Do Something with This

Escher Wrist Band

What it says on the tin. That's too cool not to do something with it. While you guys are doing that, I'm going to go get some aspirin because staring at that thing is making my head hurt.

I Have a Fetish

Now if that isn't the most provocative title I've ever used... Something that most people forget is that the word fetish has uses outside of the bedroom. The original definition referred to an object assumed to have supernatural power, typically of the protective variety.

I've spent some time studying real world superstitions and see the recurring trend of the use of fetishes and charms. Naturally, Westerners are most familiar with the ones that originated among the Slavic tribes or out of Christendom. And even some of the latter were co-opted from beliefs amongst the Greeks, Romans, Slavs and Germanic tribes. Once you really dig in you find a lot of interesting information.

If you're a bizarrist or otherwise like to perform with a more realistic supernatural persona, it's worth it to do some research on this yourself. The concept of a charm, fetish, amulet, or other mystical gizmo is deeply ingrained into the collective unconscious, some of the symbols even transcending national and cultural borders. For example, almost every culture believes that salt has power to either purify or ward off evil. Sumo wrestlers throw salt into the ring to purify it, even if they're not Shintoist themselves but still adhere to tradition. Among Westerners, a ring of salt is allegedly able to block evil spirits or even trap them.

As animists, the Native Americans built a large portion of their spirituality around fetishes. The Sioux for example would adorn their headdresses with strips of weasel skin at the temples because they believed it would make them swifter and react faster. Flint featured heavily into their myths, though those stories varied greatly, and was typically attributed mystical power.

Harlan Tarbell briefly described this phenomenon in Lesson 4 of the Tarbell Course, which makes it surprising to me that so few magicians still take advantage of it. Perhaps in our more cynical post-modern world we've stopped believing that such things could mean anything to anyone. But think about it for a second. Not many people wear medicine pouches anymore. And unless you live in certain parts of Louisiana or the Caribbean, you probably don't know what a gris-gris is. But how many sports fans do you know who have a lucky jersey? I'll bet most of you know at least one.

Charms haven't gone away, they've simply altered their form to match the aesthetics and sensibilities of the modern world. The function remains the same. The world is full of variables and forces that are beyond our control and it gives a lot of people a sense of comfort to believe that a talisman of some sort can alter fate in their favor, if only to a small degree. It should come as no surprise then that if you have a charm or fetish in your show, people will pick up on the meaning of it quickly enough.

On reflection, I think there might be another reason that magicians don't use these things anymore. Beyond the fact that the trappings have fallen out of vogue as of late, there's a prevailing attitude I've noticed even professionals parroting that goes, "I don't want the [prop] taking credit for what I did." That never sat right with me because most of the time people are not going to attribute supernatural or even mundane but secret powers to an inanimate object. In some cases however you want them to. There are times when you don't want to make it about you and what you can do. Drawing their attention to a mystical trinket can in reality be one of the most effective forms of misdirection.

Think about how much the atmosphere of a seance for example would change if next to his candle the magician also placed a bulb of garlic, or if he hung a wreath of hawthorn over all the doorways and windows explaining that it was a precautionary measure for the safety of the sitters. I know a magician who has a routine to turn himself into a vampire before the audience's eyes. Imagine a magician doing something similar after handing a spectator a holy talisman or pendant that he had been previously wearing through the whole show, as if it was the only barrier between him and the transformation. Imagine the same, but with a more totemistic sort of charm and the transformation being into some variety of lycanthrope. Imagine a Q&A act about romance utilizing an antique wedding band on a chain for a pendulum. Perhaps a performer is doing a routine based on myths of ancient China and wears a pendant of obviously Chinese design showing five bats, which is considered an extremely lucky symbol in Chinese folklore. The possibilities are limitless.

If you've got the character for it, consider utilizing this. It can spice up your act with a touch of realist mysticism. And yes, I know that sounds like an oxymoron. Just roll with it, okay? We have literally millennia worth of rites, traditions, superstitions and mystic trappings from hundreds if not thousands of cultures. There has to be something in there that you would find useful.

Sorcerer Shopping Guide Part I

With the holidays coming up, I thought I'd provide you, my readers, with some new venues to find some props, books, and other sundries to get your creativity going. So break out the wishlist and prepare to find a wealth of new items to completely blow your paycheck (or a relative's paycheck) on. It's what this time of year is all about, right?

Our first featured store in the series is ThinkGeek.com. I'd like to highlight a couple of their products and how they might help you.

Bucky Balls
These little guys are rare earth magnets formed into a series of 216 little balls about 5mm in diameter. Magnets have been part of magical methodology for ages. What's interesting about these little guys is their size. They have a good magnetic pull to them, and the tininess makes it very easy to conceal them without suspicion in or on a number of objects. Experiment with a set of these and see where your mind goes from there.

Colored Flame Tea Candles
There are a lot of possibilities here. I have several ideas myself, but I'm sure you can think of more.

Hollow Spy Coins
Given the sort of coin gimmicks already on the market, these seem like a natural next choice. I'm planning to get one of these myself and experiment with flash paper and billets first.

Squishy Shot Glass Set
If you know a routine for producing a full shot glass, this can be integrated with some sponge balls as well if you're performing for an over-21 crowd. That's just off the top of my head though. Being collapsible and portable makes it easy to hide, so there are plenty of other possibilities for the clever magician.

Micro-Spy Remote
Those of you who read The Dresden Files and certain other pieces of genre fiction may recall a tendency for technology to screw up in the presence of magic. I saw this and thought, "Why not?"

DIY Library Kit
I honestly have no idea what I want to do this yet, but I want to do something. Maybe one of you can think of a good routine.

The Zombie Survival Guide
I swear, one day I will make a book test out of this.

Sneaky Uses for Everyday Things
Sneakier Uses for Everyday Things
Sneakiest Uses for Everyday Things
Do I really need to explain this one to you? Technically these are mostly DIY science projects, but a clever magician knows how to use technology to his advantage.

Xtensor
No, it's not particularly magical, but it does look like a good way to keep your hands in good shape if you're into doing knuckle-busting sleight of hand.


There's the first installment in our little holiday guide. There's more coming down the pipeline though, so don't ask your relatives to spend everything in one place.

3 Ways to Increase Your Creativity

The creative process varies from individual to individual. Thom Wolfe was known to put himself through all sorts of weird processes to write, including sitting in his kitchen sink simply because he'd never done that before. While it takes time to work out your own process, there are some exercises that can help.

3. Keep a Dream Journal
When our brains go into REM mode during sleep, that's when dreaming occurs. Most of it is nearly impossible to remember, but the recall is there if you just get used to it. Keeping a dream journal is the best way to tap into this.

Keep a notebook and pen next to your bed. Get into the habit every morning of writing down what you remember about your dreams. It won't be much at first, but within about a week, you'll start remembering more and be able to write more detailed logs. After a couple months, you might even be able to trigger lucid dreams.

The reason this is a boon to your creativity is because it shuts off the analytical left brain. I've recorded dreams about visiting a town where a pirate is the mayor, where I'm driving the Mach 5, and one in which a demon in the art style of the Scott Pilgrim vs the World graphic novels questions me about my dreams. Your right brain isn't terribly critical of what goes on in dreams, so you end up with these bizarre juxtapositions of logically incompatible ideas.

However, this also means that recorded dreams make interesting fodder for creativity, sometimes providing the seed of an idea. Your brain is simply jumbling together ideas that it's been mulling over for the last couple of days. The connections it sometimes forms are the sort of thing you normally would never think of when conscious because your left brain is being way too critical of content.

If this also leads you to experience lucid dreaming, that has advantages as well. You can rehearse performances, reinforce knowledge you already have, practice a skill, and improve your memory and recall. Of course, this will take some time to get used to and it may be months before you achieve actual lucid dreams. I suggest you do some reading on the subject if you're interested.

Otherwise, just keep a dream journal. Remember to write your dreams down immediately upon waking. Don't get up to stretch and dress. Don't stare at the ceiling. You need to preserve the visions of the dream on paper before they fade away.


2. Clustering
This a freewriting type of exercise that I'm fond of. I discuss it along with others in my ebook "Say What?" It works well for people with very visual imaginations. What you do is write down a single thought. For the sake of example, let's say it's storms. Write it in the center of a blank page and circle it. This is your keystone thought.

Now write down all the things your keystone makes you think of, circle them, and draw a line connecting them to the keystone. Lightning, howling winds, dark clouds, pitch darkness, cold, rain, and so on in this example.

Now repeat the process with every new little node. Lightning makes me think of violence, inspiration, thunderclaps, destruction. Rain makes me think of rejuvenation, flooding, the scent of water in the air, the drumming of falling rain, mist, fog, and summer. Pitch darkness makes me think of isolation, obscurity, fear, night, and so on.

Just keep repeating the process for each node until there's no more room on the page. You now have a mental road map of imaginative connections between disparate elements. The more connections you make, the more you start to see possibilities open up before you. You can explore possibilities you never thought of before. IN this little example, I already got the seed of an idea for a routine using some stage hypnosis and a murder mystery story using effects such as getting people to smell the scent of rain even though there isn't a cloud in the sky.

If you're familiar with freewriting and other concepts, clustering should come naturally to you. Effectively, this is freewriting in a visual format. Experiment with it and see where it takes you. It's an effective way to turn off the analytical left brain for a few minutes, and once you get the feel for it, you can try similar methods such as automatic writing and cave writing.


1. Think Like a Time Traveler
As an avid gamer I've tried out numerous systems, settings, and genres. Pen'n'paper RPGs are still my favorite for truly expansive thinking since so much more is possible when you have a game master responding to your ideas and actions in real time. On that note, I point to a concept from an underrated gem published by Wizards of the Coast called Urban Arcana.

As the name suggests, it's an urban fantasy game. Among suggestions for the players and game master, it recommends that you learn to think like a person displaced in time and space. Go to a hardware store and put yourself in the frame of mind of not knowing what most of the stuff is. Think of the most outrageous uses and explanations for these things that you can. That is every day of a time traveling wizard's life.

Through this exercise, you end up coming up with some pretty interesting ideas. As an example, here's a list of some of the spells and magic items described in the Urban Arcana rule book:

• A wristwatch that makes you faster.
• A bullseye tattoo that magically makes you a better shot.
• A backpack with an extradimensional interior of over 100 cubic feet.
• A spell that lets you teleport to the location of a telephone you're calling.
• A spell that disables all surveillance and security devices temporarily.
• A spell that lets you read barcodes and other data sources like a machine by running your finger over them.

I'm working on an effect based on that last premise, incidentally.  Part of my Dr. Question Mark show.

Anyway, the point is that you start thinking of things not as what they are but what they could be. It's a call back to the days of childhood imagination. For a child, the impossible is only a matter of time. One of the unique challenges to doing magic for children is that they don't take things for granted as adults do. Everything around you could do something fantastic and they're waiting for it happen. Consequently, you can't rely on surprising them as much. But that's tangential to the point.

The message here is to exercise your creativity by thinking laterally and observing possibilities instead of facts. A lot of comedy is based on this as well. You see it frequently in Mystery Science Theater 3000.

"He's got two huge Sudafed on top of his car." (lights on a police car)
"I think the Tin Man had that thing surgically removed." (a small satellite)
"This is the most complicated beer bong I've ever seen." (lab equipment)
"Eat this baguette! Eat it!" (guy getting hit with a 2x4)

Next time you're out in public, give it a try. Consider mundane objects and start thinking of them in a totally new context.