Magical Secrets

Everyone knows magic is secretive and that a magician should never reveal his secrets. So what am I doing writing this website? How does anyone ever learn about magic? How is magical knowledge shared?

Personally I think secrets are a tiny, minescule part of magic. The important thing is what is done with the secret knowledge. This is why people are often disappointed when they find out how magic works, they think to themselves ‘how could we have been fooled by that?’. The answer is that the secret move or preparation is hidden behind interesting presentation - it’s funny, scary, mysterious - it’s entertaining.

So, when you start learning magic don’t dismiss stuff that is really simple to do. It is how you present it and how the audience sees it that is important. In fact, simple magic often looks really good because the performer can spend more time on the presentation.

So why bother learning difficult and technical sleight-of-hand? Well, there is no simple way to do some things. For example, making a coin disappear right in front of someone. You have to learn some sleight-of-hand to do that (what? It’s not real magic?!). Presentation is still important though, even when doing technical stuff. You have to practice so much that the difficult sleight-of-hand becomes easy and simple to do (for you) and then you can concentrate on the presentation.

The Rules of Magic

So there these are rules that magicians follow about not revealing secrets. These are my versions, not official in any way, and they are not designed to protect my secrets or those of fellow professionals. They are to help you, as someone who wants to perform magic.

  1. Never reveal the secrets and methods of magic you perform to your audience.
  2. Never reveal other magician’s secrets and methods.
  3. Always practice before performing a magical effect so you don’t inadvertantly reveal the secret

The important thing to note here is that this is about revealing secrets to your audience. It’s fine to talk about how to perform magic with magicians and others with a genuine interest in the art of magic. Otherwise, no one would ever learn any magic and there would never be any new magic!