Mysteries of Magic 1 - Masters of Mystery

since the beginning of time there has been magic in the world in ages past when magic science and religion were one people thought that magic of the earth made the Sun rise and set it changed the seasons and brought feast or famine but who were the first magicians were they the ancient wise men who in the light of communal fires practiced secret rituals of healing and purification these shamans entranced their audiences weaving stories and performing illusions were they the first to realize that spellbinding and deception gave them the secret power to become the Masters of mystery today's masters of mysteries still retain the secret power to entrace and deceive and they practice their art on a scale that the ancients could scarcely imagine audiences are still drawn to the light although the flickering campfire has been replaced by the glaring neon of cities like Las Vegas here every night 365 days a year thousands of people gather to be entertained and are standing in venues like Caesar's magical Empire magic is big business during the best performers in the world to feed the public's insatiable appetite to be spellbound but what is it about magic that appeals to a modern audience an audience that is by nature skeptical and well informed surely most people realize when they watch a magician that they're being tricked MAGIX a very peculiar condition because although you realize that what's going on isn't real you don't completely suspend your disbelief in the same way in fact you kind of demand to have your disbelief suspended for you you want your disbelief unwillingly suspended magic is an imitation it's a theatrical imitation of human action but it's a theatrical imitation of impossible human action it appeals to I think all ages of people all nationalities all languages I think it's probably something that's inside the human the human mind may be built into our DNA it's just something that appeals to everybody magic teaches you that life is filled with surprise the Hat was empty and now there's a rabbit inside Wow magic also tells us that things are not always what they seem to be in order to keep the power that a magician holds our resilience the mystery of magic tricks and illusions must remain closely guarded secrets the first rule of magic that magicians if they are sincere in what they're doing is never reveal your secret that's an oath that many of us take very seriously because that is the way that the ancient mystery traditions have been passed on through symbols beyond words the word secret and the word sacred flow from the same source and that is how the mysteries are passed on not through words not even through performance magic but through silence and because magic is a big business whose top stars earn millions a year the need to protect magic secrets has become even more important most magicians agree that much of the universal appeal of magic Springs from the constant question how did they do that magicians protect their secrets primarily for artistic reasons because one of the beautiful things about seeing a performance of magic is that it leaves you lots of room to think you see an event and there's lots to think about including how could this possibly be done in view of all the rest of my experience I've never seen somebody really float through the air consequently when I see somebody float through the air onstage and it appears to be happening there's lots of room for me to think it's a very intellectually stimulating art form it's one that you can't watch passively you can't just sit there and go oh yeah yeah she's floating through the air you just can't it's in human nature to be skeptical it doesn't necessarily take a complex illusion to fool the audience in the hands of a skilled magician even a simple trick can be baffling this is a favorite trick of mine a stack of these wooden round checkers all resting on a cinder dowel rod they happen to be right side up but they possess a capacity a characteristic called juxtaposition 'el reciprocity which makes it literally impossible to turn them upside down now I've tried that for years never succeeded what I just did the method I know I was using is the trick and the props involved what you experienced as the observer or the spectator that's the illusion the real difference between a trick and illusion is that a trick sets up an intellectual challenge between the viewer and the magician if you figure it out the trick you've won if you don't figure out the trick you're just kind of annoyed and it's just a trick an illusionist can take the very same trick and kind of diffuse the intellectual challenge by wrapping it in mystery in a story in metaphor and symbolism and allegory and create a piece of theater and enchanting theater to bring you in the importance of theater magic is well understood in the East the keen skills and poetic beauty of Chinese and Japanese magic have long fascinated magicians in the West but little is known of ancient oriental magic beautiful illustrations show clearly impossible tricks such as exhaling bees and turning men into frogs these illusions if they ever existed are lost forever early travelers offered fanciful accounts of oriental conjurer's and may have brought back some of their secrets the linking rings are thought to be Chinese in origin but their roots are shrouded in obscurity many effects of magical seem to be very old the rings were the magician links the Rings together this may indeed have started in China when we look at magic history books the first chapter is always speculation and the second chapter is 90% speculation and then we jump to the Middle Ages where we posit magicians at fairs and other public gatherings but before that we really know very little and that is a very distressing place for the human mind to be and so the human mind invents history we must travel to ancient Egypt to find the very earliest authenticated account of a magic performance the West Carr papyrus discovered in 1823 tells of a local magician who was summoned to perform before the Pharaoh the earliest illusion of which we have any record takes us back to the time when kinky ops was building the Great Pyramid at Giza approximately 2,600 BC the conjurer called dedi performed a trick really an illusion by the modern definition he apparently cut off the head of a goose the decapitated animal walked around the room until its head was miraculously restored the ancient papyrus goes on to describe how deadly also decapitated and restored a pelican and then an ox the magician did however refuse the Pharaoh suggestion that he behead one of the royal prisoners nearly 5,000 years later we can only speculate on the magical secrets that he used to perform the solution did he have knowledge of animal hypnotism did he use basic sleight of hand or did he somehow fool the superstitious audience into thinking they had witnessed actual decapitations at the time when Teddy was performing most people believed in natural magic that rivers stones and animals all possess spirits some good some evil it is quite clear that the primitive peoples in witnessing an illusion or a trick would believe that this was produced by spirit aid and would doubtless have a great sense of all magicians have always used ignorant sin superstition to baffle their audiences magic was used in the ancient Greek mystery traditions in temples there's books with illustrations of pneumatics and hydraulics for example the doors of the temple when the high priest would open them bellows would press into the floor and fire would appear on the altar make the fire Jets flare up creating a Wizard of Oz like effect speaking statues there would be hidden tubes in the hallways and that the statues could then give ocular messages to the devotees at the temple so these records still exist of magic used to let's say kick up the energy charge of a religious ceremony the earliest trick of which we have a record as opposed to an illusion is the cups and balls this we know is one of the oldest tricks ever performed in which their balls appear and disappear in the most bewildering fashion beneath inverted cups though accounts of the cups and balls date from the 1st century AD it's in the Middle Ages that the trick became universal in that time magicians had many varied skills and were called jugglers these traveling performers could be found working alongside minstrels troubadours and acrobats jugglers would show up on a village green and begin delighting and deceiving the ignorant audience with displays of simple sleight of hand from my experience I feel the plot of the cups and balls is a game of hide-and-go-seek there's an object of desire and you're trying to find it and there surprises along the way the former's would amaze the audience with a repertoire consisting of 20 or 30 impressive sleight of hand drinks the cups and balls is so simple that it's terribly complex the cups and balls in its way is an abstract piece of magic the disappearing bulls coupled with the magician's apparent bewilderment as they reappeared somewhere else defies explanation the cups and balls is almost like a piece of geometry where you're just abstracting the idea of appearing and disappearing it has an amazingly ritualistic look to it the plot of the cups and balls is all about scale that's the whole subject of the cups and balls the magician pretends that it's a big deal that the three balls are assembling under the cups but the audience is likely to applaud in a half-hearted manner the whole function of that is to accustom the audience to the size the little size of these balls and under cover of all of these little tricks the magician secretly sneaks huge balls underneath the cups and suddenly raises the cups and there are the huge balls and now the audience realizes what the plot was really about one two three the first cob it's empty in Egypt Street magicians shouted the phrase gali gali to drum up an audience in the Middle East today the words have become synonymous with this particular trick they're the cups are ever-present the balls are often replaced with less manageable objects stay hey let y'all go get Busan hell although true Paul you are key chain or between and now you have three more chicken go fly Granick you can Shabba ina keep in here don't planet chicken does is a swatch it's going to be six eat chickens all together and another one will be here in Vassar a six-week in Pusan Salathe yonko intimacy I have told here now when it comes to the cups and balls do magicians really think that the average non magician believes that these balls just appeared magically under these cups I don't think so I think most people believe that the magician somehow cleverly got them there when when I wasn't looking we're happy now alley bongos from hell American magicians Penn & Teller have often been criticized by the magic establishment for their seemingly irreverent attitude and the so called exposures of magical secrets but it was their fondness for the cups and balls tradition that led to the creation of a modern alternative to the classic routine the cups and balls I've been fascinated by the cups and balls for a long time I find that if I practice it late at night I won't stay up all night doing it it's somehow it's it's an insidious dangerous kind of thing it sets some sort of you know the synapses in operation that shouldn't be an operation but I found myself sitting at diners and at diners I'll just I'll grab a coffee cup and I'll grab a paper napkin and I'll do really silly things let me show you my idea of a really silly thing a really silly thing is to take the ball and put it underneath the cup now that doesn't seem like much of a trick does it but let me show you how that trick was done I took the ball and pretended to put it in my hand now it's not really in my hand it's really hidden in this hand and now this non-existent ball I then pretend to place underneath the cup but in fact I'm secretly sneaking the other ball under the cup at the same time so I would sit at diners doing utterly pointless magic here we are I am now simulating commonplace reality by pretending to put a ball under a cup this is this could be simulated by really just putting the ball under the cup that's how crazy I am when it gets to the cups and balls we're going to break four basic rules of magic now the first rule is you never do the same trick twice we're going to do the same trick twice second rule of magic is you never tip the gaff to the lay public that means you never tell people how the trick is being done I'm going to tell you exactly how this trick is being done magicians are sometimes the easiest people in the world to fool so when magicians heard that magicians were supposed to be really upset about our cups and balls presentation the magicians got outraged started writing terrible articles about us in magic magazines like anybody cares for people read magic magazines and and it was absolutely wonderful because suddenly we had a tempest in a top hat the third rule of magic is you never let the audience see your secret preparation this has got to be done backstage out of sight so the audience does not know what is hidden in which pocket and the fourth rule of magic is something even Paul Daniels would agree with me on no one in the world would argue with this you never ever do the cups and balls with clear plastic now you ask any of our audiences right after we've done this how did they do that they'll say we don't have a clue it was all too fast precisely so here's our version of the cups and balls be the first ball balloon in here the first copy the second ball simultaneously screwed anything up but it's in our hand and show it hit the third and final ball because n hannahs turn into captain blister the capitaine I see you screen and vielen and all seven second half think up solo two three balls on top Center ball please had a cubby to the side balls you put it anymore yeah three years under sink up Lisi balls go over again this is not juggling this is called misdirection for looking over here tell us things final ball one of this woman you decide and of course mr. Barney lime for our finish that's the question I find the transparent cup routine that they do pretty magical even though the outer framework is about exposing it all they've exposed is the obvious except for those very that small percentage of the population we thought that the ball is actually magically appeared under the cup for some strange reason well now comes the teacher trick portion of the show folks this is where I teach you all how to perform a magic trick I'll demonstrate the trick so you can see what it looks like then I'll show you how it's done so you can amaze your friends it's a simple trick with a purple handkerchief a little squeeze it changes into an egg the handkerchief jumps into the pocket secrecy is essential to magic as a hobby or profession because by definition deception whether for good or evil purposes assumes and requires that something is being concealed or kept secret from the objects of the deception now I I know you're thinking okay sure he can do the trick he does this for a living I'll never be able to do it it's really easy once you know the secret the secret to the trick is right there you use two handkerchiefs make sure they're the same color you also need what we imagine call a magician's egg now a magician's egg is not an egg that is laid by a magician it's a wooden egg laid by a decoy it's hollowed out there's a little hole on the side that's all you need to do the trick to handkerchiefs and the wooden egg now before you perform the trick you have to do what we imagine call your presets this is what you do before you come out on stage one of the handkerchiefs goes into your pocket the wooden egg goes into your pocket we get paranoid when we want to preserve something that we think is in danger of being taken away from us in modern magic for much of the 20th century the focus was really almost exclusively on technique as you're chatting with the people in the audience the right hand slips into the pocket takes out the wooden egg the audience will never notice this because they're not watching you they're watching the people you're talking to in magic this is called misdirection bring the egg out clipped between the two middle fingers in the palm of the right hand hold your hand in a natural position and magic this is called palming as a young boy I used to practice this in Walmart now you're ready to start the trick as far as the audience just concerned slowly poke the handkerchief into the egg and magic this is called poking the handkerchief into the egg when magic is reduced to technique then secrecy is pretty important but when magic is about the frame around the trick then secrecy is not as crucially important if someone on the side should notice the hole whatever you do do not panic stay calm do what I do remove the hole from the egg and pretend to crack the egg into a glass that way you don't end up with egg on your face question of secrecy is if you know the secret of a magic effect does that ruin it for you would you still pay your money to go to the magic show if you know how it's done well I sometimes think that magicians are pretty much deceiving themselves but if at the magic show we were to give out a little questionnaire at the end with all the tricks done by the magician and say well how are these done I think we might because magicians we might be shocked and appalled and how much of the game was pretty out there in the open anyway to some degree secrecy has always been a part of magic but in some periods it was also a liability by the late Middle Ages magicians in Europe began to face strong opposition from the church at this time belief in witchcraft and the supernatural was all but universal in a deeply superstitious age any miracle not sanctioned by the church was considered black magic and therefore suspect many magicians were threatened with execution if they did not reveal the secrets of their tricks sharing tricks with the clergy undoubtedly saved many magicians from being burned as witches the years of the Inquisition by the Catholic Church imposed great difficulties on conjurer's belief in black magic was widespread and it took just one weak minded person to point the finger of accusation many an innocent conjurer was accused of being in league with the devil Cillian eat your pasta despite persecution magic was still a popular if precarious profession eventually some magicians began to enjoy the weary patronage of wealthy landowners and the aristocracy at this time the itinerant magician had only a limited repertoire of tricks to perform playing cards were not yet freely available and large illusions that relied on props were expensive magicians relied largely on sleight of hand storytelling and feats of natural magic tricks involving animals and birds were popular secret methods of training and mesmerizing birds into performing impossible feats have been known to magicians since ancient times for almost 300 years the tide of religious persecution egged and flowed of the magical arts during the reign of Henry the eighth of England the penalty for conjuration was death by the late 16th century the persecution of witches had become a panicked bloodbath it was this frenzy that led to the publication of the very first magic book in the English language it was an attempt by its author Reginald Scott to save the lives of magicians the discovery of witchcraft published in 1584 sought to separate the real skills of the magician from the diabolical powers of witches of course to do this Scott had to reveal secrets to the public this remarkable book of magical revelations contains illustrations of magical props such as these trick knives Scott used magic tricks in order to prove that these apparent miracles were brought about purely by natural means and not by being in league with the devil believing that this would be a very telling argument against witchcraft and so a whole section of that book is devoted to a description of conjuring tricks some of them still being performed to this day simple explanations of powerful illusions were revealed for the first time and squats crusading work save many magicians from being burned at the stake magicians have long depended on their physical dexterity and sleight of hand skills to perform magic tricks a talented magician can apparently prove the saying the hand is quicker than the eye I would define sleight-of-hand as the creation of magical effects through purely dexterous or manual means of its a little easier to demonstrate sleight of hand than it is to define it I can demonstrate it with this queen of diamonds watch it closely this is the world's fastest card trick that sleight of hand armed with sleight of hand skills a magician can turn the simplest of props like two rubber bands into the most fascinating magical trick a trick that can stand up to the closest scrutiny of even the most observant and skeptical audiences that's behind that is in front is that correct - Fred no get right you can see that there's no way can it come through there David well my heart sees can it come from the middle no it can't director thank you I didn't even see that how did you do that and it comes through the middle no can I do that I miss you me how to do that actually you're looking very confused about this sleight of hand is the kind of magic performance that depends less on special props and special mechanics and more on the acting and the physical skill of the performer it's often considered that the sort of the rock-bottom test what could you do if somebody put you naked on a beach could you do a magic trick for them and in fact there are magic tricks that you can do naked on the beach and I've done them naked and on the beach to understand the complexity of tellers life you need to know the seven basic principles of magic one palm to hide an object in an apparently empty hand to ditch to secretly dispose of an unneeded object three steal the opposite of ditch to secretly obtain a needed object for load to secretly move the needed object to where it's needed five simulation to give the impression that something that hasn't happened has six misdirection to lead attention away from the secret move and seven switch to secretly exchange one object for another I remember when I was a kid with palming palming means hiding something in your hand so that I mean so so that no one can see it but so that your hand is still held in a very natural position I would walk around all day long with something just palmed in in my hand and you know it was just it was just sitting there very calmly in my hand but I would do things like I would drink glasses of water you know I walked through the kitchen and I'd say hi mom carefully not exposing the palm looks simple doesn't it to become a perfect sleight-of-hand artist as possible you can get close and it takes years simple sleight of hand to roll one coin on your fingers will take a few months maybe a year I want it to go beyond that it took me two years every day 20 minutes to a half an hour each day to be able to get it to a level where I no longer need to concentrate on it I find that one of the best tricks to practicing is to try to distract myself that is to do it again and again and again while listening to music while jogging on the treadmill or it to be in the middle of washing dishes and suddenly take my hands out dry them and see if I can do it because it has to become so reflexive that I don't think about it during performance otherwise performance is no fun for me or the audience my favorite sleight-of-hand artist of all time was Cardini he invented a lot of the techniques that magicians use today but it wasn't just that it was the context he had a character and he had a plot he was a tipsy gentleman English gentleman coming home from a society affair and the cards that would appear in his fingers appeared by themselves he wasn't controlling them and then another one would appear you would get more confused and throw it away and it was as if he was hallucinating the whole performance and that the magic was happening around him and that's a story of our lives magic is happening around us all the time and he was the essence of a man in a magical world a Welsh magician named Richard Valentine pitchford performing as Cardini elevated card magic to an art form his dexterity was so great that he could even manipulate cards while wearing gloves most performers today who include card magic in their act our debt to Cardini some of the manipulations and palming techniques he invented are the basis of many modern routines Cardini was a true master of all kinds of sleight of hand few modern performers can match his skill with a billiard ball magicians really do incredibly irrational and bizarre things all the time someone from another planet who'd never seen a magic show would wonder if these people were psychotic the irrational things they do to turn those demonstrations into an entertaining presentation storytelling is the key that ties it together yellow cotton thread a single length which will represent the entire universe in the stories of India it is the god brahma who creates the universe and all that there is Brahma then retires and the god vishnu takes over and vishnu sustains and preserves the universe in every moment of its existence and then at the end of time the god shiva appear and dances the Tandava dance a weird and terrible dance of fire in which the entire material universe is destroyed in blinding light brighter than ten thousand suns and the universe is no more there is only silence vast cosmic sleep and out of this cosmic sleep Brahma wakens himself again he looks about and seeing nothing he decides to create the universe again and creating it he retires pleased with his eternal play armed with dexterity skill and the spellbinding talent of storytelling it's no wonder magicians have sometimes been accused of using magic for nefarious purposes there have always been con men in magic if you look at the great classic painting by Hieronymus Bosch of the conjurer you'll see a magician entertaining with the cups and balls but that's only half the scenario on the other side of the painting the real illusion is happening the cut purse the pickpocket is making the swindle so here in medieval times you see the relationship between the magician and the dark side of the magician the shadow of magician when we move to present day every day we read in the newspapers about swindlers and silver tongued con artists and shape-shifting cheats getting caught but there are those magicians that are really invisible that never get caught technically speaking Martin Nash is neither a magician nor a conman but performing is the charming cheat he uses his agility and skill to manipulate cards and entertain how you do like to welcome to the show and is cheating times now there's one question I do get asked if says this an honest deck of cards or some marked as a gimmick to restrict out I'll be honest with you in the zone time I won't be doing the entire performance I buy my cards in drugstore so as you'll see the cards were honest it's always hands to cheat the ability to produce any card at will is only a small part of his repertoire it's taken now more than 30 years to achieve an expertise for manipulating cards virtually by feel alone it's a skill ease willing to share it I am going to show you how to do this but please don't use it because if you do as I say I would feel very bad in order that you can see everything I'm going to do with all the cards face up so the ace of spades is on top of deck now if you want to keep the ACE for yourself all you do just take the second card I mean it's just that simple you see just read you take a card now if you want you speeded up pentacle hex a lot better but in slow motion is just like this so you can see exactly how I'm getting that card Natchez peter deficit looks better one thing that's always fascinated me is a simple fact that you practice practice practice in my particular field and I guess my life I've spent over or maybe 3000 hours practicing to do a second deal and we stop and think of it it's a little bit ridiculous because you're practicing so that nobody can see it even using slow-motion replay it's impossible to see how he manages to deal the second card from underneath the ace gambling is my business card tricks are my hobby but if you took a real top card magician and a third-rate card cheat the magician wouldn't stand a chance the reason being is the two techniques are entirely different and the card sheet of course he has to work under fire not too long ago I was in a game and there's one type of person I really don't like they get very very suspicious and he took the four aces and he placed them into four different parts of the deck now of course I was watching very carefully so as I would know where the cards are four aces I did have to notice that there was exactly six cards above the first ace three six I also have to notice those eight between the next sub between Nexus 6 between the next so because I already know where those aces are I can be able to deal them to myself but then he took it one step further he push the cards in flush and then he cut the deck now to make it even more difficult for me he took the debt and in his hands like this he gave it the deck shuffle now course I have absolutely no idea as to where those aces are three dollars came over and I said you mind if we joined the game we said no so that meant that we had eight people who came at that point I had to know so one of them had a great deal of money and who would have the money so it's an 8 handicap number 2 3 4 5 6 7 whoo well number 4 he must be a card player and that's one of the most difficult things to set up as I say I had no idea where anything was I was just dealing the cards so I'm just gonna be playing by luck while he happen to get a king so I just play by luck because well I would like to match him the spade a spade now the odds of getting a pair on the first ball he did have to get a pair besides just your blind luck and so I would have to reach over and get the Ace of Hearts for myself now three of the kind of course is a very good hand so you know well I didn't expect him but he did which means I had to follow with the ace of diamonds and four of a kind was practically well it wasn't impossible me together also so for those who may be interested this little game at my house this evening I accept both Visa and MasterCard so just give me a call thank you when you're sitting down at the table and you're entertaining people doing quote unquote card tricks then you'll be using entirely different moves than you would if you were sitting at the table playing for big money and the one thing about the card cheat if he makes a mistake he gets beat up the magician he gets laughed at and there's a big difference now watch it ready go okay there's a lady find the lady and three-card Monte con games are a familiar sight all over the world but even before you lay your money down the odds are heavily stacked against you I'll do it really slow this time okay if you ever see a three-card Monte worker on the street no matter how skillful you may be as an observer and even if you're a professional magician don't play the game because it isn't a game they can change the rules on you at any moment never better strangers because and in the unlikely event that somehow or other you should finally be able to get a correct win on something as you walk away you'll soon meet some people in an alley throughout history wherever the public gathered both con artists and honest magicians were guaranteed a rapt audience in the 18th century nothing could rival the crowds excitement of the annual fair it was a carnival circus sideshow and market all rolled into one fire eaters and snake handlers fight for attention lhar contortionists and midgets Giants and sword swallowers displayed their skills and natural talents for standard on lookers but of all these competing spectacles the Magician was truly the star the greatest magician of the early 18th century was a man called Isaac Fox we know very little of his origins it's suspected that he might have been a Londoner but he came to great prominence in the early 1720s and he was to be found performing at the major fairs and in various taverns Isaac Forks masterpiece was the famous egg bag by means of sleight of hand he would produce an astonishing succession of eggs and coins for an apparently empty bag it cost one shilling to be entertained by mr. Fox the first true star of the art eventually became the highest-paid magician of his day with a deeply devoted following when folks died in 1731 newspapers reported he left a fortune of ten thousand pounds worth almost a million dollars today further proof of his popularity but it would take another hundred years before magicians realized they too could hold an audience for more than a trick or two with the rise of the theatre magicians were quick to combine illusions with sleight of hand stage effects and lighting a new era had dawned magicians had found a new home and a new audience eager to be entertained they now dressed in formal clothes just like the theater going public elevated above the juggling and fire-eating of the fairgrounds new magicians now held center stage new illusions and tricks were invented especially for theaters and for the first time magicians found themselves at the top of the marquee one of the first magicians to establish himself in the theater was Scottish performer John Henry Anderson born in 1814 he started his career as the Caledonian conjurer and later found fame as the great wizard of the north he certainly made a tremendous impression and arrived in London in 1840 at the new Strand Theatre there he was advertising his gorgeous solder apparatus and certainly his stage was I feeling he performed most of the standard tricks of the day Chinese rings Birds being produced from a cauldron and he was not really an innovative magician but he was a great showman and he was also the first of the very great publicists the innovation of people in the 19th century like John Henry Anderson was to perform in a more natural setting the stage setting was more like an elegant drawing-room and the magician was performing basically informal evening attire it was really the birth of the modern genre of magic over the years however the magicians who are very often not very bright when it comes to understanding the basic meaning of things said hmm tail coat I guess that's what a magician is supposed to wear so nowadays when an audience comes to the theatre well at its dressiest in a business suit and in its most casual in jeans magicians are still walking out on stage in tail coats from the 19th century they've completely lost the sense of what the what the costume was for it's mystifying really though John Henry Anderson is scarcely remembered today his legacy has lasted for more than 150 years his pioneering style of showmanship paved the way for thousands of performers around the world the larger-than-life demeanor that began with Anderson created a market for magic than his drug steadily ever since audiences demanded bigger and better shows and magicians were happy to oblige the late 19th and early 20th centuries brought the Golden Age of stage magic with magicians playing to packed houses around the world magicians became household names some still remembered others long forgotten but they all live on forever preserved on dusty theatre posters and playbills the growth of the movies in the 1930s led to the rapid decline of stage magic in moving pictures all manner of magic was possible only the true masters of mystery was still guaranteed to hold an audience spellbound today the demand for magic has returned the growth of entertainment capitals like us Vegas coupled with the mass appeal of television has created a new generation of stars these masters command great fees and a global following that the magicians of the past would find difficult to comprehend even today magic still satisfies a primeval desire in all of us to be amazed and entertained the bright neon of Las Vegas has replaced the light of the campfire and a new generation begins to explore the mysteries of magic you

Channel: 770pratik

Views: 212,006

Rating: 4.7277489 out of 5

Keywords: Mysteries of Magic, part 1, Death Defying Feats, 1997, TV, Show, magic history, Television Show, magic

Id: zoFiXlRj4HI

Length: 52min 15sec (3135 seconds)

Published: Thu May 10 2012