Can a musician teach anything to help magicians learn a magic trick perfectly? In my experience, playing an instrument can teach a lot about how to study magic.   Being a musician, one of the first secrets I discovered was the proper techniques for practice, and this can be applied when you learn a magic trick. I quickly realised that practising the right way can save you so much time and bring far better results than simply ‘jamming’ with a musical instrument without a plan. The key is structure.   I have just recently started taking up magic seriously and have applied a lot of the ..read more

Answering the question of who invented playing cards isn’t easy because it wasn’t just one inventor. Playing cards have been a popular pastime for centuries, with a rich history dating back to the 9th century in China. The exact origins of playing cards are difficult to trace, but it is believed that they were invented as a way to pass the time and to entertain. As magicians, we often take for granted the amazing journey these 52 little cards have taken to arrive in our hands today.   The earliest known playing cards were created in China during the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD). These cards ..read more

Taking the time and effort to learn a new magic trick can be a fun and rewarding experience, but it can also be challenging at times. Whether you’re learning to control playing cards for cardistry, introducing some sleight of hand into your magic performance, or focusing on developing mastery of a move or magic performance technique, the key to success is practice. Here are a few tips to help you learn a new magic trick and practice your magic effectively: Set specific goals: Before you start practicing, it’s important to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve. Setting specific, achie ..read more

Linda writes: Hi Merchant of Magic, just wondering if you have any magic tricks which are small enough to fit into a homemade Xmas cracker?   Christmas crackers are great! But let’s be honest, the gifts inside are usually PANTS! The only decent one is the small deck of cards you sometimes find…  We want MAGIC in our crackers!  The key to trying to fit magic tricks inside a Christmas Cracker is to know your audience. There’s no point in choosing anything that is going to take more than a few minutes to learn and perform. The ‘Cracker owner’ isn’t a magician; they just want a c ..read more

The Magic Circle Convention. Review by Paul Osborne   I didn’t know what to expect. It was my first magic convention in 38 years. Yes, really. (Teenage magician. Then did other things… drumming, standup. Came back to magic recently. That’s it in a nutshell.) So when I saw that The Magic Circle was holding its first-ever convention, I thought, ‘Why not?’ My last convention was the Northern Magic Circle’s Easter Parade in Harrogate, and  I went along three years running, 1982 to 1984. I have mostly good, but hazy, memories of the event: I saw Alan Shaxon perform and lecture (eagerly g ..read more

Joshua writes: I have a question regarding your Approaching Magic Practice ebook. The original document suggests magic training through drilling either a single move or an entire effect/sequence in a very specific way. I really like this approach and just wanted to say thank you very much. Your magic training approach helped me perfect the most difficult card routine I’ve ever tried to tackle, Darwin Ortiz The Sting. I’m sure you’re familiar with the effect, but there’s a notoriously awkward and difficult riffle stacking sequence that has a 2-1 (2 cards, 1 card—each side) rhythm as opposed to ..read more

By Greg Chapman I’ll be honest, this may seem to be a strange choice of topic to choose when I have been very kindly asked if I would write a post for the ‘Merchant of Magic’ blog, especially as a first blog post, however, I want to talk to you about the most disappointing moment involved in buying magic tricks and effects, and especially when buying them online. I do think that this is an important subject and one which isn’t discussed enough, and I certainly wish that I had understood it when I started my career in magic. What is this magic secret disappointment of which I speak? I think th ..read more

By Paul Osborne Exposure. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? When I was a lad [picture me walking up a hill carrying a bread loaf while Dvorak’s New World Symphony is playing – now there’s a reference for the teenagers] magic secrets exposure was an easy concept to understand. From my very first magic book – How to be a Conjurer by Robert Harbin – the rules of magic were clearly laid out: Never tell anyone how a trick is done, the author wrote. However, even in those dark days before the internet, the waters were sometimes muddied. I remember Paul Daniels being criticised for including tricks such a ..read more

By Paul Osborne Paul runs Merchant of Magic’s Twitter account. A former teenage magician, he took a brief 30 years off to pursue drumming and standup comedy. Now back in love with magic, he’s slowly working his way through Royal Road to Card Magic and Bobo‘s Modern Coin Magic. Firstly, let me say, I’m not some bright young thing with a man bun, smart shoes/no socks, and a degree in marketing and social media. I’m just someone who has used Twitter a lot over the past few years and kept an eye on what works and what doesn’t; looking at which accounts get a lot of followers, and why — and which ..read more

Many of the commercial effects on the market today shout about how they have been designed to ‘finish clean’ or be fully examinable both before and after the performance of the trick. But is insisting on finishing magic tricks clean really that important? Is it just some of the ‘sales spin’ designed to sounds good, whilst not really doing anything to improve your performance? Here’s some important advice from one of the world’s most respected magicians… Wayne Dobson. There’s something that really annoys me about magicians – amateurs, it’s never pros. For many years this has really been a bugb ..read more