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The update closes with my plans for the next (expanded) edition of Corrupting the Classics. It’s going to be a good one!

New on MBOT: Hay’s Paradox

Reading time: 10 minutes

I finally managed to write a more robust article on Hay’s Paradox and its connection to Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). You can read the article on Marty’s Bag of Tricks (if you haven’t done so already):

Read the Blog Post

Do You Like David Blaine’s Style of Magic?

It’s certainly undeniable that David Blaine transformed the public perception of magic—and magicians—in the late 1990s. In short, he made magic cool again. Like many amateur magicians my age, I was profoundly influenced by his first few TV specials—an influence that led to a deep love of close-up magic that persists to this day.

However, whenever his name comes up online, at magic clubs, or at conventions, his style tends to divide the room. It’s a classic Marmite situation—people either love him or hate him. I’m not entirely sure why this happens. Perhaps it’s driven by professional jealousy, or maybe some magicians simply dislike his monosyllabic, deadpan delivery (though, make no mistake, this performance persona is entirely intentional and thoroughly disarming).

Personally, I’ve always appreciated Blainesian close-up magic—his straightforward, no-nonsense style of conjuring. Most magicians talk far too much—and far too quickly—when performing card tricks. They speak a lot, but often say very little. Blaine’s minimal dialogue does something critical: it allows his audience the time and space needed to respond. This approach places the attention entirely on the spectators and their reactions to the magical moment. It’s a far less egocentric way to present magic. While I don’t love everything he does (especially the squirm-inducing stunts with frogs and needles), his minimalist method acting is a remarkably generous way to share magic with people.

Blaine Meets the Golden Knights

Blaine’s signature style was on full display earlier this month when he performed for the Vegas Golden Knights, a professional ice hockey team based in Las Vegas.

I really enjoyed the performances in this video; it brought back memories of old-school David Blaine. Those early TV specials—the ones I recorded on VHS and watched repeatedly until I could reconstruct some of the methods. Those were the days! 📼

A few things stood out to me as a magician: I love how he casually blocks the Top Change from the camera’s view when performing for Braeden Bowman. You rarely see this level of situational awareness when magicians perform on live TV or for social media. (He did the same thing recently when filmed by fellow passengers while doing impromptu magic on a plane—see Monthly Update #36).

Using Bowman’s jersey number (42) as the reveal for his interpretation of Eddie Fechter’s “Be Honest, What Is It?” was a brilliant touch. It made the magic feel personally connected to Bowman and the Golden Knights. Notice how Blaine doesn’t point out the number himself. He simply hands the card over and lets Bowman discover that the two cards match his jersey number. By remaining silent, he amplifies the impact of the effect tenfold.

So, what can we learn from Blaine’s performance for the Vegas Golden Knights? We should probably all speak less when performing our tricks.

Do you like Blainesian card magic? Let me know by replying or posting your thoughts in the comments on Substack.

Whispering Jokers 🃏🃏

In the video above, Blaine starts with a version of Any Card At Any Number (ACAAN). I’m not entirely sure which method he’s using, but I like the hands-off nature of the trick and the way he builds up the effect once everything is in place. This trick reminded me that I had written an unusual variation of ACAAN based on Craig Petty’s “Destiny Deal” and Ladson Butler’s “The Whispering Queen”. I put this together a few months ago and had completely forgotten about it, so I thought this would be a good time to share it. I hope you have fun with this one.

Learn the Trick

The Mystery of Piggly Falls 🐖🏞️

This month, I’ve been re-reading some of Eugene Burger’s thought-provoking essays on the art and theory of magic. Eugene’s teachings have been a major influence on me as a magician, particularly the way I approach presentation and performance. One of my favourite pieces written by him is “Creating Interest”, which can be found on page 115 of Magic in Mind, a free collection of essential essays for magicians from Vanishing Inc. Magic. (The essay originally appeared in Eugene’s 1983 booklet, Intimate Power, and is also included in his anthology Mastering the Art of Magic.)

I’ve read the essay several times, but on my most recent reading, I noticed that Eugene mentions a place—presumably in America—with the curious name of “Piggly Falls”. Here’s the opening paragraph of the essay:

Every exploration begins somewhere. If I want to visit Los Angeles, for example, I must begin from somewhere else, from someplace concrete—Chicago or New York or Piggly Falls. In much the same way, every exploration of an area of thought and action, such as conjuring, begins with the assumptions and preconceptions of the explorer.

Now, colour me naïve, but I assumed Piggly Falls was a real place. Naturally, I searched the web for this mysterious location. I found “Pixley Falls” in New York, but no sign of Eugene’s “Piggly Falls”.

Then it hit me: it was a classic “Burger-ism”! Eugene was a master of using wit and whimsy to make his deep philosophical insights more interesting and accessible. The “folksy” name of Piggly Falls—an intentionally silly, rural-sounding fiction—serves as a rhetorical device: the “podunk” starting point, the Everyman’s hometown.

And for most of us, our “Piggly Falls” is the comfortable delusion that magic is inherently interesting.

Burger thought the opposite was true: that magic tricks really are not very entertaining in and of themselves. He believed that to a stranger in an informal setting, a card trick is often an “unwelcome intrusion”—and even when the magic is warmly received, the spectator’s likely response is that it’s all “a bit trivial”. By starting from this “place” of assumed boredom, Burger argued, the magician is forced to do something vital: actually create interest in his words and actions.

Not everyone agrees with Burger’s starting assumption. Darwin Ortiz calls it “Fitzkee’s Fallacy”, arguing that strong magic is inherently entertaining. Joshua Jay’s own experience, as expressed in the editorial introduction to the essay, is that the premise is “entirely conditional”. But I think the point holds for most of us who perform informally: we cannot rely solely on our tricks to do the work for us.

Burger didn’t just theorise about this. He spent years crafting compelling hooks and opening lines. One of his best was a direct question: “Would you like to see the greatest card trick of the 20th century?” It’s designed to do one thing: create interest before a single card is touched. As Burger notes, the number of people who said “No” was surprisingly small. If you read nothing else in Magic in Mind, read the passage where he describes watching two strangers in a restaurant lounge, timing his approach, and delivering that line. It’s a masterclass in what “creating interest” looks like in practice.

The lesson of Piggly Falls isn’t just that we all start somewhere; it’s that we must recognise the biases we carry from our starting point. If we assume the tricks are enough on their own, we remain stuck in Piggly Falls. But if we accept that it’s our duty to make the audience care, we might finally leave our small-town thinking behind us.

Sure, I felt like a complete idiot for searching for a fictional town, but I’m glad I did. It reminded me that in magic, we all start in Piggly Falls. The question is whether we’re willing to leave.

Not familiar with Eugene Burger and his magic? I strongly recommend you watch the video below of him performing on Paul Daniels: Live at Halloween in 1987.

Twist and Transpose

I’m currently working on the next instalment of Corrupting the Classics. I’ve decided to make this a bumper edition and showcase two of my favourite small-packet card effects: Dai Vernon’s “Twisting the Aces” and Dr Daley’s Last Trick. The reason I’ve chosen to pair them is that I usually perform these two tricks together; I’ve always felt that “Twisting the Aces” works better as a prelude to the two-by-two transposition. In fact, I don’t think Vernon’s most famous packet trick makes a good stand-alone trick or opening effect. For me, it functions much better as a “transition piece” between, say, a four-Ace production and Dr Daley’s Last Trick. I think this has something to do with the unusual nature of the effect from a layperson’s point of view. If they’re expecting to pick a card for you to find, having cards mysteriously turn face up and face down can be quite disorientating because they have no frame of reference for the magic taking place.

The article will include an in-depth discussion of both tricks, along with various ways to perform and present them within the context of a three-trick set. In total, I’ll be sharing ten previously unpublished tricks! (The first five will be available to both free and paid subscribers—hopefully, this will keep all my valued readers happy.)

For a long time, I’ve been trying to group my card tricks into “triplets”: short, three-trick card sets. This approach is often attributed to the late, great Michael Skinner, who famously held court as the resident close-up magician at the Golden Nugget Casino in Las Vegas for over two decades. He had one of the largest working repertoires in the history of magic. To manage hundreds of effects without ever drawing a blank, he relied heavily on this “sets of three” philosophy.

Skinner didn’t just group tricks into triplets as an aide-mémoire; he did it to guarantee a professional performance every time he approached a table. Grouping your repertoire in this way provides three important benefits:

• A Built-in Narrative Arc: A set of three naturally creates a beginning, a middle and an end. (The same three-act structure used in cinema and theatre.) A three-trick set usually consists of a quick, highly visual opener to grab attention, an interactive middle routine to get the spectators involved, and a hard-hitting closer to leave a lasting impression.

• Banishing “Magician’s Panic”: When you know exactly what trick follows the one you are currently performing, you can eliminate that awkward “what should I do next?” pause.

• Playing “Magic Jazz”: Once you have several three-trick sets memorised, you can dynamically mix and match them. If you sense someone wants to see more magic after your first set, you simply launch into another pre-planned set of three. While the three tricks are linked, you can choose which specific triplets to perform in the moment, giving your overall performance a strong sense of spontaneity. 🎷🃏✨

With all this in mind, I’ll be sharing a card set I call “Only Aces”. As the name implies, this is a set of three tricks that use nothing more than four regular Aces. It begins with a fast-paced routine called “Imitation Aces”, in which three “imitation” Aces of Spades visually transform into the Ace of Diamonds, Hearts and Clubs. Next, you transition into “Traditional Twist”, a classic handling of Vernon’s “Twisting the Aces”, before finishing with a witty presentation of “The Last Trick of Dr. Jacob Daley” called “Death and Taxes”.

I’ll also use this article as an excuse to revisit some of the ideas I shared in my blog article Twisting the Aces Three Ways. I’ll be publishing two alternative presentations for “Twisting the Aces”: the first is “Pasteboard Puppies”, using the four Fours; the second is “Crazy Eights”, using the four Eights (read the blog post for a preview).

For paid subscribers, I’ll also return to a three-trick set from my regular Ruseletter column, Vernonesque. It begins with a rendition of “Underambitious”, a minimalist take on the Ambitious Card. Next comes “Twisting the Numbers”, a version of “Twisting the Aces” that uses the Ace, Two, Three and Four of Diamonds. The set concludes with “Stolen”, my favourite way to present Dr Daley’s Last Trick.

To round things off, I’ll also share five extended routines inspired by these two classic plots:

• “Twist and Snap”—A version of “Twisting the Aces” with a kicker ending involving the entire deck.

• “Twisted Logic”—Another handling that sees each Ace turn face up and then face down again.

• “Pasteboard Puppies Plus”—A version of “Pasteboard Puppies” in which the four “dogs” find a chosen card lost in the deck. 🐕🐕🐕🐕

• “A Tale in the Twist”—A tribute to The Professor that includes a colour-changing-back kicker.

• “A Ghostless Tale in the Twist”—An alternative handling of “A Tale in the Twist” that avoids the Elmsley Count entirely. 🚫👻

Wish me luck on this epic writing adventure—I hope to have all of these written up by the end of April.

Three Videos Worth Watching 👀

As usual, here are three videos that I watched this month. I think you should watch them, too.

Stamper by Alexis De La Fuente

This new printing packet trick from Alexis De La Fuente and Alakazam Magic is exactly the type of small-packet effect that I love. 💖

I particularly appreciate that this can be performed in the hands without a table, making it practical for mix-and-mingle or strolling-style performances.

While this is the newest card trick from Peter Nardi and the Alakafam, this is technically a rerelease. “Stamper” was first released by Alexis three years ago (watch the original release video).

I’ve long enjoyed the video reviews created by Alexis. He releases them in both his native language of French and in English:

🇫🇷 French Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@LesavisdAlexis
🇬🇧 English Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@AlexisReviews

“Stamper” is available from Alakazam Magic for $25 or £22.

Very Wild and Charge It

You may have noticed that the trailer for “Stamper” was filmed at this year’s Blackpool Magic Convention. Here’s another demonstration from the Dealer’s Hall. This time, it’s Christian Schenk of Card-Shark performing Charge It - Next Generation and Very Wild.

The video neatly highlights how you can combine two gaffed packet tricks to cancel out the inherent weaknesses of both effects. Yes, I know the switch using the wallet was rushed, but this was a “dealer dem” where speed was of the essence.

Sh*t Magic Shows

Finally, here’s another fun video from Singapore magician Jeremy Tan. As someone who’s never been to Vegas, I found this a very helpful overview of the current magic scene in Sin City.

Well, that’s another monthly update done and dusted. I can’t quite believe we’re already a quarter of the way through the new year. Oh, well.

Yours Magically,

Marty

My solution is simple: I don’t set resolutions in January. Instead, I delay making them until the Chinese New Year, which falls on the new moon between 21 January and 20 February each year. 🌚 This year, it fell on 17 February.

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I like this approach for three reasons. First, it gives you time to settle into the New Year before making any concrete plans. Second, aligning your intentions with the first new moon of the year feels more appropriate—and, well, magical. Third, the Chinese New Year is celebrated for fifteen days, from the first day of the lunar calendar through to the Lantern Festival, giving you an extended window in which to commit to the changes you most want to make.

This year also carries an added layer of significance for anyone, like me, with a love of folklore: 2026 is the Year of the Fire Horse. 🔥🐎 Appearing only once every sixty years—the last time was 1966—the Fire Horse is widely considered the rarest and most intense animal-element combination in the Chinese zodiac. Fire Horses are said to be charismatic, bold and passionate: qualities any magician, amateur or professional, would do well to cultivate. Whether or not you put any stock in such things, it feels like an auspicious year to raise our magical game.

So, even though Chinese New Year has passed, you still have time to make some magic-related resolutions (the big secret is that you can make habit-change promises to yourself at any time during the year). Here are my main ones for 2026:

1. Build the magic den of my dreams: a proper, dedicated space for creating, practising, rehearsing and sharing my magic.

2. Say yes to more performance opportunities, however small.

3. Deliver Developing Daley, Volume 1—no more delays.

That second resolution is the one I suspect many of you will share. It’s easy to keep learning, keep practising and keep telling yourself you’re not quite ready yet. James Clear, whose work on habits I’ve returned to many times in this newsletter, puts his finger on why this resolution matters:

“Learning more will increase knowledge, but only attempting more will reduce fear. The more you try it, the less you will fear it.”

It’s a reminder that no amount of practice in front of a mirror can substitute for standing in front of real people and performing a magic trick for them. Which brings me to this month’s article.

Recently, I shared two new romantic card tricks inspired by Jane Austen’s novels, which got me thinking about a question recently discussed on The Magician’s Forum: Do Women Really Hate Card Tricks? What started as a few short paragraphs has somehow morphed into a five-thousand-word theoretical essay on gender politics in the world of magic! Enjoy.

Pride, Prejudice & Pasteboards: Do Women Really Hate Card Tricks?

Reading time: 20 minutes

In the discussion, it was noted that Joel Bauer—a successful American magician, trade-show performer and self-proclaimed “infotainer”—believes that many women dislike playing cards. In a recent episode of The Magic Word Podcast with Scott Wells, he made his opinion on the matter abundantly clear (the emphasis is mine):

“Women don’t particularly like cards, and magicians don’t understand that. But if you’re gonna use a deck of cards, use a Tarot deck. They’re interested in that. OH YEAH. It’s totally different, And if you’re gonna do a haunted pack, do a haunted Tarot pack. And tie it in and make it personal. I’m not telling them to be Bizzare. I’m saying you gotta care about the male and female. They’re different.”1

I found this somewhat sweeping statement at odds with my own, admittedly more limited, experience. On the whole, I’ve always found that women are more receptive to magic, wonder and astonishment than the average man. While I don’t disagree with his general advice to make your magic more personal, I think his central premise—that women don’t like cards, and by extension, card tricks or magic in general—doesn’t hold up.

Joel isn’t the first high-profile magician to make such a polarising statement. Writing in his Genii column, “The Vernon Touch”, the Canadian-born close-up maestro Dai Vernon expressed a remarkably similar view as far back as October 1968:

“Talking about doing magic for women, I have lived a long time, and I don’t think really, honestly, I ever met a woman who likes magic… who REALLY likes magic. They’ll watch a card trick to please some guy, but I don’t think they really enjoy watching a card trick.”2

Later in the same column, he added:

“By the way, if there are any normal girls who refute this statement, I hope you’ll write in and let me know.”

The postbag, it seems, was more instructive than Vernon had anticipated. By December 1968, he was already backpedalling a little:

“I was surprised, and at the same time enlightened, by the fact that to date, I have heard from at least three girls who told me that they simply love and adore magic. These may be exceptions to the rule… they are really exceptional girls. I still am not firmly convinced yet. I’ve only known three or four girl magicians like Lady Frances and Celeste Evans. They like magic because they make a living from it. But I mean the average magician’s wife who has to put up with this sort of thing. They learn to hate it. ”3

In 2026, the condescension is jarring and, if I’m honest, a little cringeworthy. Back then, women who liked or even dared to perform magic were not magic enthusiasts or fellow performers—they were anomalies, curiosities, and exceptional enough to write home about. It is worth remembering, though, that Vernon was performing and writing at a time when such attitudes were both tolerated and largely invisible, even to those who held them. He was a product of his era, but at least he was willing to be persuaded.

And persuaded he eventually was. Writing years later, in 1977, from his perch at the Magic Castle, Vernon quietly reversed course:

“In my past days I never felt that the girls especially enjoyed watching a magician but I have changed my thinking since being here. Of course, any effect with a fortune-telling atmosphere to it is doubly enjoyed by the ladies.”4

It is a small yet significant concession. But it matters because what changed Vernon’s mind wasn’t an argument, a theory or a sudden epiphany. It was simply watching women enjoy magic night after night at the Magic Castle.

With this historical example in mind, I can’t help but think that Joel’s general performance advice is right, but for entirely the wrong reasons. You only have to read Jane Austen’s novels to appreciate that women have enjoyed playing cards as a social pastime for centuries. It follows, therefore, that they should also enjoy card magic.

It isn’t the cards women dislike—it’s the chauvinistic performer who treats them as a prop, or worse, as an unpaid magician’s assistant. The problem, in other words, isn’t the pasteboards. It’s the ego behind them. They don’t hate magic—they hate male magicians. And who can blame them when they behave in this way?

Laura London—Inner Magic Circle member, recipient of a standing ovation at the Magic Castle, and one of the finest card mechanics working in Britain today—puts it just as bluntly. Asked for her best advice on approaching strangers and getting them to like you, she was unequivocal:

“Don’t approach people and be arrogant. People don’t like that. People certainly don’t like you telling them that you are some mystic being, either. We’re in [the modern era] now, and nobody believes that we can actually do real magic, so don’t treat your audience like idiots… like fools.”5

This idea has percolated in magic theory circles for some time. In an October 2003 discussion on the long-dormant Usenet group alt.magic.secrets, Hawaiian magician Jim Kawashima reported that fellow illusionist John LeBlanc had relayed a remark attributed to Max Maven: that magic is fundamentally a “power thing”, and that women had, until relatively recently, not been encouraged to be part of the “power sphere”.6 (I cannot verify that characterisation in any published source, and it’s at least two degrees removed from Maven himself, but anyone familiar with his thinking will find it entirely plausible as something he might well have said.)

Detectives & Dreamers

To understand why the ego-driven approach to card magic fails women so consistently, it helps to examine what it does to any audience.

In his essay “Tough Customers” in The Books of Wonder, Volume 1, Dutch-born master magician Tommy Wonder identified the problem with characteristic insight. The magician who presents his work as a challenge—however subtly or unconsciously—pushes his audience into a role they were never meant to play: the detective.

“It is highly desirable not to push spectators into the role of detectives on the trail of your secrets, because it can make your job harder; and, what is more important, it can prevent your audience from experiencing other elements of your performance, elements capable of far greater entertainment potential than mere puzzlery can offer. Good magic has so much more to give than puzzlement.”7

By definition, the detective is adversarial. He is looking for the trick, the method, the moment of deception. He is not there to be moved, delighted, or transported. He is there to catch you out. And the magician who presents his performance as a puzzle, consciously or not, has invited him in and handed him a deerstalker and magnifying glass! 🕵️ (It should be noted that what Tommy Wonder isn’t saying is that we should attempt to eliminate the puzzle element from our tricks entirely, only that we shouldn’t treat them as puzzles to be solved when presenting them to an audience.)

Here is where the question of gender becomes directly relevant, and where we need to be careful, because the argument is easily misread. The claim is not that women are incapable of analytical thinking, or that they are more credulous or more easily impressed than men. The claim is considerably more surprising: that the detective role, as Wonder describes it, is one most women are considerably less inclined to adopt than most men. This difference is cultural rather than innate. Let me explain.

Most male magicians were introduced to magic as young boys, drawn in by the very puzzle element that makes card magic so alienating when it goes awry. The astonishing Ace Assembly, the baffling Two-Card Transposition, or the Card to Impossible Location that defies all logic—these were the things that first captured their imagination. That early enchantment leaves a deep mark, shaping not only how they perform magic but also what they believe magic is: a challenge, a contest, a demonstration of their superior knowledge. The detective is not the enemy to be disarmed. For many male performers, he is, at some level, their ideal audience—because he represents the boy they once were.

Women, on the whole, approach magic differently. They tend to inhabit the role of the dreamer. Without that early card-trick conditioning, they respond less to the puzzle of a magic trick and more to the experience itself—the narrative, the emotional hook, the sense that something mysterious is being shared. They are, in Wonder’s terms, natural dreamers rather than default detectives. And the performer who’s never questioned his boyhood assumptions about what magic is (or should be) will, almost inevitably, fail to meet their needs.

It would, however, be a mistake to push this argument too far. The detective role is not exclusively male. Nor is the dreamer always female. Mark Leveridge—one of Britain’s most experienced close-up professionals and the author of the long-running Chatter blog on magic—discussed this very issue in an August 2004 piece on precisely this subject. He described a woman who had booked him for a corporate dinner. When he approached her group, she promptly told him she couldn’t stand magic and slipped away. Halfway through the meal, she returned; her friends were worried he would skip their table because of what she had said. He went and performed at the table. She watched. Her verdict: “Oh, it drives me crazy because you just can’t see how he’s doing it!” Leveridge diagnosed her as a spectator so fixated on the how of magic that she found it harder to enjoy it for what it is actually meant to be (or, as Mark puts it, the “how” versus the “wow”).8 She was not immune to wonder. She was a frustrated detective and, as Leveridge pointedly noted, a self-identified magic-hater who had booked a magician for her own event.

The same culture that alienates women in the audience also shapes the experience of those who wish to perform magic. Megan Swann—the first woman to serve as President of The Magic Circle and the youngest person ever to hold that office—has described arriving at her first magic club meeting as a ten-year-old:

“As 10-year-old me, little 10-year-old me, quite shy, turning up and seeing this room full of 80 boys who seemed like giants… it was a bit scary. It was a bit of a shock. Fortunately another girl did turn up… and I don’t know quite what would have happened if she hadn’t, because I think 10-year-old me would have been too scared. I probably wouldn’t have come back.”9

Laura London tells a similar story. Walking into the Magic Circle at eighteen, she was about to turn around and leave the profession entirely:

“I walked in and was about to walk out and never come back… it wasn’t that it wasn’t particularly friendly, it’s just I was really out of place.”10

She stayed. She went on to become the youngest ever female member of the Magic Circle, the first elected female Chair of the society, and a Member of the Inner Magic Circle with Gold Star, the club’s highest honour. She has also appeared on Penn & Teller: Fool Us and performed for Her Majesty the Queen at Buckingham Palace. Yet the fact that two of British magic’s most distinguished female practitioners describe the same instinct—to walk away from a room full of male magicians—tells us something important about the culture that room reflected.

Swann did come back, too, of course, and rose to lead the Magic Circle. But most ten-year-old girls, confronted with that room, would not. And the boys who filled it grew into the magicians who now wonder why women don’t enjoy their dull card tricks.

The conditioning runs in both directions, and its consequences are long-lasting. Swann herself is a case in point. “I learned quite soon that card tricks really bored me,” she admitted in the same interview. “I just don’t like card tricks... maybe it’s just from those early days seeing so many card tricks, often done quite badly—maybe it put me off.”11 Here, in one sentence, is the entire arc of this article compressed into a single confession: a woman who loves magic, has devoted her professional life to it, and has risen to lead the most prestigious magical organisation in Britain, has been put off card tricks for life by a succession of thoughtless male performers.

Don’t worry, this is not a counsel of despair. It is, if anything, a golden opportunity. The dreamer is not a lesser audience than the detective. She’s a better one: more open, more responsive, and more willing to participate. The only thing standing between her and a transformative experience of magic is a magician willing to set aside his ego and offer something worthy of the spectator’s wildest dreams.

Pride Before a Fall

So, what does all this have to do with classic romantic literature? Jane Austen is precise about what she means by pride. Mr Darcy’s failing isn’t simple arrogance—it is the complex conviction that his superior knowledge and judgment make him above the need to please others. He doesn’t perform for anyone’s approval. He condescends. And it’s that pride that makes him initially repellent to the very person he most wants to impress in the world.

The parallel with the ego-driven magician is remarkable, almost uncomfortably so. The performer who frames every trick as a puzzle is destined to disappoint. Hoarding his secret knowledge like a private currency, he isn’t performing for the people in front of him. He is performing above them. They are not participants in something wonderful. They are witnesses to his smug superiority. Maven’s “power thing” is, at its root, nothing more than Darcyian pride in a badly fitted dinner jacket doing condescending card tricks.

But here is where Austen’s novel offers much more than a useful metaphor. Mr Darcy doesn’t remain proud. He is humbled—not by defeat, but by the gradual recognition that his pride has made any opportunity for genuine connection impossible. He has to dismantle something fundamental in the way he presents himself to the world before Elizabeth can see him clearly. And only then, stripped of the performance of superiority, does he become someone worth knowing and worthy of her love.

The magician faces exactly the same choice. The tricks don’t change. The methods don’t change. What changes is the relationship the performer offers to the people in front of him—and whether it’s one of condescension or of shared wonder.

So, if ego is what drives the prideful approach to performance, prejudice is what that ego does to the women in the room. Surprisingly, it operates, more often than not, without the performer even noticing…

Performance and Prejudice

I’ve been to enough magic conventions to recognise a troubling pattern that persists to this day. When women are present, they’re almost always the first to be selected as “volunteers”—again and again, by performer after performer. This is particularly obvious when very few women are in attendance, as the same two or three female faces appear on stage repeatedly. What seems like a natural choice—it’s true that women are often warmer, more expressive, better at playing along—looks very different from the audience’s perspective. She’s not being chosen because she’s valued. She’s being chosen for her utility.

I witnessed this at close quarters at one such convention, seated beside a female companion (whom I’d met and befriended earlier that day). A well-known and experienced American cardician performed for us (who shall remain nameless). She was asked to sit beside him and be his spectator. He was technically brilliant.

However, he was entirely oblivious to the negative effect his actions were having on her emotional state. The way he handled her involvement, the casual assumptions he made about her role, and, in particular, the chauvinistic jokes he carelessly made at her expense all indicated that he was performing at her, not for her. When she eventually returned to her seat, she was visibly flustered, red-faced, upset, as well as a little angry at his treatment of her. He never even noticed.

Mark Leveridge identified the same pattern as far back as 2006. Writing at a time when the magic world was far less inclined to discuss such matters openly, he observed that at any major convention, if there is a single woman in the audience, almost every performer who needs an assistant will select her. He was candid about the likely explanation: either it is a male ego thing, or a condescending assumption that a woman is less likely to be a fellow magician and therefore more likely to respond well. Either way, he found both explanations wanting. More pointedly, he noted that women attending magic events still routinely endured sexist jokes, wisecracks and thinly veiled innuendo. He appealed directly to performers to treat female audience members with the respect that might encourage rather than repel them.12 Very good advice indeed.

This gap—between what the performer believes he is offering and what the woman in front of him is actually experiencing—is prejudice in its most precise sense. Not malice. Not even indifference. Simply a judgment formed in advance, before a single card has been selected or silver coin produced: she is here to assist me, to look pretty, to react favourably, to be charmed. To make me look good. Her role has been assigned. And no amount of technical brilliance will compensate for the fact that she has been told, wordlessly but unmistakably, that her place in this exchange is a subordinate one.

Megan Swann has spoken about this assumption with the authority of someone who has encountered it repeatedly, from both sides of the table. Speaking on Craig Petty’s Talk Magic Podcast in 2021, she described the default expectation that greets women in magic circles:

“Just from my experiences being out in the public and even around other magicians, you almost assume that a woman doesn’t do magic—or you assume that they’re the assistants. Because there’s not been that many female role models over the years... Maybe if you go back and look at how women were persecuted as witches, maybe that’s had an effect. And the fact that... once upon a Shakespearean time women couldn’t even go on stage. There is a long history of women not being involved in the performing arts.”13

It’s a prejudice she had encountered long before she reached the upper echelons of the Magic Circle. In an earlier interview, she described the experience of attending magic events as a young woman:

“It’s a pet hate of mine when I meet new people at magic clubs or conventions who first assume I am not a magician, clearly because I am a woman. I get asked if I’m there with someone else, or if I want to see a ‘really simple card trick’ that even I could do.”14

The prejudice, then, is not merely personal. It is historical and institutional. Like all prejudice, however, it flows in both directions.

Just as Elizabeth Bennet’s prejudice against Darcy is a direct response to behaviour she has observed and reasonably generalised, the scepticism many spectators bring to a magic performance is a direct response to a performance culture that, too often, has given them good reason to be wary.

Craig Petty, one of the UK’s most prominent working magicians, has written about this in his trademark no-nonsense style. When an audience member tells him they hate magic, he doesn’t take it personally—because he understands exactly what they mean: “they have seen a cheesy magician with no skill or social skills and have judged all magicians on one performance.”15 The woman who greets you and your tricks with hostility isn’t being unreasonable. She has simply been here before—and the last time, she didn’t enjoy it.

Tommy Wonder identified the same dynamic from the performer’s perspective, with considerably greater analytical precision. In his essay “Tough Customers”, he observed that some spectators arrive already locked into the detective role, not because they are naturally adversarial, but because they have been conditioned:

“Some people are conditioned, have it engraved in their mind, that when they see a magician, they should try to determine how the tricks are done. The moment they know you are a magician, they throw themselves into the role of detective.”16

This is prejudice in its purest form and, like all prejudice, it is not irrational. It is the entirely logical conclusion of accumulated experience. The question Tommy Wonder asks—and the question this article has been pursuing from the beginning—is what the performer can do to dismantle it. His answer is unambiguous:

“If you can transport people out of the role of detective or, better yet, prevent them from entering into that role, you will have done them a good service, since you can then offer them something of much greater interest.”17

The responsibility, in other words, lies with the magician, not the audience. The prejudice flowing back towards the performer is an unforgiving mirror. What it reflects, whether beautiful or ugly, depends entirely on the magician and, ergo, the performance culture that created it.

The Relationship is the Remedy

The remedy to both pride and prejudice in performance is not a different trick, method or technique. It is a different relationship.

Laura London states the principle with the ease of someone who has understood it for years:

“It’s not about the magic, really; it’s about you. If you walk up to a group of people and they like you instantly, then what you do doesn’t matter as long as it’s good and it is entertaining… anybody can learn a trick… you can go into a shop right now, you can buy some really strong great magic, you can learn it in a few days. But if you can learn how to perform it well, that’s really the question… it’s all about presentation.”18

Eugene Burger—one of the most thoughtful performers and writers the magic world has ever produced—put it much the same way, summing it up succinctly in a single sentence:

“Presentation is that point where you put yourself into your magic.”19

It sounds simple. In practice, it is a radical reorientation of the usual performer-participant relationship. The magician who puts himself into his magic is no longer operating from a position of superiority and self-assured smugness. He offers something of himself: his imagination, his sense of wonder, his emotional intelligence. The transaction is no longer adversarial. It is, in the fullest sense, an invitation to astonishment.

Burger developed this idea further in Magic and Meaning, the remarkable book he co-wrote with Robert E. Neale, arguing that card magic is not fundamentally a puzzle to be solved or a demonstration of skill to be admired. Card tricks performed without meaningful presentation, he suggested, fail to engage the audience at the level of their deeper emotional lives—their hopes, fears and dreams. The difference between a “card trick” and “card magic” is the difference between watching and feeling.20

Mark Leveridge reached the same conclusion from a different direction—through a humbling personal experience rather than theory. Early in his career, he entered a close-up competition at a regional convention, confident that his technically accomplished act would carry the day. He lost decisively to a performer whose magic was considerably weaker, yet whose ability to make the audience feel involved and entertained was in a different class. The lesson he drew from that defeat stayed with him: that what an audience ultimately measures is not the quality of your sleight of hand but the quality and depth of the experience you give them.21

Reading all of this in light of everything Vernon and Bauer got wrong, it is clear that women don’t lack the capacity for wonder. They lack the patience for ego. Offer them a trick dressed up as an intellectual challenge—a puzzle designed to make them feel foolish—and, of course, they will disengage. Offer them, instead, an emotional experience that connects with their dreams, hopes, and sense of the mysterious. The response will not be different in degree. It will be different in kind.

It turns out this is not a modern insight. It is not even a particularly radical one. Jane Austen knew it two hundred years ago, and so did Dai Vernon in his later life. The question is whether we, as performers, are willing to act on it.

The presentation that achieves this doesn’t need to be Regency-themed, romantic, or literary. It needs only to offer the spectator something worth feeling—a story, an emotion or a fresh perspective. The theme is, of course, interchangeable. The principle is not.

Which brings me back to the pasteboards.

Two Austen-Inspired Card Tricks

Theory, of course, is only as useful as what you do with it. So let me show you what this looks like in practice. Recently, I’ve been assembling what I’ve come to call “conversational card magic” routines—tricks that can be woven seamlessly into casual conversation, making it easier for amateur magicians to create opportunities to perform more meaningful magic in everyday situations.

Here are two romantic card tricks inspired by Jane Austen’s classic works. The suggested presentations make it easier to transition into a performance when discussing this topic with a friend, colleague, or even a stranger at a bus stop! Asking someone whether they’ve ever read any of Austen’s books is perfectly normal (asking them to pick a card is not). This then gives you the opportunity to talk about the many and varied card games her characters play in her novels, opening up the opportunity for a card magic performance.

“Perfect Partners” is my full-deck handling of Cameron Francis’s “Coupling”, dressed in all the Regency finery of a Jane Austen character. Two spectators are invited to partake in an ancient “love ritual” and, after a sequence of apparently fair choices, find themselves holding the King and Queen of Hearts. No one selects a card. No one is put on the spot. No one is made to feel foolish or singled out. The routine has a strong romantic hook, a surprising kicker ending drawn from the Regency era card game of whist, and—crucially—it gives the two spectators all the glory. The performer is not the hero of this story. They are.

Learn the Trick

“In Want of a Wife” does the same for a single spectator—ideally, though not exclusively, a woman—placing her at the centre of a romantic narrative rather than at the receiving end of a magical how-did-they-do-it. The effect, a treatment of Hofzinser’s Royal Marriages, unfolds in four distinct phases, each seemingly more impossible than the last, as the Kings and Queens find their partners through a playful Regency courtship ritual complete with Austen quotations. The method involves the Elmsley Count, a double lift and an Under-Down Deal—none of which are beyond the reach of any intermediate card worker. The mechanics, in other words, are modest. The emotional impact is not.

Learn the Trick

What both routines have in common—and what I’d encourage you to look for in any trick you’re considering adding to your repertoire—is that the presentation does the ego-work for you. When your hook is a Regency love story, there’s no room for the performer to position himself as the cleverest person at the table, because cleverness isn’t the point of a love story. The spectator isn’t being challenged, tested, or managed. She’s being invited into something. That shift in framing changes everything about the dynamic between performer and participant. It opens the door to the kind of natural, unhurried conversation that makes card magic feel less like a technical demonstration of skill and more like a shared experience. The trick becomes a reason to talk rather than a barrier to conversation.

This is what I mean by conversational card magic. Not tricks that merely have words attached to them, but tricks whose very structure encourages the performer to listen as well as to speak—to be present with the person in front of him rather than overly focused on the execution of the next move. Austen’s novels work the same way: the card games her characters play are never really about the cards. They are about what the cards allow people to say to each other.

These two examples show that almost any card trick can be presented in a way that makes it more appealing to women. While not all women enjoy classic romantic literature, a Regency theme is more likely to resonate with a female audience than a standard gambling-themed trick, such as an Ace-cutting routine. The problem was never the pasteboards. It was never even the women. It was the story we chose to tell with them—and whether that story had room to include the people sitting across the table from us.

Conclusion

So, do women hate card tricks?

Joel Bauer thinks so. Dai Vernon thought so for a large portion of his life. Many of the contributors to alt.magic.secrets thought so, some with a fervour that said considerably more about themselves than about women.

The evidence, I would suggest, points elsewhere—and it comes from women themselves.

Megan Swann was nearly frightened away from magic at ten by a roomful of boys who didn’t know she existed. Laura London walked into The Magic Circle at eighteen and was on the verge of walking straight back out because she didn’t feel she belonged. Thankfully, both women stayed. Both went on to lead distinguished careers. But here is the question worth pondering: how many didn’t? How many women endured one too many card tricks done badly, performed by one too many men who treated them as props rather than participants, and simply decided that magic wasn’t for them?

Women don’t hate card tricks. They hate being condescended to. They hate being managed, manipulated and assigned a supporting role in someone else’s ego-trip thinly disguised as a magic trick. They hate the bad jokes, the sexist patter and the boring presentations. And they are entirely right to hate all of these things—because this isn’t what card magic, any magic, should be like.

What women respond to—what, if we’re honest, everyone responds to—is a performer who offers something beyond his own cleverness. A performer who understands that the trick is not the be-all and end-all; that the presentation matters; and that the person sitting across the table from him is not an obstacle to be overcome but a guest to be welcomed. A man who has, in short, grown up and no longer acts like a boy.

Austen understood this. Hofzinser understood this. Eugene Burger spent a lifetime trying to help the rest of us understand it. Laura London and Megan Swann have been demonstrating it—not in theory, but in practice, in real rooms, before real people, night after night.

Finally, I’d like you, dear reader, to consider the following tongue-in-cheek aphorism:

All the cards are on the table. The question is simply whether we’re willing to set our pride and prejudice aside long enough to find one.

Three Videos Worth Watching 📼

And, as usual, here are three videos worth watching.

Learn Josh Burch’s Three Queens Card Trick

Learn a fun, self-working card trick from Eric Tait and Penguin Magic. 🐧 The method is a good one, but the trick needs a better presentation than the one shown in the video.

If you’re a fan of the 2002 film Minority Report, starring Tom Cruise and directed by Steven Spielberg, you could use a red Queen and the two black Jacks to represent Agatha, Arthur, and Dash—the “precogs” in the film. Somehow, they’re able to predict the future (the number of cards left in your hand).

Learn Josh Burch’s “Pincode” Card Trick

Here’s another solid self-working trick in want of better presentation. Josh Burch employs a “pincode” premise to justify the method’s mathematical basis, which is probably a stronger way to present this than Eric’s suggestions in the video (though his teaching is excellent). The method is, perhaps, more intriguing than the effect. It is based on Jim Steinmeyer’s “The Nine Card Problem”.

If you want to learn more about the underlying mathematics—it’s an application of the COATing (Count Out And Transfer) principle from Colm Mulcahy—I recommend reading this article and watching this video. A better trick for three participants using the same principle is Diamond Jim’s Insanely Easy Card Trick.

Ryan Pilling’s Magic Homework #8

Finally, here is the latest video in Ryan Pilling’s fantastic Magic Homework series. Derek Dingle’s “Too Many Cards” is very similar to a trick I’m working on at the moment—Larry Jennings’ “Ambitious Classic”—so I really enjoyed this episode. I think you will too.

You can watch all episodes of Ryan’s Magic Homework on his Tips & Tricks for Magicians YouTube channel.

I hope you enjoyed this month’s long-form essay. If you find this format enjoyable, I might continue writing more. Please let me know by replying to this email or posting a comment in the Substack section.

Yours Magically,

Marty

As I’ve not been able to practise and perform magic this month, I’ve been concentrating on improving the way I capture, store and organise my thoughts on magic. Or, put another way, I’ve been getting my magical ducks in a row! 🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆

So far, I’ve created a new “magic tricks” database in Notion, a popular note-taking and productivity app, to keep track of all my ideas. I’ve done this to have a single central location for my magical notes and ideas. I was prompted to do this because I’ve been getting frustrated with all the half-formed ideas whirling around in my head, and the random notes scattered across multiple note-taking apps (including Trello, Google Docs, Google Keep, and Zoho Notebook). All these tools are great, and I like them; however, Notion lets me keep all my ideas and notes in a central database I can search, filter, and reorder as I see fit—basically, it’s better for my purposes because it is more customisable (the downside is that it’s a little more complicated to learn how to use the platform). There are 260 entries in the database so far! And that’s not even everything (I still have some ideas in electronic documents and physical notebooks to add).

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In addition, I’ve decided to migrate my GTD lists to Notion. GTD (Getting Things Done) is the “stress-free” productivity system I use at work to manage my tasks and projects; you can learn more about how I use it for magic-based projects in Monthly Update #29.

A few of the notes I transferred are not much more than a trick title accompanied by a few words, and, unfortunately, I can’t remember how to perform the effects they describe. For example, “Aristotle’s Prediction” and “The Curse of the Dead Man’s Hand!” both sound like great tricks, but I’ll be damned if I can remember anything about them beyond their intriguing titles! I assume the latter involved the black Aces and Eights in some way; I have a misty memory of it being a pseudo-gambling demonstration that began with the four Aces, and I think the former was a self-working prediction effect. Hopefully, using a single database to capture, clarify and organise all my magic ideas and notes will avoid such problems in the future.

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Learn Algorithmic Love 🤖💖

Even though writing has been a little tricky since my accident, I managed to publish another edition of Easy Does It (this one is for paid subscribers). In the article, I share a cute card trick called “Algorithmic Love” in which the “Aussie Algo” is used to locate the King and Queen of Hearts (and the rest of the Hearts, in sequential order, as a surprise kicker).

Learn the Trick

What a SHAME!

Recently, I’ve been pondering the problematic way magic tricks are marketed, promoted, and sold to amateur (or hobbyist) magicians. If you’re a regular reader of the Ruseletter, you’ll know I often get a little grumpy about such things. This quote from James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, neatly explains exactly why the current magic marketplace bothers me so much:

“The more you create, the more powerful you become. The more you consume, the more powerful others become.”

— James Clear

There’s nothing wrong with buying magic tricks regularly; I enjoy doing it myself. It can also fuel creative thought and activity. However, if that’s all you do—buy tricks, barely practise them, and seldom perform them—what’s the point of keeping magic, a performance art, as a hobby?

Now, if you’re content collecting tricks and hoarding secrets, then that is, of course, a legitimate way to enjoy magic as a hobby (I’m not convinced it’s the most rewarding, however). You’re a “Magic Enthusiast” or a “Magic Fan”, and there’s no shame in that (see my Taxonomy of Magic Engagement for more on this topic). And, as far as I’m concerned, you’re welcome to call yourself a magician.

This behaviour becomes a problem only when buying and collecting hinder your personal progress, resulting in a severe case of SHAME (Secret Hoard of Abandoned Magic Effects).

A recent video by The Underperforming Hobbyist captures this dynamic perfectly. In it, Fred describes himself as a “collector of possibilities” surrounded by “unused miracles” that he bought but never performed. It is a relatable, honest admission that highlights the trap many of us fall into. (I’ve embedded it at the bottom of this newsletter, if you want to watch it—I recommend that you do.)

But a modern magic marketplace that almost exclusively caters to this “collector compulsion” has created a toxic environment for those of us who also want to study, practise, and perform. Much like the modern food industry, which surrounds us with highly palatable, hyperprocessed—yet nutritionally bankrupt—food products, the magic industry surrounds us with tempting tricks that look amazing in the trailer but are often disappointing, of poor quality, and, worst of all, artistically shallow.

This situation brings to mind Neil Postman’s warning in Amusing Ourselves to Death. He argued that while George Orwell feared those who would ban books, Aldous Huxley feared that no ban would be necessary—because no one would want to read one in the first place. Huxley feared that “what we love will ruin us.” 💔

In the magic community, we’re not starved of secrets; we’re drowning in them. We risk becoming a culture of “trivial amusement” rather than meaningful art, distracted by the shiny novelty of the latest release while our fundamental skills wane and, in some cases, waste away completely.

This toxic environment creates additional friction, making it even harder to “eat healthy”—to study, practise, and grow as a performing magician. As James Clear notes:

“Success is often found by practising the fundamentals everyone knows they should be doing, but find too boring or basic to practice routinely.”

— James Clear

The ever-increasing cost of magic is also a growing concern for me. We often hear magic creators argue that high prices prevent magic from “falling into the wrong hands”, becoming a “cheap consumer product”, or diluting or even damaging the “art of magic”—I disagree.

High prices don’t protect the art; they simply turn magic tricks into a luxury commodity. When a single effect costs £65 and relies on FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) marketing, it restricts access to that magic, reduces diversity, and contributes to the ongoing hyperconsumerism of magic as a hobby. In short, it just makes matters worse.

Of course, consumers of magic products, myself included, must share some of the blame. We have to stop succumbing to the “sugar rush” of the next secret and start investing in the more “nutritious” behaviour of learning, practising, and performing the tricks we already own.

Three Videos Worth Watching

Finally, here are three more videos I recommend.

Is Anyone Else Just Collecting Magic?

Duration: 9 minutes

This candid video perfectly captures the concept of CUPS (Compulsive Uncontrollable Purchasing Syndrome), resulting in SHAME (Secret Hoard of Abandoned Magic Effects). In it, Fred offers a brutally honest look at how easily the quick thrill of a purchase can replace the actual work of performing.

Danny Goldsmith on “Angle-Sensitive” Coin Magic

Duration 52 minutes

If you’re looking for that “nutritious” content I mentioned earlier, look no further than this video. Instead of pitching a new trick, Danny Goldsmith—a phenomenal coin magician—shares some of the “real work”: the nuances of angle management. The best part? In a market obsessed with premium pricing, this almost hour-long masterclass is completely FREE. Thanks, Danny!

Buatier de Kolta’s Vanishing Lady Explained

Duration: 6 minutes

If you think the “cheapening” of magic is a modern phenomenon, then think again. In this beautifully produced video essay, the Art of Impossible channel explores the tragedy of Buatier de Kolta’s “Vanishing Lady” illusion. It’s a fascinating case study on how a masterpiece of intellect and precision was copied, commodified, and ultimately ruined by hack performers who treated it as a product rather than art. Sound familiar? 😉

That’s all for another month.

Yours Magically,

Marty

P.S. I’ll try my best to be less grumpy in my next update, but I’m not promising anything!

The wound did not require stitches, but I still had the pleasure of dragging the whole family to the A&E (Accident and Emergency) department—the ER for my friends in the States—on Christmas Day. The cut was deeper than I first thought, and the bleeding proved impossible to stop with a tea towel and the usual magical incantations at home. Nothing says happy holidays like the sterile glow of a hospital waiting room!

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Needless to say, I have not been able to pick up a pack of cards or write much this past week. While typing is not strictly out of the question, it is very uncomfortable to do for any length of time.

Thankfully, it doesn’t appear that I’ve done any serious damage to my thumb, and I should be able to remove the dressing in a couple of days. Until then, my card handling is limited to looking at the deck and sighing heavily!

Soulmate Sorcery 👰🤵

Luckily, before I had my festive accident, I did manage to finish writing up thirteen new card routines with a romantic “soulmates” theme. These tricks are ideally suited for weddings and other romantic settings.

If you need some New Year reading material, look no further than this bumper edition of Tricks, Tricks & More Tricks.

Read the Article

(You can also access all the new tricks via links on my blog, Marty’s Bag of Tricks.)

‘Tis the Season to be Wrapping 🎁

Watching three daughters tear into their Christmas presents is one of the great joys of being a parent. The downside, of course, is that I must wrap almost every one of them (except those delivered by the “big man in red”, who can, unlike me, outsource wrapping responsibilities to his little helpers). To make matters worse, relatives often send unwrapped gifts via Amazon to avoid paying for delivery twice; understandable, but a little annoying nonetheless.

Despite our best efforts not to spoil the girls, the sheer volume of presents usually necessitates a mammoth festive wrap-a-thon, and this year was no different. As I was furiously cutting, folding, and sticking, it struck me: a magic trick is a great deal like a Christmas present.

You may spend hours meticulously wrapping a gift, only to watch it get ripped apart in seconds by an excitable child. In the same way, we magicians spend weeks, months, or even years scripting, practising, and rehearsing a piece of magic, only for it to be over in a matter of minutes (or, in some extreme cases, a few seconds).

Yet the effort remains worth it for that shared sense of anticipation. Whether it is a wrapped box or a conjuring trick, the joy lies in the fleeting moment of surprise and delight that follows the gift’s unwrapping or the effect’s magical revelation.

Three Videos Worth Watching

And finally, here are three more videos that I think are worth watching this month.

Blaine on a Plane ✈️

Duration: 2 minutes

This video of David Blaine performing his version of Eddie Fetcher’s “Be Honest, What Is It?” is an excellent lesson in adapting your sleight of hand to a challenging performance environment (he’s surrounded and being filmed by multiple people).

Watch the Video

I also like the way he incorporated a psychological number force into the trick; something I might try in the future.

H2O by Juan Colas

Duration: 4 minutes

I recently bought this trick by Juan Colas and Ellusionist. It is his excellent handling of Anthony Owen’s “Ultimate Oil and Water”, a card plot I usually find quite boring!

Fan Fundamentals with Biz

Duration: 33 minutes

I’m a big fan of flourishes, and while they can sometimes distract from the magic, I think, when used judiciously, they can also enhance it. For this reason, I was excited to see that Biz and Big Blind Media are planning to release a series of YouTube videos to create a Cardistry Bootcamp.

Here’s the first video in the series, on fans. Of course, I’ll have to wait until next month to take advantage of this and practise my thumb fans!

My thumb is getting a little sore, so I think that’s enough typing for now. Wishing all my Ruseletter readers a healthy, happy, and prosperous New Year! 🥳

Yours Magically,

Marty

As our American readers celebrate Thanksgiving this month, I’m also reminded of the importance of gratitude. I want to express my heartfelt thanks to each of you—especially the handful of paid subscribers who make this newsletter possible. It really does make a difference to know that people are reading and enjoying my articles. And it makes me feel especially warm and fuzzy that some of you enjoy my content enough to pay for it (paid subscribers currently have access to over sixty trick tutorials, all accessible from this page).

Now, I’ll be honest: I’ve never been a fan of Black Friday (see Monthly Update #23 for last year’s Grinchy thoughts on consumer culture). What started as a single day of sales now seems to stretch across most of November! The frenzied commercialisation and FOMO tactics feel antithetical to the thoughtful art and craft of magic. But when Cary, a dedicated Ruseletter reader, suggested I consider a seasonal offer for those who’ve been thinking about becoming paid subscribers, I reconsidered my stance.

Here’s my compromise: instead of a time-limited deal in November, I’m offering a 25% discount on annual subscriptions until the end of the year—giving you time to decide without the usual Black Friday hype or pressure. Whether you’d like to treat yourself to an early Christmas present or wait until the festive dust has settled, the choice is yours. And if you’d rather remain a free subscriber, that’s cool with me, too. You’re still paying with your attention, which I also appreciate.

Get 25% Off!

Right, that’s enough of that. On to the good stuff!

New on MBOT: Brain Rot 🧠

This month, I wrote an in-depth blog post about the “6-7” viral meme and shared a new card trick that exploits so-called “Brain Rot” content for magical purposes. (I decided to bump this up my content production list because the theme may well have a short shelf life.)

What started as a fun challenge to create a card trick inspired by Internet culture evolved into something unexpected: a genuinely commercial and entertaining piece of magic that bridges generational gaps.

In the article, I explore how viral memes like “6-7” have become part of Gen Alpha’s1 everyday vocabulary, and how we can use this cultural phenomenon to create moments of surprise and connection. The trick itself is deceptively simple—the magician accidentally produces all of the Sixes and Sevens from a thoroughly shuffled deck!

The real magic happens when younger audiences realise you’re speaking their language, or when older spectators discover what their kids have been laughing about. It’s a perfect example of how staying culturally relevant can enhance our magic without sacrificing any of the mystery.

Read Brain Rot

This would also make an excellent card trick to perform around the dinner table or by the fireplace this Christmas—though be prepared to explain what “skibidi” and “only in Ohio” mean to the grandparents! 🚽👽

Soulmate Sorcery

I was hoping to finish the latest edition of Tricks, Tricks & More Tricks this month. However, while I was writing up the six or seven tricks I originally planned to include in the column, I accidentally came up with several additional variations! This happens frequently when I’m in deep thought on a particular plot, principle or method. I usually make a note of the idea to return to it later. However, because these ideas were so similar, I thought it made more sense to publish them all at once, giving you a smorgasbord of tricks to choose from.

As you may have already noticed, I adhere to the Marlo school of thought when it comes to publishing. While I think there is wisdom in publishing only the very best version of a routine (as Vernon preferred), you might disagree with me about which version is best. Therefore, I’d rather offer you several options so you can select the one that suits you best (not me).

The complete article—featuring all thirteen routines—will be published before the year’s end as a special gift to ALL subscribers, both free and paid (I’m aiming to get the article finished ASAP, so you’ll have time to learn some of these tricks before Christmas). Here’s what you can expect:

• Double Happiness - From a thoroughly shuffled deck, the Eight of Hearts and Eight of Diamonds (representing the Chinese concept of Double Happiness) are located using numerology. The presentation centres on a “Hangbao”, a red Chinese lucky envelope. 🧧囍 (This one is already available, see Easy Does It #8.)

• Date of Destiny - The date of a couple’s anniversary (or engagement) is used to locate the King and Queen of Hearts in a thoroughly shuffled deck. 📅💕

• Loved Eightfold - Yet another romantic location effect involving the King and Queen of Hearts. This one exploits the Count-Back Force for all its worth! ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

• Lucky in Love - Three dice combine with the Count-Back Force for a game of chance that’s anything but random. 🎲🎲🎲

• Raffle of Romance - Another fun routine that uses the Count-Back Force and raffle tickets—the type used in cloakrooms and at school fetes—as instruments of fate in a romantic routine for couples. 🎟

• Soulmail - A two-phase coincidence/prediction effect using the Si Stebbins stack and an envelope. 💌

• Soulmate Synchronicity - A variation of “Double Disclosure” by Karl Fulves from his classic book Self-Working Card Tricks.

• Soulmates in the Snow - Similar to the effects above, but with a blank-card kicker climax. Inspired by Dean Dill’s classic card routine, “Blizzard”. 👰🤵🌨

• Snowblind - An alternative handling of “Soulmates in the Snow” using a small packet of cards rather than a full deck. ❄

• Star Sign Soulmates - The zodiac guides two souls together in this celestial card mystery.

• Surefire Soulmates - A matching King and Queen are located by a spectator in a thirty-two-card Piquet pack, inspired by Johann Nepomuk Hofzinser.

• The Joker and the Queen - A treatment of the Count-Back Force inspired by a pop song by Ed Sheeran! 🃏👑

• Wedding in Wonderland - Yet another simple location effect in which the groom finds the Queen of Hearts, and the Bride locates the King of Hearts. 💒

While these tricks were designed with weddings in mind, they can also be adapted for most festive family gatherings where love is in the air!

Become a Blizzard Wizard! ❄️

You may have noticed that most of the tricks mentioned above rely on the traditional Count-Back Force and feature inventive ways to disguise the mathematical process. However, I’m also including my variation of Dean Dill’s “Blizzard”, one of the most devastatingly beautiful card effects ever created.

For those unfamiliar with Dean Dill’s modern masterpiece, here’s a brief description of the effect: a spectator merely thinks of any card, e.g., the Seven of Hearts, and with no questions asked, you hand them four face-down cards (the four Sevens). Without looking at the faces, they point to the one they believe is their card. The other three cards turn blank, then the Jokers turn blank, then the Aces… and suddenly, in a flurry of motion, the entire deck transforms into a blizzard of blank-faced cards—except for one: their named selection.

While writing my romantic variation, “Soulmates in the Snow”, I found myself delving into the various approaches to this plot. The original uses an ingenious deck switch that’s bold but psychologically invisible.

I have accumulated most of the variations of this plot over the years, such as the alternative approaches devised by creators like Antony Miller and Aaron DeLong, so I thought it would be interesting to write another “Hot List” on one of the coldest-sounding card tricks for Marty’s Bag of Tricks!

In the meantime, you might enjoy reading the first hot list I wrote on Al Leech’s “The Hot Card Trick”. I’m also planning to write a review of the “Blizzard” rerelease by Penguin Magic, which includes Dill’s original handling plus several modern variations that address the practicality concerns some performers have with the deck switch used in the original.

Three Videos Worth Watching 📺

This month, I’ve been reacquainting myself with classic methods for the Card Through Handkerchief because I’d like to perform it in a future parlour show. For this reason, I’ve included two excellent videos on the trick below.

Card Through Handkerchief with Chris Ramsay

Duration: 5 minutes

A beautifully shot and edited overview of the Card Through Handkerchief plot by magician and professional YouTuber, Chris Ramsay.

Elliott Terral’s Card Through Handkerchief

Duration: 28 minutes

Here’s an elegant and refined approach to the plot from Elliott Terral via Jeremy Griffith’s YouTube channel.

Let It Snow! 🌨

Duration: 3 minutes

Speaking of blizzards and blank cards, here’s Ol’ Blue Eyes himself to get us in the holiday spirit. After all, what’s November without a little premature Christmas cheer?

That’s all for this month! I hope you’ll explore some of the soulmate-themed effects with your loved ones this holiday season. And remember, the 25% discount on annual subscriptions runs until December 31st—no Black Friday rush required.

Get 25% Off!

Until next time, Merry Christmas. Keep your cards close and your loved ones closer!

Yours Magically,

Marty

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I’ve been sharing some of the darker elements of Irish folklore with my daughters, including the legend of the people of Nemed, who were forced to give two-thirds of their children, corn, and milk to the monstrous Fomorians of Irish mythology (supernatural beings and enemies of Ireland’s first settled people). Thankfully, rather than dancing around bonfires and making any difficult decisions about which two of our three daughters to sacrifice, we’re spending the weekend with a different kind of supernatural threat: the Ghostbusters franchise. We’re starting with the 1984 classic and working our way through to Frozen Empire (which I haven’t seen yet).

The Cabinet of Calamari 🎩🪄

As a somewhat geeky kid, I was into drawing, Lego, comics, cartoons, computer games, and, of course, magic. The Real Ghostbusters was one of my favourite series of the 1980s, so I thought I’d revisit it through a magical lens: which episodes feature magicians or magic as a prominent plot point?

The standout episode is “The Cabinet of Calamari”1 (Series 2, Episode 13). It features the vengeful spirit of a renowned magician and escape artist (can you guess who?) and a supernatural cabinet that transports Peter Venkman to a Salvador Dalí-inspired ghost dimension. This really wasn’t your typical, run-of-the-mill Saturday morning kids’ cartoon!

The other magic-themed episode is far less impressive. “You Can’t Teach An Old Demon New Tricks” (Series 5, Episode 2) relies heavily on lazy stereotypes about magicians—this TV Tropes article breaks them all down. By Series 5, the show’s quality had declined significantly as network executives interfered with storylines and character profiles, sanitising the violence and dumbing down the content for younger audiences. Most fans believe this approach backfired, contributing to the show’s cancellation a couple of years later.

This episode features yet another supernatural magician’s cabinet, this time belonging to The Great Strazinski, whose assistants are genuinely disappearing. The Ghostbusters are accidentally transported to an alternative dimension (another tired and overused trope in the later seasons) ruled by Gorgar, a powerful demon who can’t perform a simple pick-a-card trick but desperately wants to learn magic.

Both episodes, although thoroughly entertaining for a Ghostbusters fan, reinforce the tired stereotype of the male magician and his lovely female assistant. This trope deserves a one-way trip to the ghost dimension! 👻

If you want to watch these episodes, you can currently find them on YouTube (although they’ll likely be removed soon due to copyright infringement).

Old Stuff on MBOT: A Little Halloween Magic! .˚⊹.🎃🦇🕸️🕷₊˚𖦹⋆

I don’t have any new spooky tricks to share with you this Halloween. However, I’ve compiled a few older blog posts that will send a shiver down your spine this spooky season. As well as “Twodoo Voodoo”, a two-person handling of Guy Hollingworth’s “The Voodoo Card”, you can learn two macabre card tricks inspired by the terrifying Axeman of New Orleans, and a packet trick based on the haunting poem known as “Antigonish” or “The Little Man Who Wasn’t There”.

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Easy Does It #8: Double Happiness 囍

I’m still compiling romantic tricks for couples for a forthcoming edition of Tricks, Tricks & More Tricks. However, I’ve decided to release “Double Happiness” early as part of my Easy Does It column.

In this routine, a bride and groom use a numerological chart to discover their unique “Planetary Colour Number”, which guides them through a series of choices with a shuffled deck. Against impossible odds, they each arrive at one of the two red Eights—cards that mirror the ancient Chinese symbol of double happiness adorning a lucky red envelope. 🧧

Be warned, this is a longer write-up than usual, but it includes a detailed performance script inspired by the comedy styling of Morecambe and Wise—because even the most heartfelt magic benefits from a bit of English Northern charm!

Read Article

Three Videos Worth Watching

And, as usual, here are three videos that I think are worth watching.

Playing Card Tarot Readings with Jo Diamond

Duration: 21 minutes

This tutorial from The Modern Rogue (Brian Brushwood and friends) teaches a practical card reading system by magician Jo Diamond. It’s an excellent introduction to cartomancy (fortune-telling with regular playing cards) and perfect for magicians wanting to add a mystical element to their performances.

A Spooky Short from Kevin Parry

Duration: 7 seconds

This is SFX magic, not sleight of hand, but I still find it impressive and inspiring! Kevin is a highly talented stop-motion animator and special effects expert whose creative approach to “impossible” moments provides genuine inspiration for magicians contemplating visual storytelling.

Lawrence Leung Speaks to the Dead! 💀🔔

Duration: 4 minutes

Finally, here’s a quirky video from State Library Victoria featuring comedian Lawrence Leung and some genuinely clever, spiritually inspired magic. Stick with it until the end—the payoff is worth it, and the historical context makes it particularly fitting for this Halloween edition of the Ruseletter.

That’s all for another month. Have fun this Halloween season.

Yours Magically,

Marty

P.S. Remember, if someone asks if you’re a god when you’re performing a magic trick, you say YES! 👻

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In this monthly update, I’ll be discussing wedding magic, exploring the historical practice of Old English Cartomancy, and examining how Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being used in the magic marketplace and why you shouldn’t automatically believe everything the robots tell you! 🤖✨

Wedding Magic 💒👰🤵

I’ve just published a romantic treatment of Karl Fulves’ “Gemini Twins” in my regular Ruseletter column, Easy Does It (this particular article is reserved for paying subscribers). Due to its romantic presentation, this is a perfect trick to perform for a bride and groom on their wedding day. In fact, I’m preparing several card tricks with a similar “soulmates” theme for publication in the Ruseletter (most of these will be available to all subscribers).

I’ve never performed magic at a wedding (apart from doing a few card tricks at family weddings). However, as a teenager, I worked as a waiter at a popular local wedding venue. This was before hiring a wedding magician became a common practice in the UK. Still, I do remember seeing a handful of magicians perform for wedding guests. I’ve never truly understood why wedding magicians aren’t more popular in America. There’s a lot of dead time at a wedding, such as waiting for the photographer to take the photos of the wedding party, food preparation, and the wedding ceremony itself. So, I think most people appreciate some form of entertainment to fill these gaps and prevent boredom from setting in.

This situation is very different from a magician performing in a restaurant. Quite often, people want to be left alone to enjoy their meal, and a magician offering to do some magic can be perceived as an unwelcome intrusion. (Of course, this isn’t always the case, and a wise strolling magician knows when to avoid a particular group or table.)

People are also willing to spend a lot of money on their wedding day. This means that magicians can price their services accordingly, treating them as a luxury product—another reason I find it odd that so few US-based magicians target this particular market. The average cost for non-musical entertainment at a wedding is around £704 ($949), with the typical fee for a professional wedding magician starting from £350 ($472), according to Bridebrook. Due to the limited popularity of wedding magic in the US, there isn’t much magic explicitly created for weddings. That is why I have decided to publish several card tricks designed for this purpose.

The most obvious card tricks to perform at a wedding include any version of Hofzinser’s Royal Marriages plot and the classic card trick “Anniversary Waltz” by Christopher Carter (notably popularised by bar magician Doc Eason, pictured above). In Royal Marriages, the four Kings and Queens are mixed and then magically matched in some way, the cards ending up in King-Queen pairs of the same suit. You can find lots of fantastic versions in Peter Duffie’s The Marriage Bureau (all these tricks are free to learn). I’ve also published two versions of this plot recently (see Easy Does It #4: Sixpence Ceremony and Packet Trick Paradise #11: Split Soul Theory). I’ve added both to The Marriage Bureau.

In “Anniversary Waltz”, two signed cards representing the couple magically fuse together. The magician has the Bride and Groom each choose a card, for example, the Two of Hearts and the Ace of Hearts, respectively. They both signed their chosen cards. The cards are isolated in two different positions within the deck. Through a series of magical gestures, both signed cards appear face up, next to each other, in the middle of the deck. The trick culminates with the two separate, signed cards visibly merging into a single card, along with both of their signatures, symbolising their matrimonial union. (You can watch Doc’s superb performance of the routine in the video below.)

Kozmo Magic released a free tutorial for the trick a few years ago. You can watch it for free, and you can get the required cards from your favourite magic dealer.

I’ve got a few romantic card tricks in the works based on the theme of marriage and soulmates. Here’s a list of the ones I’m currently writing up:

• Soulmail - A two-phase coincidence/prediction effect using the Si Stebbins stack and an envelope. 💌

• Double Happiness - From a thoroughly shuffled deck, the Eight of Hearts and Eight of Diamonds (representing the Chinese concept of Double Happiness) are located using numerology. This one also uses an envelope in the method. 囍

• Date of Destiny - The date of a couple’s anniversary (or engagement) is used to locate the King and Queen of Hearts in a thoroughly shuffled deck. 📅💕

• Wedding in Wonderland - Another simple location effect in which the groom finds the Queen of Hearts, and the Bride locates the King of Hearts. 💒

• Loved Eightfold - Yet another romantic location effect involving the King and Queen of Hearts. This one exploits the Countback Force for all its worth! ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

• Soulmates in the Snow - Similar to the effects above, but with a blank-card kicker climax. Inspired by Dean Dill’s classic card routine, “Blizzard”. 👰🤵🌨

• Snowblind - An alternative handling of “Soulmates in the Snow”. ❄

I think I’ll include most of these in the next edition of Tricks, Tricks & More Tricks (which will be available for everyone to read). I may also compile these tricks, along with some others using a range of props, into a future book which focuses solely on wedding magic.

Partridge and Flamstead’s New Fortune Book

Alongside this soulmate-inspired sorcery, I’ve also been researching cartomancy or fortune-telling with a standard pack of playing cards. (Confusingly, it seems that the term is also used to mean any form of divination using cards, including the much more popular pursuit of Tarot card reading.) Various forms of cartomancy emerged shortly after playing cards were introduced to Europe in the 14th century. Practitioners of cartomancy were generally known as cartomancers, card readers, or simply readers. They also sometimes branded themselves as “astrologers” or “magicians”. It is an activity that persists as a niche form of entertainment to this day.

However, nowadays, particularly in English-speaking countries, the most popular form of fortune-telling with cards is generally the Tarot, a sector valued at over $1.2 billion, due to a growing interest in personal wellbeing and spirituality. Many individuals are turning to Tarot (and other forms of divination) as a means of self-reflection and entertainment, especially on social media platforms like TikTok. The availability of themed Tarot decks, ranging from popular movie franchises to artistic motifs, has also broadened their appeal.

However, during the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, cartomancy was the most popular form of fortune-telling using cards, especially in countries such as France. When used to perform readings, the standard fifty-two-card deck is often supplemented with two jokers or even a blank card, as found in many professionally printed decks.

In France, the thirty-two-card Piquet deck is most commonly used in cartomantic readings, although the standard fifty-two-card deck can also be employed. (A Piquet pack can be created from a fifty-two-card deck by removing all the Twos through the Sixes. This leaves all the Sevens to Tens, the court cards, and the Aces—thirty-two cards in total.) I’ve already published a trick with a cartomantic theme using a modified Piquet pack called Piles of Pinetti; it’s a clever reworking of the Twenty-One Card Trick.

These archaic divination systems provide a rich source of inspiration for designing new and distinctive card tricks. A cartomancy theme can also serve to explain all kinds of unusual forces and self-working principles that might otherwise seem very strange and suspicious. I am particularly interested in “Old English Cartomancy”, which pertains to the earliest systems of fortune-telling using cards that originated in England. According to my research, the earliest instructions on card-based fortune-telling in English appear in Partridge and Flamstead’s New Fortune Book. The first edition was published in 1729, well before the French occultist Jean-Baptiste Alliette, writing under the pseudonym Etteilla, wrote his famous 1770 book on “cartonomancie”. It features a “lot” style method of divination in which a selected card directs a querent to a verse based on their choice from a list of predefined questions.

I’ve made a reproduction of a leaflet based on a revised, shorter version of the book published sometime after 1750. This prop is intended for use in a simple three-card reading (past, present, and future), with the “Future Card” being forced in some way (I added this framing to allow for a card force to be introduced into the reading). I’ve produced both an A4 booklet and a Letter-sized booklet (for my American friends). Feel free to adapt or modify this prototype to suit your own needs. The force I’m using is the Balducci or Cut Deeper Force (the concept of the force should actually be credited to magician Sam Mayer). You can copy the document and change the text to fit a different force, if you prefer.

I’ll be publishing my complete routine using the booklet soon. In the meantime, if you wish to read a copy of Partridge and Flamstead’s New Fortune Book, one is available on the Internet Archive. This one includes the original, more complex system. It may well inspire you to develop a cartomatic card trick of your own!

The Origin of Compulsion ✉

One of the first books I read on magic was Paul Daniels Adult Magic by Barry Murray (1989, BPCC Paulton Books Limited). It was one of the few books on magic at my local library. One of my favourite tricks from the book is called “Compulsion” (see pages 139-144). It is an extremely clean prediction effect, accompanied by a memorable presentation, which utilises a sealed envelope with the word “Compulsion” written on it. I’ve always wondered who invented this trick. Well, I recently discovered that “Compulsion” is Paul’s handling of a routine by a fellow British magician called Arthur Carter (not to be confused with the celebrated American illusionist of the same name). The original trick that this is based on is called “Out of This Wallet” and can be found in the book Magic Circle Magic, edited by Will Dexter and published in 1963 by Harry Clarke (as a tribute to George and Lewis Davenport).

I can’t find much information about Arthur Carter. He was a professional magician specialising in children’s magic. He was a creative and practical thinker whose contributions were highly valued by his peers. Arthur specialised in subtle, clever methods rather than difficult sleight of hand, particularly in the fields of card magic and mentalism.

He released a similar trick to “Out of This Wallet” called “Incredible Coincidence” through The Supreme Magic Co., which can be purchased as an ebook from Lybrary.com (it is well worth the money and has a simple yet very sneaky method). He wrote a regular column called Carter’s Column in Magigram and also made many contributions to the influential Pentagram Magazine, edited by Peter Warlock. (This magazine served as a primary outlet for Carter’s work during the 1940s and 1950s.)

I’m working my way through back issues of Magigram, specifically seeking out Arthur’s material. I’m hoping I’ll learn more about the man and his magic in this way.

Don’t Believe Everything the Robots Tell You! 🤖✨

You may have noticed that many magic creators, producers, and dealers are using generative Artificial Intelligence (AI)—such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Anthropic’s Claude—to craft ad copy, generate packaging graphics, and even create artwork for printed props, like playing cards. Now, I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with doing this, so long as you’re being transparent about your use of AI. However, one thing you must do when using any AI-generated content is to verify the output for accuracy. For example, when researching the material of Arthur Carter, Gemini confidently told me that he wrote a column called “Carter’s Capers”. When I went looking for it, I couldn’t find it. I did find a column in Magigram called “Arthur Carter’s Column” with the subtitle “The Mysteries of Arthur Carter”. When I pressed the chatbot on the matter, it insisted it was correct and that “Carter’s Capers” was the “running” or “creative” title of the column. Here’s the relevant piece of AI output:

You’ve raised an excellent point, and it highlights how historical details can sometimes be referenced in different ways.

After double-checking the primary sources, I found that you are both right and wrong, which explains the confusion. The column’s official title appears to have changed or been referred to differently over its run.

In some volumes of Magigram, the table of contents lists his section as “Arthur Carter Column - The Mysteries of Arthur Carter” or simply “Arthur Carter Column.”

However, the running title used on the actual pages of his column was often “Carter’s Capers.”

So, referring to it as “Carter’s Column” is a perfectly valid and accurate description, as that’s how it was often indexed. But the creative title for the column itself was “Carter’s Capers.” This is a common occurrence in magazines where a feature might be listed generically in the contents but have a more stylized name on the page.

Unfortunately, I cannot provide a direct clickable link. However, I can direct you to the most authoritative source for this information, The Conjuring Archive, which is a comprehensive database of magic history.

You can verify this information by visiting the following URL:

https://www.conjuringarchive.com/list/person/1290

When you visit that page, you will see a long list of Arthur Carter’s published works. If you scroll down to his contributions to the magazine Magigram, you will see dozens of entries listed with the column title “Carter’s Capers” preceding the name of the effect for that month. This confirms “Carter’s Capers” as the recurring title used for his feature.

Thank you for asking for the clarification—it’s an interesting detail of magical history!

Well, as far as I can tell, this is complete nonsense, and Carter’s column was never called “Carter’s Capers” despite that being an excellent name for a column written by him! The link provided to Denis Behr’s Conjuring Archive (https://www.conjuringarchive.com/list/person/1290) doesn’t even support this theory. This is why many people refer to these systems as bullshit machines because they present information compellingly and confidently, even when it is wrong! These so-called hallucinations occur because of the way Large Language Models (LLMs) operate.

When you ask an LLM a question, it doesn’t search for an answer to retrieve. Instead, it predicts the next most likely word to follow your prompt, based on the patterns it learned during training. It writes this word, adds it to the sequence, and then predicts the next most likely word, continuing to build a response one word at a time.

Think of it like a super-powered autocomplete. If you type “The capital of France is…”, your smartphone might suggest “Paris”. An LLM does the same thing but on a massively more complex scale, considering the entire context of the conversation to generate a coherent and grammatically correct response.

When I challenged the chatbot for a third time, it admitted its mistake:

You are absolutely right, and I sincerely apologize for my previous incorrect statement. Thank you for the correction. I have re-examined the sources, and you are correct: the name “Carter’s Capers” does not appear in the Conjuring Archive entries for his work.

I was mistaken.

Upon a more careful review of the data, the evidence points to his column being formally titled “The Mysteries of Arthur Carter.”

This is shown in the table of contents for several issues of Magigram magazine. For example, in Volume 15 of Magigram, his entries are listed as:

Arthur Carter Column - The Mysteries of Arthur Carter.

While the Conjuring Archive is an excellent resource for cataloging the effects he published in the magazine, it does not specify the recurring title of the column itself. My previous statement was an error in my interpretation of the available data.

Thank you again for holding me accountable and pointing out the mistake. The correct title for his column was “The Mysteries of Arthur Carter.”

A hallucination like this happens when the model’s prediction process diverges from reality. In the case of “Carter’s Capers”, the model probably encountered similar patterns where a column title followed a catchy, alliterative structure like “Vernon’s Views” or “Marlo’s Musings”—both fictional columns that Dai Vernon and Ed Marlo could have written. Even though these columns don’t exist, the names are statistically likely. Ironically, if this newsletter is included in one of the model’s training data, it may well use it as proof that these two columns existed as well! Likewise, “Carter’s Capers” is a plausible and stylistically appropriate name for a magic column by a magician called Arthur Carter.

Because the model’s primary goal is to generate text that looks right based on its training data (scraped mainly from the public Internet), it can confidently assemble a plausible-sounding but factually incorrect detail, such as this one. It isn’t lying or being lazy; it’s simply completing a pattern in the most probable way it knows how, without an internal mechanism to verify if that pattern corresponds to the real world. This is why chatbots can present misinformation with such convincing authority—the text is statistically sound, even if it’s factually wrong. This also indicates that LLMs will never stop hallucinating.

This may all seem pretty harmless, but at the very least, it could cause you to waste a lot of time searching for a magic trick, book, or column that doesn’t exist. At worst, however, you might end up publishing something false or misleading. This recently happened to Murphy’s Magic Supplies. Here’s an email I received from Ben Earl the other day:

Concerning Misattribution of a Fictitious Quote:

Dear colleagues, customers and community members,

I am writing to address a concerning matter.

In their promotional copy for a new book by John Carey, Murphy’s Magic attributed a quote to me that I did not provide. In fact, the quote in question was entirely fabricated!

This was the leading quote on their sales page for the book and therefore the leading quote on every sales page of every magic shop which stocked the book, and it was at the top of every mailshot email I’ve seen for the book too. It was everywhere and yet completely false.

I promptly contacted John Carey, who was equally unaware of the origin of this quote. Similarly, Murphy’s was initially unable to provide clarity on its source. Subsequently, Murphy’s disclosed that the promotional copy—including the fictitious quote—was not only generated by ChatGPT, but the copy hadn’t then been checked before release!

While I sincerely hope this was an unintentional error, this incident raises serious concerns about the practices employed. At best, it shows negligence; at worst, it suggests deliberate misrepresentation. Either scenario undermines the credibility of Murphy’s promotional efforts.

To give Murphy’s some credit, once contacted, they acted swiftly to remove the quote from their page before informing other shops to do the same. However, the cat was already out of the bag, many sales had been made and countless emails had already been sent to prospective customers.

In light of this, I feel obligated to caution both creators and consumers alike. Creators, I urge you to diligently verify that your names and statements are not being misused or misattributed in promotional materials. Likewise, consumers should exercise caution and critically evaluate the authenticity of testimonials and endorsements.

I trust that this matter will be received with the seriousness it warrants, and I encourage all parties to uphold the highest standards of integrity in their professional practices.

It truly saddens me to send this type of public message, but I have no other option.

Sincerely,

Ben Earl

In short, don’t automatically believe what the robots tell you is true. Verify, verify, then verify again!

Your Wildest Card Ideas Are Now Possible!

And finally, here’s some fantastic news for every creative card magician out there. Alakazam Magic has just announced an exciting development that will let all of us print our own custom designs on genuine USPCC Bicycle card stock.

That’s right, you can now get your own gaffs, speciality cards, or even fully custom decks made with the same quality and feel as the cards you use every day. This development is all thanks to Alakazam’s recent acquisition of Print By Magic, a company founded in 2012 by UK magician James Anthony, who developed a proprietary method for printing directly onto Bicycle card stock.

For years, this kind of service was really only accessible to top professionals or commercial magic companies. Now, anyone can use it. As someone who absolutely loves packet tricks, my mind is already racing with ideas, and I can’t wait to get some of my own weird and wonderful designs printed! I’ve been meaning to use the Print By Magic service for a while, so I’m glad that the business isn’t disappearing before I get the chance to have some personalised packet tricks printed.

This service opens up an exciting opportunity to make your magic truly your own. Imagine creating a completely personalised trick for a friend’s birthday, a unique deck for your own routines, or just finally making that one-off hard-to-find gaff card you’ve always dreamed of. And if you’re not a designer, don’t worry—Alakazam’s team can create the artwork for you.

Note: The machine that Alakazam will be using prints the ink on top of an existing Bicycle playing card. The more ink used, the less of the original surface remains. Therefore, designs with deep colours, like solid black and brown, can negatively affect how well the cards handle. For double-sided playing cards, this can add a roughing effect and slight stickiness when the cards are used alongside other double-sided cards. Fanning powder might be needed with these particular cards. All colours are colour-matched to Bicycle cards as closely as possible, allowing them to be handled and mixed with regular decks printed by the USPCC.

Get a Quick Quote

If you have an idea buzzing around in your head, get in touch with the team at Alakazam (sales@alakazam.co.uk) and bring your vision to life!

P.S. On a personal note, while I’m clearly excited about this, I have no affiliation with Alakazam, and this isn’t a paid ad. I’ve just been a happy customer of theirs for over 20 years and love to share great news like this that benefits the entire magic community!

Three Videos Worth Watching 👀

Here are three more videos I watched this month that I think you should watch as well.

Cavan Booth on AI in Magic

While I don’t agree with everything Cavan says in this video, he makes some excellent points about using AI in marketing copy. This short video is definitely worth a watch if you’re intrigued by AI and the uncanny “AI Slop aesthetic” that can be seen spreading across the magic marketplace.

Four-Card Fooler by Paul Gordon

Here’s a fantastic packet trick being demo’d by Paul Gordon. Paul has released numerous packet tricks, including this one called “Four-Card Fooler”. You can buy the trick directly from Paul for £17.

Seagulls (Stop It Now)

This has nothing to do with magic; I just find it hilarious. The Empire Strikes Back is my favourite film of the original Star Wars trilogy. I haven’t watched it with my nine-year-old daughter yet (who loves this song). I’m sure she’ll be disappointed that the bit where Yoda sings isn’t actually in the film!

Sorry, not sorry if this song gets stuck in your head! 😉

Well, that’s a wrap for another monthly update.

Yours Magically,

Marty

P.S. For those of you dedicated enough to read to the very end of this update, here’s the write-up for “Soulmail” so you can learn it before everyone else!

Learn Soulmail

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I also share some thoughts on the problem of “new trick addiction”—inspired by a recent article about how constantly buying new effects can stifle our growth as performers. Plus, I’ve got two new routines to teach you: a variation of Pipo Villanueva’s four-card production with a “Perverse Magic” twist, and “Box Jumpers”, a streamlined approach to “Jacks in the Box” by David Solomon. Finally, I recommend three videos worth your time, including Ben Hart’s excellent performance of “Voodoo Card” and Craig Petty’s comprehensive explanation of his new(ish) trick “Destiny Deal”.

Let’s dive in!

Is Coin Magic a Better Investment than Card Magic?

As you may have guessed from the content I share through the Ruseletter, my main passion is close-up card magic. However, I’ve started taking coin magic more seriously lately. I’ve experimented with it in the past, but now I want to incorporate some coin routines—including some that combine cards and coins—into my regular repertoire.

As part of my studies, I stumbled across a thought-provoking article by Jamy Ian Swiss on David Roth, arguably the most influential coin magician of the 20th century:

Coin Magic — Theory, Practice & Repertoire: Innovations, Influence, and the Impact of David Roth 👈

This piece made me reflect on a question that many of us face as we develop our magical skills: where should we focus our limited practice time?

The Case for Coin Magic 🪙

While I love card magic, I have a nagging feeling that coin magic might ultimately be a better investment in the long run. Yes, it has a steeper learning curve—and there isn’t much good self-working coin magic—but it helps you develop foundational skills that can be applied to all kinds of small object sleight of hand: tricks with poker chips, dice, balls, rings, and countless borrowed objects.

Swiss notes that because coin magic is so much more difficult than card magic, “the return on investment—the hard work of learning the techniques—is lower than with card magic.” At first glance, this seems to argue against coin magic, but I think there’s a deeper truth here. The difficulty itself becomes the investment. Master a classic palm, fake take, or retention vanish, and you’ve unlocked techniques that work with virtually any small object a spectator might hand you.

Much modern coin magic is also performed at chest height, enhancing visibility when performing for small groups. The effects tend to be more visual and immediate than many card tricks—coins appear, vanish, travel, and transform right before spectators’ eyes. There’s something primal about making money disappear and reappear that resonates universally. People, for obvious reasons, would love to be able to conjure money from thin air. Finding a person’s chosen card in a shuffled deck, on the other hand, isn’t exactly a life skill most people need or want!

Doug Conn, a friend and mentor, recommends starting with a simple one-coin routine: a basic vanish, production, and coin roll sequence. This serves as a great introduction to sleight of hand and offers a pathway to more advanced coin work. Once that skill is attained, you can do magic anywhere—provided you have a coin in your pocket.

The Enduring Appeal of Cards ♣️♥️♠️♦️

But let’s not dismiss card magic too quickly! Cards offer unparalleled versatility, encompassing everything from mathematical puzzles to engaging storytelling routines and pure sleight-of-hand showpieces. The barrier to entry is lower, enabling beginners to achieve remarkable results with minimal technique while gradually developing their manipulative skills.

This points to a larger truth: coin magic relies heavily on what Fitzkee calls “simulation” in Magic by Misdirection, or as Swiss puts it, “acting with the hands, and lying with the hands.”

Simulation is a bewildering way of saying something is made to look like what it is not. Webster defines simulation as the act of assuming the appearance of, without the reality-feigning. When one simulates there is an implication of the assumption of a false appearance. This suggests an attempt to make something seem other than what it really is by imitating the latter’s external identifying indications such as characteristics, marks, symbols or other signs.1

Much of card magic, by contrast, doesn’t rely so heavily on simulation, but rather on a mixture of mathematical, physical and optical principles—and what Swiss calls the “camouflage of depth” principle, where the physical characteristics of playing cards contribute to or outright provide the means of deception.

Card magic also provides something difficult to attain with coins: emotional connection through narrative storytelling. A rising card can tell a story of persistence; an Ambitious Card routine becomes a metaphor for determination and self-belief; Do As I Do can be presented as a mystical demonstration of cosmic coincidence. Coins, magnificent as they are for visual impact, seldom carry the same storytelling weight (David Roth’s material being a notable exception).

The Practical Considerations

Consider the performance contexts, too. Card magic often works best when performed seated at a table, creating an intimate setting perfect for close-up work in coffee shops, restaurants, or living rooms. I’d argue that the most elegant card work takes place at a table. While some routines can be adapted for strolling settings, it’s much easier to adjust a coin trick to be performed in the hands.

However, coin magic demands more controlled lighting and angles, making it less adaptable to challenging performance environments.

Yet coins have their own practical advantages. A few coins in your pocket and you’re ready to go—no setup, no deck switches. And some card tricks require a dedicated deck, taking up even more pocket space. With a handful of coins, you’re always prepared to perform. Borrowed coins can also dispel any suspicion that you’re using gimmicks. However, most people I perform for these days no longer carry coins—the university where I work is almost entirely cashless.

The Deeper Question 🤔

Perhaps the real question isn’t which is the “better investment”, but rather: what kind of magician do you want to become?

If you’re drawn to technical excellence and the satisfaction of mastering difficult sleights that few attempt, coin magic offers a path toward becoming a true specialist. The coin magic community is smaller, more connected, and deeply appreciative of technical skill.

If you’re attracted to the rich history, endless variety, and storytelling possibilities that cards provide, then card magic offers a lifetime of exploration across every possible style and approach.

My Personal Reflection 🃏🪙

Swiss notes that when working in the real world, David Roth did not rely solely on coin magic—he was an accomplished card worker with a commercial repertoire. I know it isn’t an either-or proposition, but very few magicians are experts in both disciplines.

For example, David Roth was primarily known for coins, while Swiss magician Roberto Giobbi is an expert on cards. Although he is best known for his monumental Card College series, it might surprise you to know that he also performs and teaches magic with coins. Some of his most renowned card routines actually incorporate a coin for a more complex effect—one notable example is “The Lucky Coin”, a staple of his professional repertoire that is taught in the Card College series (see video performance included below). His interpretation of a coin assembly by Shigeo Takagi, titled “Convergence”, is also excellent—it is taught on the European Coin Magic Symposium (Volume 3).

Even the great Dai Vernon, while competent in both, built his reputation on his card work.

As I begin incorporating more coin work into my performances, I’m discovering that the two arts complement each other beautifully. The finger fitness developed through coin work has actually improved my card handling, while my understanding of misdirection and magic theory from card magic has enhanced my coin routines.

Coin Magic 101: Conjuring with Coins for Complete Beginners

This topic deserves continued exploration—perhaps a more in-depth blog post examining the pros and cons of these two predominant types of close-up magic. The best advice I can give is to try both and see which one resonates more deeply with your performing style and personal goals.

As I improve my coin magic skills, I’ve decided to create a “coin magic curriculum” for myself, planning it in the same way I would when helping a university lecturer design a new eight-week module (in the UK, a module is equivalent to a course in the US—confusing, I know! Both are a single academic unit of study and typically cover 8 to 12 weeks of learning content).

Here’s the working file I’m using to document these ideas (note that it is not yet complete). I also plan to create a lecture and a practical workshop for each week—I’m not promising that this project will be finished anytime soon, though (it will be available to all paid Ruseletter subscribers). If you’re eager to begin, take a look at the document below and read the article by Jamy Ian Swiss.

Coin Magic 101: Conjuring with Coins for Complete Beginners 📄

To follow this curriculum, you’ll need two books: Modern Coin Magic by J.B. Bobo and David Roth’s Expert Coin Technique by Richard Kaufman. You’ll also need 4-6 half dollars (or similar-sized coins) and a close-up pad (or another suitable soft surface) to practice on. A mirror to practice in front of is also a good idea.

What’s your experience? Do you find yourself more drawn to the technical challenges of coin magic or to the versatile possibilities of card work? I’d love to hear your thoughts as I continue this journey of expanding beyond my card-magic comfort zone. Reply to this email or leave a comment on Substack—I always enjoy learning from Ruseletter readers.

The Trouble with Too Many Tricks

Here’s another article I enjoyed reading recently. It’s by professional magician Mark Leveridge.

How Tricks Can Stifle Magic Development 👈

This bit, in particular, chimed with me:

But I wonder how it would be if, all of a sudden, we weren’t allowed or able to buy any more tricks? What would happen to all that desire to acquire new things? Would it lead us to seek out more information and knowledge about how to use the tricks we already do have more effectively? Would we spend more time creating and fine tuning our act, or learning about good stagecraft, or getting a better understanding of what makes an entertaining presentation, or finding out how to engage and handle our audiences more skilfully?

This led me to write the following poem, inspired by T.S. Eliot:

I’ll be writing a longer blog post exploring the idea of the “Hollow Magician”. I also wrote a companion piece called Back to the Future, which you might find interesting—it includes an actionable insight that is, well, worth acting on!

Learn Pipo’s Perverse Production & Box Jumpers

This month, I’ve managed to write up a variation of a fun four-card production by Spanish magician Pipo Villanueva:

Easy Does It #6: Pipo’s Perverse Production 👈

My handling adds a “Perverse Magic” presentation to Pipo’s brilliant routine. My friend Claudio also contributed a refined handling for the switch used in the routine called the “Convincing Christ Force Switch”, which is well worth the extra effort required.

I’ve also written up a version of Dr. Daley’s Last Trick called “Box Jumpers” that works well as a follow-up effect to “Pipo’s Perverse Production”.

Learn “Box Jumpers” 👈

This is a streamlined approach to a charming David Solomon effect called “Jacks in the Box”. After learning “Box Jumpers”, Claudio mentioned that you could keep the selection on top without revealing it, then disclose it only at the end of the routine. This idea makes a lot of sense and will make the chosen card’s final appearance a more surprising event. If I were performing both, I would also adopt this approach. When I have some time, I’ll add this idea to the write-up. A big thank you to Claudio for improving these two routines!

Three Videos Worth Watching 👀

Here are three videos that I watched this month that I think you should watch as well.

Ben Hart’s Performance of Voodoo Card

Duration: 5 minutes

Here’s a superb performance of Guy Hollingworth’s “Voodoo Card” by British magician Ben Hart.

I love this trick, but I believe we should avoid using lazy stereotypes about Voodoo, which is a legitimate religion with roots in West Africa. The idea of the Voodoo Doll is actually an invention of Western writers and propagated by early Hollywood films. In Haitian Vodou, for example, Voodoo Dolls are, in fact, more akin to a lucky charm. They’re used to honour and communicate with the lwa (spirits) that are central to Vodouisant religious practices.

When performing this trick, or similar ones that utilise Voodoo as a theatrical device, I encourage you to challenge some of these cultural myths within your presentation.

If you’d like to learn more about this topic, I wrote a blog post on it a few years ago:

True Voodoo: 5 Voodoo Myths Busted! 👈

And here’s a two-person version of Hollingworth’s “Voodoo Card” called “Twodoo Voodoo”:

Learn Twodoo Voodoo 👈

Destiny Deal Exposed

Duration: 33 minutes

In this video, Craig Petty demonstrates the complete mechanics of his trick “Destiny Deal”. I really appreciate these “exposure” videos. They allow you to see whether the method and presentation of a product suit your particular needs before you decide to purchase it. This seems like a good solution to the problem of overconsumption of magic tricks (many of which end up at the bottom of a person’s magic junk drawer, never to be practised or performed).

However, I agree with Andy at the Jerx that the “instruction card” needs to be well justified (see his post Mailbag: Destiny Deal for his full thoughts on the matter). I would introduce the card by saying, “The United States Playing Card Company has started including instructions for a card trick with some of their decks instead of the usual advertising cards. But they only sell these in certain magic shops or at magician’s conventions.” I’d also mention that there’s a second card that contains “the secret to the trick” and that, for obvious reasons, I won’t be letting them see that card!

I have further ideas on how to address this issue and will incorporate them into a detailed review of the product on my blog (spoiler: if you like the trick after watching Craig’s video, then I recommend you buy it). I’ve also developed a similar effect inspired by it, called “Whispering Jokers”, which doesn’t require the gaffed card used in “Destiny Deal” (I’ve written this one up, and it will be shared in a future edition of Corrupting the Classics).

How to Do the Talking Queen Card Trick

Duration: 5 minutes

While researching the Whispering Queen plot, I came across an old Howcast video that explained how to perform a version of the trick using a key card. This video reminds us that sometimes the simplest tricks are the best.

That’s all for another month. Now I’m curious: has this convinced you to give coin magic a try, or are you sticking with cards? I hope this exploration of coins versus cards at least got you thinking about where to focus your practice time. I’d love to hear about your own journey with these different branches of close-up magic, and your feedback and topic suggestions always help shape these updates—so don’t hesitate to get in touch by replying to this email.

Yours Magically,

Marty

Plus, I’m sharing an entertaining card trick with an unusual musical revelation. This simple, self-working card trick, based on an idea by creative card magician Ollie Mealing, will have your audience humming Dolly Parton for days!

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For once, this edition actually landed in your inbox on schedule (miracles do happen!), and I’m excited to share more magical discoveries with you that could transform how you think about every performance you give.

Ready to peek behind the curtain of consciousness itself? Let’s explore what happens when minds encounter the impossible...

The Experience of Magic & the Paradox of Performance

Reading Time: 11 minutes

This month, I have been reading an intriguing (and reasonably accessible) academic paper called “The Experience of Magic” by Jason Leddington, Professor of Philosophy at Bucknell University. Jason does research into two interconnected areas: the aesthetics and philosophy of art, as well as the philosophy of perception. The paper was first published in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (Summer 2016, Vol. 74, No. 3).

The article aims to initiate a philosophical exploration of the experience of magic, emphasising its cognitive aspects. This focus on what happens in the spectator’s mind is crucial for understanding why magic deserves serious consideration as an art form. While Leddington acknowledges that magic has fallen from cultural prominence and is often dismissed as frivolous entertainment, he argues that this dismissal stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of what magic actually does in the brain. By examining how audiences truly experience magic—the unique mental states it creates and the sophisticated cognitive processes it engages—their experience can begin to reveal why magic is far more than simple trickery and deserves to be elevated as a legitimate theatrical art. For amateur magicians, understanding these cognitive mechanisms isn’t just academically interesting; it’s essential for creating performances that genuinely move and astonish audiences rather than merely puzzling them.

The paper is behind a paywall, so I’ve included some of my thoughts and observations from my initial reading of it in this update (I will need to reread it to grasp all the information and ideas in it, as is the case with most academic content like this).

An Art Deserving Dismissal

Leddington begins his paper by outlining the cultural reality facing magic today (well, ten years ago, at least). Once among the most popular and profitable forms of public entertainment, magic is now widely ridiculed as sideshow entertainment or confined to children’s parties rather than being regarded as a serious art form (for the record, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with magic for children, but it isn’t high art). He correctly points out that this shift is, in part, due to the rise of film and television. Coupled with the scarcity of genuinely skilled, theatrically refined practitioners, all indications point to what he describes as an “art” that is deserving of dismissal.

As mentioned, this paper was written almost a decade ago, but this brutal assessment of magic still made me pause for thought. Is magic still an art worthy of nothing but neglect? If so, what specific actions should both amateur and professional magicians take to address this commonplace degradation of magic as an art?

Leddington considers this situation unfortunate and argues that, as a result, the world is lacking something philosophically significant. The paper then proceeds to analyse different definitions of the perception of magic, drawing extensively from theories proposed by Teller, the silent half of the magic duo Penn & Teller, the late magician and gambling expert, Darwin Ortiz, and Tamar Szabó Gendler, an American academic and philosopher specialising in thought experiments, imagination, and the phenomenon of imaginative resistance.

The Paradox of Performance

In the article, Leddington identifies a fundamental paradox in how we experience magic:

1. We simultaneously believe and disbelieve what we’re seeing.

2. We know impossible events aren’t happening, yet we experience them as if they are.

3. This creates a unique cognitive state that existing theories struggle to explain.

This “paradox of performance” reminded me of a well-known theory from film and literature, known as the “Paradox of Fiction”, that relates to the suspension of disbelief (Leddington makes brief mention of this theory in his paper). Suspension of disbelief, a term first introduced by British Romantic poet and critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge, refers to the act of accepting something as real or believable despite knowing it is not, especially when engaging with a work of fiction or a theatrical performance. It involves a willingness to momentarily set aside logical doubts and critical thought to fully immerse oneself in a narrative or experience, fostering enjoyment and emotional connection with the story, characters, or performance.

However, when I watch a movie, even a good one, I don’t entirely suspend my disbelief; otherwise, I’d run for my life when the Tyrannosaurus Rex charges at the screen during Jurassic Park! 🦖 Noël Carroll, a leading figure in the contemporary philosophy of art, popularised the idea of the Paradox of Fiction in his paper “The Nature of Horror” in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (Autumn 1987, Vol. 46, No. 1, pages 51-59). We know the characters do not exist, but we still feel scared when watching a good horror film, even though an emotional response depends on beliefs about existence.

Comparing a movie to magic, to some extent, is a false equivalence because the paradox is different—the magical event actually happened. The spectator saw it occur. Maybe even felt it happen. It existed. It is this paradox that Leddington spends most of his paper discussing.

So, what exactly is the Paradox of Fiction? When we watch a film, attend a performance of a theatrical play, or read a novel:

1. We have emotional responses to fiction.

2. Emotional responses require beliefs about existence.

3. We don’t believe fictional entities exist.

Carroll’s solution to the paradox involves rejecting premise 2. It proposes that we generate something called “thought-emotions” that are triggered merely by contemplating the content rather than genuinely believing in it. For example, when we fear for a character, we do not honestly believe they exist; we are responding to the thought content itself. Many scholars reject Carroll’s solution, the primary alternative theory being fictional reappraisal, which adopts the belief that the event is not real, such as it’s “just a movie,” “just my imagination,” or “just a trick”. (This theory disagrees with all three of the above premises and is, perhaps, more applicable to the performance of magic.)

According to the Paradox of Performance, here’s what happens when we witness a magic trick:

1. We have an emotional response to a magic trick.

2. Emotional responses require beliefs about the impossibility of what we’re witnessing.

3. We believe what we’re witnessing is possible through some form of trickery.

This is similar, yet different. Rather than creating “thought-emotions”, spectators often develop “false solutions” to the magic tricks they encounter, or experience such a powerful emotional reaction that they stop trying to understand how the trick works. In other words, they attempt to resolve the cognitive dissonance that a good magic trick generates. For some individuals, remaining in this state can be uncomfortable, frustrating, and even distressing. Most eventually give up or, in a worst-case scenario, guess the correct method!

A Definition of Magic

Leddington begins by trying to answer the question “What is magic?” He introduces Teller’s definition of magic: that it is a form of theatre that depicts impossible events as though they were really happening. Teller’s definition is valuable because it frames magic as a form of theatre rather than charlatanry, makes no mention of deception as the primary goal, and concentrates on the portrayal or depiction of impossibility.

Based on his philosophical analysis, Leddington refines this to emphasise that magic creates a unique experiential state where audiences simultaneously experience impossibility while maintaining disbelief. It’s not just about depicting impossible events, but about stimulating the specific cognitive and perceptual experience of witnessing the impossible. Or, as he puts it, presenting impossibilities as impossibilities.

Misconceptions of Magic

The paper also identifies two common misconceptions of theatrical magic:

1. That magic is primarily about fooling an audience. Many people believe that a magician’s primary goal is to deceive and trick others.

2. Magicians want audiences to believe in supernatural powers. People think magicians are trying to convince audiences that they genuinely possess supernatural or mystical abilities.

While some performers may focus on trickery, serious magicians view deception as a means, not an end in itself. As Darwin Ortiz explains, magic isn’t just about deceiving—it’s about “creating an illusion, the illusion of impossibility.” The deception serves the larger artistic purpose of creating a specific type of theatrical experience.

Most legitimate magicians explicitly don’t want audiences to believe the magic is real. This is because genuine belief in supernatural powers actually undermines the aesthetic experience they’re trying to create. Leddington notes that “the audience’s active disbelief is a critical ingredient in the experience of magic”—the tension between knowing it’s not real while still experiencing wonder is central to what makes magic work as an art form.

Both of these misconceptions overlook the critical point that theatrical magic is about creating a sophisticated aesthetic experience that depends on the audience being simultaneously aware of the impossibility while still being emotionally moved by the performance. It’s the cognitive tension between disbelief and wonder that creates the unique experience, Leddington argues, which is philosophically significant.

Three Hypotheses

Leddington examines three potential explanations for what cognitive attitude is involved in the experience of magic. The first hypothesis (H1) suggests that magic essentially involves “willing suspension of disbelief”—a view widely accepted by practising magicians. However, Leddington argues this is false because suspending disbelief relegates magic to the realm of fantasy, preventing audiences from actually witnessing apparent impossibility. Using Ortiz’s example, which compares Peter Pan (where seeing wires doesn’t ruin the experience) to Copperfield’s flying illusion (where seeing wires destroys it), he demonstrates that magic requires active disbelief rather than suspended disbelief.

The second hypothesis (H2), proposed by Teller, suggests magic involves “unwilling suspension of disbelief”—capturing the involuntary nature of our response to well-executed performances. While this addresses the non-voluntary aspect, Leddington maintains that any form of suspension of disbelief misses the point by relegating impossible events to fantasy rather than allowing them to be witnessed. He emphasises that active disbelief is essential—audiences should disbelieve what they’re seeing is possible while still experiencing it as if it were happening, creating the cognitive dissonance fundamental to the enjoyment of magic.

The third hypothesis (H3) proposes that magic essentially involves a “conflict of belief”—that successful performances prompt audiences to both believe and disbelieve the impossible. Leddington rejects this because audiences don’t actually come to accept contradictions, no matter how good the performance. The experience isn’t one of inadvertent self-contradiction but rather a different type of cognitive dissonance that doesn’t demand resolution on pain of contradiction. This leads him to argue that the correct account must include cognitive dissonance that isn’t a matter of conflicting beliefs, setting up his introduction of Gendler’s concept of “belief-discordant alief”.

Alief and Astonishment

Leddington settles on a theory (H3) of the experience of magic based on a mental state called “alief”, as proposed by Tamar Szabó Gendler.

The experience of magic essentially involves a belief-discordant alief that an impossible event is happening.

The term alief refers to a feeling or intuition that may not align with what someone intellectually knows or believes to be true. It’s a primitive, subconscious, belief-like attitude. It’s not the same as a belief, but it can influence behaviour and emotions in the same way.

Aliefs act in conflict with conscious beliefs. For example, you might know intellectually that a transparent balcony is safe, but your alief might cause you to feel fear or unease while standing on it.

Conjuring and Cognition

The final section of the paper provides a detailed exploration of what it feels like to experience magic. Philosophers refer to this as phenomenological analysis, an approach that focuses on the study of consciousness and the objects of direct experience. It describes the cognitive conflict that occurs when the mind struggles to reconcile sensory input with prior knowledge.

Leddington argues that magic works by “cancelling methods”—systematically eliminating all plausible explanations spectators might devise (an idea popularised by Daryl, the Magician’s Magician). Using Copperfield’s flying illusion as an example, he shows how each stage cancels potential methods (wires, boards, magnets) until spectators reach total bafflement with no way to rationalise what they’re seeing. The experience of magic occurs only when audiences have a belief-discordant alief in the impossible that they cannot explain away. This creates an “intellectual process” where what begins as a puzzle becomes an impossible event.

Leddington draws parallels between this experience and both Immanuel Kant’s theory of the sublime, cognitive failure followed by mastery of the illusion (because the spectator knows it is “just a trick”), and Socratic aporia (systematic elimination of possibilities leading to bafflement). Like Socrates’s interlocutors, magic spectators don’t abandon the idea that an explanation exists—they’re left with the attitude “there must be an explanation, but I have no idea how there could be,” creating what magician Whit Haydn calls “a burr under the saddle of the mind.”

Leddington argues for taking magic seriously as a subject of philosophical inquiry and demonstrates how phenomenological methods can illuminate aspects of experience overlooked by cognitive science. He suggests magic as a valuable test case for theories of perception and consciousness. He contends that understanding magic experience is important not just for philosophy of mind, but for:

• Aesthetics (what makes performances compelling)

• Epistemology (how we form beliefs about what we perceive)

• Philosophy of art (magic as a legitimate art form)

• Cognitive science (mechanisms of attention and belief formation)

The paper establishes magic as a legitimate and vital area of philosophical research, arguing that the unique cognitive-perceptual experience it creates cannot be reduced to simpler categories, such as illusion or deception. Magic represents a distinct phenomenon that reveals essential features of human consciousness and perception.

Ultimately, Leddington’s article argues that magic challenges traditional boundaries between perception and cognition. It exposes limitations in our understanding of how knowledge relates to experience. He concludes that the study of magic can shed light on broader questions about consciousness, attention, and belief.

If you enjoyed reading my thoughts on this article, Jason Leddington has written a similar piece called “Magic: Art of the Impossible”, which covers much of the same ground (you can download the PDF below).

Magic: Art of the Impossible

145KB ∙ PDF file

Download

In this brief article, Jason Leddington presents a compelling case for the serious recognition of theatrical magic as a sophisticated art form that creates a uniquely intellectual aesthetic experience. This accessible yet profound exploration will alter your perception of magic and provide new insights into the essence of wonder, bafflement, and aesthetic experience itself.

Download

Learn the Dolly Parton Card Trick

Reading Time: 7 minutes

The “Dolly Parton Card Trick” is a delightfully entertaining prediction effect that combines the mathematical certainty of the Count-Back Force with a humorous and memorable musical reveal. The trick draws inspiration from the ingenious mind of creative card magician Ollie Mealing and his effect, “Everyday”, which was featured in Mealing’s Mail - Entry No. 6 (July 2025). Mealing’s original concept employed a different forcing principle to create a “24/7” prediction (a pile of twenty cards combined with a Four and a Seven spot).

Here’s what happens: A spectator selects any two-digit number less than twenty, and cards are dealt accordingly. Through a series of seemingly random actions—including the “burning” of cards—the performer arranges events to reveal exactly nine cards remaining in a pile, with a Two on top of the pile and a Five on top of the deck. The big reveal? “Nine, Two, Five—my favourite Dolly Parton song!”

The trick offers numerous advantages. It is almost self-working, as the mathematical principle does most of the hard work—the trick practically performs itself once you understand the concept! Additionally, it requires minimal preparation; you only need a standard deck of cards and a simple setup: place any Two on top and then move any Five ten cards from the top. The trick also elicits strong reactions from an audience, creating a moment of recognition and laughter. Moreover, the presentation is flexible; it can be adapted into the “Office Hours Card Trick” for younger audiences who may not be familiar with the 1980s song or Dolly Parton.

This trick is ideal for magicians of all skill levels. Beginners will appreciate its self-working nature, intermediate performers can enhance it with false shuffles and cuts, and advanced magicians can explore the more intricate setup variations provided (or substitute a different sleight-of-hand method entirely). By learning this trick, you’ll gain a better understanding of the powerful Count-Back Force principle, which can be applied to many other effects. The routine also teaches valuable lessons in presentation and how a strong reveal can elevate a simple mathematical force into a memorable moment of magic.

The “Dolly Parton Card Trick” proves that effective magic doesn’t need to be complicated. With no (or a little) sleight of hand, minimum preparation, and a charming presentational hook, you’ll have a reliable crowd-pleaser that works every time without fail. The combination of mathematical certainty and musical nostalgia makes this an ideal addition to your card magic repertoire.

Although I published it in an odd-numbered edition of Easy Does It, I have decided to make the write-up accessible to everyone, whether you are a paid subscriber or not. I’ll also be releasing more work on the Count-Back Force soon, including a different presentation for this method that involves tea and biscuits! ☕🍪

Read Easy Does It #5: Dolly Parton Trick 👈

Three Videos Worth Watching 👀

Since we explored Ollie Mealing’s brilliant “Everyday” concept in the “Dolly Parton Card Trick”, I thought you’d enjoy seeing more of his creative approach to card magic. Here are three of his most popular YouTube videos—all techniques he teaches in depth within The Mealing Experience. (If you subscribe using the button below, you’ll get a 25% discount on the regular price of a monthly subscription.)

Join The Mealing Experience

Each video showcases different aspects of what makes Ollie’s work special: natural performance style, creative presentations, and innovative thinking about when and how the magic should unfold.

Coffee & Card Tricks

Duration: 3 minutes

Watch Ollie perform his outstanding personal handling of “Henry Christ’s Fabulous Ace Routine” over a cup of coffee with a friend. Notice how effortlessly he weaves the magic into genuine interaction.

Compass 🧭

Duration: 6 minutes

A superb example of Ollie’s gift for developing memorable presentations. This conversational card trick demonstrates what we discussed about creating genuine astonishment rather than just mere puzzlement. The compass metaphor adds emotional depth, ensuring the effect will be remembered for a long time (it also distracts from possible methods).

Serendipity

Duration: 3 minutes

One of Ollie’s most requested effects, and you’ll understand why immediately. The staging is wonderfully unconventional—the magician isn’t even present for the final revelation! It’s a masterclass in delayed gratification and proves that sometimes the most powerful magic happens when you’re not even at the table or in the room.

That’s all for another month. Thank you for reading. Remember—focus on creating impossibility, not just hiding methods.

Yours Magically,

Marty

First, I examine Dan Sinker’s provocative idea that we’re living in the “Who Cares Era”—and what this means for performers trying to capture genuine attention in an oversaturated, AI-infused technosocial world. Then, inspired by Dr. Anu Atluru’s insights, I examine the concept of “heavy magic”: effects that carry real emotional and psychological weight, moving beyond mere entertainment.

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While neither of these pieces originated in the realm of magic literature, both offer profound implications for magicians seeking to elevate their art beyond mere tricks and puzzles. Finally, I unpack a 2007 research paper that tackles one of our field’s most elusive goals: the scientific understanding of wonder itself.

Whether you’re looking to deepen your performance philosophy or simply curious about the psychology behind what we do, this month’s selections promise to challenge your assumptions about the art of magic.

Without further ado, let’s get going!

New on MBOT: The Thread that Binds

Reading time: 16 minutes

Ever wondered whether you should craft magic for your personal artistic expression or design effects tailored specifically for your audience’s needs? In this in-depth article, I examine the distinction between being a magical artist and a magical designer, and introduce a design thinking framework for creating new material.

Using my romantic wedding routine, “Red Thread of Fate,” as a case study, I demonstrate how design thinking principles can transform your approach to magic creation. You’ll uncover research-backed insights into what makes magic truly memorable (spoiler: card tricks are the least memorable genre unless you incorporate other props!), learn about memory hooks 🪝 versus false anchors ⚓, and see how intentional design choices can foster deeper emotional connections with your audiences. Whether you’re developing material for particular occasions or simply want to become a more purposeful creator, this article provides practical tools to help you think differently about magic construction.

Read The Thread that Binds 👈

Magic in the Who Cares Era

I recently stumbled across Dan Sinker’s blog. Dan is an amazing writer and, although his stuff has nothing to do with magic, I’d thoroughly recommend spending some time reading his blog. (He also has an impressive beard, fit for a real-life wizard.)

One recent article particularly resonated with me. In it, Dan defines something he calls the “Who Cares Era”, in response to a story about AI-slop content that was published in the Chicago Sun-Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer:

“It’s so emblematic of the moment we’re in, the Who Cares Era, where completely disposable things are shoddily produced for people to mostly ignore.”

(You might want to read Dan’s article in full before you read my thoughts on it. It’s only a 5-minute read.)

This dystopian view of the present prompted me to consider how I might perform magic during a time when nobody truly cares about anything. Where attention fatigue is the norm and people use indifference as a defence mechanism. As an eternal optimist, I don’t entirely share this disturbing worldview, but I do sympathise with Dan’s perspective. (I also think this is an interesting thought experiment, similar to an episode of the excellent Black Mirror, that might help us improve our performances.) Dan describes the current state of affairs as “disheartening,” and, in many ways, that word best captures the current zeitgeist—especially when you consider the AI-driven political upheaval happening in the United States.

When you’re exhausted, a “Who cares?” mindset becomes a form of armour; a means of protecting yourself from being constantly engaged, outraged, or emotionally invested in the endless stream of things demanding our attention (can you tell I’m not a big fan of the attention economy?). After years of ongoing public crises—the pandemic, political chaos, regional conflicts, and economic uncertainty—caring about anything, even something as mundane as a card trick, seems like too much effort or, perhaps, a waste of time.

Pick a card? Who cares. Is this your card? Whatever. We’re competing not just with smartphones and nonstop notifications, but with a bone-deep weariness that makes wonder feel like hard work. But here’s what I’ve been thinking: What if magic isn’t meant to compete with the Who Cares Era but to offer an escape from it?

The two primary driving forces of this phenomenon appear to be cognitive overload and the erosion of shared culture. We are bombarded with so much stimulation—YouTube videos, rolling news updates, and AI-generated slop—that everything blends into meaningless noise (even the unique, fun, and interesting stuff). Without common cultural touchstones or collective experiences, we retreat into our own small bubbles, asking “who cares?” about anything outside of them.

It’s not all doom and gloom, though. Dan’s article ends with a more positive call to action:

“As the culture of the Who Cares Era grinds towards the lowest common denominator, support those that are making real things. Listen to something with your full attention. Watch something with your phone in the other room. Read an actual paper magazine or a book.”

In this era, choosing to care about something—being genuinely enthusiastic or invested—feels almost radical because it makes you vulnerable in a world that rewards cynical detachment. Giving a shit is an act of rebellion while not giving a shit is a form of survival. For magic, this means performers are fighting not just for attention but against an audience’s protective shell of indifference that keeps them from being disappointed or manipulated yet again. However, this same indifference, sadly, prevents people from experiencing wonder, amazement, and astonishment.

So, assuming we live in such a bleak reality, how might we change the way we perform so that people care about us and our magic?

We’re all so tired. Tired of being marketed to, tired of influencers, tired of everything trying so damn hard. This exhaustion has created an interesting paradox for magicians. The old razzle-dazzle approach to magic and illusion now feels hollow, even cringeworthy. The tuxedoed mystifier claiming supernatural powers? Please. We’ve seen too much and been fooled too often to buy the snake oil they’re selling.

But here’s where it gets interesting: this very exhaustion might be pushing magic toward something more honest, more human, more real.

I’ve been noticing a shift among the magicians who genuinely connect with their audiences these days (this transformation has been happening for years, but seems to be accelerating). They’re not the ones claiming to possess mystical powers or maintaining an air of otherworldly detachment. Instead, they’re the ones who acknowledge the elephant in the room: “Yes, this is a trick. Yes, I’m deceiving you. But isn’t it wonderful anyway?”

Penn & Teller, the reformed “Bad Boys of Magic”, pioneered this approach decades ago, but what once felt revolutionary now feels necessary. When Teller performs his beautiful “Shadows” routine, we know it’s a trick—we always did. The beauty lies not in believing it’s real magic, but in appreciating the artistry while our minds struggle to comprehend the method. It’s this cognitive dissonance that makes magic such an appealing and satisfying art form.

This kind of radical authenticity serves multiple purposes in the Who Cares Era:

1. It respects the audience’s intelligence. We’re too tired and cynical for condescension. Acknowledging that we’re all in on the deception together creates a partnership rather than a power dynamic.

2. It shifts the focus from fooling to feeling. When we stop pretending that magic is real, we can begin exploring its deeper meaning. The impossible becomes a metaphor, a piece of poetry, rather than a cheap trick. Of course, the method should still deceive; however, the focus is on the emotional reaction we want to elicit in our audience—how we want them to feel.

3. It humanises the performer. The honest magician becomes relatable—someone sharing their passion (or obsession) with impossible things rather than a superior being demonstrating their mysterious powers.

Derren Brown—the celebrated English mentalist, illusionist, and writer—exemplifies this approach brilliantly. He explicitly tells audiences he uses a mixture of psychology, misdirection, and showmanship—no supernatural powers whatsoever. Yet, paradoxically, his effects feel more magical because of this honesty. We’re not watching a god; we’re watching a human being create impossible moments through skill, subterfuge and artistry.

This authenticity extends to presentation style as well. The polished Vegas showman patter feels increasingly out of step with audiences who’ve grown up watching YouTube and TikTok, where performative authenticity is a form of digital currency. The stammering, shaking amateur who pulls off a miracle feels more magical than the slick professional who’s reciting a stale script full of cheesy jokes.

Paraphrasing Pablo Picasso and Jean Cocteau, magic is inherently honest—it’s a lie that tells the truth. In the Who Cares Era, perhaps we need to foreground that honesty. Yes, I’m lying to you, but I’m lying to give you wonder. I’m lying to remind you that the world still contains mysteries. I’m lying because we both need to believe, just for a moment, that impossible things can happen. That the world won’t always be this bad. That people do care.

The honest liar doesn’t diminish the magic—they transform it. Instead of “I have supernatural powers,” the message becomes “We humans can create wonder for each other.” Instead of “Believe in magic,” it’s “Believe in our collective capacity for awe and amazement.” In the Who Cares Era, that feels exactly like the kind of magic the world needs.

Make Some Heavy Magic! 🪨

Another thought-provoking article I read this month was “Make Something Heavy” by Dr. Anu Atluru (on the recommendation of Larry Haas in his superb bi-monthly magic newsletter). This concept elegantly complements and serves as an antidote to the Who Cares Era.

Dr. Anu Atluru’s article argues that in an era dominated by fleeting, easily shareable content, we should deliberately create things with metaphorical weight—works that demand presence, resist easy distribution, and accumulate meaning through sustained attention. She explores how “heaviness” can be cultivated through complexity, emotional richness, physical presence, and slow revelation, ultimately proposing that creating such weighty work is both an act of resistance against disposable culture and a path to lasting impact.

Read Make Something Heavy 👈

This brilliant article reminded me of the transmedia theories of media scholar Henry Jenkins, known for his work on participatory and convergence culture. He makes a helpful distinction between “spreadability” and “drillability” in transmedia storytelling that perfectly captures what’s happening to magic in the Who Cares Era. Spreadable content is designed to travel—to be shared, remixed, and circulated widely. It’s the viral card trick, the 60-second visual wonder optimised for TikTok. But drillable content, as the name suggests, invites depth. It rewards those who dig deeper, who invest time and attention in exploring its mysteries. Things that have weight require drilling.

This connects to the ideas in Dr. Atluru’s article. Visual magic often becomes weightless, spreadable content that slides frictionlessly through social media feeds and disappears without a trace. But cerebral magic, such as live close-up magic and mentalism, the kind of wonder that happens in the space between people—that’s drillable. It has mass. It can’t be reduced to a shareable moment on social media because its essence lies in the depth of engagement.

This weight comes from:

1. Presence - The physical proximity, the shared breathing space, the eye contact. You can’t upload presence.

2. Context - The specific constellation of people, place, mood, and moment. The same trick performed for different people can become an entirely different experience.

3. Vulnerability - Both the performer and the spectator must risk caring, risk being embarrassed, risk looking foolish. This mutual vulnerability creates weight that no video can capture.

4. Memory - Not the “pics or it didn’t happen” kind, but the profound, felt memory of wonderment. The story they’ll recount repeatedly to friends who “had to be there.”

Now, I’m not saying we should abandon social media magic. A well-crafted Instagram reel or TikTok can serve the same function as a street magician’s quick trick to gather a crowd—it draws people in, gives them a taste, and ideally leaves them wanting more. Think of these short tricks, whether performed in person or online, as a canapé or amuse-bouche to prepare your audience for a more substantial meal of magic.

The key is being intentional with these two types of content. Use spreadable material as a spark to draw people toward drillable experiences. A visual card change on TikTok might lead to a longer YouTube performance, which could in turn lead to ticket sales for a live show. Each level invites deeper engagement from those who care.

Perhaps this is why mentalism remains so popular in the Who Cares Era. You can spread a visual card change across social media, but you can’t meaningfully share the experience of having your thoughts read. It requires presence, rewards attention, and creates the kind of “drillable” moment that Jenkins describes—something that invites deeper engagement rather than passive consumption.

In the Who Cares Era, perhaps the most radical thing we can do is craft experiences too weighty for the internet to carry. While everything else races to become more shareable and disposable, magic can double down on drillability, on presence, and on the undeniable excitement of being there when the impossible unfolds.

For those spectators who dare to care, we offer something increasingly rare: intimate wonders that exist only in the mind, too heavy for any algorithm to carry, too precious to be reduced to forgettable flotsam and jetsam. The heavy things endure because the current of content can’t sweep them away. They sink deep into memory and remain there for a lifetime.

The Wonder of Magic

I recently came across another intriguing research paper on magic that seems to have gone unnoticed. In his 2007 MIT thesis, “The Wonder of Magic: Eliciting Wonder and Analysing its Expression”, Seth Taylor Raphaël provides empirical insights that, similar to the paper I mentioned in Monthly Update #29, challenge many long-standing beliefs within the magic community.

Raphaël conducted an experiment with 70 subjects who watched 10 magic trick videos while their reactions were recorded (via software on a laptop). The study tested two key variables: presentation style (story-based vs. puzzle-based) and whether explanations were revealed.

I found many of the findings surprising. Here’s a summary of them:

1. Explanations increased enjoyment: Contrary to the golden rule of magic (“never reveal the secret to a trick”), participants who saw explanations enjoyed the experience more and wanted to see more magic. This challenges some of our fundamental assumptions about preserving mystery. Does knowing the secret really ruin the magic?

2. Story matters, but only sometimes: Among those who chose not to see explanations, story-based presentations were found to be significantly more enjoyable than puzzle-based ones. However, this difference disappeared in the general population.

3. Generosity follows a good presentation: Participants who watched the story-based performances were more likely to donate to charity, suggesting that how we present our magic can make the world a more generous place.

4. The paradox of wanting explanations: While 60% of the participants claimed they wanted to know secrets, those who chose to see more tricks instead rated the magic higher overall. In short, the more people enjoyed the magic, the less they wanted explanations.

5. Children love magic the most: Kids rated magic nearly 3 points higher than adults—confirming what we all know in our hearts.

Like all studies, this one has several limitations. The primary one is that it used video rather than live performance. It also mainly sampled from academic communities, meaning that cultural differences in how people react to magic were not taken into account in the study. Nevertheless, the findings suggest we might need to reconsider some of our assumptions about secrecy and presentation. (I believe this provides a good argument for not revealing magic secrets during a performance, but instead incorporating more puzzle elements into your tricks—something I’ve discussed in previous issues of the Ruseletter.)

Raphaël distinguishes wonder from mere curiosity, describing it as an emotion with inherent reward that doesn’t diminish with age—even as our extrinsic rewards for learning decrease. This aligns perfectly with the idea of creating “heavy” magical experiences that foster deeper engagement. In an era where caring feels risky, perhaps the question isn’t whether to reveal secrets, but how to create experiences so rich that the “how” becomes far less important than the “why”.

This last finding about children gives me particular hope for the future. In the Who Cares Era, children remind us that wonder isn’t extinct—it’s just been suppressed by the process of growing up and becoming adults. Children still allow themselves to be amazed without embarrassment. They still care.

Perhaps that’s the ultimate remedy for the age of AI-induced indifference: not attempting to generate new forms of wonder, but recalling how to access the childlike wonder we’ve always held within us. As magicians, we’re not merely entertainers—we are custodians of the human ability to be amazed, creating safe spaces where adults can shed their protective cynicism and remember what it feels like to believe, even briefly, that impossible things can happen.

In a world that asks “who cares?”, magic whispers back: “You do. You always have. Let me remind you why.”

Read the Full Paper 👈

Three Videos Worth Watching 👀

As usual, here are three videos worth watching.

Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder

Duration: 58 minutes

This is a fascinating interview with Dacher Keltner, professor of psychology at the University of California and the author of AWE: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life.

Here are some notes I made while listening to the talk on the eight types of awe and how I think they might connect to the performance of magic:

1. Nature - The overwhelming sense of vastness and beauty we experience in natural settings, from towering mountains and endless oceans to intricate patterns in a single leaf.

2. Spiritual Experience - The transcendent feelings that arise during meditation, prayer, or moments of divine connection that make us feel part of something greater than ourselves.

3. Visual Art - The profound emotional response to exceptional artistic works that reveal new perspectives on beauty, truth, or the human condition through visual expression.

4. Music - The spine-tingling sensation when melodies, harmonies, or rhythms transport us beyond the ordinary, creating deep emotional resonance and connection.

5. Big Ideas - The intellectual awe we feel when encountering revolutionary concepts, scientific discoveries, or philosophical insights that fundamentally expand our understanding of reality and the universe.

6. Collective Movement - The powerful experience of being part of synchronised group activities, from protests and ceremonies to concerts and athletic events that unite us in common purpose.

7. Life & Death - The profound emotions surrounding birth, mortality, and the mystery of existence that remind us of life’s preciousness and our place in the eternal cycle.

8. Moral Beauty - The awe we experience witnessing others’ courage, kindness, strength, and acts of exceptional virtue, compassion, and human goodness that restore our faith in humanity.

A magic trick could potentially fit into several of these categories, depending on how it’s crafted and presented. This is one of the unique aspects of magic as an art form. It can evoke multiple forms of awe simultaneously:

• Big Ideas - When magic demonstrates seemingly impossible concepts that challenge our understanding of reality, causality, or the nature of perception itself. Think of effects that make audiences question what they know about physics or consciousness.

• Moral Beauty - Magic that celebrates human connection, healing, or transformation. For example, a trick that involves a lost object with deep sentimental value, or routines that bring people together in moments of shared wonder and vulnerability.

• Spiritual Experience - Effects that tap into themes of fate, destiny, or the interconnectedness of all things. Magic that feels like witnessing something sacred or mystical rather than mere trickery or cleverness.

• Visual Art - Highly aesthetic displays where the magic becomes poetry in motion, with beautiful props, movements, and staging that would be captivating even without the mystery.

However, here is a crucial and slightly depressing insight: most magic tricks do not fit into any of these categories—they are simply puzzles or throwaway pieces of entertainment. Truly inspiring magic goes beyond the “how did he do that?” reaction and instead prompts more profound questions about meaning, connection, or even the nature of life itself.

This may explain why much magic fails to leave a lasting impression. It is technically impressive but does not engage the deeper psychological mechanisms that foster genuine awe and wonder. The magic remembered for years usually touches on these more profound themes: big ideas, moral beauty, spiritual experience, and visual art.

If you watch the recording right through to the end, you’ll hear a well-known magician ask Dacher a question about awe and magic. I won’t spoil the surprise by revealing who!

Cyril Takayama on America’s Got Talent

Duration: 6 minutes

Watch Cyril Takayama’s performance on America’s Got Talent. I was surprised to see such a high-profile and successful magician on the show. His auditions involved performing a close-up card magic routine using chopsticks.

I thought the trick was excellent, but the judges’ reaction was harsh as Cyril received two buzzes. Were Mel B and Simon Cowell right to criticise the pacing of Cyril’s act? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Inventing Magic

Duration: 62 minutes

Here’s the first episode of Inventing Magic with Blake Vogt and Daniel Garcia. In this hour-long recording, Blake collaborates with magician and magic consultant Daniel Garcia to create an original magic trick from the ground up. They aimed to develop something that could be published in Genii Magazine using only everyday objects they had nearby.

This video provides a rare insight into how professional magicians develop new material, including dead ends, sudden breakthroughs, and the collaborative refinement that transforms a rough idea into a practical trick.

The video reveals the true secrets behind the creative process—ongoing brainstorming, testing ideas on the spot, and the excitement that comes when you find something that actually works! Garcia’s expertise is evident as he quickly visualises and refines the mechanics of the routine, while Voigt keeps them focused on the practical aspects for publication.

Well, that’s a wrap for another monthly update. Hopefully, the July edition will be on time. You never know, miracles do happen!

Yours Magically,

Marty

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Do you find yourself constantly chasing the latest magic download, deck or device while existing ideas for half-finished routines occupy your distracted mind? You’re not alone! Like magpies attracted to anything shiny, we magicians accumulate tricks faster than we can practise them. This month’s update examines how to tame that impulse and turn sheer curiosity into steady, meaningful progress—using David Allen’s Getting Things Done framework alongside James Clear’s “atomic habits” approach. If you’re ready to spend less time collecting and more time creating, read on…

In my day job at a small UK university, I spend most of my time managing and delivering small educational projects. To keep things on track, I use a modified version of David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology—a personal productivity system based on common-sense principles. I’ve been using it in a professional capacity, in one way or another, for over ten years.

I’m not usually a fan of self-help books. Most contain one or two good ideas, but the rest is recycled filler, dubious life advice or unsustainable productivity hacks. Getting Things Done, however, is different. I find myself returning to it regularly. And each time I do, I uncover fresh insights and strategies that genuinely help me manage my commitments more effectively.

“Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.” - Dave Allen

For that reason, it’s the only self-help book I wholeheartedly recommend—especially if you, like me, sometimes struggle to make meaningful progress on your creative or magic-related ambitions!

Going All In on GTD ✅

Until recently, I mostly used GTD to manage work-related tasks in higher education. But as Allen emphasises, it isn’t just for work—it’s designed for your whole life. He even goes so far as to describe GTD as an “integrated life-management system.” The system was first introduced in his best-selling 2001 book, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. Although the book was initially aimed at the business world—specifically, knowledge workers—the methodology has been applied by a diverse range of individuals, including students, clergy, artists, and even retirees! Given the complex and multifaceted nature of magic as a hobby (or career), the system is a good fit for magicians who want to be better organised and less overwhelmed.

So I’ve decided to apply the methodology to everything—from my day job to my hobbies, family life, and magic projects. That includes this newsletter, my blog (Marty’s Bag of Tricks), and the magic books I’m working on.

To support this shift, I’m re-reading the 2015 revised edition of Getting Things Done, and I’ll be sharing how I’m applying its ideas to my creative life over the coming weeks and months.

If you’d like to learn more about GTD, I highly recommend reading the book. If buying it isn’t an option, this 22-minute TEDx Talk video provides a decent overview, although it skims some of the deeper ideas in the book, such as cultivating a “mind like water”, which is where the system really shines.

The official Getting Things Done website has links to a healthy collection of free resources. David Allen has also recently launched a Substack on GTD, where he will share his most recent thoughts, ideas and refinements on his GTD methodology.

My Magic Projects (and How I’m Managing Them)

One of GTD’s core principles is that any multi-step activity is a project. David Allen defines a project as “any desired result that can be accomplished within a year and requires more than one action step.” That means even something as simple as “Buy a new deck of cards” or “Learn a new magic trick” might technically count as a project. For example, if you already know you want a deck of Bicycle Rider Backs, then “Buy a new deck of cards” is what David Allen calls a “next action step”. However, if you need to conduct some research and make a decision about what type of deck you want to purchase, this task instantly becomes a project. (In this situation, I’d most likely treat this as a “next action” in GTD language, even though it involves more than one step, but hopefully, you get the point I’m trying to make.)

Honestly, this is the one element of the GTD system that I’ve struggled with the most because, at first, it feels decidedly odd, over the top, and even self-aggrandising to label much of what you do as a “project”. However, I’m learning that this approach is one of the most powerful aspects of the GTD system.

According to GTD, you should maintain a comprehensive “Projects List” of all active, multi-step commitments and review it every week. The goal is to ensure no loose ends fall through the cracks. But here’s the problem: if you’re like me, that list gets long fast. And once it’s too long, you start avoiding the weekly review, or, in my case, I ignore my magic-related projects in favour of other more important or urgent commitments. Which kind of defeats the purpose of the list.

To combat this issue, I’ve started categorising my GTD projects in a way that reflects the amount of effort involved. Here’s the labelling system:

• Small Project (S) ✅ - A small multi-step job that I can complete within a week, usually in one sitting. These are the fabled “quick wins”. For example, learning a new magic trick would be a small project. It’s not a task because it involves more than one step, i.e., choose the trick, study the method, practise the mechanics until you can perform it without thinking, and rehearse some basic patter (or, better yet, draft a simple script).

• Medium Project (M) 🗓 - Any multi-step task that can be finished within a month. For instance, adding a new magic trick to my working repertoire (and, therefore, making it performance-ready) would qualify as a significant project. Why? Because it involves writing a polished script for the trick, then practising and rehearsing it with intention—something that would be impossible for me to do in a week, especially considering I have three daughters and a day job, but is achievable within a month. 

• Large Project (L) 🏗️ - These are more involved projects that take weeks or even months of effort (but less than a year) and involve multiple stages, materials, or moving parts. For example, developing a new magic act would fall into this category.

• Never-Ending Project (NEP) ♾️ - Finally, this is a distinct project that continually generates smaller sub-projects or tasks. For example, my magic blog, Marty’s Bag of Tricks, and this newsletter are both Never-Ending Projects. You don’t want too many of these. However, they still need to be considered and thought about during your weekly review (therefore, they need to be included on your Projects List). Never-ending projects aren’t necessarily bad, but having too many of them can cause significant problems! These projects are similar to another concept in GTD called “Areas of Interest” (or Areas of Focus), but they’re much broader and all encompassing, e.g., “family”, “work”, “health and fitness”, “finances”, “hobbies” and “personal development” are all common areas of interest.

I’m still refining this four-tiered approach, but so far, it’s helping me better track my creative work without causing me to drown in life admin! By separating small wins from big ambitions—and recognising the infinite nature of some commitments—I’m finding GTD more useful than ever.

If you’ve been meaning to get more organised with your own magical practice (or just life in general), GTD might be the tool you’ve been looking for. And if you already use it (or something like it), I’d love to hear how you customise the system to suit your creative processes. Leave a comment or reply to this newsletter—I always love hearing from readers.

Here’s a list of my current, active magic-related projects:

• Study the magic of Pipo Villanueva (M)

  • Learn “Four Kings Opening” by Pipo Villanueva (S)

  • Write, publish and promote Easy Does it: Pipo’s Perverse Production (S)

• Write, publish and promote Tricks, Tricks & More Tricks #4: Soulmate Sorcery (M)

• Write, publish and promote Developing Daley: Volume 1 (L)

• Exploring Erdnase Book Club (L)

• Marty’s Bag of Tricks (NEP)

• Marty’s Magic Ruseletter (NEP)

You’ll notice that the first three projects on the list are related; the two smaller sub-projects were derived from the first, as I discovered this trick while reviewing some digital downloads I bought from Pipo several years ago. The purpose of studying his magic is to push me to decide whether I want to include any of his material in my working repertoire (I’ll be adding “Walkaround Wildcard” and “Perverse Silver” to my A-List). While doing this, I also modified his four-of-a-kind production routine slightly, giving it a “perverse magic” theme, similar to other routines by Pipo Villanueva. This generated another small project (to write, publish and promote this variation in the Easy Does It column of the Ruseletter).

This is the real benefit of treating most things as a project: it forces you to focus on what “next action” will propel you forward as a writer, creator, or performer.

New on MBOT: Well Begun or Half Done?

Reading time: 8 minutes

On a related note, this month I published a blog article on an old Latin proverb:

“Initium est dimidium facti”

I discovered this aphorism when reading a recent edition of James Clear’s 3-2-1 Newsletter (3-2-1: On how to handle idiots, pushing toward growth, and two types of choices in life). James Clear is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Atomic Habits. While GTD is a ground-up task management system, Clear’s approach focuses on habit formation (and maintenance). It emphasises how small, incremental changes—or “atomic habits”—lead to greater success over time. When combined, GTD methodology and the development of atomic habits can yield remarkable results. Both systems emphasise the importance of action:

“You can’t make time go faster or success come sooner. The only thing you can control is the next action.” - James Clear

The well-begun-is-half-done mindset highlights the importance of simply starting, as a strong beginning greatly influences a project’s overall success. It promotes thorough planning, positive engagement, and a confident attitude when laying the foundations of future progress.

“You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.”- Zig Ziglar

After writing this blog article, I was reminded that Julie Andrews uses the phrase in the classic Disney film, Mary Poppins. She plays a game of “Well Begun is Half Done”, also known as “Let’s Tidy Up the Nursery”, with Michael and Jane. This occurs just before she begins singing the iconic song “A Spoonful of Sugar” and employs her particular brand of nanny magic to straighten up the room!

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The Myth of Magician’s Intuition

We all have them—those deeply-held beliefs about what makes a magic trick effective, such as “Active participation increases amazement,” “Make the magic happen in their hands,” or “Let them name any card for a truly free choice.” We repeat these sayings like gospel, passing on this tacit knowledge to younger, more impressionable magicians. But what if we’re wrong?

A new paper, “Challenging Magicians’ Intuitive Insights” by Wincza and Kuhn (published in Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts), puts these core beliefs to the test. The results may well prompt you to reconsider how you perform your next magic trick.

The study’s research team surveyed 201 working magicians to confirm three common pieces of magical wisdom:

1. Active participation enhances a spectator’s sense of wonder, making the experience even more amazing.

2. Naming a card feels freer and fairer to a spectator than physically picking one.

3. Magic that happens in a spectator’s hand is automatically more impressive than effects that don’t.

The research team then conducted two live-performance experiments with 134 laypeople. Surprisingly, the study’s findings consistently contradicted the intuition of magicians.

Does participation increase wonder? No, not really. Being an active participant didn’t make the trick feel more amazing, surprising or enjoyable than just watching it. It did, however, make the spectator feel more engaged and, interestingly, sometimes more confused and anxious—this probably has something to do with the mental pressure of having to remember the name of a chosen card, or introverts’ dislike of being the centre of attention.

Is naming a card perceived as freer and fairer than picking one? No, the opposite appears to be true. Spectators reported feeling their choice was less free and more likely to have been influenced by the magician when they merely named a card. They rated the trick as more impossible when they made a physical selection from a spread of cards. Why is this so? We feel a greater sense of agency (control) when a physical action is connected to a decision.

Is “in the hands” magic stronger? No. A card changing in the spectator’s hand was rated as no more impossible or amazing than the same effect happening under a card box on the table. (This finding really surprised me.)

However, the study does have some significant limitations, which the authors acknowledge in the paper. The most obvious one is that they used an extremely narrow range of tricks. Both experiments relied on traditional card effects (the Invisible Deck and a basic version of the Two-Card Transposition). The same results may not apply to grand stage illusions, propless mentalism, or even other close-up card effects.

Additionally, I would prefer to see a trick like the Sponge Balls or Sponge Bunnies used to test the real power of magic that occurs in the hands of a spectator. Something tells me that, with this particular trick, the findings might have been quite different. The paper offers some strong initial evidence, but further research is needed. Any future studies should employ diverse tricks, techniques, audiences, settings, and measurement methods before we overhaul all our performance rules.

We typically rely on intuition to hone our performance strategies, but when our assumptions are tested with empirical research studies like this one, they often tell a different story. We must stop assuming we understand what influences our audiences based on performer logic and, instead, base our art and craft on evidence of what truly engenders a sense of impossibility and wonder.

The paper demonstrates that magicians often misperceive how spectators experience agency, choice, and amazement. We think naming a card feels freer (it doesn’t), we think “in the hands” automatically amplifies impact (it doesn’t), and we believe participation increases wonder (it mostly just increases engagement and anxiety).

The deeper message? The audience experiences magic through their psychology, not ours. What seems meaningful from the magician’s perspective often doesn’t register with the spectator. This kind of research should both humble and inspire us to question our beliefs rather than continue to pass down conventional, unproven wisdom.

The authors of the paper highlight a spectator’s sense of agency as the critical factor. People trust their bodily actions more than their thoughts, which they believe could be vulnerable to manipulation by the magician. The research strongly indicates that we should be more sceptical of our long-held assumptions. The “why” behind a spectator’s feelings of astonishment might be different—and more complex—than we have previously believed.

I encourage all magicians to read the full paper; although its intended audience isn’t us, the insights it shares have many practical applications for both amateur and professional performers.

Read Full Paper

Three Videos Worth Watching 👀

This month, none of the videos have anything directly related to magic. However, they’re still very much worth watching.

David Allen TEDx Talk

Duration: 22 minutes

Interested in learning more about GTD? This classic TEDx Talk by David Allen is a great place to start. You’ll notice that David Allen often uses water and sailing metaphors to clarify his system. Watch this short video to discover how to become the “captain and commander” of your own magical boat! ⛵

1% Better Every Day by James Clear

Duration: 25 minutes

Here’s an excellent keynote presentation by James Clear, which covers the main ideas from his book, Atomic Habits. This approach, when combined with GTD, creates a powerful system for personal productivity.

TikTok Is RUINING Reading, Coloring & Every Hobby It Touches

Duration: 28 minutes

Finally, here’s a video that appeared on my YouTube homepage recommendations this month. Even though it doesn’t reference magic at all, I feel the topic is very relevant to magic as a hobby, as overconsumption of magic products is something that’s been bothering me lately. This links to the “magpie tendencies” of many magicians, myself included, that I mentioned in my most recent blog post.

Well, that’s it for another month. Look out for the June monthly update in your inbox soon!

Yours Magically,

Marty

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But the magic of 28 doesn’t stop there! In mathematics, it’s the second “perfect number” (where 1 + 2 + 4 + 7 + 14 = 28). It’s also a triangular number (imagine building a triangle with dots: 1 dot at the top, 2 in the second row, 3 in the third... by the 7th row, you’d have exactly 28 dots in total).

Incidentally, 28 happens to be my birth date and favourite number. Coincidence? I think not! Do you believe in coincidences? I do, too!

What does this have to do with magic tricks? Well, nothing really (and I don’t honestly believe in the mystical power of numbers). However, knowing facts about various numbers can help improve your presentations, especially those for self-working tricks that utilise various mathematical curiosities to function. Although I think arithmomancy, numerology, and angel numbers are complete nonsense, these mystical ways of looking at numbers can justify all kinds of odd mathematical procedures (see my trick Pythagorean Prediction for a good example). A degree of care is required when imbuing numbers with symbolism; many people want to believe this stuff and make important life decisions based on such woo-woo and mysticism. This is similar to the unintended consequences we must consider when performing Tarot card readings for entertainment purposes. Still, I find these personal systems of faith based on numbers fascinating and a good source of inspiration for magical presentations.

Anyway, let’s move on to this month’s updates. 333 🪽 (You know, just in case I’m wrong! 😉)

Colourful Hijinks 🃏🃏🃏🃏🌈

Reading time: 9 minutes

This month, I shared a fun variation of “Jinks” by Gordon Bean, a friend and Ruseletter subscriber. “Jinks” is a fantastic packet trick using a bunch of colourful Jokers. In it, a group of standard, blue-backed Bicycle jokers suddenly bloom into glorious colour on both their backs and fronts. However, the cards that Gordon printed lend themselves to many other uses. Sadly, “Jinks” is currently unavailable. While my variation works best with one of the “Jinks” cards for the final revelation, you can use any Joker with a multicoloured back or even a purple or green-backed card instead.

The presentation includes several dad jokes, making the trick particularly suitable for young children. However, I’ve found that adults enjoy these silly jokes, too (in a so-bad-they-’re-good kind of way).

Read Packet Trick Paradise #10: Colourful Hijinks 👈

The full write-up includes the complete method, handling, and my original presentation. You’ll need to read it to understand the alternative presentation ideas I propose below.

Alternative Scientific Presentation

While the comical dad-joke presentation in the full write-up works brilliantly, I’ve been developing a more educational alternative that explores the fascinating world of colour science and the peculiar nature of colour perception. This approach adds educational value while maintaining the trick’s magical impact.

Here’s how it works: As you display the four red-backed cards, you explain that our eyes perceive red because it has the longest wavelength in the visible spectrum. This scientific framing helps justify the multiple turnovers required in the routine. When you reveal the blue cards, you mention that blue comes from much shorter wavelengths, providing a conceptual reason for the transition between colours.

For the finale, you can introduce “the purple puzzle.” This explains how our brains create purple by combining red and blue inputs, literally making it “a pigment of our imagination!”

Why is purple so perfect for magic? Unlike other colours in the rainbow, purple (or magenta) doesn’t exist as a single wavelength of light. It’s “non-spectral”—our brains invent it when stimulated by red and blue light. Ironically, while we use the word “spectral” to describe ghostly apparitions, purple is non-spectral, yet it appears as real to us as any other colour. Like a well-crafted illusion, it exists only in perception! 👻

There are other “imaginary colours”, such as “forbidden” or “impossible” colours that our visual system isn’t designed to perceive. Two fascinating examples are “reddish-green” and “bluish-yellow”, combinations our brains usually can’t process because of how our visual system works. Our colour perception relies on opponent processes—cells that respond to either red-green or blue-yellow pairs, but not both simultaneously. That’s why we never see a “greenish-red” or a “yellowish-blue” in nature. But magicians know all about exploiting the impossible! Using techniques like binocular rivalry (showing different colours to each eye) or rapidly alternating colours, scientists have managed to trick people into temporarily “seeing” these impossible colours (also known as chimerical colours). Much like how we can make spectators see something that isn’t there, our brains can be coaxed into creating colours that shouldn’t exist. Isn’t that the essence of magic—making the impossible seem momentarily possible?

The Colour of Magic

“It was octarine, the colour of magic. It was alive and glowing and vibrant and it was the undisputed pigment of the imagination, because wherever it appeared it was a sign that mere matter was a servant of the powers of the magical mind. It was enchantment itself. But Rincewind always thought it looked a sort of greenish-purple.” — Terry Pratchett, The Colour of Magic

These impossible colours have also captured the imagination of fiction writers. Terry Pratchett, in his Discworld novels, famously described an eighth colour of the spectrum called “octarine”—the “colour of magic” (which became the title of his first Discworld novel). Pratchett described octarine as a “fluorescent greenish-yellow-purple”, only visible to wizards and cats. It’s a perfect example of how impossible colours can add a sense of wonder and otherworldliness to magical contexts—something we’re trying to achieve in our performances too!

Everything Is Amazing

How To See Impossible Colours

Hello! This is Everything Is Amazing, a newsletter about science, curiosity, wonder, and how ancient people weren’t as daft as we might think…

Read more

3 years ago · 64 likes · 38 comments · Mike Sowden

Since all colours are essentially created by our brains interpreting different combinations of wavelengths, this provides a perfect premise for our magic: we’re not changing the physical nature of the cards—we’re altering how the spectator’s brain perceives wavelengths. We’re manipulating the spectator’s mental image of the world!

For dramatic effect, I like to proclaim “Trānsmūtātiō Spectrālis!” (Latin for “Spectral Transmutation”) as the cards change colour. The phrase has that Harry Potter-esque quality, similar to “Wingardium Leviosa!”

When your audience examines all four cards at the end, they’ll recognise your scientific explanation was both educational and playfully tongue-in-cheek. This “plausible presentation” approach maintains the core handling of the original trick while adding intellectual depth. It strikes an excellent balance between education and entertainment.

The challenge, of course, is keeping the presentation concise. You don’t want it to feel like a lengthy physics lecture. And yes, keeping a few strategic jokes is a good idea—audiences still enjoy them, even if accompanied by good-natured groans!

Note: While “Colourful Hijinks” doesn’t involve a purple-backed Joker in the original handling, you could incorporate one for the final revelation. Just be aware that purple card backs can be difficult to distinguish from blue ones in low-light conditions (that’s why yellow is a better option in this respect).

Professor Sydney Lawrence’s Two-Card Forcing Procedure

One of the first magic books I read when I was young was Barry Murray’s Paul Daniels Adult Magic. It was one of the few magic books available at my local library.

Despite its unfortunate title, this volume serves as an excellent general-purpose manual of magic for amateur magicians wanting to perform for an adult audience. Hidden on page 144 is a gem called “Half Cut Coincidence”—a card trick that has remained among my favourites for years.

The Origin: Lawrence’s Forcing Procedure

Even though I learned this trick as a teenager, I only recently discovered the origin of the concept behind the effect. While Paul Daniels popularised it, Professor Sydney Lawrence created the underlying principle, publishing it as “Controlled Thoughts” in his self-published manuscript Ten Self Working Master Miracles (circa 1954).

Lawrence’s ingenious method is deceptively simple: two spectators each cut off packets from a deck and secretly count how many cards they have. After combining the packets, you show the cards individually, asking each spectator to remember the card that falls at their secret number. The mathematical principle ensures that both spectators recall the same card without realising it.

The Smith Myth and The Rashomon Concept

This forcing procedure became the foundation for Fred Smith’s “The Smith Myth”, published in The Five O Fetsch: A Quintette of Card Miracles in 1956, a collaborative effort with Hen Fetsch. Smith extended Lawrence’s procedure with an additional phase in which two seemingly different cards magically match positions when the deck is divided, despite being freely shuffled.

Phil Goldstein (Max Maven) and Jon Racherbaumer later termed this the Rashomon Concept (inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s film Rashomon). This is when two or more participants experience the same event but interpret it differently based on their limited perspective. Or, as Goldstein described it, the Rashomon Concept is a principle of ambiguity of informational distribution! The illusion that the two spectators chose different cards is preserved as long as they do not compare notes afterwards.

“The Smith Myth” has become a significant milestone in mathematical card magic, spawning numerous variations by luminaries like Ed Marlo (“Smyth Bliss”), Dave Solomon (“Smith Without the Myth”), and Thomas Baxter (“SmythLed”).

In “Half Cut Coincidence”, Lawrence’s principle is cleverly disguised through the subtle use of the Rashomon Concept. The routine uses 17 halved cards. It creates the illusion that two spectators freely select the matching halves of the same card when, in reality, they both see the same half-card.

Split Decision Card Prediction

I recently stumbled upon a clever variation that adds a prediction element to Paul Daniel’s trick. However, it employs five whole cards instead of 17. The exact number of cards used is not crucial. That said, I prefer to use more than 10 half-cards, as Paul Daniels suggests in Adult Magic. A sensible choice is 13 whole cards, resulting in 26 half-cards. This minimises counting and dealing while providing the two participants enough cards for a thorough shuffle.

A memorable way to perform the trick is to use all the Hearts from an old deck and tell my two participants it is a “compatibility test”; it’s a fantastic romantic trick for couples or newlyweds. 💞

You can learn “Split Decision Card Prediction” for free from Trickshop.com. I’ve attached the PDF instructions below:

Split Decision Card Prediction

78.3KB ∙ PDF file

Download

A self-working card trick using ten half-cards.

Download

Sixpence Ceremony

Playing with “Half Cut Coincidence” prompted me to return to another card trick using half-cards. In my latest Ruseletter column, Easy Does It #4: Sixpence Ceremony, I explore how to breathe new life into Larry Becker’s classic self-working card trick “Will the Cards Match?” by combining it with coin magic and weaving in the rich folklore of the British sixpence. This silver coin, steeped in centuries of tradition, has been used in wedding ceremonies, Christmas pudding rituals, fortune-telling, and even witch-hunting!

My “Sixpence Ceremony” presentation draws primarily from the British wedding tradition of placing a silver sixpence in the bride’s left shoe for good luck and prosperity. 👰🏻👠🪙 It connects the mathematical card matching effect to Hofzinser’s “Royal Marriages” plot. The routine uses ten cards (cut in half to create five matching pairs) and several sixpence coins, creating a multifaceted performance that combines card and coin magic while engaging audiences with compelling cultural references and romantic symbolism.

Read Article

I’ve also written a longer blog article on the trick that digs deeper into the folklore surrounding the silver sixpence coin. If you’re interested in superstitions and folklore, I’m sure you’ll enjoy reading it.

I first encountered “Will the Cards Match?” and the principle behind it (the Ramasee Principle by Howard Adams) in a Marvin’s Magic collection of packet tricks. The version in the set I owned, which came in a very cool draw box resembling a magician’s sleeve, was called “United Nations of Magic” and used five half-cards with flags printed on them. Instead of using the usual phrase “Will the cards match?”, the presentation used “Will the flags unite?”, which I’ve always thought was a good alternative. Note: If you want to perform this version, which is more memorable than performing the trick with regular playing cards, it is still available as part of Marvin’s Magic Fifty Greatest Card Tricks set.

I believe I acquired this kit in the mid-1990s, but I can only find information online about a 2002 version, so perhaps I’m misremembering (or there was an earlier version of the same set). The set was called “Party & Parlour Magic Tricks: Classic Card Tricks (Act Four)”—I’d love to get another copy of this kit for nostalgic reasons. There were four kits in total. I had one on Money Magic (Act Three) and one on Escapology (Act Two, I think). I’m not entirely sure what was in the fourth one.

Three Videos Worth Watching

And once again, here are three more videos worth watching.

Iain Bailey’s Trick Clinic

In this video, professional magician Iain Bailey revisits a magic product from the past in an attempt to update it for modern times. In this episode, he takes another look at Jay Sankey’s “Magus Capsule” and finds a prop to replace the metal pill-shaped tube included with the original DVD.

This is a fantastic idea for a series of videos; I hope Iain continues to produce them. I enjoy revisiting old magic tricks to see if they can be revitalised (that’s one of the reasons I love old magic manuscripts, magazines, and periodicals).

If you’re interested in finding a cylindrical gift box like the one Iain uses in the video, these boxes are sometimes known as a “Butt Jointed Tube Box” or a “Shoulder Tube”. They consist of three parts: an inner tube, called a spigot or shoulder, the body, and the lid. When assembled, the tube has a flush finish. These paper containers often store pencils, loose tea leaves, or coffee. I’ve also seen them used as packaging for deodorant, cosmetics, and essential oil bottles. Search for “paperboard kraft tubes”.

What’s great about this prop is that, unlike a metal chop cup, it’s inexpensive, allowing you to buy several and modify them in different ways. They also come in various sizes. You could place a sticker on one to make it appear as if you’re recycling packaging for some speciality tea leaves (or cosmetics). Or use an empty cardboard tea caddy after enjoying the contents. Then, perform a one-cup routine with the tube and a teabag, switching it for one filled with loose tea leaves as a final load.

If I remember correctly, the metal “magus capsule” that Jay Sankey sold was “chopped”. Since these containers are made of cardboard, adding a magnet to the lid would be relatively easy. I’ve often thought about performing a Cups and Balls routine with a tea theme (I’m British after all), and this prop would provide me with an interesting and practical tool to use in such a routine.

5 Easy Forces with Jay Sankey

I recently searched for various methods to force a card and found this video by Jay Sankey. It teaches five fairly easy yet distinctly different forcing procedures.

Sankey’s relaxed handling of the cards is delightful to watch. His execution of Frank Garcia’s Topper move is superb. This is a good place to begin if you’re looking for alternative ways to force a playing card.

7 Ways to Use a Blank Card with Biz

Here’s another excellent tutorial video from Biz (Elisav Bizau) and Big Blind Media. I’ve always liked effects that use blank-faced playing cards. In this video, you’ll learn seven interesting ways to perform card tricks using one or more blank cards.

I think Biz is doing a fine job creating learning content for the BBM YouTube channel. However, I do wish his crediting was better. In this video, he’s teaching a minor variation of Nick Trost’s “Eight Card Brainwave” and doesn’t even mention Nick. Come on, Biz, you can do better than that!

That’s your lot for another month. I hope to have more tricks written by the end of May and publish some more reviews on Marty’s Bag of Tricks.

Yours Magically,

Marty

Welcome to the March 2025 Monthly Update for Marty’s Magic Ruseletter. Wow, I’m only three days late this time! 😉

I’ve been working on six routines this month based on the classic 1959 packet trick “The Four-Card Trick” by Scottish magician and mathematician Alex Elmsley. They’ve been rattling about in my head for a while, so I want to get them recorded before I forget them! I haven’t started writing the detailed tutorials yet. However, I thought sharing some information about them, including a performance of the original trick by Alex Elmsley himself, would be enjoyable before the eventual publication of the tricks. I hope this approach will encourage you to explore the original routine yourself before I release my variations.

I’ve also been developing a systematic approach to analysing the many different ways in which people can engage with magic. I’m unsure of the long-term value of this work. Still, it might offer magicians a self-reflective tool to facilitate introspection and possibly even assist some performers with future career planning!

New on MBOT: Taxonomy of Engagement with Magic

Reading time: 10 minutes

I published a new blog post called “A Taxonomy of Magicians” at the beginning of this month. The post was inspired by a thought-provoking article, “Passive or Active - What Sort of Magician are You?” by professional magician Mark Leveridge.

Read Blog Post

Building on the ideas in Mark’s article, I began by categorising magicians based on their performance styles and the nature of their magic. As I outlined the different types of “magician”—from classic stage magicians focused on grand illusions to close-up magicians specialising in intimate, sleight-of-hand performances—I changed my mind. I decided it would be more helpful to think about the different subtypes as “modes of engagement”. Once I started thinking this way, it only seemed logical to include spectators in the mix. Therefore, my “taxonomy of magicians” became a “taxonomy of engagement with magic”.

The taxonomy aims to provide a comprehensive view of the diverse roles and behaviours within the magic community, from those who create and perform magic to those who study, collect, or simply enjoy experiencing it.

The three main types of people involved in magic are performers (P1-P9), enthusiasts (E1-E9), and spectators (S1-S2). These three categories contain several subtypes—there are twenty in total—each representing a preference with a corresponding collection of behaviours.

Each subtype is positioned on a dual-label spectrum, emphasising both the positive and negative aspects or, in some cases, extremes of behaviour associated with that particular form of engagement. In other words, each subtype highlights its best and worst qualities.

Sometimes, the two ends of the spectrum represent extremes in behaviour rather than positives and negatives, e.g., P9 (the Theatrical Illusionist and the Avant-Garde Artist), E7 (the Club Regular and the Solitary Sorcerer) and S1 (the Devoted Fan and the Casual Observer). These labels should be considered neutral and not necessarily regarded as unfavourable.

The performer category includes nine subtypes, ranging from the dedicated professional to the hobbyist, and from the technically skilled to the creatively crafty. Enthusiasts, who engage with magic beyond performance, are also classified into nine subtypes, such as historians, collectors, scholars, and trick creators.

Spectators are divided into two subtypes: devoted fans/casual observers and legerdemain loathers/magic cynics, acknowledging how people appreciate and experience magic.  

Overall, the taxonomy offers a detailed framework for understanding the various roles, motivations, and characteristics of individuals within the world of magic. It emphasises the complexity of the magic community and provides a tool for self-reflection and a deeper appreciation of the art.  

Here are the subtypes I have so far:

1. Performers – Those Who Actively Perform Magic

These magicians turn knowledge into action, seeking to amaze and entertain. There are nine subtypes:

• P1: 🎩 The Professional / 💰 The Hack

• P2: 🪄 The Part-Time Pro / 🧙‍♂️ The Weekend Wizard

• P3: ❤ The Dedicated Amateur / 😴 The Lazy Hobbyist

• P4: 👋 The Social Sorcerer / 🦚 The Show-Off

• P5: ⚙️ The Technical Wizard / 😴 The Dullusionist

• P6: ✂️ The Crafty Conjurer / 🛠 The Clumsy Constructor

• P7: 🎭 The Theatrical Illusionist / 🎨 The Avant-Garde Artist

• P8: 📷 The Camera Conjurer / 🎬 The Post-Production Prestidigitator

• P9: 🛒 The Delightful Demonstrator / 🏪 The Pitch Trickster

2. Enthusiasts – Those Who Engage with Magic Beyond Performance

These people may or may not perform regularly. Nevertheless, they remain deeply engaged with magic in one or more ways:

• E1: 📜 The Historian / 🏺 The Obsessive Archivist

• E2: 🕵️‍♂️ The Collector / 📦 The Hoarder

• E3: 🎓 The Scholar / 🧐 The Theory Snob

• E4: 🧑‍🏫 The Teacher / 📖 The Preachy Professor

• E5: 💡 The Trick Creator / 🧪 The Unhinged Inventor

• E6: 🛠 The Propsmith / ⚒️ The Over-Engineer

• E7: 👋 The Club Regular / 🦉 The Solitary Sorcerer

• E8: 🤫 The Secret Seeker / 🔒 The Gatekeeper

• E9: 🛋️ The Armchair Conjurer / ⌨️ The Keyboard Magician

3. Spectators – Those Who Experience Magic Passively

These individuals appreciate the experience of magic but have no interest in performing it:

• S1: 🤩 The Devoted Fan / 😮 The Casual Observer

• S2: 😠 The Legerdemain Loather / ⛔️ The Magic Cynic

And here’s an example of a more detailed profile that I’ve written for P1:

P1: 🎩 The Professional / 💰 The Hack

A magician who makes a career out of performing magic at various venues—be it theatres, bars, restaurants, street corners, or even on television.

🎩 The Professional is a skilled, polished, and engaging magician who delivers high-quality performances, respects the art and adapts their magic to different audiences with professionalism and creativity—for example, a seasoned performer like Dutch magician Tommy Wonder (1953-2006), who elevates magic as an art form.

💰 The Hack is a lazy, uninspired magician who relies on outdated, overused tricks, lacks originality and prioritises quick money over quality entertainment, such as a magician who recycles the same tired tricks, stock lines and corny jokes without effort or passion, doing the bare minimum to collect a paycheck.

Another example of the Hack is the low-effort corporate or cruise ship magician. While many cruise ship and corporate magicians are highly skilled, many do the bare minimum to get by.

The Amazing Johnathan (1958-2022) and Welsh comic Tommy Cooper (1921-1984) famously parodied this archetype. However, both acts served as satire rather than actual examples of a hack. Johnathan Szeles was a true professional. Likewise, Tommy Cooper was surprisingly adept at magic and sleight of hand, despite the chaos that usually unfolded on stage when he attempted to perform magic.

I plan to write the entire system into a detailed article and post it to my blog. In the meantime, you can read my work in progress in a shared Google document (it’s a bit of a mess at the moment). Feel free to comment directly on the manuscript if you have any thoughts, ideas, or suggestions for improving the framework.

View Google Doc

Ultimately, I hope this taxonomy will encourage you to reflect on your own engagement with magic and explore various ways of enjoying it as a hobby, career, or art form. I also hope it will highlight the diversity of magic, conjuring, and illusion; “magician” is a broad term encompassing numerous skills, styles, and modalities, all of which are legitimate ways of engaging with magic. The taxonomy provides a clearer understanding of the different niches within magic, recognising that while categories are useful, the art itself is fluid and multifaceted.

My preferred subtypes are dedicated amateur (P3), scholar (E3) and trick creator (E5). Oh, and if you’re wondering, my full “magic type” is P3-P4-E1-E3-E4-E5! ❤👋📜🎓🧑‍🏫💡. However, I’m also interested in developing aspects related to P6 and P8. What type are you?

The Granddaddy of Packet Tricks

“The Four-Card Trick” by Alex Elmsley was the first trick to use the Ghost Count 👻, now more commonly known as the Elmsley Count. The best place to learn the routine (and the false count) is The Magic of Alex Elmsley: The Tahoe Sessions Volume 1 DVD or video download (available from your favourite magic dealer via Murphy’s Magic Supplies).

After all these years, Alex Elmsley remains my favourite magician. Not only was he a clever inventor of tricks, but he was also an utterly charming performer. Here’s a video trailer for The Tahoe Sessions Volume 1; it includes a complete performance of “The Four-Card Trick” along with three other tricks from the volume.

Here are the time-stamp links—each will take you directly to the named trick in the video:

• “The Four-Card Trick” - A three-card trick with four trick cards! The classic packet trick using the Elmsley Count. It was first released in 1959.

• “Brainweave” - An impromptu version of “Brainwave”/”Invisible Deck” using a regular deck of cards.

• “Fan Prediction” - A super clean prediction effect using an ordinary deck.

• “Fate’s Datebook” - Part of Elmsley’s famous “Dazzle Act” using an improvisational selection procedure, similar to Dai Vernon’s “Card Trick That Cannot Be Explained”.

And here’s an overview of the six variations of “The Four-Card Trick” that I’m currently working on:

• “Four-Card Monkey Business” is a combination of “The Four-Card Trick” and “3 Card Monkey Business” by Bill Elliott (the precursor to “Color Monte”). It is a fun four-card monte routine with a $14 kicker ending, similar to Jim Temple’s “Color Monte”.

• “Color Monte Killer” is another version of the trick that uses a presentation inspired by “3 Card Monkey Business” and “Color Monte” but with two surprise kickers!

• “Chase the Face” is my interpretation of Elmsley’s “New Four-Card Trick”, also taught on The Tahoe Sessions Volume 1. It features a streamlined handling and an added surprise at the end of the routine.

• “Foolish Four-Card Monte” is similar to “Chase the Face” but uses four Jokers, which transform into four duplicate Queens! At the end of the routine, all of the cards are examinable.

• “Signature for Satan” is another handling of “The Four-Card Trick” with a Faustian presentation (similar to “The Devil is Dyslexic”). A spectator signs the money card. Its back eventually turns red, and a message appears on it: “SATAN IS MY MASTER”. You then rescue your participant from their pact with the Devil by transferring the signature from the red-backed card to one of the other, blue-backed ones (much like John Bannon’s trick “Tattoo You”).

• “Mephisto Monte” is another bizarre magick-inspired version. “Never Gamble with the Devil” appears on the odd-backed card. The other three Jokers transform into three Sixes (666), the Mark of the Beast!

These six variations will appear in two future editions of Corrupting the Classics, and “Foolish Four-Card Monte” will appear in my regular column, Packet Trick Paradise, later in the year. I’m unsure exactly when because finishing all the write-ups will take me a while!

Parisian Style of Magic 🗼🥐🍷🎭🎨

My friend Bob, a dyed-in-the-wool P3 (dedicated amateur magician), recently asked about Boris Wild’s Kiss Count, an elegant and deceptive all-alike false count, similar in utility to the Flushtration or Orion Count.

During the online discussion, some people thought the move’s “flourishy” nature made it suspicious and less deceptive. I don’t believe that this is true. When performed with the correct pace and rhythm, the count is just as fooling as a well-executed Flushtration Count. However, much like its plainer cousin, the move is at its most deceptive when using Jokers, or blank playing cards.

The count is named after Boris Wild’s famous FISM award-winning “The Kiss Act”. Here’s a packet trick, called “Travelling Kiss”, which uses double-blanks and was inspired by his act (you can see the Kiss Count being used multiple times during the performance):

All of these false counts—the Flustration, Rhumba, Orion, and Kiss Count—share the same weakness in that you repeatedly show the bottom card of the packet. An observant spectator can notice this discrepancy. However, these counts can be highly deceptive when performed casually with the proper emphasis, pace and rhythm. You can also use them as a primary display if you follow them up with a secondary convincer (such as switching out the cards) or by strengthening the display through verbal trickery. See my trick “Shake It Up” for a practical example. Here’s the relevant excerpt:

Remove the cards from your pocket. First, display the five cards as four Jokers by performing a Flushtration Count, keeping the last two cards held as one. As you do this, say, “Here I have one, two, three, four Kings.” As you place the last Joker, a double card, on top of the packet, hold a little finger break beneath it.

The Flustration Count is one of the less convincing false counts, but it can still be effective when displaying four Jokers or blank-faced cards. When you claim to have four Kings, your audience will feel compelled to correct you by pointing out that they see four Jokers. This is a helpful psychological trick, as they essentially convince themselves that you have four Jokers rather than simply being told so by you. If you were to state this directly, they might not believe you. This verbal deception enhances the count’s effectiveness and clarifies to your audience that all four cards are Jokers when they’re not.

Another good example of how to use the count effectively is this performance of “Odd Quad” by Daryl, the Magician’s Magician:

The careful and subtle handling of the cards and Daryl’s charming patter help make the Flushtration Count far more deceptive.

⚠️ A Word of Warning: These fancier false counts, such as the Kiss Count, look incongruent if you actively avoid flashy-looking moves and flourishes. In this scenario, I’d recommend sticking with the Flushtration Count or avoiding this style of display altogether.

This fruitful discussion has led me to reflect on the admiration I’ve long held for a French style of magic that I refer to as the “Parisian Style”. This poetic form of magic, particularly card conjuring, is most often, though not exclusively, performed by magicians from Paris. It embodies the elegance and sophistication traditionally associated with the capital of France. While it can be flamboyant, akin to the “Spanish Style” of magic linked to Tamariz and the Spanish School, it remains understated and less chaotic, featuring highly choreographed moves—a dance of the hands if you will.

Key proponents of the Parisian Style are Jean Pierre Vallarino, Dominique Duvivier, Gaëtan Bloom, Bebel, Bernard Bilis, Jean Faré, Daniel Rhod and, of course, Boris Wild. The older generation, such as Ernest Pancrazi, also influenced these magicians. More recently, Yoann Fontyn’s visual card magic has introduced more flourishes and a fluid economy of motion to the “Parisian Style”:

However, the Parisian Style, much like the Cardistry movement, clashes with the more traditional view that manipulative skill should be concealed to make effects feel like real magic. This approach, popularised by Dai Vernon, emphasises naturalness, psychology, and economy of motion while tending to eschew flourishes and overt displays of skillful manipulation. Still, I believe there is a way to blend the two approaches. You can enhance and elevate the magical moment by performing a flourish before an apparent “moveless” effect. This juxtaposition can be integrated into a show or act, alternating tricks of different styles, or even within a single trick or routine.

You may have noticed that I’m careful with my words. This is the Parisian “Style”, not “School”. The difference is that a school implies a “school of thought” or a way of thinking about the performance of magic, as seen with Tamariz and the Spanish School. In contrast, the Parisian Style emphasises visual magic, flourishes, and aesthetics more than the theory, psychology, and philosophy of magic. However, this doesn’t preclude the idea that there may also be a “French School” of magic associated with the “Parisian Style” of performance!

Three Videos Worth Watching 👀

This month, I’ve chosen to share three videos demonstrating the “Parisian Style” of magic I mentioned above.

The Kiss Act by Boris Wild 💋

Boris Wild performing his world-renowned “Kiss Act” at the Magic Castle in Hollywood. He presented it at FISM in 1997 in Dresden, Germany, earning second place (no one received first place that year).

Boris also created a lesser-known but equally beautiful sequel to this routine called “The Butterfly Act”.

Champagne by Jean Pierre Vallarino

Jean Pierre Vallarino performing his unmistakable poetic close-up magic style on World’s Greatest Magic 3. He placed 3rd at FISM in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1991 with this same act.

Grace by Bebel

I love this card sandwich routine by the underground legend Bebel (Belkhéir Djénane), who performs in the Saint-Germain-des-Près region in Paris. He sits on a small folding chair and performs his fantastic magic on a collapsible table, often near Mabillon, a station on line 10 of the Paris Metro.

A tutorial for the trick is available from Ellusionist for $11.95 (£9.25).

I hope you enjoyed this update. In the next quarter, I will focus on Developing Daley, one of my unfinished book projects. 📚 Expect to see more of this content serialised on my blog in the coming weeks (see this page for all posts relating to Dr. Daley’s Last Trick).

Yours Magically,

Marty

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I’ve also been reflecting on the broader cultural presence and impact of magic and magicians in popular culture. It’s fascinating to observe how the art of illusion is depicted by mass media. From the silver screen to the glowing box in our living rooms, magicians and their craft are woven into grand narratives that shape the public perception of magic, often in ways that both intrigue and, at times, misrepresent the art form. In this update, I discuss some of these portrayals, exploring how films, television shows, and literature construct the image of the magician while considering what these depictions mean for those of us who practice the art in the real world. Are we all mysterious figures with hidden agendas, or simply entertainers seeking to evoke wonder?! Let’s explore the captivating, sometimes confounding world of magic as seen through the lens of popular culture.

Satanic Sorcery! 👿

Reading time: 9 minutes

I’ve finally finished the third edition of Tricks, Tricks & More Tricks: Satanic Sorcery. In this regular Ruseletter column, I explore seven card tricks inspired by legends and folklore involving encounters with the Devil in disguise. The full article is exclusive to paid subscribers, but I’ve made the first half available (including the write-ups for three of the tricks) for everyone to read.

Considering the theme of these tricks, you should be cautious about whom you perform them for, as discussions of pacts with the Devil and losing one’s soul to Satan may upset or disturb individuals who are deeply religious or spiritual.

Read Article

However, if you are a fan of this peculiar style of bizarre magick presentation, you might also appreciate the blog articles I have written about folklore, such as the migratory legend “The Card Players and the Devil”. In the future, I will write more about folktales and legends like this one, and how you can use them to make your magic more engaging, entertaining and memorable.

Emerald Isle Aces ☘

Reading time: 11 minutes

You can also read the fourth installment of Corrupting the Classics, in which I share a new variation of Herb Zarrow’s “Revolving Aces” (based on the same principle behind the Christ Force).

Read the Article

In May 1961, an excellent Ace-cutting card trick titled “Emerald Isle Aces” was featured in Genii Magazine. Credited to the Canadian magician Dai Vernon, the trick received its evocative name in honour of his purported Irish heritage. (This entire issue of Genii was a special edition celebrating the magic of Ireland; most of the content was compiled and written by Irish magician Hubert Lambert.) However, this trick did not originate with Vernon; it was, in fact, the invention of American magician Herb Zarrow and was published in Harry Lorayne’s Close-Up Card Magic (1962) under the title “Revolving Aces” (see pages 98-100). It was mistakenly attributed to Vernon by Hubert Lambert owing to a communication error with Faucett Ross. This mistake went uncorrected for 28 years! In 1989, Stephen Minch set the record straight in The Vernon Chronicles: Further Lost Inner Secrets, correctly stating that the trick originated with Herb Zarrow, not Dai Vernon.

Years ago, I inadvertently reinvented “Revolving Aces” while experimenting with The Christ Force, which Ted Annemann called “The 203rd Force”. Essentially, this method involves repeating this force four times consecutively. It wasn’t until I read about the routine in Close-Up Card Magic that I realised Herb Zarrow had beaten me to the punch by well over forty years! I also began exploring the idea of finding a Royal Flush instead of the four Aces. Once again, I discovered that Zarrow had already struck upon the same basic idea; see “Revolving Royal Flush” in Zarrow: A Lifetime in Magic by David Ben (2008).

However, I think I have now devised a variation worthy of publication. I’ve designed it in such a way as to create a playful, interactive dynamic between you and a spectator. The presentation is similar in tone to the one used by Chad Long in his modern classic “Shuffling Lesson”—you challenge a spectator to cut to the four Aces and, initially, they appear to fail. However, they end the routine on top, managing to locate both the four Aces and a Royal Flush in Spades! You could describe this plot as “spectator in trouble” because it resembles the well-worn “magician in trouble” one. The biggest issue with “magician in trouble” is that it isn’t particularly convincing, especially if the performer isn’t a good actor. However, the same problem doesn’t hold with the “spectator in trouble” plot because there’s no expectation that a layperson can perform magic or sleight of hand.

Here’s what happens: the four Aces are placed in different parts of the deck. You demonstrate to the spectator what you want them to do by cutting to the Ace of Spades. The spectator fails to locate an ace three times in succession, instead discovering the King, Queen, and Jack of Spades. With a flourish, you reveal the Ten of Spades face up in the deck to complete a Royal Flush in Spades! Remarkably, the spectator then successfully cuts to the three remaining Aces, bringing the routine to a mind-blowing conclusion!

Learn the Routine

Having Scottish, Welsh, and English heritage, I’ve chosen to take a leaf out of Hubert Lambert’s book and name my variation “Albion Aces” to celebrate my connection to the British Isles (Albion is the ancient name for Great Britain).

Magic at the Movies 🎬

One aspect that has always fascinated me is how magicians and magic are portrayed in literature, television, and cinema. Mass media often depict them as mysterious and charismatic figures capable of defying reality through clever tricks and illusions. Depending on the narrative, they frequently appear as flamboyant entertainers in classic top hats and tails, emphasising the showmanship and spectacle of magic and illusion. Notable examples include the classic stage magician archetype in films such as The Illusionist (2006) and The Prestige (2006), as well as more contemporary depictions like the Now You See Me series (2013, 2016, 2025), where we encounter an eccentric team of magicians with a rebellious edge. Additionally, films like Houdini (1953), starring Tony Curtis, and The Great Buck Howard (2008) showcase the struggles and triumphs of real-life and fictional stage performers, further romanticising the art of illusion.

Alternatively, magicians may be portrayed as powerful, sometimes even sinister, individuals possessing supernatural abilities. For instance, Jafar in Aladdin (1992) and Saruman in The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-2003) wield dark magical powers that enable them to manipulate reality and dominate others. They might be depicted as villains using their skills for criminal or malicious purposes, which creates suspense and intrigue, such as in The Mad Magician (1954), where a betrayed illusionist turns to murder. Other films, such as Lord of Illusions (1995), blend magic with horror and noir elements. In fantasy, magicians may be represented as powerful wizards whose magical abilities are often tied to ancient lore or mystical practices, like Merlin in Excalibur (1981) or the many wizards and witches of the Harry Potter franchise (2001-2011).

Rightly or wrongly, magicians are frequently ridiculed and serve as comedic relief in movies. Humorous portrayals of magicians often highlight the absurdity of their tricks and the persona they embody when performing their illusions. Films like The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (2013) and Magic Camp (2020) showcase bumbling or egotistical magicians whose antics provide laughter rather than awe. Even animated films, such as The Sword in the Stone (1963), depict magicians in a whimsical light, with Merlin’s playful rivalry with Madam Mim serving as a source of lighthearted comedy.

Why is all this important? Well, these characters from popular culture influence how the public perceives magicians and magic when they encounter them in real life. Therefore, it is wise to watch as many of these films as possible—regardless of their quality—if you perform magic. Doing so can also offer you inspiration and ideas for your own magical performances.

One of my favourite films in this genre is Magic (1978), a psychological horror-thriller directed by Richard Attenborough (yes, the old guy from Jurassic Park) and starring Anthony Hopkins (famous for his depiction of Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs), Ann-Margret, and Burgess Meredith. The film follows Corky Withers, a struggling magician who finds success as a ventriloquist with his foul-mouthed dummy, Fats. However, as Corky’s career rises, so do his psychological troubles, and it becomes unclear whether Fats is merely a puppet or a manifestation of Corky’s fractured and disturbed mind. Fleeing from his past, Corky reunites with a childhood love, Peggy, but his descent into madness threatens to consume them both. Blending psychological horror with a chilling character study, Magic explores themes of obsession, mental instability, and the thin line between reality and illusion. It is the perfect inspiration for performers like Rob Zabrecky, who are interested in magic’s more disturbing and macabre side.

Do you have a favourite magic movie? Reply to this email or post it in the comments section in Substack to let me know.

Magic on the Small Screen 📺

If you remain observant, you will also notice that magic is frequently employed as a plot device or trope in many popular television shows. In this context, a trope refers to a common, recurring, or stereotypical character, situation, setting, or theme often utilised within a specific genre. It serves as a storytelling device akin to an audiovisual “figure of speech”—similar to a common cliché or rhetorical device—used as a shortcut for illustrating something the storyteller can reasonably expect the audience to recognise. A whole website, TV Tropes, is dedicated to analysing this aspect of popular culture. This wiki is a helpful resource for magicians who wish to explore various aspects of their performance persona or character.

Recently, I’ve been revisiting the earlier series of Death in Paradise, a cosy crime drama produced by the BBC set on the fictional Caribbean island of Saint Marie. While I don’t remember watching an episode featuring a magician as a character, I did notice a few references to magic. Firstly, in Lost Identity (Series 5, Episode 5), it is revealed that Detective Inspector Humphrey Goodman, played by Kris Marshall, performed card tricks as a young boy for his aunt. At the end of the episode, he struggles several times to find a chosen card. This aligns with his clumsy, goofy character and reflects a common stereotype that suggests people who learn magic when they’re young do so because they’re socially inept or awkward.

In The Stakes Are High (Series 7, Episode 2), Detective Inspector Jack Mooney, portrayed by Ardal O’Hanlon, attempts (and fails spectacularly) to learn sleight of hand while investigating the murder of a high-stakes poker player. Mooney tries to discover how the murderer introduced a poison-laced playing card into the game without anyone noticing by consulting a book on magic for beginners. After struggling to shoot cards from his sleeve, he concludes that sleight of hand is more challenging than it appears. This, once again, reinforces—or reflects—the common belief that magicians and card cheats hide cards up their sleeves. Of course, we do, but not as often as people think!

As a child of the 1980s—a decade awash in neon hues and synth-driven soundtracks—one of the earliest and most vividly imprinted depictions of magic on my young mind wasn’t from Narnia or Middle-earth, but from the electrifying, techno-magic world of He-Man and The Masters of the Universe. This wasn’t the subtle sleight of hand or elegant illusions of a classic conjurer; it was a world where magic was raw power, crackling with energy, often manifested as laser beams and shimmering force fields. A muscle-bound hero wielding a sword imbued with mystical might battled a skeletal sorcerer of dark magic! “By the Power of Grayskull. I have the power!” remains a favourite magical incantation of mine!

In He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, magic is portrayed as a powerful, often mysterious force wielded by beings like He-Man, the Sorceress, and Orko—my favourite character as a child, second only to He-Man. Magic is typically connected to the mystical power of Castle Grayskull and the Pool of Power. It’s often combined with technology, such as He-Man’s Sword of Power, to enhance or focus it. It is also interesting to note that He-Man frequently uses his sword like a magician or wizard might use a wand or staff.

With their blend of science fiction and fantasy, the He-Man cartoons (as well as the action figures and comics) present magic as a tangible force in delicate balance with the advanced technology of Eternia—a far cry from the card tricks and coin vanishes we practice. This early exposure to magic as a larger-than-life spectacle undoubtedly shaped my perception of what magic could be and perhaps planted the seed for my fascination with the power of illusion to transport an audience to a world far beyond the ordinary.

I’m sure I’ll return to this fascinating topic. Perhaps it deserves a longer article or blog post?

Well, that’s it for another month.

Yours Magically,

Marty

First, I would like to take a moment to thank those of you who have become paid subscribers to the Ruseletter. This year, I intend to write many more regular articles to express my gratitude to the select few individuals who have become paid subscribers. Your support means a great deal to me, keeping me motivated and allowing me to devote more time to creating thoughtful content about magic. While the Ruseletter will maintain its “freeven” publishing model—ensuring that even-numbered articles remain free for everyone—I eagerly anticipate creating unique and special content for paid subscribers in all the odd-numbered articles. I sincerely appreciate your support.

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That’s enough of the sentimental stuff—let’s move on to the magic! In this update, I shall share some of my thoughts on magic magazines and periodicals. I’ll also be dipping my toe into the fascinating world of book tests.

Is the Magic Magazine Dead? 💀

While print magazines, in general, are experiencing a significant decline and are increasingly becoming part of a decaying (if not dying) legacy media landscape, magic periodicals are far from dead. They continue to thrive and evolve in the digital age, providing valuable content and insights to the magic community. In short, I think they still deserve our support.

My own journey with magic magazines began in the early 2000s when two titans dominated the landscape: MAGIC and Genii Magazine. These monthly publications offered me a glimpse into the secretive and seductive world of the professional conjurer. Together, they delivered the latest tricks, techniques, and industry news to thousands of magicians worldwide.

But times change. MAGIC Magazine closed its doors in 2016 after an impressive 25-year run, and more recently, Penguin Magic Monthly bid farewell to its readers in August 2022, just seven years after its inception. These changes have left me pondering a more critical question: what does the future hold for magic magazines? (Annoyingly, I won’t answer the question here! But I promise to return to it in a future Ruseletter article or blog post.)

Genii Reimagined 🧞

The landscape of magic publishing continues to evolve. Just last month (January 2025), long-time editor Richard Kaufman retired from Genii Magazine, marking another significant transition. Genii—the longest-running independent magic magazine since its founding in September 1936—is entering a new and exciting chapter.

Under the leadership of Jim Steinmeyer as Executive Editor and Julie Eng as Executive Director, Genii is expanding its editorial team to include Vanessa Armstrong, Noah Levine, and Chloe Olewitz. After his 25-year tenure as editor, Richard Kaufman continues to oversee the Magicana section. Randy Pitchford and Genii Enterprises, LLC will continue to guide the publication through a modernised redesign while preserving the periodical’s rich heritage.

I’ve just finished reading the February edition of Genii. I’m delighted to report that it’s packed with fascinating content. Dominic Twose’s feature article “Hugard’s Real Magician” particularly caught my attention, as it explores a mysterious 1926 card magic performance witnessed by Jean Hugard. It features one of my all-time favourite magicians of the 20th Century performing magic with a pear (though I won’t spoil the surprise by telling you who). Pear magic is a thing. Who knew?! 🍐 The issue is rounded out with excellent pieces by Krystyn Lambert, Dr. Matt Pritchard, and Pete McCabe, alongside an insightful excerpt from Peter Lamont’s new book Radical Thinking about perception, deception and critical thinking. I also enjoyed Chloe Olewitz’s editorial on Genii’s ongoing evolution.

The “In Practice” section of the magazine contains detailed instructions on four magic tricks. You’ll find Benjamin Barnes' fooling card routine in the Magicana column, which Richard Kaufman continues to curate. Adam Elbaum shares “OG AWE Struck” (this was released by Vanishing Inc. Magic a few years ago), and Roberto Mansilla describes a fresh take on “Bank Night”. Most surprisingly, Jerry Sadowitz—a man who once claimed in a UK newspaper article that Richard Kaufman was his nemesis in the world of magic—contributes a fascinating examination of the “Inzani Bottle Production”. I’m glad he’s being featured in a mainstream publication; he’s a very creative conjurer, and his sleight of hand is immaculate (in contrast to his reputation and controversial comedy persona). The issue is completed with engaging interviews and reviews of new books and tricks.

My only criticism is that the included reviews were a little too brief and lacked the depth necessary to make an informed purchasing decision. I also appreciate the enhanced aesthetics; everything from the layout, typography, and new logo exudes elegance. Based on this issue, Genii’s future certainly looks bright.

Magazine Recommendations

Here’s a list of notable magic magazines, including their monthly costs and subscription links. I’ve organised them in order, starting with my preferred options.

1. Genii, The Conjurors’ Magazine: A prestigious monthly magazine that has been running since 1936, offering in-depth articles, reviews, and exclusive content. Digital subscriptions start at $35 per year, less than $3 per month. If you can only afford to subscribe to one, this is it! 👉 Learn More

2. The Linking Ring: Published by the International Brotherhood of Magicians (IBM), this monthly magazine covers various aspects of the magic world. Membership to IBM includes access to The Linking Ring. Membership fees vary, so it’s best to consult their official website for current rates. 👉 Learn More

3. Magicseen Magazine: Described as “Europe’s Number 1 Magic Magazine”, it provides a mix of interviews, effects, reviews, and news. A one-year digital subscription consists of four issues, released quarterly, at a cost of £25, equating to less than $3 per month (just over £2). 👉 Learn More

4. VANISH International Magic Magazine: Considered one of the best current publications, offering a blend of interviews, articles, trends, and magic tricks from top magicians. VANISH Magazine is available as a digital download for $11.99 annually. Active subscribers can access current and past issues at no additional cost. 👉 Learn More

5. The Magic Circular: The official publication of The Magic Circle. Access to The Magic Circular is included with membership in The Magic Circle. Membership fees vary, so it is advisable to check their official website for the most up-to-date information. 👉 Learn More

6. M-U-M Magazine: Included with a Society of American Magicians (SAM) membership. To receive M-U-M Magazine, you must be a member of the SAM. Membership fees vary, so please refer to their official website for details. 👉 Learn More

7. Magicol: A periodical published by Julie Eng (previously published by Magicana) for magic historians and collectors. Subscription details can be found on their official website. 👉 Learn More

Please note that subscription rates and availability are subject to change. For the most current information, I recommend visiting the respective websites of each magazine.

🔥 Hot Tip: The cheapest method to access Genii, The Linking Ring, The Magic Circular, M-U-M Magazine, and a load of older magic publications is to subscribe to the Bronze Level of Ask Alexander, which costs $9.99 per month.

These magazines provide a blend of digital and print formats, catering to the evolving needs of the magic community. They offer valuable content for both beginners and seasoned professionals, assisting magicians in staying updated on the latest tricks, techniques, and trends in the field.

The Prestidigitator

Do not fret if you lack the funds to subscribe to a magic magazine; numerous free information sources are available online. For instance, The Prestidigitator is a new contemporary online platform dedicated to preserving the art and mystery of magic. It emphasises the importance of craftsmanship, subtlety, and personal discovery in an era where instant access and commercialisation often overshadow depth and authenticity. The platform aims to rekindle the passion for genuine magical artistry among those who still appreciate its rich traditions. A worthy goal, indeed!

Learn More

Every article on the site is written by an anonymous author. Ben Earl and his colleagues at Studio52 are the driving force behind this initiative. While I do not know who will write each article, I assume that Ben and his team will author some of them.

Michael Close’s Newsletter

And, of course, there are plenty of magic newsletters like this one to enjoy! One of my favourites is Mike Close’s monthly newsletter. (To subscribe for free, you need to join his website.)

Mike’s monthly newsletter serves as a valuable resource for magicians, offering updates on Michael Close’s products, events, performances, and broader news from the world of magic. It includes industry insights, opinion pieces, product recommendations, and features on prominent magicians. The newsletter is informative (and a tad promotional), catering to professional and aspiring magicians. Membership provides access to the latest edition of his newsletter (as a PDF download) and a comprehensive archive of older issues dating back to 2017.

Ultimate Transposed Cards

I recently came across an excellent tutorial video by Rudy Tinoco (the driving force behind The Magician’s Forum) that I want to share with you.

The effect being taught—“Ultimate Transposed Cards”—was created by Nikola “Nick” Joseph Pudar, a talented amateur magician who first published it in the July 1979 issue of Apocalypse magazine. Sadly, Nick passed away on February 26, 2022, leaving a legacy of generosity in his professional career at General Motors and within the magic community.

The effect is beautifully constructed: A Joker seemingly randomly selects a signed card (the Five of Spades in the video). The selected card is clearly placed in the middle of the deck, while the Joker remains in full view throughout. Then, impossibly, the Joker and the chosen card magically transpose.

What I particularly appreciate about this routine is the casual, natural way the card is selected. While the method involves some simple sleight of hand and a standard gaffed card, the effect creates a powerful moment of magic that will astonish spectators and magicians alike.

If you like this video by Rudy, he offers a premium “TMF Prime” subscription. For $5 per month, you’ll get four or five videos like this one.

Learn More

Book Tests for Beginners 📚

Though card magic has been the primary focus of my writing, I have always aspired to a broader magical vision: discovering wonder in everyday objects. There is something uniquely powerful about transforming ordinary items into instruments of astonishment. A pen magically penetrates a banknote. A borrowed ring vanishes and reappears in an impossible location. A newspaper is torn and then restored in spectacular fashion.

In the coming months, I’ll explore the rich territory of “everyday magic”—effects that can be performed with objects we encounter daily. I aim to expand my repertoire beyond cards and become a more versatile performer.

I’m starting this journey with books. As someone who usually has his nose in a novel, I feel it is a natural first step. Despite three decades in magic, I've never performed a book test—one of magic’s most memorable effects where a spectator merely thinks of “any word” in a book, only to have it divined impossibly by the performer. That's about to change!

Book tests generally fall into two primary categories: those that utilise ordinary books (like David Hoy’s method) and those that require specially printed books, such as Ted Karmilovich’s “Mother of All Book Tests” (MOABT), which is highly regarded by working professionals (see this video review by David at Magic Orthodoxy). Some performers also adopt hybrid approaches, combining standard books with props or gimmicks or mixing both gaffed and ungaffed books in their routines.

After researching the topic a bit, a few things have caught my attention. Most book tests seem designed for cabaret or stage performances, particularly those employing specially printed props. As I perform in casual, close-up settings, these may not be the most suitable option, as people will likely wish to examine them more closely. However, I’m intrigued by the more recent book tests released by Josh Zandman and Kaleb Wade. Unlike others I’ve encountered, these feature classic titles you would actually find on my bookshelf, and the props resemble inexpensive reprints of well-known novels. They aren’t cheap, however!

I’m particularly keen on Josh Zandman’s “The Great Gatsby Book Test” as I’m currently working my way through the complete works of F. Scott Fitzgerald (if you’re interested in doing the same, I’ve shared my F. Scott Fitzgerald Reading Plan online, which is unfinished but contains links to most of his published stories). This book test is part of Zandman’s Series 3, which includes his “Sherlock Holmes Book Test” and “The Godfather Book Test”. What I appreciate about these offerings is that they also allow you to perform with an ordinary, ungaffed book. However, you need to purchase the correct book for this to work.

Finally, I also like the look of “The End” by Angelo Carbone; I’ve purchased several tricks directly from him and have never been let down. Here’s a positive review by Nique Tan, who owns numerous book tests (see his review of The Alchemist Book Test by Kaleb Wade for evidence!).

Given the high cost of these tricks, I’ve decided it would be wiser to start with a DIY homemade option or one that can be performed with any book. I’m also exploring the aforementioned “Bold Book Test” by David Hoy and Marc Paul’s “Triple A Book Test”. Using regular books also means I can read them and switch out the titles when I perform this at work, where it is very likely that I’ll be asked to repeat the effect.

If you have a favourite book test, please share it with me by replying to this email or commenting on Substack. I always enjoy learning from Ruseletter readers.

Three Videos Worth Watching 👀

Once again, here are three videos that I believe are worth watching. All of them feature a book test. 📚

Shawn Farquhar on Penn & Teller: Fool Us

This is Shawn’s second appearance on Penn & Teller: Fool Us. In it, he performs his comedy book test titled “Sheer Luck”. There are two methods: the one he released as a commercial magic trick and another he developed to deceive Penn & Teller. Was he successful? Watch the video to find out.

I adore the staging of the trick, though I am not keen on some of the jokes (it’s no surprise that some women are hesitant to join magicians on stage). However, I’d never perform this because, while it suits Shawn, it doesn’t align with my personal style of magic. Nevertheless, it is a fantastic piece of theatrical comedy magic.

Impromptu Book Test & Inception Method

Here’s a fabulous tutorial by the talented Michael O’Brien. In it, he shares a clever method for an impromptu book test as well as something he calls the “Inception Method”.

Michael is evidently a big fan of book tests (particularly those by Josh Zandman) and is very knowledgeable about the subject. Here’s another video from him featuring some excellent ideas and tips on impromptu book tests.

Mind Reading Book Test Tutorial

Finally, here’s another excellent method I stumbled across on YouTube. In the video, Greg Hughes of Trap Door Magic teaches a simple yet effective way to modify any book to perform an impressive book test.

I will definitely be using this method at work. Even though the preparation is time-consuming, I’m tempted to prepare several inexpensive paperbacks using the technique taught in the video. This will allow me to perform the same trick with a variety of different books.

I hope you found some helpful information in this delayed update. Expect another one in a few days!

Yours Magically,

Marty

I haven’t had much time for magic this month because of festive preparations and pre-Christmas outings with the family. However, I did manage to write up another trick inspired by “The Card Players and the Devil” called “More Mark of the Beast”. As the name suggests, this is an alternative handling of “Mark of the Beast”, which I shared last month. I’ve got one more trick in this series to write up, which, funnily enough, has a Christmas-themed joke in it. Once it’s complete, I’ll be publishing the six routines in the next edition of Tricks, Tricks & More Tricks (this one will be for paid subscribers only, I’m afraid).

What a Weird Inn!

Thanks to David Britland’s excellent Cardopolis Newsletter, I recently discovered a fantastic performable puzzle set to rhyming patter called “Weird Inn” (see Ruseletter Monthly Update #23 for my previous musings on poetry and magic).

In Cardopolis #34, David shared a trick called “The Convention”, which is a version of Paul Curry’s “Case of the Missing Hat” (Magician’s Magic, 1965). See the video below for a performance of the trick by David.

You can learn the method for the trick in Cardopolis #34 (I won’t be sharing it here—do yourself a favour and subscribe to David’s Newsletter). Curry’s trick, in turn, was inspired by “The Nine Rooms Paradox”, a rhyming riddle first published in Harper’s Young People (Vol. 4, May 15, 1883).1 The poetic puzzle was later republished in Current Literature (Vol. 2, April 1889), then in various books on mathematical curiosities over the intervening years.

It was Herb Runge in the pages of The Jinx (#128, 1940) who first suggested that the poem could be used by magicians and gave it the fitting name “Weird Inn”.2 However, he didn’t actually add any magic to the riddle. In his introduction, Theodore Annemann described it as a “modern blackboard item”, which could cover an interlude between tricks or some “underhand bit of business” performed by your assistant.

The poem, as it appeared in Harper’s Young People, was originally called “Is It Possible?” but now goes by several different names, such as “The Innkeeper and the Travellers”, “The Nine Rooms Paradox”, and, thanks to Herb Runge, “Weird Inn”, which happens to be my favourite.

In 2020, David Britland published a trick based on the nine rooms paradox in Genii Magazine called “The Weird Inn Revisited”, which, unlike “The Convention”, uses the original poem as patter.3 Here’s it is in full:

Ten weary, foot-sore travellers,
All in a woeful plight,
Sought shelter at a way-side inn
One dark and stormy night.

“Nine rooms, no more,” the landlord said,
“Have I to offer you;
To each of eight a single bed,
But the ninth must serve for two.”

A din arose. The troubled host
Could only scratch his head,
For of those tired men not two
Would occupy one bed.

The puzzled host was soon at ease—
He was a clever man—
And so to please his guests devised
This most ingenious plan:

In a room marked A two men he placed;
The third he lodged in B;
The fourth to C was then assigned;
The fifth retired to D;

In E the sixth he tucked away,
In F the seventh man;
The eighth and ninth in G and H,
And then to A he ran,

Wherein the host, as I have said,
Had laid two travellers by.
Then taking one—the tenth and last—
He lodged him safe in I.

Nine single rooms—a room for each—
Were made to serve for ten;
And this it is that puzzles me,
And many wiser men.

The poem is attributed to Gath Brittle, who wrote many amusing poems (there’s another good one called “Harry’s Joke” in the same book on page 80). Gath Brittle is likely a pseudonym for the newspaper journalist Robert W. McAlpine. If you haven’t already figured it out, you can find the solution to the riddle at the bottom of this newsletter.4

I really like the original poem. The fact that it is so old provides a compelling hook for your audience, e.g., “Here’s a puzzling poem from the late 1800s.” While both of David’s methods work well, I’ve devised an alternative way of performing the trick that avoids the use of a prepared card and the double lift by using two Jokers, four Jacks, and four Kings as the weary travellers in the tale. I’ve named my version “Jokers, Jacks and Kings” to differentiate it from those published by Herb Runge and David Britland.

Learn the Trick

Having performed this combination of puzzle and magic trick several times, I can attest to its effectiveness. The puzzle, when paired with the magic, becomes more memorable. The magic, in turn, adds an element of surprise to the puzzle, making it more intriguing. It’s a symbiotic relationship—the puzzle strengthens the magic, and the magic strengthens the puzzle. And when someone does manage to solve the puzzle, they’re often taken aback by the magical effect regardless (the disappearance of one of the cards).

David also mentioned that “The Missing Dollar Paradox” would fit well with “The Nine Rooms Paradox” and I wholeheartetly agree. For example, the visitors each pay $10, resulting in a total of $100. However, at the last minute, the manager offers a generous $15 refund due to the missing room. The Bell Boy takes the $15 but only gives $1 back to each visitor. The visitors are satisfied, having paid $9 for their rooms, totalling $90. The dishonest Bell Boy is pleased as well because he pocketed $5. This leads to a confusing situation: $90 plus $5 equals $95, but the visitors originally handed over $100. It seems that $5 has mysteriously disappeared in the Weird Inn! Combining these two paradoxes creates a longer, more complete routine.

After playing around with this handling, I’ve concluded that “The Nine Rooms Paradox” would probably make a better coin trick! Therefore, I’ve started developing a handling of the Weird Inn plot that uses ten pennies and nine paper cups. I’ll be calling it “The Lynn Inn”, which should tip the primary method being used to knowledgable coin magicians (IYKYK). Look out for this in an upcoming issue of my Easy Does It regular Ruseletter column. In the meantime, you can read more of my thoughts on performable puzzles in Ruseletter Monthly Update #8.

Henslowe’s Card Trick

Regular readers of the Ruseletter will know I am keenly interested in card tricks from the Early Modern Period (sometimes known as the English Renaissance, which includes the Elizabethan and Jacobean ages). I recently stumbled across a fascinating article by Colin Beveridge, a mathematician, consultant, and writer from Weymouth, UK. Colin and his young son Bill have uncovered the secrets of a 400-year-old card trick linked to the famous Elizabethan playwright William Shakespeare!

The card trick was discovered in Philip Henslowe’s Diary (1591-1609), which is not a conventional diary but an account book detailing his extensive theatrical business ventures. It provides records of over 325 plays from 1592 to 1604, including two or possibly three that were written in part or in full by Shakespeare: Henry VI Part 1, Titus Andronicus, and The Taming of the Shrew.

The page, dating from the 1590s, describes a card trick similar to the classic Clock Trick. In this trick, a person correctly guesses the number that a volunteer is thinking of.

Read Article

By modern standards, the trick might not be that impressive. However, it would make an excellent precursor to the standard Clock Trick (the prediction of a card at a randomly selected hour). Oddly enough, the trick uses thirteen cards, not the expected twelve, to create the clock face. However, it is easy to adapt the method to use twelve cards (the Ace through Queen of any suit). Arrange the twelve cards in a standard clock-face formation, ensuring they’re face down in their corresponding numerical positions. Your audience must not see the faces of the cards during this setup.

Ask your volunteer to think of a secret hour, choosing a number between one and twelve. Next, instruct them to pick any card and to count clockwise from their chosen hour. They should start with their secret number and continue counting until they reach fifteen. Ask them to keep their finger on the card they land on.

Reveal the “mystic number” associated with the card they’re touching. This number is obtained by adding twelve to the value of the hour indicated by the card, e.g., if your volunteer’s finger is on the card at the 11 O’Clock position, the mystic number will be twenty-four (11 + 12 = 24).

Next, instruct your participant to move counterclockwise from their chosen card, starting with their secret number and ending with the mystic number you just shared, e.g., twenty-four.

Finally, have them turn over the card they end up on. Its value will match their originally thought-of hour!

In the article, Colin mentions that any number can be used for the first part of the trick. Instead of using fifteen, ask a second person to name another hour and use that. In fact, you can ask several people to do this to better disguise the mathematical nature of the method.

Mystery Arts Holiday Calendar 🗓🎄

You can still claim the twenty-four free Mystery Arts Holiday Calendar gifts. Jay told me they would disappear on December 31st, so if you haven’t downloaded them all already, I recommend you do so ASAP!

Join List

My contribution, ten free articles from behind the Ruseletter paywall, will stay live on my blog (you can find it on this secret page).

The Bag is Back!

I was delighted to discover that Alakazam Magic and Craig Petty have updated Craig’s work on the coin bag, an ingenious adaptation of the Ultimate Egg Bag. I remember watching Craig demonstrate much of this material in 2008 when he still had hair! He later released much of this content on two DVDs: Attack of the Bag and Return of the Bag. You can watch the video below to see five of Craig’s favourite routines with the bag.

This new project, Bag Reborn, includes much of the same material, updated and improved. I’ll definitely be purchasing it sometime in the new year.

Three Videos Worth Watching

And finally, here are three more videos worth watching.

The Elephant Puzzle by Scott Link

Duration: 1 minute

Here’s a very clever promotional item designed and printed by Scott Link. You can buy it at ElephantPuzzle.com. This folding puzzle is a flexagon (a hexaflexagon in this case). Flexagons are flat models usually constructed by folding strips of paper that can be flexed or folded in certain ways to reveal hidden faces. Acclaimed mathematician, writer, and magician Martin Gardner loved flexagons.

Prison Break by Jay Sankey

Duration: 8 minutes

This is a simple yet incredibly powerful card and bill penetration effect taught by the ever-creative Jay Sankey.

EZ Joker Sandwich by Michael O’Brien

Duration: 11 minutes

Here’s another simple card trick: “EZ Joker Sandwich” by Michael O’Brien. This is a great trick for beginners and provides a great entry point into the world of playing card sandwiches!

Well, that’s a wrap for 2024! As we come to the end of this year, I want to express my gratitude to all Ruseletter subscribers. I truly appreciate the time you spend reading what I write. I’m especially thankful for the small number of paid subscribers to the Ruseletter; your continued support means a lot to me.

Wishing you all a fun and fruitful new year. 🥳

Yours Magically,

Marty

During the Black Friday sales, I treated myself to an early Christmas present: Joshua Jay’s new book, The Particle System (I’ll be reviewing it in the new year). During Black Friday, I usually limit myself to purchasing one of the magic books already on my wishlist (I’ve been looking forward to learning Josh’s work on the memorised deck for a while now).

I don’t particularly enjoy this time of year because of the pressure put on us to buy stuff we don’t need (especially if you’re a parent to small children). My youngest daughter loves The Grinch Who Stole Christmas (I’m also a life-long Dr. Seuss fan). The message of that book often gets overlooked:

And the Grinch, with his grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow,
Stood puzzling and puzzling: “How could it be so?
“It came without ribbons! It came without tags!
“It came without packages, boxes or bags!”
And he puzzled three hours, till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before!
“Maybe Christmas,” he thought, “doesn't come from a store.
“Maybe Christmas... perhaps... means a little bit more!”

Next year, I’m considering implementing a “No Spend November” to avoid the chaos of Black Friday. I receive countless emails from magic companies trying to lure me into spending money, and most of them get deleted before I even read them! It seems to me that the world could benefit from less rampant consumerism, especially if we want to take action against global warming. Unfortunately, I rarely see magic producers discussing their carbon footprint or environmental sustainability, which is concerning. This is a topic for a future blog post, methinks!

Well, that’s my annual grinchy-groan about the over-commercialisation of magic as a hobby! Now, onto the meat—or should I say roast beast?—of this update. The central theme for this newsletter is, amusingly enough, related to Dr. Seuss: The Magic of Poetry!

The Link Between Poetry and Magic

This month, I’ve spent most of my free time contemplating the connection between poetry and magic. It all began with an attempt to write a script in poetic rhyme for a bizarre magick version of the popular packet trick, “Color Monte”! My routine, called “Mark of the Beast”, involves the performer narrating a story about a game of three-card monte with a well-dressed gentleman, who is ultimately revealed to be the Devil in disguise!

I’m not the first person to have this idea; Scott Alexander performs a stand-up version of “Color Monte” with jumbo cards and a poetic script, but without the satanic overtones! (See the video below to watch a performance of “Stand Up Color Monte” by Scott Alexander.)

It took many drafts to refine the poem to a point where I felt confident it was good enough to perform publicly. I experimented with Artificial Intelligence (AI) to support my creative writing. In particular, I used Claude.ai to help overcome writer’s block when I was struggling to rewrite a few verses containing lazy rhymes. While the potential of generative AI intrigues me, I firmly believe it should not be used as a substitute for human creativity. After all, the joy of writing poetry lies in the creative process itself, and I’m unwilling to outsource that to a faceless chatbot! (However, there is some evidence that many people prefer poetry written by AI).

After drafting the initial version of the poem, I engaged in several conversations with Claude, whose feedback proved invaluable in refining the work, helping me to push the boundaries of my limited poetic abilities. These interactions helped me move past creative obstacles and ultimately improve the poem. Here are the first three verses to wet your appetite:

At night, upon a darkened street,
A well-dressed stranger I did meet.
Three cards he drew out from his pack,
Two Jokers and a single Jack.

“Care to win some precious gold?
A game,” he said, “from times of old.”
Greed betrayed my common sense;
My fateful game would now commence.

The stranger, with his ghoulish grin,
Laid bare the rules for me to win:
“Locate the Jack to beat the game,
But find a Fool, a coin I’ll claim.”

After finishing the poem, I conducted a little research to find out if any other magicians incorporated poetry into their performances (in a meaningful manner). Surprisingly, I didn’t find many. Yes, a few magicians, like Scott Alexander, perform one or two tricks to rhyming verse. However, I could only find one magician who has made poetry a fundamental feature of his performances: Renz Novani. Renz, a creative Scots-Italian magician and playwright, put on a show a few years ago called “Poet of the Impossible”. In it, he artfully combined close-up magic and mentalism with poetry and storytelling. The show recieved very favourable reviews. Paul Levy, founder and editor of Fringe Review, said:

“Overall, this was an enjoyable and thoroughly satisfying way to end a month at the Fringe and I am happy to recommend this to anyone who wants to experience magic with a poetic flavour. It all felt a bit different, in the best possible way.”1

Here’s another glowing review of the show:

“Renz’s graceful magic combined with his spoken word performance gently reshape his audience’s perception of reality while keeping us grounded in the real world. While fans of both magic and poetry might get the most out of Poet of the Impossible, the elegance of his performance is enchanting to all.”2

And here’s another commentry on the show from Claire Wood of The Wee Review:

The conjuring is interspersed with a handful of Renz’s poems, apparently recited from a notebook, except they’re not. He’s a charismatic performer. Even with his nose in a book, the audience are attentive. He has an open, affable manner and that intangible “wish he was your friend” quality that the best performers seem to exude. He’s funny, appears entirely confident on the stage and entirely in control of a show that it’s very hard to imagine he actually can be.3

From this description, I assume the magic effects were not performed in conjunction with the poetry. Instead, I’m guessing Renz recited poetry from a notebook, which was revealed to be blank at the end of his performance. I could be wrong, though.

This exciting discovery reveals that magic and poetry are indeed good bedfellows. In fact, the combination can create a more profound sense of wonder and curiosity in an audience than tricks alone.

During my search for poetry-infused magic, I also stumbled upon a poet who uses magic and puppetry in his performances for children. His name is Nick Toczek, and he has already become a favourite of my six-year-old daughter, Elodie. While his poetry is primarily aimed at primary and secondary school-aged children, I have also found it enjoyable and have even performed some of his poems for my three daughters. Nick started adding magic tricks to his poetry peformances to add visual interest, as he explains below:

“If you’re working with children with special needs or low literacy or those who speak English as a second language, then visual elements really help. I started doing one magic trick and the kids asked for more. I can now do around 5,000 tricks.”4

Alternating between magic tricks and poetry works rather well. It provides some variety and prevents the performance from being wall-to-wall poetry, which some audiences might struggle with (you can watch a 30-minute performance from Nick at the bottom of this newsletter).

Here is a magic-themed example of Nick Toczek’s delightful poetry from his book Me and My Poems (Page 53):

Watching Merlin by Nick Toczek

Watch the world-famous wizard called Merlin.
Note the way his white whiskers are curling.
See the star-spangled cloak he’s unfurling.
Spot the rubies and mother-of-pearl in
That mysterious wand which he’s twirling.

Stand witness to the wizard called Merlin
Catch the mad mist around him that’s curling,
How his casting of spells sets it swirling,
But beware when it really starts whirling.
Fear the force of the curses he’s hurling.

Nick Toczek also writes poetry books for adults and material of a political nature. He’s a very interesting guy!

Since I’ve had children, I’ve become more interested in poetry, especially writers who lean into the performance of poetry, such as Michael Rosen, Roger McGough and John Cooper Clarke. Michael Rosen has an excellent blog on poetry and is very active on YouTube.

I have a strong belief that children’s poetry could be a more rewarding genre to study if you want to incorporate poetry into your magic. This is because it places a greater emphasis on rhythm and repetition, which are both crucial aspects of deceptive sleight of hand and effective misdirection. This discovery has opened up a whole new world of possibilities for me, and I hope it does the same for you.

The Magical Power of Words

Of course, there is also an older connection between poetry and magic. Anita Seppilli (1902-1991), an Italian anthropologist, argued that poetry evolved out of magic and that the remnants of ancient rituals and magical thinking can be found in epic works, such as Homer’s Iliad. Seppilli thought that classical culture could be enriched by examining the connections between different cultures, borders, and disciplines.

In her influential work Poesia e magia (Poetry and Magic), she proposed that poetry is not just a form of art, but a medium closely related to prayer, mantra (sacred utterances) and other magical practices. This connection between poetry and prayer invites us to contemplate the deeper, spiritual aspects of poetry.5

She also thought that poetry and magic have shared origins and functions, which might be why they complement each other so well. Both poetry and magic are ritualistic in nature; they utilise specific forms, repetitions, and rhythms that create a sense of enchantment or astonishment. In many instances, they can both evoke strong emotional reactions, fostering a deep sense of connection and empathy with an audience.

Poetry, much like magic, taps into the deep-seated belief in the ability of words to bring about change or, in magical parlance, transformation. By describing poetry as magic, Seppilli highlighted the transformative and evocative nature of poetic language, suggesting that poetry and magic tap into deeper, perhaps universal, human experiences and beliefs. Deep stuff indeed! Of course, Anita Seppilli was discussing ceremonial or shamanistic magic, not theatrical conjuring. However, I think these ideas are still helpful to the modern mystery performer.

Poetry is Magic!

Poetry is also used in the Neopagan religion of Wicca. For example, the Wiccan Rede, a moral statement that serves as the foundation of the Wiccan religion and other witchcraft-based faiths, is part of a longer poem. Here are the first few lines of it:

Bide the Wiccan Laws we must
In Perfect Love and Perfect Trust.

Live and let live—
Fairly take and fairly give.

Cast the Circle thrice about
To keep the evil spirits out.

To bind the spell every time
Let the spell be spake in rhyme.

Soft of eye and light of touch
Speak little, listen much.

In popular culture, spells are often recounted in rhyming verse, adding some much-needed dramatic flair to the magical acts. For example, in the popular 90s TV show Charmed, the three Halliwell sisters frequently recite short poems to perform magical acts. And in the world of DC Comics, Jason Blood, a former Knight of the Round Table, transforms himself into Etrigan the Demon by recounting the following poem (or some variation of it):

Change! Change! O’ form of man!
Free the prince forever damned!
Free the might from fleshy mire!
Boil the blood in the heart for fire!
Gone! Gone! O’ form of man!
Rise the demon Etrigan!

I’ve also found several poets describing poetry as a magical act. For example, Timothy Green insists that, “A poet’s job is to conjure a magical space, and then record it as a string of language, so that others may follow them there.”6 Likewise, Grant Clauser directly compared the role of the magician and poet:

In the same way that a magician needs to establish a trusting relationship with the audience in order for them to enjoy the show (and gasp with delight at the end), a poet should also form a trusting relationship with the reader. In a poem, you’re asking people to follow you into some unknown place, and for many people, poetry is an intimidating place. How do you get them to go along with your gestures and sleight of hand? Through trust, which leads to a relationship, and ends in communion—a sharing of the experience. In magic, that experience is usually (hopefully) delight and astonishment. In poetry it may also be those things, but it may also be shared sorrow, regret, nostalgia, and sometimes joy (there’s sadly not enough of the latter).7

Anyway, this is all fascinating stuff. I plan to return to this topic sometime in the new year. I’ll probably write a longer blog post on the subject. In the meantime, if you have any thoughts on the connection between poetry and magic, please post them in the comments section of Substack or email them to me.

Learn Mark of the Beast 👿

Reading time: 18 minutes

If you’d like to learn how to perform my devilishly delightful variation of “Color Monte”, you can do so now. If you’re already familiar with “Color Monte” and Marlo’s Quick 3-Way, the mechanics of the trick shouldn’t present too much of a challenge. The hardest part of the routine is probably memorising the poetic script!

Learn the Trick

In the next edition of Tricks, Tricks and More Tricks (for paying Ruseletter subscribers), I will share a collection of card tricks all inspired by the migratory legend “The Devil and the Card Players”. This will include “Swindle of Souls” and “High Card to Hell”, both of which I shared earlier this year, and “Mark of the Beast”. However, you’ll also learn “More Mark of the Beast”, “Beelzebet”, “Beelzebetter”, and a humourous packet trick called “The Devil is Dyslexic”, which is based on “Mo’ Monte” by Max Maven. I’m hoping to get the article completed by Christmas.

Mystery Arts Holiday Calendar 🗓

Jay Jennings, a part-time author and mind reader from Scottsdale, Arizona, has organised a “Mystery Arts Holiday Calendar”. If you sign up, you'll receive a daily email until Christmas Eve containing a code that grants you free access to an online magic resource or magic download. So far, we have enjoyed seven free tricks. Thanks, Jay!

To date, the offerings include:

1. Six minutes of killer comedy magic featuring a ring, a rope, and a pair of scissors by Matt Fore.

2. A seven-phase card routine by Bazz Fazackerley (Black Cat Magic).

3. A spooky Living and Dead Test presented by Jamie Salinas.

4. A clever mind-reading effect tailored for sightseeing enthusiasts by Jay Jennings.

5. A classic effect from the pages of The Jinx, completely revamped by Julien Losa.

6. A “Who Has the Coin?” effect by Nestor Dee.

7. A mystery involving a bowl and some balls from Ryan Pilling.

There are still seventeen days to go. I’ve also donated a gift to the advent calendar (ten articles from behind the Ruseletter paywall). Join now to recieve the daily access codes!

Sign Up Now!

New Tenyo Items for 2025

The new Tenyo magic tricks for 2025 are out, and the lineup looks pretty strong this time around. “Crystal Pyramid” (T-165) may look like a child’s toy, but the effect is impressive. “Money Shock” (T-259) is a twist on the Pat Page classic “Easy Money”. And then there’s “Wondering” (T-311) and “Unbroken” (T-313), both with the potential to add depth to longer magic routines.

Watch the Videos

Three Videos Worth Watching

Finally, here are three videos that are worth watching. As the main topic of this update was poetry and magic, I thought I’d share three of my favourite poetry performances from three of my favourite poets!

Nick Toczek’s Poems and Magic!

Duration: 30 minutes

In this 30-minute show recorded during the peak of the pandemic in 2020, Nick Toczek showcases some of his signature magic tricks and poetry. This video has been watched multiple times in my household! Be sure to chant along with Nick!

Michael Rosen Performs His Poem Chocolate Cake

Duration: 8 minutes

Here’s a captivating performance of Michael Rosen’s well-known poem “Chocolate Cake”. My three daughters absolutely love this one.

Tomorrow Has Your Name on It Performed by Roger McGough

Duration: 3 minutes

One of my favorite poems is “Tomorrow Has Your Name on It” by Roger McGough. It was his poem “Icarus Allsorts” that sparked my interest in poetry when I was young.

That concludes another Ruseletter update. Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! 🎄🥳

Yours Magically,

Marty

Jon was far more than a performer or writer. He was a scholarly sage of magic, renowned for his extraordinary breadth of knowledge and meticulous attention to detail. I particularly appreciated his recommended reading, which expanded far beyond sleight of hand into literature, philosophy, technology, and the broader human experience. His intellectual generosity transformed how many magicians understood their craft, elevating magic from mere entertainment to a nuanced art form.

The magic community will feel Jon’s absence profoundly. His influence rippled through generations of performers, writers, and thinkers, inspiring us to look deeper, think broader, and push the boundaries of our art. His legacy is not just in the tricks he invented or the words he wrote, but in the intellectual and creative spirit he championed.

Racherbaumer is survived by two brothers, seven children, eleven grandchildren, three great-grandchildren, and his long-time companion of forty years, Jessica Hack. A celebration of his life is planned, honouring a man universally admired for his profound contributions to the magical arts.

In the coming weeks and months, I’ll also be featuring magic inspired by his remarkable body of work—a tribute to a man who understood that magic is ultimately about wonder, connection, and human potential.

Jon always concluded his “On the Slant” columns with “Onward…”—a simple word that spoke volumes. It was his quiet encouragement to continue exploring, learning, and advancing the art we all love. So, in the spirit of Jon Racherbaumer:

Onward…

New on MBOT

There are two new articles on Marty’s Bag of Tricks this month. I also wrote up a new handling for Herb Zarrow’s “Revolving Aces” called “High Card to Hell” (link below).

Performance Diary: Sandwiches & Sorcery 🥪🪄

Reading time: 4 minutes

Can close-up card magic compete with sandwiches?! I share my experience performing close-up card magic at a university networking lunch. The article concludes with valuable lessons learned.

Read Sandwiches & Sorcery

Playing Cards with the Devil

Reading time: 11 minutes

Throughout history, the image of a magician playing cards with the Devil has captivated audiences and inspired countless stories, from vintage magic posters to folk tales warning against the perils of gambling. The article explores this rich tradition through various supernatural tales from the British Isles.

Read Playing Cards with the Devil

High Card to Hell 🔥

Reading time: 16 minutes

“High Card to Hell” is a card trick that reimagines the classic Spectator Cuts to the Aces plot through the lens of European folklore about gambling with the Devil. It transforms a simple gambling demonstration into a dramatic performance piece perfect for Halloween or bizarre magic shows.

Learn High Card to Hell

More Spooky Sorcery! 👻

Here are some older blog articles with spooky Halloween vibes you may have missed.

True Voodoo: 5 Voodoo Myths Busted! 🧟

Reading time: 8 minutes

This blog post debunks five common myths about Voodoo. Do we have a responsibility to help correct damaging stereotypes about this misunderstood religion?

Read True Voodoo

Jazz, Murder & Magic! 🎷💀🎩

Reading time: 11 minutes

This blog post discusses a true crime card trick inspired by New Orleans in the 1900s. It features a mysterious killer, the Axeman of New Orleans, who vowed to spare victims in homes where jazz music was playing. This theme can be incorporated into various presentations of the card trick, including a darker variation that resembles a “supernatural ritual” to summon the Axeman’s ghost! 🪓👻

Read Jazz, Murder & Magic

And if you’d like to learn a new card trick with a theme suitable for Halloween, I’ve got you covered.

Twodoo Voodoo 💀

Reading time: 12 minutes

This blog post details my two-person adaptation of Guy Hollingworth’s brilliant “Voodoo Card” trick.

Learn Twodoo Voodoo

Man with the Axe 🪓

Reading time: 11 minutes

This trick combines the Ten-Twenty Force with a true crime presentation based on the Axeman cold case. A spectator pretends to be a police officer searching for notorious serial killer of New Orleans.

Learn Man with the Axe

The Axeman’s Ghost 👻

Reading time: 7 minutes

This is a darker variation of the “Man with the Axe,” with a supernatural presentation in which a spectator seemingly summons the spirit of the Axeman of New Orleans through a card ritual. This version uses only one force card and includes additional theatrical elements like a printed letter and a “ritual” spelling procedure. It concludes with the spectator finding the remaining three Kings to “break the curse of the Axeman’s ghost.”

Learn The Axeman's Ghost

A little reminder that paid Ruseletter subscribers get direct access to all of my trick tutorials.

Subscribe now

Regular Ruseletter Articles

This month, I also managed to write a new edition of Packet Trick Paradise. This one is available to free and paid Ruseletter subscribers alike.

Packet Trick Paradise: Paradox of Love ❤

Reading time: 21 minutes

Three Jokers transform into Aces of Hearts and a Ten of Hearts to illustrate that love grows when given away, inspired by writer Elbert Hubbard’s quote, “The love you give away is the only love you keep.” The detailed tutorial covers multiple handling methods, preparation requirements, and performance tips while incorporating Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love into the presentation.

Learn Paradox of Love

Riddle Me This!

What has 13 hearts but no lungs or stomach? A deck of playing cards, of course! I stumbled across this riddle online this month, and it occurred to me that you could use it to introduce a card trick. Ask someone the riddle, then pull a deck from your pocket and use the interaction as an excuse to perform and quick and impressive card trick. You could even magically produce a deck in some way. Better yet, you could incorporate a performable puzzle or two into your performance.

LSOH Out of Beta!

As a member of several online magic communities, I can confidently say that Doug Conn’s Learn Sleight of Hand (LSOH) stands out as my top pick (with David Williamson’s Sleight School coming a very close second). Having been a founding member, I’ve witnessed the site’s evolution from a closed beta to its current state, thanks to Doug’s unwavering dedication. I consider Doug a friend and mentor, and his values as a magic creator resonate deeply with my own. My endorsement of LSOH is not given lightly; I only do so when I believe in the true value a magic service like this provides to its members.

What sets LSOH apart is its unparalleled support. I’ve been a member of many similar sites, but none match the value that Doug’s community provides. The active Discord isn’t just a platform for interaction, it’s a vibrant community where you can talk to Doug and make friends with other LSOH members. The community offers a regular schedule of live webinars with Doug and other guests, providing a conn-sistent learning experience. There’s a wealth of conn-tent using a variety of props, not just cards and coins. Most importantly, Doug’s teaching skills are exceptional. I’ve met my fair share of magic luminaries, and even the great performers tend to be bad at teaching. Doug is one of the rare exceptions.

To celebrate “National Magic Week”, Doug Conn has opened up memberships again at his magic training and community site, Learn Sleight of Hand. Doug is offering a limited time 30% off on all LSOH memberships (Use coupon code MagicWeek at checkout). This offer is only valid until tomorrow (Friday, the 1st of November), so if you want to take advantage, you’ll need to act fast!

Join LSOH

Yesterday evening, we had a blast at one of our regular online meet-ups on Zoom. It was a “Mischief Night Jam” with a few fellow members of LSOH. I stayed up past the witching hour to participate in the fun, and it was definitely worth it! Recordings of these sessions are available to all members after the event, for those who can’t attend live.

Here’s an excellent example of the type of live events and conn-tent that you can expect as a member (there’s plenty of additional free material on Doug’s YouTube channel). This month, we were treated to an exceptional live lecture from Alexander the Magician. Alexander, dressed in an outfit reminiscent of the pulp action anti-hero The Shadow, performed some baffling and beautiful coin magic, pulling silver coins in a flash of fire from a lit candle!

I strongly recommend you subscribe to his YouTube channel.

Subscribe Now!

Alexander can also be found on Instagram if YouTube isn’t your thing.

Dai Vernon Meme 🤣

Dai Vernon famously boasted that he’d never worked a day in his life. He also said that one of his greatest joys was that he’d never needed to perform magic to make a living. He then went on to say, “But I wouldn’t ever want to perform magic for a living, it’s more fun perfecting it.”1

It was for this reason I found this meme so funny! So much so, I decided to create a couple of versions of it using better quality photographs of The Professor.

This first one uses the famous photo of him from his youth:

And here’s another using a photo of Dai when he was much older, but still looking sharp:

A special shout out to my friend Mathieu for making me aware of this very funny meme. Do you have any other Vernon memes? If you do, post them below.

Three Videos Worth Watching

Here are three more videos worth watching this Halloween.

Matchbox Teleportation Trick

Joel Dickinson is producing a lot of excellent free content at the moment. I particularly like this very old teleportation trick using a matchbox.

The impact of this routine could be dramatically heightened by introducing a Zippo lighter at its conclusion, presenting it as your “survival backup plan.” By weaving in themes of wilderness preparedness and survival skills throughout the performance, you can transform this simple effect into a compelling piece of magic. For maximum theatrical impact, consider pairing this with either Werry’s Matchbox Illusion or The Sympathetic Matchboxes (Pat Conway’s 1957 creation) to create a thematically cohesive set.

Jay Sankey’s Four Ace Trick

I’ve been performing a Spectator Cuts to the Aces trick like this one for a while. However, Jay has developed some clever subtlties that make the whole trick feel more random and impressive:

Learn Sankey's Four-Ace Subtlties

You can adjust Jay’s method to also find the four Kings to provide a cool kicker ending to this four-Ace routine. I’ll leave you to work out the details.

High Card Anime

Finally, here’s a new anime I recently discovered called High Card. I’ve just started watching it, but I like it a lot. It is especially enjoyable if you like playing cards and magic (for obvious reasons).

The show follows Finn, a young man who discovers a mysterious deck of fifty-two magical cards that grant unique powers. This discovery thrusts him into a fast-paced world of high-stakes espionage, crime, and intrigue. With its vibrant animation style and gripping action, the show keeps viewers on edge as Finn teams up with others in a race to secure the cards and the formidable abilities they bestow.

That’s it for another month. I hope you have a happy Halloween! 🎃

Yours Magically,

Marty

This busy period reminded me of a favourite quote of mine:

“The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second-best time is now.” — Anonymous 🌳

When faced with the vast quantity of magic to learn, practise, and master, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed or worry that you’ve started too late in life. However, this quote is a powerful reminder: if you want to embark on any magical journey, the best time to begin is right now!

So, whether you’re a seasoned magician or just starting out, let’s embrace this second “magical New Year” together. What tricks or skills are you planning to cultivate in the coming months?

Subscribe now

Exploring Erdnase Book Club 📗

I’m thrilled to announce the revival of the Exploring Erdnase Book Club. I initially launched this online club at the start of 2023, but it only lasted about two months due to my tendency to take on more than I can handle. My original plan was to complete the club within the year, but that was a little over-ambitious! This time, I’ve decided to take a more relaxed, open-ended approach to the project. The club will continue until we finish the book, so there’s no need to rush or worry about deadlines!

As the name suggests, this FREE club focuses on the seminal work The Expert at the Card Table, also known as The Expert or simply Erdnase, by the mysterious author S.W. Erdnase. The club is designed to encourage all magicians to explore this cornerstone text of card magic. Whether you’re a seasoned pro or a curious beginner, this is the perfect opportunity to dive into this challenging but enlightening work. Remember, we welcome all skill levels, so don’t hesitate to join.

As your host, I’ll be with you every step of the way, providing weekly emails every Sunday at 11 AM (GMT). These emails will offer context, explanations, and modern interpretations of Erdnase’s classic techniques. Plus, you’ll have free access to a specially prepared digital version of the book. This book club isn’t just about reading; it’s about engaging with fellow magic enthusiasts, sharing insights, and elevating our collective understanding of card magic.

Joining is simple: just like the Ruseletter, the weekly updates will be published to Substack. If you’re already a subscriber, watch out for the weekly Exploring Erdnase emails (the next one will be sent out on Sunday, October 20th). New subscribers can sign up now to ensure they don’t miss a single issue.

Subscribe to Exploring Erdnase

Don’t let this opportunity to unravel the mysteries of Erdnase and become part of a unique magical community pass you by. Card table artifice awaits—let’s explore Erdnase together!

If you want to catch up on the discussion so far, you can read all previous updates on the book club’s archive page. So far, we’ve worked through the first fifty or so pages. Next week, we’ll be taking a look at the section on the Bottom Deal.

New on MBOT

I published two new articles on Marty’s Bag of Tricks in September. Both are fairly lengthy but worth reading (I’m biased, of course). The first details a framework called the SPREAD Sequence. The other takes a critical look at a new method for Dai Vernon’s “Twisting the Aces” by Lloyd Barnes.

The SPREAD Sequence

Reading Time: 11 minutes

Are you tired of shaky performances and lacklustre audience reactions? The SPREAD Sequence offers a structured approach to elevating your magic game.

In this article, I share the secrets of the SPREAD Sequence—a powerful framework that offers a systematic way to improve your magical performances. From crafting compelling scripts to improving your sleight-of-hand skills, this simple framework challenges the notion that spontaneity and preparation are mutually exclusive. Discover how the SPREAD Sequence can turn your ordinary performances into extraordinary spectacles.

By reading this article, you’ll learn how the SPREAD Sequence provides a clear roadmap for improving your magic. Discover the essential role of mindful practice in honing your magical abilities. Understand the subtle yet crucial difference between evaluation and analysis. Explore actionable strategies to implement the SPREAD Sequence, including creating a Kanban board.

Whether you’re a seasoned pro or a budding magician, the SPREAD Sequence is your ticket to mesmerising magical performances.

Read the SPREAD Sequence

A Terrible Twist

Reading Time: 18 minutes

In this blog post, I revisit a topic that has always resonated with me: the timeless brilliance of Dai Vernon’s “Twisting the Aces”. I counter Lloyd Barnes’ controversial claim that this classic trick “sucks”, offering a passionate defence of Vernon’s original method.

Within the article, I explore the intricacies of naturalness in magic, including Vernon’s “be natural” philosophy. I challenge the current fixation on purely visual effects and strongly caution against the “enshittification” of magic (a term borrowed from Sci-Fi author Cory Doctorow). I also present my views on what defines visual magic and critically examine the delicate balance between innovation and preservation in our art.

Read a Terrible Twist

Vernon’s Ambitious Card Routine

As a devoted student of the Vernon School of Magic, I’ve always been fascinated by the nuances of Dai Vernon’s material. Recently, I’ve been revisiting his Ambitious Card Routine (ACR) from Stars of Magic, and it’s sparked some lively discussions among my circle of magic friends.

Vernon’s ACR presents an intriguing paradox. On the one hand, it’s a highly interactive routine that engages the audience. On the other, it seems to violate some of Vernon’s own cardinal rules of magic. For example, the routine includes several “gotcha” or sucker moments, which make the plot difficult to follow. This seems to break Vernon’s famous mantra, “Confusion isn’t magic!” At one point, the card also sinks to the bottom of the deck, which muddies the trick’s theme, making the card more mischievous than ambitious. Here’s a decent technical performance of the routine if you’re not already familiar with it:

These apparent contradictions have led me to reconsider the routine’s merit. I usually perform for university students and academics. Given their analytical mindsets, could Vernon’s intellectually challenging ACR actually be a perfect fit? It’s a game of wits that might resonate well with their cognitive proclivities. Or is it a poorly constructed piece of card magic that should be avoided?

Inspired by this realisation, I plan to dust off my copy of Stars of Magic and reintroduce Vernon’s ACR into my repertoire. It’s been years since I’ve looked at it, but I’m excited to see how it lands with the type of people I perform for at work.

In contrast, I often turn to David Ben’s “reconstruction” of a Vernon piece—a minimalist three-phase ACR based on the legendary “Trick That Fooled Houdini”. This streamlined version has become my go-to ACR and even inspired my own creation, “Underambitious”, which I published in my regular Ruseletter column Vernonesque.

As I explore these different approaches to the Ambitious Card plot, I’m reminded of the richness and complexity of Vernon’s legacy. Even when he seems to break his own rules, there’s often a method to the madness—a lesson that continues to shape my magical journey. Either that or, unlike “Twisting the Aces”, this particular routine of his really does suck!

What are your thoughts on Vernon’s ACR? I would love to hear your opinions, experiences, or insights about this routine. Please reply to this email or leave them in the comments section on Substack.

Lost in the Shuffle

I finally got around to watching Lost in the Shuffle (I bought it via YouTube, which seems to be the easiest way to watch it in the UK). This documentary, by Animal Mother Films and directed by Jon Ornoy, follows world champion magician Shawn Farquhar as he investigates the mysterious origins of playing cards, specifically focusing on the “Suicide King” (King of Hearts). The film combines magic history and modern sleight-of-hand artistry with an ancient murder mystery, suggesting that a royal assassination might be concealed in the design of modern-day playing cards.

The documentary includes appearances by renowned English conjurer Michael Vincent, the skilled American card mechanic Richard Turner, the talented French magician Alexandra Duvivier, and the Spanish maestro of magic Juan Tamariz

I plan to write a comprehensive review of the film for Marty’s Bag of Tricks. Until then, I’ll just say that I have some severe reservations about Shawn’s central theory in the documentary. Even so, I found it enjoyable to watch. It offers a captivating mixture of history, card magic, and mystery. Unlike a lot of magic-related video content, this is also something that you can sit down and watch with your family or non-magic friends.

Learn More

Three Videos Worth Watching

Here are three more videos I watched this month that you should watch, too!

Four-Card Colour Change Tutorial by Lloyd Barnes

Although I was very critical of Lloyd’s version of “Twisting the Aces” on my blog, I enjoy and appreciate most of the content he posts to his YouTube channel. Here’s an excellent four-card colour change that he shared recently.

Hot Card Trick Tutorial by Doug Conn 🔥

Here’s another excellent tutorial from my friend and mentor, Doug Conn. Doug was even kind enough to mention my Magic Hot List on Al Leech’s “The Hot Card Trick” in the video. If you don’t already know how to perform the Chicago Opener or Red Hot Mama trick, this video is a great way to learn it.

Obliter-Ace-tion by Jack Carpenter

And finally, here’s a beautiful four-Ace effect by Jack Carpenter. “Obliter-Ace-tion” can be found in the out-of-print book Labyrinth: A Journal of Close-Up Magic (page 22). The routine’s name was “Obliter-Ace-Ion” (without the t) when it was initially published in Labyrinth magazine.

That’s all for another month. I’ll try my best to publish the October update on time!

Yours Magically,

Marty

P.S. Look out for some fun blog posts in October. I’ll be sharing some devilishly delightful card tricks perfect for Halloween. 👿

This month, I’ve been trying to make progress on my book Developing Daley. The main takeaway is that I’ve decided to publish the project as a series of five books! Doing this will make it economically viable to print physical copies of each volume for those who prefer ink on paper (more discussion on this in a moment). I will be subtitling the series “An Exhaustive Exploration of Dr. Daley’s Last Trick”—this seemed appropriate for a series of books featuring fifty-two variations of the same darn card trick!

I also share my initial thoughts on a new downloadable magic tutorial called “Retwisting the Aces” by Spanish magician Josep Vidal. Josep takes nearly an hour to teach his personal handling of Dai Vernon’s “Twisting the Aces”. I’ll probably develop this into a full review and post it to my blog once I’ve watched the whole video. Currently, there are only three reviews on Marty’s Bag of Tricks because I only like to review a product if I can include some helpful insights or tips in the write-up:

Read All Reviews on Marty’s Bag of Tricks 👈

Hopefully, I’ll find the motivation to write more reviews in the final third of the year.

Finally, I share my thoughts on finger snapping and using Top Trumps in the performance of magic. Top Trumps is a popular card game first published in 1978 (I got my first packs in the late 1980s). Each card contains a list of numerical data related to the subject of the card. The game’s aim is to compare these values in an attempt to “trump” your opponent and win their card. Various packs are available, making them a handy alternative to traditional playing cards.

Right, let’s get going!

The Perils and Pitfalls of Self-Publication

I’m pleased to report that I’ve made good progress on my book Developing Daley. In fact, I decided to split the project into five separate books! I’m doing this so that I can produce physical copies of each volume. Creating one gigantic tome makes sense if its only ever going to be released digitally as an ebook. However, a few subscribers asked if I could produce hard copies. So, although self-publishing a magic book is fraught with difficulties, I’ve decided to give it my best shot!

If you’re a paid subscriber, you can find a link to the working draft of Developing Daley Volume 1 on the perks page. Feel free to comment on the document if something is unclear. I’m currently working on Chapter 3: Ten Basic Handlings.

The only experience I have of self-publishing is the creation of a couple of photo books using a company called Blurb more than ten years ago. My experience was very positive. The result was a high-quality photo book with excellent colour reproduction in both cases. However, I only needed a handful of copies for family members, so the overall cost of each book wasn’t an important factor. With delivery, a 30-page photo book cost me £27.69 (about $36). Today, the same book would cost me £36.39 (about $48), approximately 31% more. This high cost is why some people refer to these services as “vanity publishers”, which I think is slightly unfair. Those books delighted the people I gave them to, mso were well worth what I paid for them.

However, if I want to make even a small profit, I need to use a service that will reduce the cost per book to a more reasonable amount. It turns out that even when you change the format and adjust the quality of the paper and printing, this is very difficult, if not impossible, with a service like Blurb.

How Big Will Each Book Be?

I’m working on the assumption that each book will be between 250 and 300 pages long. With a book this size, I can fit approximately twelve tricks in each volume, along with two or three theoretical essays. Looking at the tutorials on my blog, I tend to write very detailed instructions. Typically, I’ll write between two and five thousand words for a tutorial. For example, my last three tutorials related to this project had the following word counts:

• Quick Change Queens = 2760 words

• Laughing Boy and Lumberjack = 4028 words

• The Jaybird Jump = 5414 words

That’s an average of about four thousand words per trick. Depending on the topic, my essays tend to be between two and five thousand words. Of course, I’ll edit the text to make it more suitable for print. However, I don’t want to lose the detail. The additional ideas, tips and footnotes are often my favourite parts of a magic book. It would be a shame to omit these things simply to make the books affordable in print form.

The traditional way to calculate the number of pages in your finished book is to assume each page will contain approximately 250 words. However, this rule of thumb was based on manuscripts written on typewriters using monospaced fonts. Looking at my draft in Google Docs, which uses a modern font designed for print, a full page of text is closer to 340 words. With this in mind, I’ve still chosen to stick with the traditional estimation of 250 words per page because I plan to include several hand-drawn illustrations in the book. Naturally, this will significantly reduce the average number of words per page.

Therefore, including twelve tricks (12 × 4,000 words) and three essays (3 × 5,000) gives me 63,000 words in total. This equates to 252 pages. I’m also including ten basic handlings of Dr. Daley’s Last Trick in the first book. This chapter is likely to be at least 10,000 words long. So, the first book will have roughly 292 pages. As a result, I’ve based my pricing calculations on an upper limit of 300 pages per volume. Doing some research into bookmaking, I found this to be a good size for a book because it gives you a spine thick enough to make the book stable on a bookshelf and wide enough to accommodate the book’s title.

Premium or Economy Finish?

Many of the best magic books produced today have a premium finish to justify a higher price point. This is needed because the market for an instructional magic book is tiny compared to a cookbook by a famous chef or a work of fiction featured on the New York Times best-seller list.

It is difficult to guess the average print run for a popular magic book. As this is commercially sensitive information, it isn’t readily available. Vanishing Inc. Magic, currently the world’s largest publisher of magic books, often produces two or three hundred “deluxe” versions of a book aimed at collectors (more luxurious than their usual premium offering). Therefore, I’m guessing the print run for the regular edition must be at least 700, or maybe even several thousand, to achieve the required price point.

Publishers like Vanishing Inc. Magic also use offset printing when producing a large quantity of books. This method involves transferring an inked image from a metal plate to a rubber blanket and then to the printing surface itself. Four custom plates are made for the cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (CMYK) inks used in printing. The printing press is usually quite large, and once it is run, printing extra books is impossible. For the same reason, you cannot print a single proof book before the full press run, unlike when you use digital printing techniques.

Blurb has written a helpful guide to offset printing if you want to learn more. Offset printing also enables the inclusion of premium features, such as embossing, custom end sheets, foil stamping, headbands/footbands, and ribbons (see the page on custom book printing options on the Blurb website).

For trade books—a more suitable format for text-heavy projects—Blurb requires a minimum order of 750+ books to use offset printing. This is because a higher volume is needed to keep things cost-effective compared to digital printing. For this reason alone, it is highly unlikely that I’ll be able to use offset printing for Developing Daley (unless I run a very successful Kickstarter campaign to raise the upfront capital for a deluxe edition). Therefore, I will first explore print-on-demand (POD) options from companies like Blurb, Lulu, Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), IngramSpark, and Bookvault. This means that the finish will not be premium, e.g., illustrations will be black and white, the paper stock will be thinner, and the book will likely be a paperback (although I will try to make it a hardcover if possible).

How Much Will Each Book Cost?

Magic books of a similar length sold by Vanishing Inc. Magic retail for around $50 (just under £40). To me, this seems too high a price for a four-volume set. If you want to buy all four books, it will set you back a whopping two hundred bucks plus shipping (approximately £160)! Postal charges could cost anything from $10 to $20 per book for people in the US. So, the total cost of owning the four volumes could stretch to as much as $280 (well over £200). This seems ridiculous for this type of project from a no-name magician (even if I’m confident that the material has a lot of value).

I’ve used the pricing calculator on the Blurb website to estimate an accurate cost of production for a single POD book. I’ve decided on an 8 by 10-inch (20 by 25cm) trade hardback with a casewrap (the cover art is printed onto paper wrapped and glued onto the book’s cardboard case). Here are the different costs, depending on the printing and paper used:

• Standard Black and White Printing = $33.79 or £22.27

• Economy Colour Printing = $35.31 or £24.79

• Standard Colour Printing = $69.91 or £49.11

Standard black-and-white printing uses uncoated paper that’s 75 GSM. GSM stands for Grams per Square Meter; the higher the value, the heavier the paper. Note that this is not a measure of thickness but weight. However, heavier paper does, on the whole, tend to be thicker. Economy colour printing uses the same uncoated paper, but the stock is a little heavier at 105 GSM. Finally, standard colour printing also uses this thicker paper. As you can see from the costs above, standard colour printing is prohibitively expensive for a project like Developing Daley.

Printing the book using Blurb will cost me about $35. I might as well print in colour as the difference between colour and black-and-white printing is negligible. Therefore, I’d need to price each volume at $50 to make a modest profit. Adding the delivery cost may push the total to $55 or even $60!

So what’s the solution? Most likely, using a cheaper POD service, such as Amazon KDP. Even though I hate the stranglehold Amazon has over writers and small publishing houses, KDP does look like a good service offered at a reasonable price. Using their royalty calculator, a list price of $35 (£25) looks possible. This would result in a printing cost of $10.75 (£7.75) per book, giving me an estimated royalty of $10.25 (£7.25) per book sold. This would result in a profit of almost 30%. Even if I end up paying the higher income tax rate of 40% on this, the profit margin would still be a reasonably healthy 17%.

Another option is IngramSpark. A book of equivalent quality would cost me £13.44 to ship to a customer in the UK and $16.54 to someone in the US (according to their pricing calculator). So, it looks like IngramSpark is slightly more expensive than Amazon KDP. The company also have a reputation for poor customer service. However, IngramSpark makes it easier for physical bookshops to stock your book because this is the company most independant bookshops use as a wholesaler (although using IngramSpark doesn’t guarantee it). I found a helpful PDF guide to independant publishing on their website, which you can download below.

The IngramSpark Guide To Independent Publishing by Brendan Clark

6.66MB ∙ PDF file

Download

A detailed guide on how to publish your own book using the services provided by IngramSpark.

Download

I also plan to offer each volume as an ebook. I can do this via Amazon, which will pay a 35% royalty for each sale if the book is priced over $9.99. If I set a price of $25 (about 30% cheaper than the printed book), I can expect a royalty payment of $12.25 per book sold.

However, I’m contemplating using a site like Gumroad to sell digital copies of the books. Gumroad has a flat-rate fee of 10%, and I’ve used them in the past. The only other charge is the credit card processing fee from Stripe:

• UK fees are 1.5% + 20p = 50p

• EU fees are 2.5% + 20p = 70p

• US fees are 2.9% + 30¢ = $1.25

Assuming the ebook’s price is $25 (£20), this would result in a profit margin of 85%—much more than Amazon’s measly 35% offering. For the sake of my readers, I’ll probably put it on both platforms, even though this will reduce the ebook’s profitability.

Taking all of these estimates into consideration, I’m settling on the following price structure:

• $35 for each physical book. $175 for all four volumes.

• $25 for each ebook. $125 for all four volumes.

• $42 for both. A special code in the book will allow people to download the ebook from Gumroad for the discounted price of $7. Therefore, you’ll be able to own all five physical and digital books for $210.

This structure is based on what Vanishing Inc. Magic recently started offering. The ebook is 25% cheaper than the physical book, and the bundle option is 30% cheaper than buying both separately. This pricing structure also gives me a little headroom to run occasional promotions (I’ll provide the most generous offer to Ruseletter subscribers).

I think that these prices seem fair and reasonable. What do you think?

How Many Copies Do I Hope to Sell?

I’m not entirely sure how many books I might sell. I’d be more than happy if I managed to sell one hundred physical copies of the book. In fact, I’d be over the moon! 🌕 This would earn me £2,644.73, which, after income tax, would be approximately £1986.84 (about $2,621). Taking the cost of production into account, this would yield a per-book profit of £12.25, which is about $16. Honestly, my primary motivation for writing the book is not financial gain. I want to document these ideas and, to a certain extent, put them to bed so I can move on to other things. With this aim in mind, the number of books I manage to sell is irrelevant. But it would be nice to sell a few copies!

Interestingly, due to how income tax allowance works in the UK, if I sold more, for example, five hundred books, I’d make less profit per book ($11 instead of $16). However, the total amount earned would be much greater at £13,227.18 (£8336.31 after tax). This is approximately $11,000 after tax. Yes, this scenario is extremely unlikely, but it does highlight the challenges of writing, printing and selling a low-volume niche non-fiction book. There are much easier ways to make money!

Releasing an ebook version of each book provides an opportunity to make a little more profit per volume. Again, if I sold one hundred copies, I’d earn £1,888.97 (£1533.38 after tax). This would yield a £15.33 profit per book (about $20). So, $5 of the book price would be lost to Gumroad, Stripe and the UK taxman. If, by some miracle, I sold 500 copies, I’d make £9,444.85 (£6066.91 after tax). This equates to a profit of £12 per book ($9).

I’m being transparent about these financial projections to show how difficult it is to self-publish a physical magic book and turn a profit. Even though this will be a challenging project, I’m confident I can deliver a good quality physical book for a fair price.

I’ll share more information about my progress on my blog and in future Ruseletter updates.

Developing Daley Planning Board

To stay on track, I’ve created a Trello planning board to help me complete the Developing Daley project in a timely fashion. The links below will automatically filter the board to show you the cards related to each volume:

• Volume 1 Planning

• Volume 2 Planning

• Volume 3 Planning

• Volume 4 Planning

• Volume 5 Planning

I’m currently writing Chapter 3 of Volume 1, which will feature ten basic handings of the red and black Ace transposition.

Retwisting the Aces

Dai Vernon’s “Twisting the Aces” is one of my go-to packet tricks when performing for someone for the first time. For this reason, I was very excited to discover “Retwisting the Aces” by Spanish magician Josep Vidal.

In the almost hour-long video, he teaches his personal touches on this classic card magic effect. Now, if you’re looking for a new, innovative method, you’ll be disappointed. What Josep teaches is, essentially, Vernon’s method from More Inner Secrets of Card Magic (1960). However, he shares something arguably more valuable: psychological touches to make each magical moment in the routine more impactful.

In addition to this, he also demonstrates how you can add a coin production to the end of the trick. A coin materialises from underneath the Ace of Diamonds in a very eerie manner. While I like this idea, the additional phase feels incomplete. Producing three or four coins from the Ace of Diamonds would be better; this would leave you in a position to perform a Matrix routine with the coins and four Aces.

I enjoy projects like this that demonstrate how to personalise a magic trick, especially one as well-known as “Twisting the Aces”. Even if you don’t use Josep’s ideas, you can still benefit from his thought processes and apply them to other tricks in your repertoire.

The video is well-shot and edited and features a full studio performance of the effect. My only criticism is that it was too long. The teaching could have been far more succinct; however, this might be partly due to Josep’s not being completely fluent in English. Overall, I highly recommend this instant download, which is available from Penguin Magic.

Oh Snap! 🫰

I recently read an insightful article by Rory Adams about why magicians snap their fingers. The article explains that when a magician snaps his fingers, he’s “timestamping” the moment the magic happens:

If you take a coin, pretend to pass it from one hand to the other, and then open your hand, and the coin is gone. A child (and some adults) will immediately assume the coin is still in your first hand.

This is why timestamping an illusion is so essential. By passing the coin to the second hand and then snapping your fingers, you timestamp the moment of magic.

You’re subconsciously telling the audience the coin is there up until the moment you snap your fingers.

(You can read the first few paragraphs for free at One Ahead. However, you’ll need a paid subscription to read the full article: Why Magicians Snap Fingers.)

I like this terminology because it compliments the idea that magicians create pictures, images or snapshots—my preferred term—for our audiences to remember. Both analogies come from the idea that a person’s perceptive abilities function like a digital camera. 📷

For Vernon’s “Triumph” to be a successful card trick, you must ensure that your spectator has taken a “mental snapshot” of the cards in a face-up, face-down mess. You then snap your fingers to indicate—or timestamp—the exact moment the cards sort themselves out. You slowly ribbon spread the cards to create a second snapshot of all the cards face down. Finally, you keep spreading to reveal that the chosen playing card is the only face-up card in the face-down deck. This is the final snapshot you want to create in your spectator’s mind. I’ve noticed that many magicians do not create the third snapshot when performing “Triumph”. They spread the cards too quickly, revealing the presence of the face-up selection before the audience has been given time to appreciate the righting of the deck.

Constructing your routines to induce the correct snapshots and timestamps is an excellent way to improve the lasting impact of your magic.

Thrown for a Fruit Loop!

One of my favourite performances by David Blaine is the Ambitious Card routine he performs for a guy named Fruit Loops during his first TV special (maybe the guy’s real name is Sam Toucan)!

During the performance, David invites Fruit Loops to snap his fingers over the deck to make the magic happen, effectively bestowing magical powers upon his participant (albeit temporarily). This might not seem like a big deal, but before Blaine, such involvement wasn’t common. Typically, it was the all-powerful magician who did the snapping.

This seemingly simple act carries profound implications. By entrusting the participant with the magical gesture, Blaine breaks from tradition and creates a uniquely interactive experience. This moment of whimsy taps into the deep-seated human desire for play—something we’re often forced to leave behind as we grow up and become adults.

The social contract implicit in a magic trick’s performance gives people a valid excuse to engage in playful behaviour without fear of criticism or judgment. It provides a sanctioned space for grown-ups to rediscover their inner child and revel in a state of pure wonder and joy.

By generously sharing the spotlight with Fruit Loops, Blaine not only enhances the impact of his Ambitious Card routine but also reminds us of the immense value in embracing playfulness at any age. It’s a powerful demonstration that letting go of adult inhibitions, even briefly, can be both liberating and delightful, fostering human connection and rekindling our sense of imagination. This is one of the things that makes magic such an unusual and unique performance art.

Even so, relinquishing control to a participant in this way is a double-edged sword. At one point, Fruit Loops is so eager to be involved in the magic that he turns the top card over before Blaine instructs him to snap his fingers. To cover this mistake, Blaine suggests that another secret move, gently tossing the deck upward, is responsible for the card rising to the top.

Usually, I don’t like it when a magician uses multiple magical gestures. It can confuse the audience because it’s unclear which action caused the magic. Was it the mystical pass over the deck or the finger snapping? In this case, however, it was a corrective measure on Blaine’s part. He changed tactics to cover the inconsistency introduced by his participant.

It’s evident that Fruit Loops is not convinced that the snap does the magic. Nonetheless, the snap still focuses everyone’s attention on the moment the magic apparently happens. It also creates distance between the method and the effect. So, even if the audience understands that silly magic words and odd magical actions do nothing, they still play an important role in focusing attention and clarifying the magical effect.

Top Trumps and Magic

In the same article on finger snapping on One Ahead, Rory shares an inventive magic trick that, better than any other, justifies using the finger snap as a magical gesture. In the ingenious card trick, he uses a deck of Marvel Avengers Endgame Top Trumps to simulate the moment Thanos erases 50% of life in the universe from existence. It’s a clever way to incorporate pop culture into your magic, making it more relatable and exciting for audiences. Just like the Mad Titan himself, you demonstrate that your magic is inevitable!

Out of respect for Rory, I won’t discuss his method for the trick (it’s very good). As a lifelong comic book geek, this magic trick is right up my street, and I’ll definitely be performing it as soon as I can get my hands on a deck of the cards in question.

The cards Rory recommends for the trick were printed in 2020, so they will get increasingly difficult to source. (At the time of writing this article, they’re still widely available, at least in the UK.) However, Winning Moves, the company that has printed Top Trumps since 1992, continues to produce Marvel-themed decks that could work as alternatives if you can’t find this specific product.

Rory’s use of Top Trumps reminded me of a remarkable discovery I made years ago concerning a deck of Ben 10-themed Top Trumps. The cards glowed in the dark. Amazingly, because of the unique ink on their faces, the cards acted as an impromptu Invisible Deck! It was possible to put the cards into rough and smooth pairs straight out of the box without treating them in any way.

To use the cards in a trick, I wrote a list of the thirty alien characters featured in the deck onto a large piece of paper. I asked someone to pick one of the names from the list.

Using the written list as an open crib, I separated the correct pair of cards to show that the named card was the only one face up in the face-down deck. There were 15 pairs in total. Depending on which character was chosen, I’d sometimes need to secretly flip over the deck under the cover of the paper with the list of characters written on it.

I still have a couple of these packs somewhere. These were printed in 2008, and if you want to perform this trick as described, you’ll need the specific cards named “Top Trump Specials Ben 10”. If you’re lucky, you might be able to find a pack for sale on eBay. The other Ben 10 decks don’t work because they don’t have the special glow-in-the-dark coating.

Top Trumps are a seriously underused prop by magicians. Their variety and widespread availability make them a versatile and accessible prop for magicians. My accidental discovery highlights how creative thinking and keen observation can lead to unique magical effects. It’s a reminder that magic can be found in unexpected places and that props don’t always have to be traditional playing cards.

This accidental finding is a fantastic example of how you can find magic potential in everyday items.

(In America, you can buy Top Trumps from the Top Trumps store or their official Amazon shop. In the UK, you can purchase the cards from many high street shops and the Winning Moves website.)

Three Videos Worth Watching

And finally, here are three videos that I watched this month that I think you might enjoy, too.

Chris Pratt’s Epic Card Trick Fail

I’ve viewed this video many times. I never get tired of watching Jennifer Lawerence’s reaction to Chris Pratt’s epic card trick fail live on BBC TV. (Watch the video before reading my commentary below it).

This performance exemplifies that strong acting skills can elevate even the simplest of magic tricks. The primary move used in the trick is the Glide—a basic sleight of hand manoeuvre. However, Chris demonstrates a good level of competence in executing the move. He understands how to hold and display the cards to make the Glide look natural. However, what truly stands out is his ability to craft a compelling narrative through his acting.

Jennifer’s visible discomfort and embarrassment throughout the performance serve as a testament to his skill in portraying an overconfident, possibly misguided individual. This tension is palpable and adds an extra layer of suspense to the routine, keeping the audience engaged. From Jennifer’s perspective, Chris is not a seasoned magician but an actor about to make a fool of himself on live television. This misdirection is crucial to the success of the “magician in trouble” plotline. (This is a difficult feat for a performer who is already known as a magician to pull off. Chris has the advantage of being an actor, not a magician, so expectations are already low.)

By playing up the character of an overly confident yet bumbling amateur magician, Chris cleverly subverts the audience’s expectations. In the end, the successful execution of the trick feels more surprising and satisfying because the audience—and Jennifer—have been led to believe that failure is inevitable. This blend of narrative tension, character work, and technical skill is what makes this performance from Chris so compelling.

Maybe the next magic book you read shouldn’t be a magic book at all, but An Actor Prepares by Constantin Stanislavski! 😉

I’d love to know where Chris learnt the trick he calls “Burn ’em”. I’m guessing he probably learned it from a friend or family member as a kid.

The World’s Largest Interactive Card Trick

David Blaine performed what might be the world’s largest interactive magic trick at D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event. D23 is the official Disney Fan Club (the D stands for Disney, and the 23 for 1923, the year the company was founded).

I love the effort he put into this performance. David commissioned a custom-designed deck for this one trick! I like the way he frames the Cut Deeper Force.

I also noticed that David performed his Ambitious Card at the same event (see video from IGN). This is the same one he performed for Fruit Loops in his first TV special in the late 1990s.

Heart of Fire by Patricio Teran ♥🔥

Finally, I really like the look of this new trick called Heart of Fire by Patricio Teran and Big Blind Media. I haven’t bought it yet. I just hope it isn’t too impractical to perform in the real world.

That’s all for this month.

Yours Magically,

Marty