All Types of Magic
magicBesides its power of amusing, conjuring affords an immense amount of instruction. Magic is useful in inculcating coolness, precision, and endless resourcefulness.
Such character qualities will always stand one in good stead on this world’s ever-changing stage.
The virtual magician Jon Finch says that only nine fundamental categories comprise all magic tricks you’ve ever seen!
You know that there are thousands of magic tricks. But all of them fit into one of the nine different types of magic tricks.
Each class describes a type of illusion.
By learning a bit about each kind of…illusion…the zoom magician can easily focus efforts on learning magic tricks from that category within the others.
How Do Magicians Do Mind Blowing Magic Tricks?
For the sake of variety, if a magician perform ten magic routines at an event to the same audience, you may not want all the tricks to be in the same category. Penetrations (one of the nine classes). That’s why every good magic kit has a mix of tricks from each of the 9 types. As you learn magic, you’ll discover a school of thought in the performance of magic, mentalism, and stagecraft that there should be variety in your act to make the event enjoyable for your spectators and create a strong reaction in your audience. Many magicians on the TV show Fool US put variety in their magic act or Zoom magic show, even though the idea is performing one classic trick. Uri Geller, one of the most famous magicians and mentalists of the 20th century, displayed a variety of abilities at his events.
Kinds of Easy Magic Tricks
Let’s take a peek into what each category does and see a few examples and images that best represent them. All professional magicians know these categories of magic tricks. Each category has easy tricks, tricks for beginners, and advanced effects. The last two listed (8 and 9) are the most potent forms in terms of impossibility, onlooker envy (the degree to which onlookers want the ability), and audience impact.
Productions
The magician shows an empty box or an empty hand, and then a ball appears. A magical Production is the opposite of Vanishing.
- The magician produces a dove out of thin air.
- Coin magic – The performer pulls a coin from a child’s ear.
- Card magic – The performer makes a deck of cards appear in an empty box.
Vanish (a coin or a car)
When people learn magic, vanishing is the first trick most learn. Vanishing is the opposite of Production.
- The magician’s assistant enters a box, then the magician reveals the box is empty.
- The magician holds a cage with a bird inside; then, he makes the bird disappear into thin air.
- The illusionist makes a bottle of water disappear.
Transformations
In a transformation, the magician transforms an object from one state into another, such as changing an item’s weight or turning water into wine. Usually, the magic performer achieves the transformation via a combination of Production and Vanishing.
- The performer runs a yellow scarf through his fist, and the scarf comes out of his fist a red scarf.
- One of the most shocking effects of all magic is the color change. The “color change” is a card trick where a red card changes to black. There are fun variations of the color change card trick, one being the Snap Change — a card trick Blaine performed on his first TV special (requires sleight of hand).
- One coin magically changes to a coin; e.g., a copper coin magically changes to a silver coin.
Restorations
Restorations involve the magician destroying an object and then making it whole.
- The magician saws a lady in half, then puts her back together.
- The close-up magician tears apart a playing card and then restores the card to its untorn condition (requires sleight of hand).
- The performer tears apart a newspaper, then heals it, and it is whole again.
- Easy magic tricks include pulling off the thumb and putting it back on one hand.
- The coin magician bites a quarter in half and makes it whole again, the quarter bite trick (not a coin trick for kids).
Teleportation Trick
activities for kids
In teleportation magic tricks, the most familiar objects are made to vanish and reappear as though they were disembodied and reinstated. This magic trick type encompasses two objects changing location with each other (double teleportation, which magicians call “transposition”).
- The assistant entered the cupboard. An instant later, she stands among the audience.
- The participant placed a playing card inside the deck of cards, and it’s now on top of the deck of cards.
- The coin vanishes from the performer’s hand and appears in the magician’s pocket.
Transposition Trick
The transposition magic trick type is a child of the teleportation magic trick type. Two objects swap places in a magical manner.
- The spectator holds the king of spades sandwiched in her hands. The magician waves an ace of spades over her hands. When the performer turns over his ace of spades, the audience can see it’s now the king of spades. When she opens her hands to look at her card, she finds the ace of spades. The two cards switched places. Magic!
Penetration
Penetration optical illusions involve passing an object through another solid item.
- Linking Rings (solid steel rings link and unlink, like water)
- An escapologist can escape from a locked container.
- Sawing a lady in half. Usually, she’s restored; this could fall under Restoration. A non-magician can start sawing a lady in half sawing illusion, but the real trick is making her whole again.
- Thrust a pen or pencil (or cigarette) through the center of a quarter.
- A rubber band passes through a friend’s rubber band.
- The performer borrows a dollar and then shoves his pen through it like water. He slides the pen out and hands the healed twenty back to nervous friends.
Levitating – The Levitation Illusion
Levitation magic effects involve the magician creating the illusion that a thing or the performer is floating.
- David Copperfield hovering over his audience (no other magician can fly like David Copperfield)
- Fun close-up magic:
- Floating a coin, finger ring, or floating a dollar bill trick above your hand in thin air
- Rising card or levitating card
- Easy magic trick for beginners —magic floating match (great trick for older kids)
Mentalism tricks include telepathy, telekinesis, attention, influence, sudden insight, mathemagic, and predictions. Of all magic tricks, mind reading tricks have the strongest magic effects—predictions being the strongest mental effect of them all, as well as impossibility and impact. Some products are easy magic; others are challenging.
- Describing by insight a picture your participant has drawn
- Easy magic trick for beginners
- Knowing by insight the card your participant has chosen
Magic Books and Tutorial
Magic Tricks
The Dollar Bill in A Magnetic Pencil
There are plenty of magicians who specialize in one magic trick over another skill. Still, many magicians, like David Copperfield. Exceptional at card magic, coin magic, crafts sleight of hand, and all art of deception—can merge the magic effects in their acts to make the event entertaining.
Sure, Uri Geller was most famous for his ability to impress people by bending spoons with his mind. Still, in his performances, he duplicated unseen drawings, read minds with insight, stopped clocks with his mind, and influenced an entire audience to select a precise picture, among other things.
A school of thought contrary to that one is you should display only one clearly defined ability, e.g., math genius, master of influence, telepathy, or foresight at the event.
If your persona is you are outstanding at influencing friends to think certain things and do certain things, then—no matter how cool you believe spoon-bending is—you should avoid bending spoons in your show, as that would be incongruent with your persona.
even the uninitiated can see that David Blaine, David Copperfield, or Derek Dingle from the Amazon is an excellent sleight-of-hand artist with playing cards. Then he “reads their minds,” even using a deck of playing cards to do so.
they believe he can read minds!
The Paper Clips Application Book of Playing Cards Impress
If we look at the most celebrated magic performers of the past century and breakdown by star, we’ll notice that though each kept the attention of spectators and did indeed present a clear brand and persona, none of them adhered to it 100%.
Magicians like David Copperfield, Joseph Dunninger, David Berglas, Kreskin, and Derren Brown—all famous and commercially successful mentalists with 5-star ratings, the public knew these magicians as mentalists who wouldn’t be caught dead saying abracadabra. But each of them did a magic trick with silk or coins or eligible items at every event—something which is incongruent with their professed mental ability.
, they did a bit in the rubber band family of mental magic (a combination of mentalism and magic…such as when a spectator thinks of someone and that person’s name appears on a chalkboard).
Berglas did the floating table deception, as did Derren Brown. Kreskin performed (poorly) the ambitious card trick (the ambitious card trick is a standard card trick that every magician knows, but few magicians perform well).
The Amazing Kreskin—known to the world as a mentalist—performed card tricks on national TV.
These mentalism giants (magicians) weren’t strictly opposed to doing a magic trick occasionally—even ambitious cards—because surprisingly, the public still believes a performer is psychic or has some components of insight and mind power. The public thinks this even after seeing a performer reveal he is skilled at sleight of hand and trickery.
Here’s an excellent example. After David Blaine throws the deck of cards at a glass window with faster shipping, and the chosen playing card goes through the window, the guy exclaims that Blaine can read his mind.
Focus on any trick, and you’ll find hundreds of variations of those tricks to perform.
Focus on any variation, and you’ll find dozens—sometimes hundreds—of nuanced iterations of that variation created by magicians.
This misguided belief occurred multiple times on Blaine’s first TV special. Although David Blaine’s persona is a magician, not a mind-reading mentalist, laypeople still believed Blaine could read minds.
Derek Dingle—a card magician—did the same thing with Barbara Walters (after showing her card tricks and doing impressive sleight of hand with cards, he told her to think of one card from a fanned-out pack of cards. Dingle correctly guessed which card she was thinking of, and Walters exclaimed the below.
“The card magic I can understand, but when you read my mind!”
Barbara Walters, to Derek Dingle
Consider the implications of this lazy thinking displayed by family professional Barbara Walters. It is universal when magicians sprinkle mentalism into the event.
I’ve been performing magic tricks for 20 years, and I’ve heard only two people (one, a 7-year-old boy and another spectator at a wedding) have such an exceptional mind they concluded,
“Well, I know you are skillful with your hands, the mindreading must have somehow happened using the skill you have with your hands.” Remarkable!
Those two people (out of thousands) were correct.
A lay audience doesn’t give a crap about logical inconsistencies.
If we look at the greatest (commercially most successful) magicians of the last century, we’ll notice a clear pattern of disregard for this “persona congruence” idea.
Dunninger, The Amazing Kreskin, Al Koran, and Derren Brown (hands down the most innovative and outstanding performer of the 21st century) all displayed a hodgepodge of abilities unexplained by their magnetic persona.
all of them (aside from Blaine) presented themselves as mentalists, and all of them sprinkled magic effects into their mentalism shows.
The strict school of thought a mentalist should not do a magic trick (or that which is perceived as clearly a magic trick by simple average)—at the risk of tipping the audience he’s a trickster and not a real mind reader—simply does not hold up, when you look at successful “psychic entertainers”.
To learn magic tricks and master them, you study the best magic books, perform for a live audience, return to the magic books, perform for a live audience, rubber band percentage breakdown, confidence ratings, science experiment, return to magic books, and live audience, etc.
Conclusion Illusion
Learn from A Book of Magic
“Ooh, I’ve seen that magic trick before”
For this reason, it is foolish to say, “Oh, I’ve seen that trick before,” when a magician pulls out some coins or a silk deck of cards and says, “Pick a card.”
I’ve personally heard this before—when I simply pull out a deck of cards!
Even if I begin the experiment with a deck of cards, “take a card,” I never proceed with simply discovering that card and revealing it. That’s an easy magic trick for beginners. The magician can go in a thousand directions.
Make it interesting!
I might make the card change into a card in their hand. Or shoot out of the deck (which is one way to reveal the card—there are hundreds of ways to reveal a discovered card).
Ooh, that’s interesting, see.
If I’m the entertainment for a wedding with families and friends, I’ll make the card appear in the cake or have the bride choose a card, sign the front, and the groom take a card and sign the back. Then, let the groom shuffle the deck and find his own card, looking at the backs. Turn it over, I say. Now they begin to see that the bride’s signature is on the face of his card.
Ooh, fascinating!
Or jump to an impossible location (my mouth, my pocket, the spectator’s pocket, under the saltshaker, under the spectator’s cup of coffee, folded up and inside the clock hanging on a wall. You get the idea—hundreds of magic tricks within the ‘card to impossible location’ plot, and few of them are achieved with the same method). Or even ambitious card.
Make the magic interesting, fascinating, and entertaining.
The same is true of levitation tricks and mentalism tricks. The premise of the mentalism trick is usually something along the lines of telepathy, body language, application, NLP, some combination of the above, or some other malarky.
On close inspection, it’s all a bunch of horseshit.
Is the mechanism in the minds of the audience. The solution does not present itself to an audience by insight. The performer makes sure of that by including references to such red herrings in his patter. Though the plots and premises of the effect are a few dozen, the modus operandi number in the thousands.
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