Many of us – perhaps most – have at one time or another been the ones to inform a group of friends or a younger sibling that the guy on the TV who seems to be making colored handkerchiefs appear out of the palm of his hand is actually doing no such thing. At the moment we do it, it makes us feel somewhat powerful. We’re in on the secret! However, part of the enjoyment of magic or illusion is the very real spell it casts on […]
Read moreThere is no shortage of people who will criticise illusionists for giving the appearance of being able to do something while not explaining that it features no more real magic than a pen does. One can only wonder at such a response. After all, do the same people walk up to Leonardo di Caprio and slap him for pretending to have drowned when the Titanic sank? For this is what illusion is – the ability to create an appearance that something has happened, when in reality it […]
Read moreThe difference between magic and illusion is perhaps most persuasively explained if you have read the Harry Potter books or similar fiction written around a magical world. In the “Potterverse”, magic is very much a real thing, and indeed the binding and guiding force of the world the characters inhabit. Things that those characters do could never be explained by illusion. In the world of Harry Potter and his friends, acquaintances and enemies, the casting of spells does change the effects of natural forces. With certain spells, […]
Read more“Magicians” are constantly among the entertainers that are most commonly booked for children’s parties. This love of magic might dissipate as we get older, but there can be no doubting that a skilled magician will have both the children and the adults at any party looking on in astonishment as they perform tricks which seem on the face of it to be impossible. Of course, the fact that the tricks are being done means that they are not impossible. However, it is that fine line between what […]
Read moreWhile as children we mostly look on magicians as just that – people who can control forces that are beyond most normal human beings – as we get older we learn to see that what they are doing is, while exceptionally skilful, not actual magic. This often makes it no less impressive, but what it does do is give us the desire to “see how they do it”. The difference between magic and illusion is probably thinner than most of us think. No doubt, as soon as […]
Read moreIf you were a magician – by definition, someone able to control natural forces by calling upon the supernatural – what would you do? Visit the home of an acquaintance who had wronged you and make it rain in their bedroom? Control events in such a way as to ensure financial prosperity for you and yours? Protect your home from intrusion? Or would you make a playing card disappear and reappear in someone’s pocket? This is part of what is referred to in professional wrestling as “kayfabe”. […]
Read moreFrom childhood, we are beguiled by a magician’s abilities to perform tricks that seem to have no obvious explanation. As we get older, we may begin to understand more about how a trick has been performed and with practice may be able to perform the tricks ourselves. However, most of us will still in adulthood be unable to see the “unseen hand” that makes these tricks happen. There are however a number of talented illusionists who seek to shine some light on what is otherwise a fairly […]
Read morePerforming magic is something that has become a very broad term. On the one hand, there are people who perform spells in a Wiccan, naturalist sense which are designed, supposedly, to bring safety, prosperity and good luck. Then there are showman magicians who perform what might more reasonably be described as “tricks” which fool the eye and make it appear that they have done what we consider to be impossible – such as sawing another person in half and rejoining them, or making an object disappear totally. […]
Read more