Conjuring is certainly a complex and deep discipline, however, it is structurally simple, but by no means easy to do well: it takes a lifetime of dedication, study and practice to understand its intricacies.
The present essay offers a few thoughts on some of the essential elements of magic as a performing art, with the hope that the student may gain yet another view of this wonderful métier. And you will be treated to Fred Kaps’s personal version of the “Folded Card in Box”, which has meanwhile become a classic of card magic.
In your essay “The Art of Simplication” you mention that “Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the famous German literary genius, is said to written a long letter to a friend, at the end of which he remarked, “Dear friend, please forgive me for having written such a long letter, but I didn’t have time to write a shorter one.””
I believe that this quotation is actually from the French mathematician Blaise Pascal, in Letter 16: « Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte. », which translates as “I have made this letter longer because I have not had time to make it shorter.” (Seizième lettre aux révérends pères jésuites du 4 décembre 1656 – in “Les provinciales”)