Cracking Magic—Part 2: Archive Structure

Let’s take a look at this mon­ster called the Archive. You are going to build one from scratch. Much bet­ter than wast­ing time try­ing to get an over­view of the mess you already have. This will be your new archive, rep­res­ent­ing your new life as a mage. And you will want to build it right from the start.

It needs to be a work­ing archive. So you need a sys­tem that is easy to use and struc­tured. Noth­ing in there that is just dead weight. The sim­pler the sys­tem the bet­ter. The basic idea with this new archive is to focus on sim­pli­city and ease of use. There is noth­ing wrong with the stuff you already have, but for­get about it for the moment. Pre­tend you don’t have it.

I will describe things the way I do them. This sys­tem has evolved after much exper­i­ment­a­tion with mixed res­ults. This cur­rent sys­tem works very well for me, but feel free to change it as much as you like. It is flex­ible. I divide the archive into three sec­tions: know­ledge, props and skills. Each sec­tion requires a dif­fer­ent approach. This is where I store everything that comes along the way.

Knowledge

Here we have everything that has to do with inform­a­tion. Prin­ted mater­ial, digital mater­ial, per­sonal notes, his­tor­ical stuff. Any­thing that can be clas­si­fied as know­ledge about magic.

Props

The title says it all. Here we organ­ise the phys­ical accessor­ies we need for our magic: tricks, gim­micks, ward­robe, trans­port­a­tion, addi­tional mater­ial, tools and replace­ment mater­ial. Everything you need to prac­tice your magic.

Skills

This is not a phys­ical stor­age space. This is your col­lec­tion of routines, moves, tricks, feints, pat­ter, gags and routines that you can (or want to) per­form. It is what you can already do. This archive shows where you stand as a per­form­ing magician.

It also needs to be organ­ised, as some tech­niques may need con­stant refresh­ing (memo deck, sleight of hand, remem­ber­ing set-ups, etc.) and some sleight of hand tech­niques need to be kept ‘sharp’. To learn a new tech­nique, some plan­ning and organ­isa­tion is essential.

Your archive should allow you to cre­ate small acts, routines and tricks with the mater­ial you already have (or the range of magic tech­niques you have at your dis­posal). It should allow you to assemble, prac­tise and per­form them without wast­ing time. It per­son­al­ises the archive for your skills, equip­ment and interests in magic.