Eng­lish Art­icles

On my re­cent lec­ture tour, I spent a won­der­ful even­ing after the lec­ture din­ing with my friends. Sud­denly a small dis­cus­sion about Denis Behr’s new full even­ing pro­gram came up. Some guys had seen it already, and the talk was about Denis’ open­ing ef­fect, which seemed …

The Goz­intha Box in­ven­ted by Lub­or Fiedler is ac­tu­ally a bril­liant in­ven­tion. Un­for­tu­nately, it has not been giv­en as much at­ten­tion and love as it de­serves. In real­ity, this feat is not that easy to per­form, and the hand­ling needs to be prac­tised very care­fully. It is …

If you’re aim­ing to in­fuse a sense of genu­ine an­tiquity into your present­a­tion ma­ter­i­als – wheth­er it be an old-style let­ter con­tain­ing cards, akin to those used in the Gipsy Curse, or per­haps a cal­en­dar re­sem­bling an an­cient leath­er-bound tome – here’s my proven meth­od for …

As a ma­gi­cian, I’m usu­ally re­luct­ant to re­veal the secrets of my craft to fel­low con­jur­ers, pre­fer­ring to keep these mys­ter­ies close to my chest. How­ever, giv­en my prom­ise to you, I’ll make an ex­cep­tion this time. While I have a gen­er­al fond­ness and re­spect for …

Sub­tleties are fine in ma­gic routines, but they will not al­ways work as in­ten­ded. Much de­pends on the audi­ence’s level of at­ten­tion and in­tel­li­gence, and their in­terest and fo­cus on the per­form­ance. So you can­’t al­ways be sure that the sub­tleties in a routine will work. Some­times …

  The new year has waved its ma­gic wand and cata­pul­ted us all into the next round. I hope you all had a ma­gic­al end to the hol­i­days and are ready for what’s to come. Well, my own end of the year was rather … let’s call it …

  R.I.P. With him, ma­gic has lost one of the ma­jor cre­at­ive forces and an out­stand­ing per­former, cre­at­or, his­tor­i­an and am­bas­sad­or of the art of ma­gic. A truly out­stand­ing, ori­gin­al per­former and per­son­al­ity. Thank you for all you have giv­en to us. You will live on in our memor­ies forever.   ~~~o …

An in­tro­duct­ory present­a­tion for the Fred Kaps $11 Bill Trick: First tell the old story about the res­taur­ant and the 3 guests. The bill for the 3 cus­tom­ers is $30. Each pays $10. Later, in the kit­chen, the own­er ex­plains that the bill is ac­tu­ally only …

One thing that sad­dens me when I see con­tests at (many) ma­gic con­ven­tions : the tables of the close-up, card ma­gic and par­lour cat­egor­ies. How of­ten have we seen a simple, plain table dec­or­ated with an ugly piece of ma­ter­i­al? “At­tached to the table with gaf­fer tape, …

It is some­times dif­fi­cult for Eng­lish speak­ers to pro­nounce Itali­an or Span­ish names cor­rectly (as it is for us Ger­mans!). Re­cently I was do­ing some re­search and had to go through some of Rober­to’s pub­lic­a­tions. Of­ten I heard his name mis­pro­nounced in the in­tro­duc­tions. This may …

In the past years, the SO (stand­ing ova­tion) seems to have be­come a “reg­u­lar” at ma­gic con­ven­tions. The most re­cent ex­ample is the FISM in Busan. Wit­tus Witt re­marked on his blog that maybe this FISM-con­­ven­­tion will enter his­tory as the “con­ven­tion of the stand­ing ova­tions”. A …

It is not un­com­mon to see the phrase “easy to per­form” used in ad­vert­ise­ments for ma­gic items. As some of my re­search in the ma­gic com­munity has shown, the ma­jor­ity of ma­gi­cians (am­a­teurs and pro­fes­sion­als alike) are at­trac­ted to ad­vert­ise­ments that use this or sim­il­ar copy. Un­der­stand­able, …

In re­cent years, there seems to have been a trend in the ma­gic of ad­vert­ising: the way in which ad­vert­ising copy is worded. More and more of­ten we read words and sen­tences like these: “This will fry your brain!” “This is a killer ef­fect!” “Des­troy them with this!” “This will …

One of the in­ter­est­ing things for me is to ana­lyze my buy­ing habits. As most of us, I went through the te­di­ous pro­cess of be­ing re­mote con­trolled by the deal­ers’ cata­logues, the ads in the magazines and, of course, the in­ter­net and their on­line shops. After be­ing …

Re­cently I ac­quired a very in­ter­est­ing read: John Naish’s book ‘Enough’. It’s main top­ics are about get­ting the idea of ‘hav­ing enough’. Whilst be­ing a ‘non-ma­­gic’ book, it is a very in­spir­ing and thought pro­vok­ing read for us ma­gi­cians, who are fa­cing the same prob­lems of over-sat­ur­a­­tion, …

People like giz­mos and gad­gets. So do I. The cra­zi­er, the bet­ter. I want to share with you my one of my ’idea techniques’.The photo shows my typ­ic­al idea work­space. I use the light­bulb, which ac­tu­ally is a con­tain­er with a screw­able lid. This is al­ways …

Script­ing is very im­port­ant for ma­gic. It is an art for it­self and de­pends largely on good ideas and nov­el slants story wise. When writ­ing a script for a ma­gic trick, it is some­times not so easy to find an ef­fect­ive in­tro line. Some­times a ques­tions can …

One of the most im­port­ant things for a prop­er the­at­ric­al per­form­ance piece in ma­gic (or Men­tal­ism) is the plot. Many routines lack of a plot. They seem like a use­less demon­stra­tion of clev­er prin­ciples, de­signed and put to­geth­er to show­case the performer’s clev­erness, dex­ter­ity or ‘skill’ …

It is the little things that really make the dif­fer­ence. This post is to make you aware (or re­mind you, if you have for­got­ten) of some bril­liant ana­lys­is and think­ing by As­canio re­gard­ing the Ham­man Count. Usu­ally this count is done in a steady rhythm: 1 — 2 …

Since my youth I was ad­dicted to the ‘cut­ting the aces’ by Dai Ver­non (see Stars of Ma­gic). Es­pe­cially when I learned of the the­at­ric­al present­a­tion of PUNX, which is de­scribed in his book ‘Set­zt euch zu mein­en Füßen’. What a gem! But then the meth­od was …

From time to time ques­tions like these arise: “What makes a good cre­at­or and how can you be­come aware of them?” I faced this ques­tion quite a few times. The an­swer is quite dif­fi­cult (or was). Mean­while, I an­swer with cita­tions from the Bible: “By their fruits you …

If we be­lieve re­search­ers and sci­ent­ists, we all have the mind of a mon­key. This ana­logy, slightly hu­mor­ous though it may be, is ac­tu­ally an in­ter­est­ing one. Con­sider that we have around forty thou­sand sep­ar­ate thoughts each day, many of them on the same top­ic. As ma­gi­cians, thoughts …

Whilst watch­ing the ex­plan­a­tion of Ru­biales’ geni­us ‘Blind­side Deck’, this idea oc­curred to me. You might find it in­ter­est­ing to play around with. The BSD is set-up as fol­lows: 26 cards from Ed­die Joseph­’s Pre­mon­i­tion deck (bank 1), 26 cards (bank 2). A blue deck set-up with 51 …

Cuando Len­nart Green pub­licó su ru­tina comer­cial lla­mada ‘Stolen Cards’, res­ultó ser un éxito in­me­di­ato en el mundo de la car­to­ma­gia. Como muchos, com­pré in­me­di­ata­mente el juego. Sin su in­ven­ción y su ru­tina, esta hu­milde ofrenda no ex­i­stiría. El truco es muy fuerte y bastante fá­cil de …

I will take the right to write a few ran­dom words on my blog. I chose the word ‘en­thymemata’, which is Lat­in and sort of trans­lates into: thoughts, point of view, re­flec­tions. Cool word and a fit­ting one to de­scribe what you will read on this …

This is my ver­sion of the clas­sic ‘Di­ary Ef­fect’ as in­ven­ted by Ted Dan­son. It was in­spired by and is loosely based on ideas by Patrick Page, Ed­die Joseph, Mark Els­don, Mike Born­stein, Richard Web­ster and Bob Cas­sidy. I wrote up the work­ings of this in …

Many ma­gi­cians are very fond of Juan Tam­ar­iz’s bril­liant routine “Neither Blind Nor Silly”, pub­lished in his won­der­ful book SONATA. I did it for a very long time and still use it as de­scribed for lay people. What an ef­fect this trick has! I some­times do it …

Do you re­mem­ber the old trick, where two glasses are placed with the open­ings down onto a clear glass plate (or a book), which is then turned over with the glasses be­ing ap­par­ently sus­pen­ded in mid air? I al­ways liked the trick, be­cause of its sim­pli­city and …

Robert Har­bin’s ‘Card in Bottle’ is a ter­rif­ic trick. I ab­so­lutely love Mar­tin Lewis’ bril­liant adaption/method for do­ing it. The only wee little draw­back is that it de­mands the use of a black­out table to get rid of the empty bottle. For a long time I …

Re­cently, Bob Ostin’s ven­er­able switch­ing device re­ceived an up­date and was re­vamped by a prom­in­ent ma­gic fact­ory. I am a big fan of Bob’s gim­mick and have been us­ing it for a few dec­ades now, switch­ing in and out vari­ous items, from bil­lets to bills to …

In the ma­gic com­munity ar­rises from time to time the top­ic of ‘be­ing a cre­at­or’ or ‘cre­ations’. So – time to take a short look at what cre­ation, cre­at­ors or ‘be­ing cre­at­ive’ could mean. If we look it up in the dic­tion­ary, the res­ults will be some­what …

Re­cently visu­al­ist Will Tsai per­formed his ver­sion of the Mat­rix ef­fect on AGT. As it could be fore­seen, it got a tre­mend­ous re­ac­tion on the vari­ous so­cial me­dia and ma­gic for­ums. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7wrfzpjf9U The main point of dis­cus­sion is without a doubt the ques­tion wheth­er this routine could or …

This is a little ex­tra for an ACR, that can be used be­fore re­veal­ing that the card rose up to the top. To be­gin with, the am­bi­tious card is on top (without the spec­tat­ors know­ing this, of course). The per­former shows the top three cards not …

When Len­nart Green put out his com­mer­cial routine called ‘Stolen Cards’, it proved to be an im­me­di­ate hit in the card ma­gic world. Like many, I im­me­di­ately bought a set. Without his in­ven­tion and routine, this humble of­fer­ing would­n’t ex­ist. The trick is a very strong one …

Spring flowers have been a top­ic in ma­gic for more than 100 years. Ever since Buati­er de Kolta in­ven­ted them, they have been a fixed com­pon­ent in magician’s rep­er­toires. It is sad that the flowers avail­able from deal­ers look just out­right crappy and cheap. One source I …

Ma­gi­cians tend to over-eval­­u­ate the im­port­ance of per­fec­tion. They try to achieve per­fec­tion in their tricks and moves, and most of the times some­thing oth­er very im­port­ant (present­a­tion) falls be­hind. Ever since Dai Ver­non brought that ›per­fec­tion‹ to the at­ten­tion of ma­gi­cians, this mys­ter­i­ous thing cir­cu­lated …

This pro­ject is loosely based on the BURNERS series, which I pub­lished in Ger­man lan­guage. The books will en­able ac­cess to my ma­ter­i­al for the Eng­lish speak­ing world. Be­sides some scattered sets of lec­ture notes, a few is­sues of the SCRAPBOOK magazine and a few DVDs, …

Fi­nally, I found a ring that is per­fectly suited for these count­less ring/rope routines. Fi­nally a ring the spec­tat­ors will re­cog­nize and know what it is! On­stage, I could ima­gine even us­ing the li­on’s head as a deco, re­mov­ing the ring, do the routine and re­pla­cing …

Com­par­ing the past and the present times, it seems the magician’s scene is more and more dom­in­ated by trends. I see people get­ting heav­ily in­volved into pro­du­cing and pro­mot­ing busker’s pouches and com­plete ‘busk­ers’ out­fits (from table to pouch to cups to wand). I see more and more …

In the past years there has been a re­viv­al of the ‘ma­gic’ with a Rubik’s Cube. More and more clev­er meth­ods to do vari­ous ef­fects with it. The craze once again star­ted … For me, the cube has al­ways been a toy. A soph­ist­ic­ated one, but still …

This one really changed my life and at­ti­tude to­wards the work with a thumb tip and any fol­ded slips of pa­per or bills in­side it. It is what I would call a clas­sic­al ‘hack’.  The main prob­lem for me was that of­ten I couldn’t re­trieve the …

Daniel Madis­on’s video­clip makes the rounds and it seems that more and more card men dis­agree or laugh at it. I like Daniel Madis­on. He is him­self and unique. And I like the clips he puts out. Very en­ter­tain­ing. He is the best Daniel Madis­on there …

Here is an in­ter­est­ing and thought-pro­­vok­ing art­icle you should read be­fore go­ing into my ram­blings: http://blog.simplease.at/2014/02/dont-please-your-clients/ Good thought, right? For a de­sign­er, this is simply a truth. The qual­ity of the re­la­tion­ship customer/designer de­pends on how good the de­sign­er is find­ing out what the cus­tom­er really needs. In ma­gic, …

This is quite a good say­ing that someone re­minded me of some time ago. I have been think­ing about it really hard. I’m talk­ing about what to do in ma­gic in these times, and what to pub­lish and share with the ma­gic com­munity and how to do that. After …

In the past years I star­ted to watch care­fully oth­er ma­gi­cians’ se­lec­tions of tricks that they per­form in their shows. No mat­ter where I looked, again and again I saw the same tricks (at least here in Ger­many, Aus­tria and Switzer­land): Chop Cup (Paul Daniels style), float­ing …

Does go­ing to the Black­pool Con­ven­tion, drink­ing in the Ruskins, so­cial­iz­ing, mak­ing one’s ego big in front of oth­ers, chat­ting bull­shit to oth­er guys, hanging around and shar­ing use­less card moves really im­prove your ma­gic? Or maybe does it only charge up the ego? When you at­tend the …

Re­cently, I was watch­ing the You­Tube clip of Dav­id Roth’s per­form­ance on the Penn & Tell­er show. I was in­ter­ested in see­ing his hand­ling of the open ser­vante. A glance at the pic­ture will tell you that the dir­ect­ors of the show made my stud­ies very …

I am re­flect­ing on the mag­ni­fi­cent ma­gi­cians and people who brought all that joy to my life. Without them, I would­n’t be what I am. Par­tic­u­larly, I would like to ex­press my sin­cerest thanks to Mr. Dav­id Roth. When I was a young­ster, his coin work shaped …

The clas­sic three shell game is a strong fa­vour­ite of mine. All those years I was strug­gling to find a nice and prac­tic­al way to trans­port the props. No fi­nally, I found it. The solu­tion is a simple leath­er pouch, which is used to carry pen­cils and …

The idi­ot is me, by the way. Be­cause I re­peatedly for­get in Ver­non’s great trick ‘Emo­tion­al Re­ac­tion’ with the key card (see In­ner Secrets of Card Ma­gic), wheth­er the card on the left or the card on the right is the spec­tat­or’s chosen card. I sim­pli­fied …

Some­times I like to chal­lenge my­self (or, in fact, I am chal­lenged by someone) with a par­tic­u­lar prob­lem. How can I make the per­former ap­pear in a close-up theat­er? This sounds easy, but it is not. I have found some in­ter­est­ing solu­tions, which I will ex­plain …

Just re­ceived Dia­mond Jim Tyler­’s new Omni Deck from Wolfgang Wollet (thank you for the light­ing fast de­liv­ery). Great thing! Scares me to death only look­ing at it, not to talk about hav­ing it in my hands! It looks so scary that I would­n’t want to per­form …

It was­n’t long after Dav­id Cop­per­field and Kev­in James pop­ular­ized the ‘Snow’ ef­fect that soon just about every­one was do­ing it. If your goal is to look like every oth­er ma­gi­cian, fol­low the herd. If your goal is to define your own ma­gic­al ex­per­i­ence, run away …

The di­ary ef­fect is a clas­sic for many reas­ons. I like it, but many of the ex­ist­ing meth­ods are a bit com­plic­ated. This changed when Patrick Page showed me his Good Old Moore’s Di­ary trick. Here was the per­fect solu­tion for walk-around work. Noth­ing to re­mem­ber, …

In the past years I ob­served that quite a lot of ma­gi­cians were search­ing for ref­er­ence ma­ter­i­al on mis­dir­ec­tion. Here I of­fer a col­lec­tion of book sources. The books lis­ted be­low have helped me most and shaped my think­ing about mis­dir­ec­tion. These books should get you …

I ab­so­lutely hate writ­ing about this, but then we live in a mod­ern world, where copy­ing stuff is the nor­mal thing to do. I was ripped-off so many times that I don’t want to count any­more. I am sick of it. But re­cently I learned of an­oth­er …

Now at the be­gin­ning of a year, I al­ways make my notes of all the dif­fer­ent lec­ture tours in Ger­many. 2017 will be a year like nev­er be­fore. The MZvD (Ma­gic Circle Ger­many), and some private lec­ture tour or­gan­isers, put up a sched­ule which is ri­dicu­lous! This …

I don’t jump on a new one-trick pony too of­ten, but this one really baffled (and fooled) me. Check out the video trail­er, make up your mind and down­load it. It is really good and a fun trick to do. I am go­ing to in­cor­por­ate this into …

There are more book tests in ma­gic than ma­gi­cians are will­ing to buy. The num­ber of dif­fer­ent sys­tems and edi­tions is stag­ger­ing. I have had my fair share: M.O.A.B., Flash­back, Codex‑X, you name it. All of them are good, but some of them de­pend on pre­pared books. …

Not so long ago the concept of the bul­let Journ­al came to the aware­ness of many people which had used the clas­sic Filo­fax time man­age­ment sys­tems. It was­n’t long and the thing cre­ated a real hype on the in­ter­net, a lot of people for­get­ting the ma­jor idea …

I for­got how many times ma­gi­cians have asked me that ques­tion in the past 25 years. It seems there is some­thing mys­ter­i­ous about that old book. The an­swer to that post’s title is: Yes, ab­so­lutely! What – a $2.00 book that is pub­lic do­main and old-fash­ioned? Yes, ab­so­lutely! But then …

Some guys wondered about the sub­title of this blog. The ex­pres­sion ’90% of everything is crap’ is the well-known Sturgeon’s Law (or Sturgeon’s Rev­el­a­tion). The reas­on I use it is be­cause I find Daniel Dennett’s work quite in­ter­est­ing and I think in mod­ern ma­gic it holds true …

Jan Gallo’s Osaka Bills is one hell of a fun trick, and a prac­tic­al one, too. If you don’t have it yet, do your­self the fa­vour and get it. It is worth hav­ing that one in your ar­sen­al of ma­gic­al weapons. But buy it from the ori­gin­at­or, as …

I don’t do table-hop­ping any­more, ex­cept in an emer­gency. But when I was do­ing this, here is a little strategy that is easy to make, doesn’t cost a lot and is really fun to per­form. This gets all your props in a handy case, sup­plies an …

When I was work­ing for the ZZM (Za­uberzen­t­rale München) with Har­old Voit, one of the main tricks to be learned and demon­strated for the cus­tom­ers was Ken Brooke’s “Chase the Ace”: the one with the three jumbo cards with the false in­dices: Ace, Two and Three. I …

Ma­gi­cians are proud of their his­tory, the whole looooong story .… We cher­ish the old stuff, but wrongly. We still per­form, like apes im­it­at­ing each oth­er, the same lame stuff. One copy­ing the oth­er, in the hope to get the same strong re­ac­tions from the lines, jokes …

I don’t know when it happened and how. But it happened. At one time, many of the lec­tur­ers on the cir­cuit star­ted to per­form card tricks (on the table top). I have noth­ing against it (I like card tricks), but I had a prob­lem: ac­tu­ally see­ing …

Re­cently I found some­thing in­ter­est­ing. The Con­jur­ing Arts Cen­ter sells some tiny TEATCT edi­tions, which look like mini­ature bibles. Great. The main idea is two-fold. Many times I was asked by the spec­tat­ors, how I learned all those tricks. Now, by hav­ing this little book with me, …

After the elec­tions in the USA, we have a dif­fer­ent situ­ation com­ing. I don’t want to go into the polit­ic­al de­bate, that is not my busi­ness as a Ger­man. But it is nice that this Mr. Trump is in the spot­light and so prom­in­ent now, be­cause …

  Re­cently I sub­scribed to the chess web­site «Ti­ger Chess» by GM Nigel Dav­ies. My thoughts were two-fold: I want to im­prove in my chess and looked for a sort of «course» that was con­struc­ted on a longterm basis. A sol­id train­ing plan. Secondly, I wanted to …

This new gim­mick has ar­rived in our headquar­ters. Well, I write re­views only rarely, but will do on this one. At least, this is a 70 € in­vest­ment. First, take a look at the trail­er: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kKinJV1YlE Ba­sic­ally, this is an in­dex sys­tem con­cealed in a card case. The …

When do­ing the se­lec­tion pro­cess for the ma­ter­i­al in your archive, it is of enorm­ous help of hav­ing a check­list with the most im­port­ant ques­tions about the item to be ad­ded. This list is op­tim­ized for the cas­u­al per­former and hob­by­ist, the pros will have their …

I re­mem­ber well when about 18 years ago, I wanted to open a small theatre of my own, where close-up ma­gic was per­formed even­ing after even­ing. A few years later I was help­ing a fel­low ma­gi­cian with his show and I sug­ges­ted per­form­ing close-up ma­gic at …

Just saw this on Face­book, lovely pic­ture of a street per­former por­tray­ing ob­vi­ously a ma­gi­cian. He is dressed like a ma­gi­cian with top hat and tail­coat and holds some the tools of our trade in the hands … maybe he ac­tu­ally IS a ma­gi­cian? Now this is really …

When I watch videos of ma­gi­cians (es­pe­cially close-up­­pers) on the net, there is one thing that is an­noy­ing to me: the con­stant snap­ping of their fin­gers, when a ma­gic­al mo­ment is about to hap­pen. Sure, we are used to quite a lot of silly “ma­gic­al ges­tures” …

All ten years or so I de­cide to cre­ate a “new” act. This time it will be a ma­nip­u­lat­ive act for the small stage/parlor. In my past I had already some ex­per­i­ence with a ma­nip­u­la­tion act. I al­ways was fond of this branch of ma­gic. With …

Re­cently I at­ten­ded a con­ven­tion here in Ger­many (the preselec­tions for the Ger­man Mas­ter­ships) and I watched with an­ti­cip­a­tion the con­test – es­pe­cially the genre ma­nip­u­la­tions. And there it was again: the old Bil­liard Ball Trick. Well, it is a clas­sic, and (maybe due to the …

Re­cently I read in some of those really old books in ma­gic. In the volume “Tricks for Every­one” by Dav­id Devant (pub­lished in 1909!), he de­scribes a lovely quick trick with a ruler. The moves and the van­ish look like the well-known “Flip Stick Move”, as a …

Les pré­par­at­ifs et voy­ages pour la tournée de con­férences en Es­pagne ont oc­cupé tout mon temps libre, de sorte que le blog a été en quelque sorte nég­ligé. Mal­gré tout — en ce mo­ment je suis en tournée en Es­pagne, je montre ici pour la première …

Our ma­gic in­dustry is gov­erned by the ma­gic deal­ers. Ima­gine a (ma­gic) world without our deal­ers. It would be drear­ily and bor­ing. Only half the fun. But also, with the deal­ers came the trade-spe­­ci­f­ic copy. They de­veloped it al­most into an art form of de­ceiv­ing the pro­spect­ive cus­tom­er. …

Siendo cada vez más y más bom­bardeado por las nuevas co­sas y las es­trategi­as de mar­ket­ing de in­ter­net (y los in­ter­nautas) me surge una pre­gunta. Hab­lando acerca de ma­gia, por supuesto. Los video clips per­fecta­mente real­iz­a­dos,  todo a un cierto niv­el de pro­duc­ción es lo es­tándar …

Be­ing bom­barded by new things and the mar­ket­ing strategies of the internet(eers) more and more, a ques­tion ar­rises. Speak­ing about ma­gic, of course. Per­fectly made video clips, all in a cer­tain level of pro­duc­tion is the stand­ard these days. We all got used to that. The design, …

This and the fol­low­ing art­icles should be of some help in mak­ing prop­er se­lec­tions. Of course, it must be un­der­stood that the tricks and books I will sug­gest are purely my per­son­al opin­ion and your taste may vary. Don’t for­get, this is writ­ten with the cas­u­al …

After hav­ing pre­pared everything from the hard­ware side, it is time to tackle the ma­ter­i­al it­self. The first thing in my opin­ion is to be able to prop­erly se­lect ma­ter­i­al, or some­times to de-se­lect ma­ter­i­al. There­fore, I changed the former art­icle “The Bull­shit List” into this …

The hard­ware is be­ing ex­pan­ded by some very im­port­ant tools … Hav­ing men­tioned in the last art­icle already that the com­puter is not my most im­port­ant tool for the archive, here is one of the most im­port­ant tools (be­sides the brain, of course): note­books. Not the elec­tron­ic …

Now that we have the little note­book or whatever ready for use, it is time to get some struc­ture onto it. Here is the sys­tem I have been us­ing for years and it proved to func­tion per­fectly. The whole thing is to make the amount of sub­folders …

Gedanken von Robert Stach­er Sem­in­are, Work­shops, Su­per Prac­tice Ses­sions – sie sind das Za­uber­salz in un­ser­er Suppe. Wo sonst würden wir alte Bekan­nte und Fre­unde tref­fen und über un­ser ei­genes Rep­er­toire plaud­ern können? Wofür würden wir sonst un­ser Geld aus­geben, wenn nicht für Re­quis­iten und Hil­f­s­mit­tel, die kur­ze …

Now we are go­ing to dis­cuss a couple of tools that are use­ful in build­ing our archive. These are not many and may dif­fer from what you have been us­ing already. Again, very few and simple cat­egor­ies: com­puter note tak­ing stor­age Com­puter In these days al­most every­body owns a smart­phone, tab­let, …

Let’s take a look at that mon­ster called archive. We have to build one from scratch. Much bet­ter than wast­ing time in try­ing to get some over­view of the mess we have already. This will be our new archive, that also rep­res­ents our new life as …

There are tons of books and courses out there, even blogs ded­ic­ated to the top­ic of self-or­­gan­­iz­a­­tion. But for the ma­gi­cians, there is­n’t too much on this. In the past years, help­ing oth­er ma­gi­cians cre­ate their acts and shows, one thing has been very prom­in­ently: They …

This pro­ject was born out of an­ger and des­pair about the things go­ing on on the ma­gic mar­ket­place. Help to stop that! See what Tim El­lis is right­fully do­ing already. I think we are not the only ones think­ing that way. We feel that the hon­est cus­tom­ers in …

Este proyecto nació desde el en­fado y la deses­per­a­ción sobre lo que está ocur­riendo en el mer­cado de la ma­gia. ¡Ay­uda a parar esto! Echa un vistazo a lo que Tim El­lis ya está haciendo de hecho. Creo que no somos los úni­cos que pensam­os así. Pensam­os …

If there ever was a ma­gic­al “DIY hack”, then it is this one here. John Ram­say’s “Cyl­in­der and Coins” trick is a clas­sic and a very strong ef­fect. I al­ways wanted to do it, but then there were two obstacles: The ex­pens­ive and hard to get …

A card pre­dic­tion us­ing only two small blank file cards. Any­time, any­where, in the pocket/wallet and al­most im­promptu. One of the res­ults of my nev­er-en­d­ing search for “nat­ur­al in­dex sys­tems”. It was born in an emer­gency, when I did­n’t have the Knep­per out­fit with me, be­cause …

La pre­dic­ción de una carta util­iz­ando sólo dos tar­jetas de vis­ita en blanco. En cu­alquier mo­mento, en cu­alquier lugar, en el bolsillo/cartera y casi im­pro­vis­ado. Este es uno de los res­ulta­dos de mi búsqueda sin fin de “sis­tem­as de clasific­a­ción nat­ur­al”. Nació en una emer­gen­cia, cuando …

The Him­ber Wal­let is a very use­ful tool. But some­times, it is easy to get con­fused as to which side to open. I know that a seasoned pro has no prob­lem with that, but this hint is dir­ec­ted at the am­a­teur and cas­u­al per­former. In or­der to …