A Magician’s Guide to Exploiting Failure Pt. 2

In the last post I wrote about Magical Failures. These were failures of effect that still maintained a magic element.

There is a second style of failure I use often that has no magic to it. At least not in the short-term.

Here is my thinking behind it. When I discuss magic with laypeople and ask them about potential methods and things like that, they always assume—correctly—that the methods in magic are mechanical in some way. That is, that there are gimmicks or sleights that work in some sort of way that—if explained to them—would make sense with their understanding of physics and the world around them.

They will often assume a method is more clever or complicated than it really is, but they will rarely assume it’s something more fantastical than it really is, which is the direction I often want to push them. And I’ve found the best way to do this is through a trick that fails.

Here are some examples

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I place a coin from my right hand into my left fist. I turn so we’re standing side by side and I place my right hand on your shoulder as we focus on my left hand. My left hand squeezes and slowly opens finger by finger. “And the coin… is… gone…,” I say.

But it’s not. You can see it right there.

“What are you talking about?” you say.

“Can you see it?” I ask. “Dammit.”

That’s the end of the trick. I don’t “fix” my failure. I don’t do another trick. You’re left thinking: Wait… what did he think was going to happen? What did he expect me to see, if not the coin?” You’re left to consider what methods might exist that would involve the coin still being in my hand, but me thinking you wouldn’t be able to see it.

If you follow up with me, maybe I’ll say, “Pressure points. I’ve had it work on me and I thought I had it figured out. If you press right here,” I say, and point to a location near your shoulder where I rested my hand during the trick, “it can affect your perception of certain metals and other materials. I have to work on hitting the right spot.”

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I sit with my friend and bring out some objects belonging to my great-uncle. A notebook and a ring. I also remove my own ring. We light some candles and I tell her about my old gypsy uncle and this notebook that has a bunch of different… well…”spells” for lack of a better term, written in Romani. I want to try something with her.

I put my ring and my uncle’s ring on her palm and cover it with my own hand.

I read from the book in a language neither of us understand. When I’m done I lift my hand. Nothing has changed. The rings still just sit there.

“Ah. Hmmm,” I say. and look at the rings closely for any type of difference. “I don’t think it worked.”

That’s it. There is no follow-up trick. That’s the end of it. We tried this thing and it didn’t work.

My friend is left thinking, “How could he have possibly expected anything to happen? He studies magic. He reads up on these things. What has he experienced that made him think it was even possible that reading a passage from a book might affect anything?”

Four months later. After the holidays. I tell her I spoke to my aunt about that ritual we tried from my great-uncle’s book. “I have an idea why it didn’t work,” I say. We sit down with the book and the rings and the candles again. “We need your ring too,” I say. We add her ring to the other two in her palm. I cover it with my hand. I read the passages from the notebook. When I’m done I lift my hand and poke the rings a little. “Holy shit, it worked,” I say. I lift her ring from her palm, and attached to it are my uncle’s ring and my ring, in a three ring chain. It doesn’t last too long. After a moment, they’re separated (and free for her to examine) but there was definitely a point where it was clear as day that the three rings were linked.

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One of the faux-techniques I’ll mention frequently when I perform is “sleight of energy.” So maybe I’ll attempt a card-across style demonstration but nothing will happen.

“Eh, that sucks,” I’ll say. “But I kind of expected it. There’s a way to do similar tricks with, like, sleight-of-hand or trick cards and things like that. But they don’t look so good. This version uses a sleight-of-energy technique. I don’t really have it down yet, but it’s not possible to practice on your own, so thanks for helping me with it.”

Sleight-of-energy? What does that mean? I have no idea. I’m just trying to paint a world that includes more wondrous sounding methodologies. I do this all the time. I’ll “explain” how tricks I’m working on are done and casually refer to “techniques” like sensory substitution, memory hijacking, dimension shifting, and so on.

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What I’ve found is that failure can actually be stronger than success when it comes to getting someone to consider more incredible ideas. This is what I think is going on… If I tell you that I want to try an old gypsy ritual and at the end of it something amazing happens, you are likely to look at that ritual as part of the “theater” of the trick. That’s what tricks are… moments of theater, moments of fiction. But if I try an old gypsy ritual with you and nothing happens, then you don’t really know how to categorize that experience. It’s not presentation for a trick, because there was no trick. But why would I bother doing it if nothing was going to happen, unless I believed maybe something would happen? And if I believed something might happen, does that mean that I really believe in this old ritual? Why would I—as someone who studies this stuff—believe in that (or in energy manipulation, or in pressure points that blind you metals, or whatever unbelievable thing I’ve suggested)?

This isn’t the sort of thing that works in a vacuum. This is a tactic I use on people who see me perform with some regularity. If I tried it on someone I just met they’d just think I was a lunatic. It’s only when you’ve seen some strong magic from me in the past, and you know I’m proficient, that you say, “Well, I don’t know what was going on, and it didn’t make sense to me. But he seemed to think it would work and I know he knows what he’s doing. So… maybe there’s something to it?”

I can’t make you, a reasonable 21st century adult, believe in the idea that I’m some sort of wizard. But I believe it is possible to get your mind twisted around itself to the point where I can at least get you to consider that the methods behind these trick are significantly more strange and mysterious than you would have ever assumed. And for me that’s a worthwhile pursuit