Magic Tricks: October 2006

New exciting additions for you

Some very exciting new eBook items have been added to the magic collection that will help add some magic and fun to your life.

Check them out now here ->

http://www.discovermagictricks.com/cbmagic.html

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Learn To Fly!

Magic Tricks

Why bother levitating like David Blaine when you can fly like Super Jon!...

Learn To Fly!

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Amaze Your Friends and Family...

Have you ever been to a live magic show, or watched a TV performance by a famous magician, and wondered... 'How do they do that?'

Well... you are about to find out!

I am an enthusiastic fan of magic tricks, just like you are, and I really, really, wanted to know how it was all done. So I asked!

First I asked visitors to my web site what they most wanted to know about magic tricks, thenI had their questions answered by expert researchers...

Discover The Magic Trick Secrets You're Not Supposed To Know!

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Develop a "Hook"

What makes you different from all the other performers out there?
What is your unique angle? What makes you shine and stand out from the crowd?

Ideally, your show or your persona should strive, in some way, to differentiate from everything else that's out there at the moment.

Now I'm not saying you should go out on a limb and try something totally crazy and overly ambitious. But it's smart to give clients even more of a reason to hire you and not someone else.

So, for example, you could concentrate on one particular area within magic and cultivate it as a specialty. That would ultimately allow you to market yourself as, say, "The Mentalist Magician" or "Merlin the Mind-Reader" (okay, you can probably come up with something a LOT better, but this is just to give you an idea of what I mean!).

The Business of Magic

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Cultivate a Stage Persona

Ideally, magic tricks should bring about a sense of wonder and excitement, not a sense of being tricked or fooled. And you as a magician should therefore aim to be mystical and wise, not hokey.

Of course, there are many ways to be entertaining. Some of the most successful magicians in the biz are very serious in terms of their demeanor. Others, however, are jocular and love to crack jokes during their shows.

Your "stage persona" is really up to you. If you're naturally inclined toward being chatty and making jokes, go for it on stage.

If you're naturally more reserved and quiet, you can think about adopting a more "David Blaine-like" character when you're performing.

The trick (pun intended!) is just to make sure you approach it as a role or a performance. Give the audience the dazzling entertainment they want and you will always be a hit.

Why Showmanship Is Essential to Success

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Levitation

Since you're interested in magic and illusion I'm going to bet you've heard of levitation before. Perhaps you've even seen a magician perform this incredible trick and wondered, "How the heck is he doing that?!" Well, hold onto your hat, because you're about to learn how.
First off, what is levitation? We all know what it looks like - the act of floating off or above the ground. It's sort of like flying. All the great magicians try to perfect this trick because it's one of the most simply visually arresting illusions in existence. And it's actually not that hard to do...

We practical magicians know that there is some trickery involved in levitation as a performance. However, there are those who believe in the real phenomenon of levitation as a form of psychokinesis, or the ability to move objects just with the power of the mind. The only people said to be able to perform levitation in reality are the spiritual elite, or those possessed by spiritual forces, like shamans, people in trances, or those possessed by a devil.

Now I don't know anyone who's actually seen a REAL levitation outside a magic performance, so take this for what you will...I mean, you can sit on the floor and meditate and wait to "lift off," but unless you're really in possession of some special supernatural forces I don't think you're going to have too much luck!

What I am here to show you is how to perform the trick of levitation, to give your audience the impression that you are floating, or else causing some other object to float.

Levitation as a magic illusion has recently been practiced in the public sphere by such magic superstars as David Blaine and David Copperfield. Copperfield even performed a spectacular stunt in which he appeared to float over the Grand Canyon!!

All smoke and mirrors? TV special effects? Not exactly...

The Grand Illusion - Large-Scale Magic Tricks That Won't Fail to Impress!

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A Brief Explanation of Hypnosis

Hypnosis is one very highly popular form of mentalism. Psychiatrists actually regard hypnosis as an everyday activity or state that we undergo when we are watching movies, reading books, or driving down a long empty road. When we are doing these sorts of activities we enter a trancelike condition in which we are very vulnerable to the power of suggestion and feel extremely relaxed.

Some people are mistakenly under the impression that hypnosis is like being asleep, but it's actually a hyperaware, hyperattentive state. It's also a state of total consciousness.

You know how when you get engrossed in a book you tune out the outside world, paying attention only to the story itself? It's similar to that. You're tuning out extraneous stimuli and focusing in only on one source, the subject or magician who is speaking directly to you. Thus you are very likely to do whatever the magician tells you to do when you're in a hypnotic state!

Reading Minds - What Is Mentalism, and How Can You Perform It?

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Sleight of Hand

What exactly is sleight (pronounced "slite") of hand? This term refers to a broad category of magic tricks that relies on your skills and techniques as well as the facility of your fingers and hands. In other words, these are tricks that depend on your skill and dexterity to fool the audience, much more so than on props or gimmicks. It's your fingers that do the work, not a manufacturer's product.

Another way of saying all this is that a sleight of hand is a trick that is performed so well and so deftly that the audience can't tell precisely how it was done!
There's a great word for this that every magician should know: "legerdemain." This word comes to us from the old French phrase "leger de main," in which "leger" translates as light, and "de main" means "of hand." So if you perform with a light touch, that's the ideal form of legerdemain.

This deftness applies to most magic tricks, though, not just sleight of hand! In fact, most of tricks we're going to discuss involve sleight of hand, from shuffling cards to palming coins. Even levitation, which we'll discuss in Chapter 4, involves sleight of hand-although that's more like "sleight of foot!"

Easy Does It - Small-Scale Tricks to Dazzle Your Audience

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What Is Magic?

At its most basic, the word "magic" carries with it the idea of special powers, or at least the illusion of possessing such powers.

At one end of the spectrum, the word implies someone who has the ability to do things that few other mortal beings can do. A magician in this sense would be someone who, for example, is able to walk on fire, levitate off the ground, or read other people's minds.

The other end of the spectrum, however, has a more practical or even cynical understanding of the term. It takes the view that magic is a form of trickery, even deliberate deceit. A magician in this sense of the word is someone skilled at lying and who is cleverer than his audience. He is intent on "pulling the wool over" others' eyes.

In reality, and for our purposes, let's come to an understanding of magic that takes the middle ground. Magic isn't pure supernatural power, but it isn't garden variety mean-spirited deception, either.

A good magician is one who gives the appearance of possessing special powers, an impression that both he and his audience agree to believe in together. Magic is meant not to outwit, fool or upset anyone-it's meant to surprise, astonish and delight.

In this view, magic is something wonderful and enjoyable, both for the practitioner and for the audience members who are also involved. It is an entertainment, a diversion, an escape from our mundane, ordinary lives. It is a chance for all of us to brush up against the possibility of something greater than ourselves!

How Do They Do It? Learning from the Great Magicians

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