h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It is important to understand that there are only a few basic principles to making stage magic work. Once you understand thesse principles you can begin to follow what is being done, though that does not mean that you will have the skills to pull some of the tricks off.

One basic principle is misdirection. In this case, the magician directs you to look in one place while s/he does something in another place that would be completely obvious if you were watching. For instance, the magician throws sparkly powder in the air or sets off a flash and smoke effect. While you are distracted and watching that, he simply puts something into or takes something out of a pocket.

Another priciple is slight of hand. Here the magician gives the impression that s/he is doing something much as a mime pretends to be in a glass box, such as passing a coin from one hand to the other. What really happens is that the coin does not change hands but you think it did. There are numerous techniques for appearing to do such things and at the same time to appear to have nothing in the hand that does in fact have something in it. Slight of hand requires great dexterity and much practice to carry off properly but the actual techniques are very simple and generally depend on having your audience in a position where they cannot see something that would be blatant from another position. Great slight of hand artists, however, can have people all around them and the trick is still not detectable.

Another technique is preparation. The magician simply has all the possibilities covered. For instance, the magician has you select a card from the deck. Through various tricks, s/he determines which card you have picked (I'll give an instance in a moment.) Then s/he reaches into a pocket and takes out a sealed pack of cards, tears off the seal, opens the pack, and the card you selected mysteriously rises out of the deck. The trick simply involves having 52 different prepared decks secreted about hir person and pulling the right one out.

Knowing which card is often the result of having a prepared deck of cards. For instance one trick is to have shaved the deck. This technique involves making the cards a tiny bit narrower at one end than at the other. Then the magician simply arranges for the person to put the card back on the deck with it turned 180 degrees from the rest. The result is that the card is easily detected by feel.

Many common illusions are based on someone having taken the time to carefully prepare a coin, for instance, so that it is not at all what one would expect.

The old trick of hanging a spoon on ones nose depends on having prepared a spoon in a simple way a few minutes ahead of time.

Sensory illusions are the basis for many other tricks. These tricks simply depend on known failings of the human senses. A common illusion depends on what is known as persistence of vision. The magician shows you something in his fingers such as the tip of a scarf that has been tucked into the hand. Then, suddenly, it is gone. Commonly this trick is performed using a device called a pull, which is essentially a tube attached to an elastic pulled tight so that, when the hand holding it relaxes, it is jerked out of sight. The persistence of vision insures that before you can possibly see what has happened, the scarf is already gone.

Human assumptions also can be used to the magician's advantage. One of the simplest of these tricks involves the clever use of mirrors against bland or repetative backgrounds. You see what you assume is background but what is actually a mirror image. Commonly such things are used from a stage to make the audience think there is empty space under a table or platform when there is much space hidden by a mirror. Other times, assumptions make the audience believe that there is not enough room for a body when there is actually just enough to make the illusion work.

In point of fact, nearly every successful magic trick makes use of most if not all of these principles as well as others which I have not listed. One thing you can be certain of, if a trick seems impossible, you have not considered all the possibilities.

Barton

Oy! Barton, don't give it all away. We still need something to surprise them with.

Just a note, dear friend:
Sleight of hand.
I've never seen the word sleight in any other context; it's very rare, which makes it easy to miss.

Thanks for the correction. Actually, that's the way I started out spelling it, but I thought, perhaps, that might have been an American spelling and backed away from my first spelling having already recognized my general failure in the area of spelling.

Barton (who is but slightly skilled at sleight of hand but moderately well versed in the techniques)

You, as they say, outsmarted yourself.

Provo on the Epic,

-- DoctorMO --

Watch carefully now, the typist is faster than the brain.

Barton

you should see some of the spoty oiks that tred my path.
they just cant type for there lives of for a good looking girl which is more imortant.

-- DoctorMO --