation, but rather the life that endures it and maintains itself in it. It wins its truth only when, in utter dismemberment, it finds itself.... Spirit is this power only by looking the negative in the face, and tarrying with it. This tarrying with the negative is the magical power that converts it into being. This power is identical with what we earlier called the Subject.”
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