Listen, Bartlett, this is about magicians helping magicians. I'm offering a little advice from quite a bit of experience- that's all. If you don't want to take my advice- don't. Why bother posting if there is no intention of positivity behind it?

Jaz wrote:


That was beautiful, man! Sheer poetry!

:light:

But this is a hobby of mine, shattering illusions. Hey, they've got to learn sometime.

As some of you know, I also have a screen name "AmazedWiz". The Wiz might claim some skill, but the Amazed part is pure magic. No one is more amazed than I am.

Bob Sanders
Magic By Sander

You are truly amazing to everyone, Bob.

I just now read your response to my last comment. Sorry it took so long.


What positive advice are you providing, and what magicians are you helping with all your blabbering?

So many interesting posts in this thread, it's hard to jump in.

Julius Heuscher (A psychiatric study of Fairy Tales) and later on Bruno Bettelheim wrote about the secret significance of Fairy Tales. Why so? Because fairy tales carry universal values for human beings. This is why our friend here in an earlier post said he had changed one of his students into a toad. How many teachers do symbolically change their students into toads with down bringing statements (I'm not claiming that our friend did)

Mythologies teach us similar values. Christians symbolically claim that knowledge of material things kills our souls but that it can resurrect by the love of others. Joseph Campbell who studied the symbolism in religions claimed comparable things when he advised George Lucas in the Star War series. Sigmund Freud represented impulses with symbols (sometimes taken from the mythology) like the Oedipus complex. Psychologists after him decipher dreams to help other human beings.

All of this to say that there are no difference between a meaningful patter and a fairy tale or a religious text: they all directly or indirectly address our guilt of being finite in an infinite world and being mortals in a seemingly eternal order.

We need to believe that somehow a part of us defeats death (directly after our death or symbolically during our life): it's a human impulse. It has nothing to do with ethics.

Our magic aims at leading people to bring in their imagination to share, for the time of a show, the dream that whatever symbols they need to feel good, could actually exists and be read at the first degree.

They know it's not true, but who cares? We all need to symbolically defeat death somehow. The philosopher George Bataille wrote mammoth work about this. What we offer is "yes let's dream that it would actually be true"

Whit is right: at the end we shouldn't push them into a belief or a disbelief. It's not our role. Jonathan is also right: if we push them into a belief, we are charlatans because we know the ways we use to actually illustrate our sharing of a dream. Our role is to supply a relief: here Bill Palmer's arguments are right. It's called entertainment.

When we cut a rope and restore it, we illustrate resurrection: we share with the people that it would feel good to destroy destruction. If a solid goes through a solid, we claim that there are no valid obstacles to the dreams we share with the audience. When we link rings...

The reason why people believe into something (whatever it is) is that it helps them live better. By symbolically letting them see the symbol live, we supply something precious. It doesn't make the lay people retarded: their imagination and their rampant beliefs supplies 50% of the dream we trigger in three dimensions. Entertainment is achieve when we succeed taking them into that dream, more than when we demonstrate with our skill that we can do it.

This is called audience involvement and any magician with a tiny bit of experience can explain that it has more impact than just a demonstration by the performer.

So Magicfish, I think that you are right. Maybe not in the way your started this thread but IMHO it is not our role to dismantle what helps people live better (even if we think we know better) it's to enhance it, sharing it for a while by representing it as if it was possible but keeping Whit Haydn approach.

Sorry for being that long, but I couldn't say it shorter.



Bill,
I know you like history and you know that I made my fortune in oil and shipping
Uri Geller convinced a wealthy oil family that his "powers" were enabling him to detect oil fields. When you know the price of dry holes, you understand that these people were soon ruined by his dishonest or mythomaniac claims.

There is a court case and it is publicly available in United States. From the post above, you understand (and you knew it already) that I don't think that mentalists are dishonest. Some magicians use their skills for shoplifting: that's dishonest. Some use it to cheat at cards. Some use it for street pickpocketting... It doesn't make us all, magicians, dishonest.

It's just a fact that our community is not immune against charlatans and thieves who use the powers we develop (skill, misdirection...) for what our society considers immoral. Not any more now than before in history (remember Cagliostro), not any more than any other art (fake paintings, and fake sculptures do exist).



Hi Whit
This would explain it pretty well (I think)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af1OxkFOK18