Magic Agora →

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Magic Agora’s essential objective is the education of magicians as artists and professionals in the Art of Magic; it carries out a work of investigation and development of the training technology most appropriate for magicians, it puts them together in a common methodology and, as a result, periodically plans training actions destined to offer a good-quality education to the magicians.

Basically an online Hogwarts, this looks really cool, get an overview of how it all works. It looks like they are still preparing the lessons, but this is definitely one to keep an eye on.

The Magic Pub →

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The Magic Pub is a new magic forum, where performers help performers. Seems a bit less flooded than The Green Place, and more focused on performance of magic, might be a nice quiet alternative to the existing forums.

Six Hour Memorized Deck →

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If you are into Memdeck work as I am, you might be interested to know you can get the out-of-print Martin Joyal book as an ebook from Hermetic Press for $20. If you haven’t learnt a stack you might consider this, as you can learn the rules, and it should take you, as the name suggests, around 6 hours. Although you will have non of the advantages of using a stack with in-built features, so it might be worth reading round first. However the book also contains some great stack-independent routines such as a three deck ACAAN called Red, White & Blue. You can read more about the book on The Magic Cafe.

A Blog in English →

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Woody Aragon has just published his new book, A Book in English, this is the accompanying blog, to showcase some videos and anecdotes. I have the book and haven’t yet made it past the tools/sleights section, that isn’t the books fault, it’s just that I can’t stop playing with some of the original sleights in this first part. The Separagon move is superb, I couldn’t stop smiling as I was working through it. I will be making my way through the tricks and will post a full book review shortly, but in short, buy it!

Five Ways to Improve Your Magic

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It’s very common to have customers ask how they can make there magic better. While there is no carved in stone formula, there are some practical steps you can take to improve your magic.

Five ways to improve your magic from Paul Richards of Elmwood Magic, courtesy of our friends over at The Magic Session. While there check the rest of the site, watch some of the On Demand Content, and head over to their new facebook page to see the new version of the site.

The Journal of Secrets

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Helder Guimarães and Derek DelGaudio launch the Journal of Secrets with a manifesto that is well worth reading, and then reading again, then printing out and sticking in your magic den! Inspired by Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth it should be required reading for any magician, young or old, amateur or professional! Can’t wait to see where they take this site, and for the launch of The Ontology Project.

Who Reviews the Reviewers

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It’s about thinking carefully, seeing past the tricks and seeing what the performer is trying to achieve, magic is and always will be more than just tricks. The tricks are the bones of it, but it’s everything else which makes it watchable. We are not here as magicians to make you believe we are really performing the impossible, we are here to entertain.

An article from Chris Cox about a review of his recent Edinburgh Festival show, and the problem with people reviewing magic.
I have reviewed a lot of magic shows in my time, and I think I am guilty of the ‘list of tricks’ however my reviews where not aimed at the lay public, and as a magician I do like to read what other people are doing in their acts, but have tried to add a bit more of my own thoughts and feelings into my reviews.
I guess that is the crux that reviews are just that, one persons thoughts and feelings of a show, but I do agree that unless we can get past the tricks and look at the show/act as a whole then reviewing magic will suffer, certainly something I am trying to improve in my own reviewing.

Writers Talk featuring Joshua Jay

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Ohio State University Centre for the Study and Teaching of Writing interviews magician and author Joshua Jay. Fascinating, particularly the part where Josh shares some thoughts on the development of his own show, and giving the spectators a peek behind the curtain into the process of magic, a presentational concept I am becoming more enamoured with. Also check out the trick at the end, this might be a sneak peek at The Prism Deck coming out soon through Vanishing Inc.