Amazing magic tricks
When I was a kid, the most simple illusions could sometimes seem like amazing magic tricks. I would see a card trick where a magician did some sort of elaborate divination to discover which card you had picked, not realizing that he already knew it. I would completely fall for the illusion, hook line and sinker.
My magic beginnings
When I was in my late teens, I started to learn some magic tricks online. It wasn’t that I wanted to be a magician or anything, but I did think that knowing a few tricks would help me to understand the magic of illusions that fascinated me so much. In my late teens, I had a great cigarette trick that entertained my friends. I could easily make a cigarette disappear, then reappear behind someone’s ear. It was an easy trick to do. All it was was a bit of misdirection and sleight-of-hand – the fundamental illusions that all magicians use. Nonetheless, my friends thought it was an amazing magic trick.
Party tricks
I learned some similar amazing magic tricks with coins which I do to show off the parties from time to time, but I never got much further than that. I had seen so many stage magicians in my life that I felt like it would take a lot of talent to really stick out – talent that I wasn’t sure I had. For me, the magic was gone.
Taking it to the next level
Then I saw something that changed my perception. I was exposed to a magician doing so-called mental magic. He was guessing the numbers people were thinking of, convincing people that he was a psychic, and performing all other sorts of mental illusions. Some of them were quite uncanny. I really couldn’t tell how he knew what was in people’s heads unless he had plants in the audience. When I saw what he was doing, I knew that I had to learn the new skills myself.
Filed under: Family, General, TV
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