Panels from my webcomic, “The Conjurers”, a companion piece to the upcoming novels.
So you want to learn how to do magic tricks? Or do you want to be a magician? There’s a difference. Learning the secret of how a trick is done is disappointing. Trust me on that. Wanting to become a magician is much more than learning secrets. In this post, I’ll give a streamlined list of tips on how to get started.
in later posts, I’ll focus on different aspects of performing magic and my philosophy on the craft. Along with a behind the scenes look at the making of my middle grade fantasy series, “The Conjurers”.
Where should one start if they want to become a magician? These days, there’s a lot of answers, but I’ll start at my beginning. First, get yourself a magician Uncle.
Yep, as cliche as it sounds, my uncle was a magician. Not a “pulling a quarter from your ear” kind of magic uncle, but a legit, aces assembly type. And a charter member of the Magic Castle. I was in the second grade when he taught me my first trick. I was hooked. He’d send magic books every birthday and Christmas. Mostly books, which he believed were the best source to sharpen your magical skills.
You could of course buy individual tricks. A coin trick here, a special deck there, a set of rings, maybe a chop cup. However, it is much harder as a beginner to piece together a performance trick by trick. A book, on the other hand, not only gives you a bunch of magic, more importantly, it gives you insight from the author. Those insights come from years of experience. And that knowledge is infinitely more valuable than the secret to an effect.
To illustrate the point, let’s say we take someone with zero magic experience. Let’s call them Barbara. I buy Barabara a vanishing quarter trick and show her how it works. I’ll even let her practice it a few times. It’s an easy trick so she gets the hang of it after fifteen minutes. Now, I’ll have her perform it out on the street. Then, right after, David Blaine will perform the same easy trick. Who do you think will get the bigger reaction? The same trick, the same method. David Blaine wins every time.
No fault of Barbara’s. The success of a trick has nothing to do with the secret. Some effects, mechanically speaking, are easy. Some you can do right out of the box. The real secret is experience. Yes, that means, even after hours of practice, the trick can flop even if you performed it correctly. How can that be if you just demonstrated a miracle?
Simple. Too explain I must expose another truth of magic. The hand is not quicker than the eye. That myth, one I believe was started by a magician, actually helps hide secrets. Again, the goal of a magician is to create a moment of astonishment, not fool people. If people believe you are trying to fool them, they will be watching for the secret: the hidden coin, the card switch, etc. if the are transfixed by the performance then they will see real magic. Back to my point though, there will always be those who are looking for how the trick is done, those who are waiting for the hand to be quicker than their eye. However, most of the time, the trick is already finished before the magic happens. By that I mean a magician controls where, when and at what their audience is looking at. In other words, the spectators never witness the secret move because they aren’t looking at it. This is a long winded definition of what is called misdirection. Learning the art of misdirection is much more important than the method and the only way to learn it is from experience. Thus one of the many advantages of learning from books.
Obviously I could go on and on. The point, I hope, is clear. Just like wizards in fantasy novels, the true learning is in the spell book, which is a collection of knowledge from other wizards. One of my first books, and one of my favorites, is Bill Tarr’s “Now You See It, Now You Don’t”. I could recommend dozens of books. I won’t because my second tip will cover that bit of business.
My second tip is admittedly harder to pursue than the first and not everyone will have this luxury. Magic shops. Magic Shops are Diagon Alley and Hogwarts combined. A good magic shop, that is. I was extremely fortunate growing up near Boston. Once a month I got to visit Hank Lee’s Magic Factory. I didn’t have a lot of money for tricks or books but that was not a hindrance. Hank’s was always filled with magicians willing to share advice with a young, aspiring magician. Many times they wouldn’t sell you what you wanted. They knew if a trick was too hard, or in some cases too easy. They steered me towards tricks that, if I committed myself, I could successfully perform.
The magic shop from “The Conjurers” webcomic.
However, after a few years, I had more confidence, a clearer vision of the kind of magic I wanted to perform. So, on one Saturday morning, I walked into Hank’s asking to purchase John Kennedy’s floating dollar bill. I was in fourth grade at the time. I can’t remember the name of the magician working that morning. I do remember the way his blonde hair hung halfway over his eyes when he sighed and leaned on the counter. “I think you should wait a couple more years for that one,” he said and demonstrated a couple of other tricks and showed me a book that would be a good primer before tackling the floating dollar bill.
He was in fact correct. The method behind the floating dollar bill frustrated many a grown, seasoned magician. It could easily have turned me off to the whole art. I, apparently, was quite stubborn and persisted. I would learn the floating dollar bill or quit magic. Begrudgingly, the magician agreed to sell it to me, so long as I promised to put in the work required and not quit. He told me I would get frustrated, even angry and would probably toss the whole mess into the trash.
Guess what? He was right. I did end up tossing the trick into the trash. And taking it out again. But I didn’t quit. Why? Simple, I wanted to float a dollar bill and was willing to spend the rest of my life achieving that goal. Well, it didn’t take the rest of my life. It took hours. Everyday. Two months later I performed it at Hank’s. It wasn’t a great performance. It was enough to impress them. And it was enough to convince them that I was committed to magic. And that builds trust between magicians. From then on they were willing to teach me anything I wanted to learn. More importantly, they were willing to share their own experience.
What if you don’t have a local magic shop? That brings me to my third tip. Magic Clubs. My Uncle enrolled me in S.A.M. (Society of American Magicians) when I was a kid. Meetings were far away so I didn’t go often. I read the newsletter religiously. So While I can’t speak to first hand knowledge of actively participating in a magical society, from the little I know and what I have garnered from other magicians, they are incredibly helpful.
I would say this goes for other groups like I.B.M. (International Brotherhood of Magicians) and magic conventions. It’s worth your time to look them up and see if they have a chapter near you. Also, in this lovely modern age, there are plenty of online forums to learn and discuss magic. I been on The Magic Cafe forums forever. You can check it out at themagiccafe.com. My username is “Bloodkin”. Drop me a line if you swing in. Almost everybody in the magic community hangs out there or pops by from time to time.
Basically, what it boils down to is, it’s extremely difficult to learn magic in a vacuum. As I mentioned before, doing tricks is the easy part. That only takes practice. The real art is creating a moment of astonishment that makes people believe, even if for a split second, that the laws of reality cease to exist. Kind of a cool pursuit, huh?
