One of the biggest sayings in magic is that a true magician never reveals their secrets. This has become taken at face value in our culture. Some people accept it for what it is, while others become frustrated. No matter your feelings on the matter, many accept it as an inevitability.
Many people do not bother to ask “why” this code exists. No, it is not to make the magician feel smarter or to hide some dark conspiracy from our patrons. Magicians simply recognize that keeping tricks a secret is the very reason why our trade is so entertaining.
The Battle between the Eyes and the Mind
When you watch a magician perform close up magic in Miami, you are trying to watch their hands to see what they are doing. No matter how hard you try, a skilled magician will always manage to surprise you with something unexpected.
The joy of magic comes from this moment of “revealing.” Audiences have built-in assumptions in their mind that certain things are impossible and cannot occur; yet here they are before your very eyes. You are being challenged to rethink how your internal logic process works, no longer accepting that things are as simple as they appear.
This conflict between what your eyes are seeing and what your brain has taught you all your life provides the true heart of magic’s entertainment capability. Magicians are not just performing a stunt, which is over as soon as it is done. The audience is left with a lingering sense of wonder, trying to discover how the feat was accomplished.
Spoiling the Fun
The human brain’s natural sense of curiosity and desire to make sense of things is tickled and teased during displays of magic. This is one of the prime reasons that magicians remain so popular.
The magician is using deft movements and performance techniques to make you think that something is occurring when it really is not. You become so focused on the reality that the magician provides, you have difficulty thinking of alternate scenarios.
The whole point of magic is to have the effect be a surprise, something wondrous that cannot be recreated on a daily basis. Much like a comedian’s punchlines, these reveals must be well-paced and unexpected in order to achieve the desired effect on the audience.
So, for all these reasons, trust a magician when he or she says, “you are better off not knowing.”
To see how a magician can captivate an entire room, take a look at Mio’s video section.