The Magic Memories (193)

Hello everyone!

Today’s topics are: Tools of  Magic; A Problem With Daley; Daley’s Do As I Do Variation

These are The Magic Memories 193, gone online Sunday, September 8, 2024, at 0:07h sharp.

All The Magic Memories from 2021, 2022, and 2023, including the Magic Advent Calendar from 2020, can be found HERE.

Tools of  Magic

May I remind you of a little anecdote I wrote at the beginning of Card College Volume 1 in regard to the importance of (sleight-of-hand) technique in magic?

Instruments and Tools

A young man resolved to become a woodsman. He bought an ax and set to work. At camp that evening, he proudly told his fellow woodsmen that he had felled nine trees. Inspired by his success, he got up an hour earlier the next morning to increase his productivity. He was dead tired that evening, but had only felled eight trees. Now he was really determined. The next day he worked from dawn to dusk without taking a break. Even so, he only managed to fell six trees. Distressed, he sought the council of an experienced woodsman. The woodsman took the young man’s ax and ran his thumb several times along the edge of the blade, saying calmly, “Young man, every now and then you should sharpen your ax!”

And Thomas Carlyle (not an acquaintance of Francis Carlyle) opined:

Man is a tool-using animal. Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.

The other day I received an advertising via email featuring the photo below:

In the accompanying text it said the box is made up of 1,200 pieces.

I immediately went to my magic library, section “card magic”/”gambling-cheating”, quickly made a rough calculation of the card sleights (mind you: just the card sleights) detailed in the Hugard and Braues, the Gansons, the Marlos, the Fortes, the Fulves, the Lorayne’s, and with a big sigh of relief said to myself: “Ours is bigger than yours!”

Indeed, in magic we do have far more than 1,200 sleights – in card magic alone, not taking into account the techniques with other instruments (coins, ropes, silks, cups & balls, etc.).

In my house I only have a few dozen (mechanical) tools that solve 90% of all problems that can be solved with a tool; for other problems I call a workman (curious: in all the years we have called workmen – electricians, plumbers, carpenters, etc. – it has always been a man…).

In magic it is very much the same thing: If you only do a few card tricks, a Control, a Force, a False Shuffle & False Cut, and a few other sleights will be more than sufficient to solve the technical problems these tricks pose. And you can be very successful with them.

However, if card magic becomes your specialty – as a professional or as  an inspired amateur – then you need specific tools to solve  specific problems.

The Buckle False Count will not solve the problem an Elmsley Count, a Jordan Count, a Hamman Count, a Siva Count, etc. can solve.

Same thing with a Double Lift/Double Turnover, a Control, a False Shuffle, a Packet Switch, and so on, through all 46 operating principles (see Sharing Secrets, p. 142).

For this reason everyone who wants to seriously practice magic, first needs to know and master the basic tools for each instruments, and then carefully choose from the thousands of other tools available those that will solve the technical problems of the best tricks in the most elegant way.

To be thought about.

Although Daley does not specify this, it seems obvious that these cards go into your pocket or other easily accessible place, from where the correct one can be produced when the spectator names it.

For those who are wondering what the “V1-p68” means: Daley wrote his notes into four notebooks (that are transcribed in the Daley’s Notebooks – there might be more).

When organizing the entries, the authors took the notes apart and ordered them according to authors (Vernon, Daley, Horowitz, Baker, etc.).

While this is a good idea in some respect, it is not so for the understanding of a note: Some notes can only be understood (if at all…) if they are read in chronological order. However, taking them apart makes this almost impossible.

Enter Gordon Bruce: When I visited him in Glasgow years ago (will relate in a future The Magic Memories), he showed me how he had painstakingly reconstructed every note to put it back into its original chronological order… What a man!

Back to our note: Try it, as it is an excellent idea. I used this for a while, and think it is an obvious idea not to take any four cards, but cards you know are being called more often than others.

This will vary from culture to culture, and country to country, as the “favorite” cards are connected with the best cards in the card games played in each country. As an example the Seven of Diamonds is an important card in Italian “Scopa del quindici”, and the Jacks are the highest cards in Swiss “Jass”, etc.

BTW: You could take more than four cards, but then the deck gets possibly a bit too thin…

This again makes you think of using duplicates in the first place, rather than cards from the deck, in which case you are working with an “Index”, a powerful concept – not only in card magic…

And if you are using an Index, well, then you can comfortably augment the number of cards (complete deck, half a deck, or only one suit). Obviously, the Index card be split up in two or more Indexes…

But what do you do if you do not have any pockets? Why not use the deck as an Index then? Which brings us back to a stacked deck, best of which a memorized deck, because every memorized deck is an Index in itself.

And this, my friends, we have to leave for another day …

Again, this is an idea that will challenge your creativity, if you accept to tackle the question… And this beautifully shows how the universe of card magic is a huge fractal – long live chaos 🙂

Eviva España!

Next week this time I will be on my way to my yearly visit to Juan Tamariz’s home in the south of Spain, and right after that I will attend the Magialdia convention in Vitoria. If you are at the convention, too, make sure to come by and say “hola” and let me know what you would like to read in upcoming The Magic Memories 🙂

Wish you all a successful and happy week,