Today's card tricking oboe who improvises nonsense phrases is from The Martlet, 1974.  (Magicians, especially, will have noticed the extra joke embedded in this: how the oboe has cheated in his card trick.)  That last panel, with the nonsense phrases, touches upon an occult secret that modern stage magicians have now forgotten, to the detriment of their careers.  Nonsense phrases, like the babbled syllables of the Ancient Egyptian wizards, the priestesses of the Delphic oracle, and the stage magicians of old (when "abracadabra" wasn't a cliché) profoundly affect the brain by instilling an altered state of consciousness.  Dr. Raymond Moody recently published his findings on the influence of nonsense and further explained why he has clients read a page of a Dr. Seuss book as preparation for a mind-bending experience within a Psychomanteum (Moody's version of the Necromanteion of Acheron).  Yes, a magician (whether on stage or in an occult setting) who utters hocus pocus gives those present a more extraordinary experience, from within their own brains.  Though the oboe magician in the comic panel cheats at its own card tricks, it knows how to perform genuine magic.  See Magic Words: A Dictionary.