While 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 […]

If 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”. […]

From 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 […]

Performing 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. […]