The Experiences Part 2: Tantra

The second magical experience I want to talk about is the “Tantric” magic experience.

Other words I’ve used for this sort of experience on this site are: “Immersive Fiction” and “Romantic Adventure.”

This is, more or less, the opposite of the Quickie.

Tantric Magic should:

• Unfold over a significant period of time

• Have a premise the spectator is already familiar with

• Blur the lines of where the trick begins and ends

Premises

We’re trying to pull people into a story. So, ideally, the premise should be something they’re already familiar with, so we don’t have to do too much work for them to step into the experience.

Things like:

• Time-travel

• Ghosts

• Imaginary friends

• Reality-glitches

• Lucky objects

• Astrology

• Scams or heists

• Deja-vu

While I do like tricks that delve into more obscure premises (like Alice in Wonderland Syndrome and things like that). I don’t think they’re ideal for Tantric Magic (they’re better for the experience we’ll talk about tomorrow). We want the barrier to entry for the story to be as low as possible to encourage them to go along with it. For that reason, it’s best to use a premise that they’re already familiar with from the real world.

Timing and Example

The total experience needs to take, at least, 20 minutes.

Sometimes I have tricks that don’t conclude until days or weeks after they begin.

Keep in mind, the experience begins when you first mention it to the person.

Consider this trick. You stop your pulse and while you’re “dead” you’re able to interact with the spirits and learn what word your spectator wrote down.

The “trick” part of that may take just a few minutes. But if I introduce the idea to you, and we execute the whole thing in three minutes, it’s going to have a very “trick-ish” feeling to you. There’s no depth to it for you to get wrapped up in the story.

But if, a few days earlier, I text you and say, “You have your CPR certification right?” And then we make plans to hang out later in the week to get dinner. I insist on going to my favorite restaurant. “Just indulge me. I might not get the chance to go again.” At dinner, I tell you about how I’m working on this “spirit communication thing.”

“The thing is, some people can get the spirits to come to them directly. But if you don’t have that gift, you can sometimes open up the ‘channel’ by going to them. That’s what I want to try with you tonight.”

At this point, you’re not worried that I’m really going to kill myself. You’re not thinking, “Oh, another lame magic trick.” You understand you’re entering a sort of interactive fiction (because I’ve done similar things with you before). In this story, your friend has invited you out to dinner, and he’s going to pick up the tab because he wants you to help him out later and stand by as he sends himself into the spirit realm to see if he can communicate with someone there.

Later, I have you write something down, show it to the spirits and then burn it. “This will give us some proof if it works. Otherwise, it might just be a dream or vision or something.”

I tell you I’m going to try and put myself in another state. I won’t be “dead.” But part of me will be… not quite alive. “If I don’t come out of it after 45 seconds, put the smelling salts under my nose. If I’m not back after a minute, then there’s real trouble.”

I have you monitor my pulse. It slows and then stops. I’m slumped back on the couch. After 45 seconds, I haven’t moved. You put the smelling salts under my nose. I start coming around.

For the first few seconds, I seem a little confused. I’m just looking around the room.

“Oh,” I say, recognizing where I am. “Wait… how long. How long was that?”

You tell me it wasn’t even a minute.

“Holy Jesus,” I say, still out-of-it, “it felt like… months.”

I’m trying to shake it off. “I can’t believe that was real.”

After a little bit, you remind me, or I remember about the word you wrote down. “Oh, right, that word! That was the whole point. Uhm. Shit. He told it to me, but it feels like so long ago. It was… oh, god, if we did all this and I don’t remember…no, I’ll get it…there was something unusual about the word, right? Did it begin with an X or something. Oh, wait, no, a V. Two Vs. Velvet!”

Again, this is a premise I could execute in two minutes. “Write something down. Burn it. Now feel my pulse as I send my consciousness to another plane of existence…. I’m back. Was I gone for months? It felt like it. Did you write down Velvet?”

But the story doesn’t grasp people when presented that way.

The time component is an integral part of Tantric Magic. It’s the part of the journey that lets them get wrapped up in the story.

If I tell you I want to take you to a mystical secret garden, and we walk out to a garden in my backyard, then I’m asking you to do a lot of the work of imagining this is really some sort of hidden magical place. But if instead we walk into the woods for a half hour, I can bring you to a place that looks just like the “secret garden” I would have showed you in my backyard, but here the journey makes it easier for you to imagine this is something special.

If I tell you I have a piece of metal from a crashed alien spaceship and pull something from my pocket and make it levitate, you’ll think, “Oh, cute.” But if I tell you to meet me at my bank and I open my safe deposit box and slowly unwrap an object from multiple layers of fabric to show you this piece of metal I salvaged from a crashed alien spaceship, that will have a very different feeling to you (even when you still know underneath it all that this is just a trick).

A strong trick + a recognizable premise + time = Tantric Magic.

What Tantric Magic is Good For

• Creating long-term memories connected to magic.

• Making people feel special by being the recipient of a unique, tailor-made magic experience.

• Making magic not feel completely trivial.

• Fucking with people’s minds.

When Tantric Magic Isn’t Good

When performing for someone new who doesn’t know what to expect.

When performing for someone who doesn’t like magic. (You might think that it would go without saying that you shouldn’t perform for people who don’t like magic. But I’ll still do Quickies for those people. Just to mess with them. Tantric Magic is for the fan.)

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Around the time I started writing this blog, this type of magic was all I wanted to do. The lesson I learned was that you can’t just do this type of magic AND perform regularly for the same people.

Tantric Magic is an experience you give people maybe 2-4 times a year, at most.

There are plenty of magic tricks that you can build out to be a big experience like this. But if that’s all you ever do, then this immersive magic experience will cease to feel like something special. You have to pace yourself.

I said this about Quickies too. You can’t do these things too often. Together, Quickies and Tantric Magic make up, probably less than 20% of my magic performances. So what is the other 80%? What is the experience we’re going for with a normal, everyday magic performance? That’s for tomorrow.

The Experiences Part 1: Quickies

This week, I have a three part series for you on a new way that I’ve been categorizing effects.

It’s not a system based on what’s used during the tricks (e.g., card tricks, coin tricks) or the setting in which the effect is performed (e.g., stage or close-up) or anything like that.

This categorization system is based on three types of experiences I enjoy having with the spectators through magic.

What is the value of categorizing effects in the way I’m going to explain in these three posts? Well, I’ve found these three experiences to be the best types of interactions I’m capable of having with people through magic.

And, I’ve found when I have a trick that is methodologically-sound, but just isn’t quite working for some reason or another, it’s often because the experience of the trick doesn’t fall into one of these categories. Sometimes a trick is like having smoked brisket for breakfast or getting a 30-second back massage. These things aren’t bad, necessarily, there’s just something off about the experience. Brisket enjoyed with friends on a summer evening, or a 45-minute back massage, is going to have a profoundly different (and stronger) effect on people because that’s the right experience for those things.

The first experience I want to talk about…

The Quickie

Quickies should be:

• Visual tricks

• With little set-up

• That are ideally under 30 seconds.

Example

I’m at my friend’s place, and we’re helping her daughter put together a craft for Christmas.

At one point, I pick up the glue and put a little in my palm. “I used to do this when I was a kid all the time.” I dip my finger in the glue and let it stretch and drip from my finger. After a moment, I spin the glue around the end of my finger, where it forms into a solid white ring. I pop it on my thumb where it lives the rest of the night.

This is, as you probably know, Tobias Dostal’s Liquify.

This is a great trick for a quick visual moment.

But if you were to try to expand this into a three-minute routine, you’d likely have something bloated and poorly paced. Something that put so much focus on that final transformation that you’re giving people time to consider and anticipate gimmicks and sleight-of-hand.

You’d be taking a trippy, visual moment and turning into this overly-planned trick climax. And putting too much emphasis on something that is usually kind of stupid if you think about it. (Turning glue into a ring, for example.)

What Quickies are Good For

• Capturing people’s eyes and attention.

• Making them question what they saw.

• Creating a unique visual memory for them

• Engaging people who might not sit for a longer piece of magic.

What Quickies Aren’t Good For

• Creating a real “magical” feeling in the spectator. It’s over too quickly for that.

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I don’t stock up my repertoire with a ton of different quickies. I’ll have 5-10 that I make sure I work on regularly.

You don’t want to do them too often. The primary value of the Quickie is the shock of this weird thing happening out of nowhere. If you make this your “thing”—to surprise people with weird visual moments—they will soon be less and less surprised.

When I was 11-years-old, a 16-year-old girl pulled me into her backyard and flashed me her boobs behind a garden shed. That experience is burned in my brain, primarily because of the shock of it. I can’t say I have a detailed memory of anything else about that girl, but the memory of that experience as a whole is as strong as most any from my childhood, in a large part because it was so unexpected.

That’s what we’re going for with Quickies. Not the most fooling, strongest magic. But an unexpected concentrated moment of something impossible or surreal, that feels like nothing they’ve seen before.

Mailbag #128: Openers

Hey Andy, I understand if your response to the following email is simply ‘I don’t do that kind of thing’, but I wonder if perhaps you have any thoughts on ideal openers, mainly for stage work but close up too. The classic advice is ‘you want something quick and visual’, but having tried various things and though about it for a while I don’t think this is necessarily good advice, particularly if your goal is trying to build a sense of story and structure.

Thoughts?—YG

I don’t do that kind of thing.

But if I did, I think I would be less concerned with the trick itself than what it is I would say to open the performance. If you say something that gets people to like you or people to be intrigued by what’s about to happen, then the particular trick that follows is less important.

Take this with a grain of salt because I have no experience performing magic “shows,” so I’m just talking from my instincts and working in other areas of entertainment.

The theory of starting with something “quick and visual” seems to be predicated on the idea that people aren’t really interested in what you’re going to do, so if you don’t capture their attention quickly they’re just going to take a nap or walk out or start throwing things. I don’t buy that.

Let’s assume we can break up people into three groups.

• People who love magic.

• People who like it (if it’s good)

• People who hate it.

If you walk up to their table and immediately go into a trick to “grab their attention,” what are they thinking?

People who love magic: “Oh, wow! Magic! Great!”

People who like magic: “What the heck? Oh. He’s a magician. Wasn’t expecting that. Hopefully he’s good.”

People who hate magic: “Oh god. What is this corny shit?”

What if, instead, you took that initial time to talk a little bit and make a human connection and build some rapport.

People who love magic: “I like this guy… and he’s going to show us some magic, too? Awesome!”

People who like magic: “I like this guy. And he does magic too? Intriguing.”

People who hate magic: “I like this guy. He’s really going to show us magic? Ugh... Well… I’ll give him a shot.”

That’a why my initial instinct would be to focus on connection as opposed to magic.

Obviously, you still have to pace yourself and not just sit there chit-chatting (especially if you’re doing a short walkaround set). But I would still make my focus identifying the right thing to say at the start to get them on my side(rather than the right trick to do).

The worst stereotypes about magicians are that they’re desperate for attention, have no social skills, only care about their tricks, etc. Rushing into a trick only seems to emphasize these perceptions.

Now, you mentioned trying to “build story and structure.” If that’s the focus, then that suggests a more theatrical type of presentation (as opposed to casual walkaround or table-hopping). So maybe something like a parlor or small stage show.

In that situation, you’re not going to be connecting with the audience individually like you would in a more close-up environment. So for that, I would focus my opening on getting them intrigued about where the show is going.

“Last night, at 3:40 in the morning, I drove 120 miles and spent two months rent on what’s inside this box. I can’t show you what’s in it just yet… I don’t even think it would make sense if I did. But I promise you, 20 minutes from now we’re all going to see something unfathomable. Or somewhere out there, some guy is laughing his ass off with a few thousand dollars of my money.”

So, depending on the situation, my “opener” would be about building connection or intrigue. These, by definition, will attract an audience regardless of how they feel about magic.

Eventually, when you do get to the first trick, it should be very strong. You want them thinking, “Ah, I was right for investing my attention in this person (or in this story).” For that, I don’t think the type of trick matters, so long as it’s a strong one.

Short version: What does a stripper do? Does she come out, whip off her Catholic school-girl skirt, spread her legs, and say, “Look at my pussy! I know it’s what you want! Pay attention to me!” No, she starts slow. Walks around the pole. Gives you a chance to fall in love and builds the tension about what’s to come. Connection and intrigue. Be more like a stripper. Not some sleazy, trashy, low-class magician.

An Approach to Your Goals in the New Year

I saw this the other day…

I’m sure there’s no scientific studies backing up this fact, but it’s just kind of logical.

Here’s how I would utilize this concept. I would identify three areas I want to make progress in next year. Let’s say:

1. Writing a mystery book.

2. Learning bass guitar

3. Mastering a bottom deal (because I mistakenly think there’s some value in this skill).

And I would identify a daily task for each area that I can accomplish in about 20 minutes:

1. In 20 minutes, I can write a hastily written, unedited page of my book.

2. In 20 minutes, I can get in one lesson on my bass guitar learning app.

3. And in 20 minutes I can do a few hundred bottom deals.

If I’m consistent with these daily tasks, I will undoubtedly have made a lot of progress on all of these long-term goals. I will have at least a rough draft of a book, 365 bass lessons completed, and probably a pretty passable bottom deal.

Then I would recommend lumping these daily goals together where you create one daily “power hour” to work on these things.

I don’t know if this is counterintuitive or not, but I’ve found it easier to block out one larger period of time than three smaller ones. Even if they add up to the same amount of time. You might think it would be easier to find smaller gaps in your schedule to fill, but—for me, at least—it doesn’t work out that way. It’s just easier to prioritize one block of time, even if it’s longer. And you only have to get motivated to do it once per day, instead of three times.

You might say, “There’s no way I can find a free hour per day! I’m too busy!” Okay, well, tough luck I guess. Obviously, I’m not telling you to set an hour aside each day to work on some goals or projects if you literally don’t have an hour to do so. (But I bet you do.)

I’m just recommending consolidating your self-improvement or project time into one block. Even if the goals are unrelated. I find this helps you commit to all three and not let one or two drift away.

And setting a few goals to focus on for a year is a fun way to give the year structure and make it more memorable. “Ah 2025, that was the year I learned bass guitar, perfected a bottom deal, and wrote Joshua Jay, Boy Detective.”

Drawing Room Inceptions by Landon Stark

Today I’m sharing a trick from Landon Stark from his book, The Stark Contrast.

Landon is a magician in Dallas, Texas. His website makes the claim that he is the #1 magician in Dallas-Fort Worth. I don’t know how accurate that is. Marty Westerman (aka Hollywood the Clown) has a perfect 5 star average on GigSalad

Am I saying Marty is necessarily better than Landon?

Hey, I’m not saying anything. I think that 5-star average speaks for itself.

Landon has two books available. The Stark Arts, which is free on Penguin. And the Stark Contrast, which is free-ish, at $4.15.

Regarding the trick I’m sharing today, Landon writes:

Drawing Room Inceptions is a worker piece that I've been performing since George Bush was in office. Much like 9/11, you will never forget this trick. DRI isn’t the best trick of the book but definitely my favorite. Using an anachronistic toy that most people know, you can perform a variety of feats. 

As for other tricks from the book to highlight, he says:

More notable tricks from my book would be Candy Cigarettes. I love the simplicity of this pocket miracle. Shady is another banger of an effect that shouldn’t be overshadowed (pun intended).

Normally I would say, “If you like this trick, consider purchasing the full book.” But hell, the full book is $4.15. Even if you just find this trick mildly interesting, it’s probably worth picking up the full ebook at that price.

Drawing Room Inceptions

A Modern Twist on the Spirit Slates

The Trick:

A prediction is thought of, and a magician divines it using an etch-a-sketch.

History:

I was always a big fan of the parlor classic, chalk spirit slate but unless you are doing a seance or you're Steve Cohen (or both), it never really matched my style. I devised an anachronistic throwback using a favorite American toy, the Etch-a-sketch (or as I call it, the first iPad).

You will need:

• A standard etch-a-sketch (I bought mine at Walmart for $10)

• Wet erase pen

Setup:

For this example, let us say you forced a card or better yet, you “pre-showed” a celebrity name on a spectator to later be called out. A great source for preshow material is Before We Begin by Asi Wind. We will use Michael J. Fox for the explanation. You will write Michael J. Fox in large text on the face of the etch-a-sketch using the wet eraser marker.

You will then turn the nobs until it covers the letters. You should end up with a mess that camouflages the reveal word.

When you are ready for the reveal, all you do is shake the etch-a-sketch and the magnetic sand will clear leaving the dry erase markings.

[The self-restraint used to avoid making a Michael J Fox “shake” joke during this whole explanation is remarkable. If you thought of making a joke about his disability, then shame on you. Just shame.]

Additional ideas: I shared this concept with a close-up magician friend of mine, and he adapted it into his strolling set. Using a mini etch-a-sketch found at most novelty stores, you now have a pocket miracle. You can do the same effect that clips on your keychain.

Free Advertising Update

Here is how free advertising will work in the future for people with multi-trick book or video releases.

First, you identify a trick you're happy with me sharing on the site. The trick should:

a. Be something that's not available elsewhere online for free.

b. Be one of the better tricks or one of your favorite tricks from the book.

I'm not asking you to give away your best trick. Or even one of your top few tricks. But it behooves you to share something good. (And don't you want to be behooved?) First because it will get more eyes on the post. And second because we are framing this as "one of your best or favorite tricks" from the release. If what you're offering is something forgettable, or kind of a "throwaway" effect, then it's not going to reflect well on the overall release. I can bring the eyes and the focused attention to your release, but only you can make it look attractive to a potential buyer. Ultimately, the power of this "ad" is going to be on the strength of the trick you submit.

In addition to submitting a trick for posting, please answer the following questions. Write as much as you want, but only a sentence or two is needed.

1. What do you like so much about the trick you're sharing today?

2. What other tricks from the release do you want to draw special attention to?

Question 1 allows you to highlight the strengths of what you're sharing.

Question 2 can create some excitement and make people want to pick up your product.

If answering two questions is too much work for you... oh well. 🤷‍♂️ Look, I don't need these posts. I have plenty of content for the site. I offer this because I think it's a win-win-win for everyone involved. A free (hopefully good) trick for the readers, 1000s of eyes on your product that you might not get otherwise, and an easy posting day for me.

Tomorrow we will have our first taste of someone taking advantage of the new policy.

Indirectly Creepy

A point that I read multiple times in magic books and message boards in the past was about how the “perfect” card trick would be: They think of a card, and you name it. And the person who was writing the book or message board post would explain how good or bad a certain trick was based on how close it got to this “perfect” card trick.

That logic used to make sense to me, but I no longer believe it.

If you could really just name a card someone was thinking of, it would be interesting for about 80 seconds. After that point, what would your friends possibly think?

1. You have a very dumb and useless supernatural ability.

2. You have the ability to genuinely “read” what card people are thinking of, perhaps by picking up on subtle cues they’re giving. It’s not supernatural. But it’s also not that interesting after a few times. “Oh, I guess he can do that.” They’ll think.

3. There’s still some sort of trick to it.

Those are pretty much the three options they have. I’m sure there is some hypothetical situation where the absolutely most direct effect is the best. But as far as doing something entertaining or artistic for people, that’s almost never the case.

And because you don’t have true superpowers, the most direct effect is going to have some sort of explanation. And by going too direct, you can often lead people right to a solution.

Here’s an example of when being too direct doesn’t work..

It starts with a creepy thing a friend of mine was doing.

When he would be out somewhere at a coffee shop or bar or party (he’s in college), and he saw an attractive woman, he would sneakily take her picture.

Then he would use a site like facecheck.id to find that woman’s social media based on the picture he just took.

So now he had her name and some details about her.

He would then go and talk to her and mention he was trying to do this thing where he could determine people’s names just by looking in their eyes. Could he try it with her?

He’d stare in their eyes for a moment and say, “Diana,” or whatever.

They would be shocked for a second, but then say that he must have overheard it or asked someone or recognized her from somewhere or seen her online or something. It was too direct, so they came up with a direct solution.

So he tried to do something subtler, since he had her social media he could see what sort of food she liked or if she rooted for a particular team or something. Revealing this information worked better, but there was still a sense that he must have found out the information somewhere. And because this information was publicly available on her social media, it’s not a huge leap to think maybe somehow he found her page.

So still not great reactions.

I told him to use it as part of a two-phase one-ahead trick.

Introduce himself. Tell them about this thing he’s learning where he’s trying to pick up on people’s names, blah, blah, blah. Ask if they’re willing to let him try.

Say that he wants to start off with something easier, a number. “Can you think of like a 4-digit number for me? Like a pin code. It can be an actual one you’ve used in the past, but I’ll want you to share it with me in a moment, so feel free to just make one up.”

[One of the things I like about magic is just lying and spinning justifications depending on the trick. “Numbers are easier to pick up on. They’re more straightforward. They’re not clouded by emotional resonance, like letters and words,” may be true in one trick. “Numbers are more difficult to pick up on, because they don’t have the emotional resonance of letters and words,” might be my logic in another situation.]

He has her think of the number, and he takes her wrist and holds her hand over the table as he counts off the numbers, moving her hand into a different position for each number.

Then he writes something down and folds it up. “What was the number. 1566? Ahh… okay… I was close. But that’s good, that gives me an understanding of how your thoughts feel.”

Now he has her think of her name (or her pet’s name, or something else he creepily figured out). He repeats the wrist holding and moving the hand around while he recites the alphabet this time. Writes something down and folds that paper up too, placing it with the other piece.

“Okay, so what is your name?”

Diana

“Oh good. I wasn’t totally confident because I didn’t get the number just right….”

He grabs the pieces of paper up and unfolds the number one.

“I had 1568, not 1566."

Unfolds the other one.

“But I did get your name right. That was great. Thank you for helping. You’ve got a vibrant energy. Let me get your number and let’s fuck each other’s brains out sometime.”

That last line is not a direct transcription, but more my interpretation of how he’s hoping things will generally go.

But again, this is an example of indirectness creating a stronger trick. I think if he found a solid premise for this, it would be even better. But even just adding some process creates a stronger moment of magic than the direct version. The indirect version involves asking for more information, and writing something down, and not showing what you’re writing, and things we try to remove from our tricks. But it’s stronger. It gives the spectator more to get tangled up in, so they can’t just say, “I guess he overheard someone say my name.”

Yes, the “real” magician would point at the person and tell them their name. But you’re not a real magician. And using the “real magician” as a model in a world where they don’t exist is not actually beneficial in creating the strongest and most entertaining magic.