Madisons

Magic is becoming an even more fascinating pastime for me. It's always* been really interesting and stimulating, but it's gained an extra dimension lately. There's of course the technical side, acquisition of skills and practical things - moves and deceptions. There's the performance side of things, encompassing learning tricks, learning routines, learning and applying a side of psychology. I've begun exploring another side, which comes in with creation. Now, I'm not creating earth-shattering amazingness. Not by a long shot, but coming up with a trick, or a new angle on a trick, has taken on a larger dimension.

*I say “always” ... I’ve only been doing it a few years - but all of that few years, I mean.

Rather than coming really from a practical standpoint, I've begun to think more about the effect. And not just something like "this is how I want to reveal the card" (reversed, on top, in a pocket, whatever...), but the overall sense of what would be actual magic? What would that look like? What would be different from what I'm doing if it really was magic? And then: how do I make that happen?

So it encompasses the technical, and the performance, and the psychology of it, but it's more - at least in terms of the mindset when approaching it. It's a striving, rather even than an outcome.

Pop Haydn, in an instructional video I bought, at one point talked about what would be the ultimate (as related to the trick he was teaching): put a card on the table; someone names a card; the card on the table is that card. The trick he taught wasn't that (it would be real magic), but it's as close as he's got (so far).

That's the way I'm beginning to think and experience magic. It takes it from technical and mental, into a spiritual (in the secular sense) domain. In a way it's like karate: a kata will never be perfect; perfect is an abstraction, and something to strive towards, but never an attainable endpoint. Therefore it is the striving, not the result, that is the primary thing. I see a real parallel here.

These cards are produced by Daniel Madison, with the Ellusionist playing card company. He's rather a fascinating individual, with a similarly thoughtful approach to - not so much magic, but as he says: "deceptive practices". They're some of the best-handling cards I've got.

Roundr; Flickr.