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Does Secrecy Hurt Magic?

secrets hurt magic.jpg

Fooling Houdini author Alex Stone is asked on PsychologyToday.com if secrecy is either helpful or harmful to magic.

His answer:

Do you think the emphasis on secrecy among magicians is helpful or harmful to the practice of magic?

I think it’s ultimately harmful, because it alienates the audience and sets up an adversarial relationship between the performer and the spectator. Plus if feels outdated and fruitless, given that we live in an age of increasingly free information. If you can learn how to built a robot while watching a dog ride a unicycle online, you can probably find out a lot of magic tricks are done.

Stone is an easy target for many magicians as his book has been maligned by a few boldfaced names in this industry. And he’s made part of his career as “the guy who got kicked out of the Society of American Magicians for telling secrets”.

But, is there something to this?

Or consider this angle: forget laymen. Is secrecy shaming harmful to the recruiting of new magicians? Ones that will continue to grow and keep this art vital for the next several decades.

Posted by Editor on Friday, October 12th, 2012 at 10:28 am.

  • http://www.facebook.com/the0Mad0Hatter Magnus Asbjorn

    I don’t feel that secrecy helps or hinders magic in the grand scheme of things. But the shaming does, not just the secrecy shaming but all the shaming. Shaming and criticizing people does not help them grow, it sets them in a defensive mode and makes them more likely to continue to do what ever you’re shaming them for.

  • Tim Ellis

    Magic can still be entertaining if the audience knows how it’s done (why else would audiences of magicians go to magic conventions?)

    But consider this: When I first started performing ‘Healed & Sealed’ at magic clubs and conventions, magicians told me they didn’t want to know how it was done as they experienced that long forgotten feeling of wonder. The feeling they had before they became magicians and learned the secrets.

    THAT is the feeling our audiences should be allowed to experience at a magic show.

    If they know how the trick is done, they may be entertained by the performance and impressed by the skill, but they will NOT have that sense of wonder that we enjoy when we haven’t got a single clue as to how a trick was done.

  • SNOW

    I could get long-winded here. I’ll spare you all. But, yeah, I think it does hurt magic overall. In light of recent space coverage by WeirdThings and the SpaceX launch, lets use that as an example; could space advance without standing on the shoulders of the minds before? no. Magicians are not being secretive to the public, they are being secretive among themselves. If magicians were trying to desperately protect the public from spoiling their experience, would they be creating effects and publishing them on Youtube, their websites and iTricks? What about the books published on method? Band together. Advance each other. The public that pays for tickets and actually attends a magic show does NOT spend their evenings searching the internet trying to learn method. Magic and method is only a big deal to magicians; to the public it is a night out of entertainment…end of. Focus on advancing the art.

  • HAL

    @DVCPRO:disqus I’m not a magician, but I want to know how EVERY trick is done. The good ones I can’t figure out. I FINALLY figured out Monti’s 3 card trick. It never should have taken me so long. I made the mistake of looking for the wrong method. Felt like a real dummy.